Just ran the numbers, only for this year:
I played 8 online games, so Essential already required a bunch of times.
I played 6 Essential games. Most wander directly in my backlog. I think that's more than what I did the past years.
I played 15 Extra games.
I played 2 Premium games.
Also used Premium for some streaming.
Premium is a bit unconvincing, but still okayish. Used it more at the launch. But the rest is extremely fine.
That's already worth the yearly fee, in April. If your mileage varies far from that, of course it decreases the perceived value and I often wonder why anyone that does not really use Plus sufficiently often, why they ever were subscribed in the first place. Pure Essential subscribers possible get probably a worse deal now, less games than the 2+2+2 combo we had for some time, and some major game entries appear rather on Extra instead of Essential. So them being a bit pissed is understandable. But it felt like most people anyway argued that they don't care for the games and only subscribe for the online, so which games are there or not on it doesn't matter much.