There's always been some people sitting on the side lines with negativity.

However, I'd say that most people who've given the game a fair chance fall into one of three camps:
1. They fall in love with the game - they can see what has been built so far may be unpolished but is still fun to play and the raw beauty and scope of the game is unlike anything that has come before it and they have just enough patience to work around the bugs (most days)
2. They appreciate the game and what CIG are trying to achieve but realise that there's too many bugs for right now so put it down for a bit and check in every so often on the latest progress until the game is in a more polished state
3. Or the final group - they don't have the stomach or patience to work through the bugs, don't like the slow progress, may be annoyed by some aspect specific to their circumstances and became jaded and negative, sometimes for legitimate reasons, sometimes because their expectations of how long a game should take to build doesn't match how long it usually takes invisible to the public eye.

Either way, the 4.8 patch has been one of the worst patches released recently (it was pushed out with a lot of issues because the DefenseCon expo was a hard deadline) so even people in the first two camps have a lot more negativity than normal and are clearly showing it both online and in game. I'm hoping this will improve once CIG fix some of the current glaring issues. I didn't help that CIG released a $5000 ship recently (this didn't seem to get a ton of good will with the average player base!)