I still can't quite fathom why a large part of the miners/community refused to embrace it.

Right, because you still haven't learnt a thing. Core has not listened or cared about the users of bitcoin. It's not that the community refused to embrace whatever Core decided to shovel out. It's that Core never listened to users and produced what they wanted. Instead they pushed the agenda of what benefited Blockstream.

They supported and continue to support the censorship of the main bitcoin communications channels. They tacitly and sometimes explicitly support the attacks on competing clients, non-core developers and even core developers who they disagree with.

Core developers have implemented a solution that effectively increases the blocksize, as requested.

Core did what "was requested" in the same way a deal is made with the devil in cartoons. "Sure, we have a deal. You can now play a violin better than anyone in the world....^{but you have to keep playing forever"}

"Sure, you can have a small capacity increase right now...^{but bitcoin will be stuck with this on-chain capacity forever} "