I think that the more people wait, the more they cover the same ground and after a while sides form and get entrenched.
There's many good points made by a lot of people here, regardless of what they believe about the state of the simulator and the potential of release, and there's also some needless remarks made by the exact same persons. It just goes part and parcel with the nature of internet forums and a bunch of highly enthusiastic (and thus, some too impatient and some too perfectionist) people discussing the same or similar things too often. People get tired of the repetition by others and then state something themselves that is already repetitive as well
The developers are not gods, but they are not stupid either. Could they screw up? They could potentially, they are humans after all. Do they have a proven track record? I'd say they do and i give them the credit due for it and the burden that goes alongside said credit that they will deliver another benchmark product.
I too get tired of reading a lot of similar things, but then again nobody is forcing me to and i'm also guilty of doing it myself for the reason outlined above: we cover the same ground too often. However, that doesn't detract from the fact that if one is willing to dissect the flow of posts in a reasonable manner, it's very much possible to separate the useful bits from the rest.
In short, don't let it get to you everybody and keep posting, as statistically speaking when you have a large enough number of people with a wide spectrum of opinions, you also will have a better spectrum of potential ideas and constructive criticism...we just have to be calm and separate the chaff from the wheat
I think that despite the various rivalries, the place is still bubbling with anticipation if heated debates are anything to go by and most importantly, harsh remarks might be made from time to time but there has not been a concentrated effort to shut down anyone who's critical of the pace that progress occurs or any real or perceived features of the title.
We've had threads discussing anything from mission design and campaign structure to DRM, as well as people pointing out flaws and disagreements in some strong language and yet, to my knowledge there hasn't been any "forum-pogrom" by one side against the other. There are usually a few people who take up "forum-dueling" among themselves but the rest, regadless of personal opinion, manage to maintain a level-headed attitude.
This is way much more than can be said about another recent simulator title that was released in a state and with features that many potential customers found quite disagreeable. I don't want to point fingers just for the sake of pointing fingers, but if something is true then it's true and that's all there is to it.
When RoF was released (a year and a half ago was it?) it had a handful of flyables, no offline single player mode, no persistent server multiplayer mode, quite the host of technical issues, a precarious development history under a team that people weren't familiar with and a restrictive activation system that extended to the very ability to use the simulator one paid for with their hard earned cash and yet, when people talked about it all hell would break loose.
Hell can break loose in here too, but people are allowed to nitpick details to no end, from aircraft related ones that can be considered important like incorrectly modelled trim tabs, to scenery related ones like foliage types, plus they are allowed to do it to an extent that sometimes even important details get dragged down to the level of minutae, or as an ancient Greek saying goes about diminishing returns for the effort expended when directly translated, "refining the mosquito". Just a single comparison made for the sake of maintaining some perspective. The difference in amount of slack provided and scale of allowed criticism is enormous.
I don't agree with all the nitpicking, but i don't agree with the "wait and hope it gets fixed" school of thought either. It might seem like constant arguing sometimes, but i think the end statistical result of it all is a good amount of synergy between developers and fans and you know what? I think the dev team sees this too, despite the tiresome taks of having to wade through the static, otherwise they wouldn't let it continue or they would throw us a bone as a means of appeasement.
They know what we want to see in this sim because we are allowed to scream at what we think is wrong and vice versa, they actively try to fix issues that are being pointed out as evidenced by corrections shown in the weekly update (yes, issues as small as a reversed aerodynamic fairing on the 109's radio mast, i'm not saying it shouldn't be correct but it wouldn't make the sim unplayable for me if it wasn't) and for me, that's the most important thing. I don't know if they will get 100% right on release, but i guess it'll be a solid 70-80% in the worst case scenario and that is worth a delayed release in my book, as opposed to having to "fight" the game for the first few months and losing interest in it.
Of course, this is my personal opinion and not the absolute, universal truth, so everyone do feel free to strongly disagree, pick it apart and shoot it down at your own leisure...who knows, something positive might come out of the whole exchange and if it does, that's worth it too. It's good for a community when members are strongly opinionated, what's bad is them being dogmatic