I would say that 70% of the stuff that I hear people whining about Stardock to change can be changed with a MOD. Of course that leaves the other 30% though like the core tactical fights, memory leak, and lack of depth concerning the spell system and lets not forget the AI.
Sure some people are just whining, but there has been plenty of constructive criticism of Elemental all the way back to Beta.
Anyways, we shouldn't be EXPECTED to mod systems that don't work well. Creating systems that work well was Stardock's job. Our 'job' is to take working systems and MOD them. Right now, I would argue that the aspect of tactical combat I mentioned is broken, and needs to be fixed. Sounds like you might agree based on your post, not really sure.
As for balance, I agree, we can handle much of that, so I would rather Stardock focus on the things we can't fix. Same holds true for most of the 'creative' content. I don't really care much about Stardock making new maps, quests, etc. because that is just adding content on top of a weak foundation. We in the community can create content, but fixing the basic systems is a much bigger challenge, one that Stardock is best positioned to handle.
