If you're making any changes whatsoever to the licensing groups, don't bother using the default "Product Licensing" Group. Create a new license group and send the default group off to the side (remove the lic key from it too).
That being the case, make a new group for the vROps license key. If you want to populate it with ALL VMs except those in the "Excl VM Group" (which you already created per your original statement), use the following screenshot as the new license group's ruleset.
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