Imagine that installing and configuring HDmod takes three times as long as it does now.
And there are a couple more pages of options added. And they all appear during installation; there's no easy setup with default settings.
And yes, there are a few more crashes.
Plus, let's remove cranim and the ability to choose a template, so you have to do it manually, the old-fashioned way. And let's remove something else... for example, the option to choose the resolution through a menu; instead, you have to enter it manually in the ini file.
And let's add some nasty thing. Let's say we add a bug to the network protocol, so that to connect to an opponent, you have to enter their IP address not in a window, but in another ini file.
For the sake of a clean experiment, let's assume that there are no older versions (and there never were) - either this one or a bare SoD.
The question is, will this lead to a mass rejection of HDmod?
Answer: for those who already use it, it won't. And for those who haven't tried it yet, they won't need it anyway.
The answer, I think, is obvious.
Conclusion?
The answer is actually not at all obvious. You're thinking too progressively.
За то что нейтралы не бегают за единичкой, для меня это уже стоит того