I'm not a dev, heck, I'm not a programmer at all! so my opinion hardly matters. it might be fine as a way to tailor special characters stories tho, no?
I'm not enamored with this, but for me it hardly matters - I use cheats and don't actually play - never been past day ~25 with previous build and I had it for a year maybe.
and while I agree that high obed should matter, the whole trance system was made specifically to modify char's opinions, not obedience, that was more a casual command execution.
the idea of expanding game system is nice, but the game was around forever, so modifying systems, that are familiar to long time players would inevitably create discontent.