I'm pretty certain you'll be proven wrong on this point. The show is great and don't need 2 decades of Star Trek enclypedias to be enjoyed. I've got several non-Trek interested friends who enjoy the show.
the thing is the complaint some fans have is that they changed a bunch of stuff just for the sake of changing things, and then tried to claim this is the same prime timeline just a few years before the start of the classic star trek.
If they had gone a little bit different route they could have essentially gotten their cake and eaten it too so to speak.
one suggestion was that they could have introduced their new Klingons without totally discarding the "old Klingons" I have an idea on how they could have done it that makes sense and ties into the old history.
essentially you have groups and "types" of Klingons kind of like the enterprise Zindi.
you have "pure Klingons", Various race Hybrid Klingons, "Augment Klingons" etc. the advantage of going that method, is that while it gives you a lot more options, it doesn't throw out any of the old canon it actually enhances and embraces it.
the Ships, aspect also could easily work around this Idea by NOT calling that ship a D7 or whatever it was, you have the various ships, but then you say ok this is a "house" fleet and they have design ethic whatever, and then there is the "imperial fleet," which uses the designs we are familiar with, IE there are some ships that are built by and or to specs specified by the overall Klingon government, a frontier fleet, various defense fleets, and also the individual House fleets many of which are just flat out different from each other.
plus they could still "revise" the imperial designs much like they did with the enterprise, IE brought up to modern high res images cgi, levels of detail, but you can still see the classic designs in there. even if its the overall outline, but lots of the small and fine detail is different.