Uh, the original Crusader Kings was way, way, way worse with the passivity. In CK2, I can at least tell a counselor to "Forge a claim here". In the original Crusader Kings, you just had to wait till the game gave you a seemingly random claim. And the hard part with the original is that most things were not really that random, but undocumented in-game. Its a core game mechanic.
...and there are mods to fix it.
EDIT: Just wanted to point out the flaw with Stellaris, and why it's not fatal to Paradox Studios: There is no historical setup in space. Look at all their good games. They have a fixed start. Maybe, just maybe, someone at Paradox can take the random scenario generator from Crusader Kings 2 and apply it to Stellaris so that players can start as an established empire instead of having to research "space stuff for dummies" every single time. And if that miracle should happen, they might be able figure out how to make it fun to play as a vassal or a single-system empire like with their other games. Even without a random scenario where large parts of the map are established, they could salvage Stellaris if they create a fixed start with large, established empires that the player can play. But I worry someone is obsessed with creating the best 4x space game instead of a game they actually have the talent to make. Frankly, my opinion is that they're going to just give up soon.