I wish all of the people who rejected base Dominion because they felt it was too simple or predictable would have started with 2nd edition. Perhaps their opinions would be different now.
A few years back, my Mother-in-law bought Base Set to try relating to my wife (Mother-in-law does enjoy other lighter board games like Splendor, Kingsburg, and 7 Wonders, so we had no reason to think Base Set Dominion would be a bad fit). After having played a couple rounds with my Sister-in-law, MiL calls up my wife and complains "the game is just too easy. It's so obvious what you have to do and one strategy is easily the best". I assume they're talking about Chapel, because you know, it's Base Set.
Next time we're over at MiL's house, we ask to play a game of Dominion with her. Much to my horror, her "obvious winning strategy" is the Village Idiot. She just buys Village after Village, then
only once the pile is empty does she start buying other Action cards and/or Treasures. Needless to say, one of us beats MiL by a significant amount despite intentionally playing a little sub-optimally. So we politely try to tell her between games that the Villages gain you no benefit if they're the only Action cards in your deck. She's skeptical. So I explain to her that, yes, you will have tons of Actions now, but after playing all of those Villages your deck is still just 7 Coppers and 3 Estates, so "what are you going to do with all of those extra Actions? You only have Treasure and Victory cards." Her conclusion: "You're just trying to get into my head so
you can get all of the Villages first!"
We played a few more games, in which she stuck to her guns and lost every time. Despite my constant assurance that Chapel was in fact the strongest card in the box, she kept saying it was a worthless card. I even demonstrated a typical chapel Big Money deck in a game for her. No dice, Chapel is super weak and you only won because you got the Golds first. I couldn't get her to realize that the reason I was able to get those Golds first was because of Chapel.
So I'm not so sure that many of the people who were convinced that Dominion is too simple or predictable really know what they're talking about
While I'm ranting: I also have a brother who rolls his eyes every time he hears there's a new Dominion Expansion and says something along the lines of "Jeez, they're gonna
have to start a rotation soon like all the other CCGs if they want players to be able to keep up". I try explaining to him that the core mechanic of Dominion is basically a rotation- as in you rotate 10 cards every game, and that you don't have to have the entire card pool memorized to play it, because thinking on the fly is a key part of the game. He doesn't see it that way. He also feels that Arctic Scavengers is a better Deck Builder because of how much smaller the cardpool is.
...I don't like to talk about Dominion with most of my family...