People have weird expectations. I was disappointed with the HUD from GoT, that's valid, although I am still quite excited to play.
But SoT? There was an alpha and a beta. This shit is annoying as hell. People build up expectations on a big nothing, for no good reason. This has been a theme ever since there were betas. Every single fucking time there is a beta very close to launch, people defend games because it's not out yet. Why can't people have realistic expectations? For once? Every valid point about the game's state instantly becomes "concern trolling" up until the very end, when it releases. And voila! Realistic expectations turned out to be the closest to reality.
And I don't mean this in derogatory way concerning the games. SoT was a perfectly fine game. It was a GaaS game which from the very start was about the social online multiplayer. It was clear as day that that was the main idea behind the game. If someone hoped that it was a completely different game from what it was meant to be up until the very end after two early access looks... Man, that's on completely them.
I can totally understand people asking for refunds on NMS. I think the pitchforks were too much, but all in all, yes, that was a shitty move. But once again, people seemed to be disappointed with NMS because it didn't have side-quests all over it with some advanced deep combat. That game was never meant to have either of those things. It was an amazing unique game where you explored a generated infinite universe. I can understand if that is not enough for people. It was a niche game, but I cannot understand how people were disappointed (to clarify, I am not talking about the multiplayer here, that is completely valid).
I don't know, I'm just venting. The same thing is happening with next-gen. Unreasonable expectations with instant wild speculation. Even though we are probably going to get a very nice looking AC game, people are going to crap on its graphics. I can guarantee it.
(and to be fair, this is not a direct response to anyone in this thread, it's just a general feeling I've been having about the problems with expectations regarding video games)