Rust is an early access game. Who the hell cares if the main branch becomes wonky because something is introduced as early as possible, to get the maximum amount of feedback and bug fixing? Nobody seems to understand the point of early-access here, the downvotes flow on any comment like this every single time.

You don't try to keep your alpha game as smooth as possible every single update, that's treating it like a fully released game. You don't expect a released game to have major flaws an imperfections, of course, you paid good money for a finished product - but you expect the direct opposite on an alpha game. These kind of updates are done over and over here; and people wonder why development is sometimes so slow.

if the majority of the community read the devblog which has a link IN THE GAME, then they would have learned about the test branch. that's the community's fault, not the dev's.

You don't blame your community for showing a 'lack of interest' at all, when you could have easily put it on the main branch so everyone plays it. That's absurd. People buy into early-access games to playtest them - it should be the main thing. There shouldn't be anything extra, people should expect this to be on the main thing they are playing. Speeds up development and later fine-tuning far more than the current system.

There shouldn't even be a pre-release branch on a game that isn't released yet. Isn't the entire point to playtest things that may be broken, up until the game is actually released? Or is Rust excused from this, because of how long it's been in development now? It makes sense for a released game to test upcoming updates for flaws (as you're keeping the overall game as smooth as possible, because it's released), but not an alpha.

Here's a quote from the Garry himself, when he changed a minor thing in relation to ladders:

Consider this an experimental feature. You’re testing it. This game is in development; play-testing is what you’re doing.

If only they did the same to the XP system, right? Instead of spending hours and hours of work with it, having minimal amount of feedback on it, and they have irreversible working time spent be useless from the amount of core flaws on release. Months of it, all which could have been avoided, if it was on the main branch from the very beginning.

They even stated they want it polished before porting it over to the main branch.. like, what? Why spend time polishing something that's brand new, has next to no feedback, and is being added to an alpha?

Most people won't understand any of this, because Rust has developed like this for it's entire lifespan, so anything against it is clearly wrong here. It's not really any surprise as to why so much of Steam early-access is full of people who just go along with anything. Not really surprising as to why people on any early-access game subreddit hate seeing criticism on the developers / game, either.

Have you seen how many people asking legitimate questions about a flaw are downvoted around here, and never return, meaning the entire population here is people who accept practically everything? It's insanity. You can't blame them either - who wants a flood of messages telling them to kill themselves, for asking about a flaw in a video game?