Here's how I see it:

Empowerment is optional because empowerment classes are optional.

Empowerment is not an impossible barrier for anyone. New, veteran, RP savvy or not, ESL, whatever., you can get empowered to 51. I wouldn't generalize that quite so much when it comes to virtues on a Paladin, but even things like shaman paths I'd say it holds true.

Sometimes, very rarely, empowerment fails. I can think of maybe two instances in the last year where I felt like someone did their due diligence and ended up getting boned by the system and they ultimately deleted. It happens and we're sorry. CF not being death row, we find this preferable to a system that is substantially weaker in the RP department.

I get that empowerment being unappealing to some people means they feel "left out" with respect to a handful of class options in CF. This is by design. If someone can make empowerment work and simply does not want to then that's fine, but we're not redesigning huge portions of the game because of that. The same logic applies to the core mechanics of conjurers, the practicing required of invokers, the randomness of shapeshifters, etc. Some of our many classes come with an inherent proposition that players need to be a certain amount of okay with in order to enjoy them and I'm okay with that.

A month ago (or so) I'd have sympathized a little more given the state of the wizlist but after adding a few new religions, I think we're in really good shape.

Lastly, I'm not going to assert that empowerment will never change. I can certainly see a future for CF where empowerment as-is stops making sense, but I think we're still a long way from that reality.