For what it's worth my observation was only that a significant proportion of "haters" have chosen to be so without actually giving it a chance, and the survey results support this.
Are there issues with 6E? Yes. Is CGL ultimately responsible for them? Yes. But is 6E an "unplayable dumpster fire"? Absolutely not.
It really does play much better than it reads for those that are willing to give it a shot is all I'm saying. Even as one of the authors I've admitted to not liking portions of it and also wish I could have one more pass at tweaking the stuff I wrote once some fresh eyes were able to view it.
There are very few actually negative reviews (strictly concerning game play and excluding quality) that I give much credibility to simply because based on the evidence provided with those reviews they are based on just reading the book (usually without taking errata into account even) or playing it but obviously missing using the rules as presented.
I mean, if someone reads the book and gets a different interpretation than intended, isn't that more on the designer than on the player?
It's fair to say that rules with errata may be better. However, this is the first system I've played and run where I've felt the need to go to errata. I don't have much experience with game systems (Various editions of D&D, Eclipse Phase, Sprawl), but I don't think it's fair to count on the player having a lot of experience with game systems. I don't think all problems with the book require you to play it, either: missing rules at the beginning (Unarmed damage, essence value), typos, references to rules that don't exist- all of these are things that someone can identify without playing.
It's far too easy to fall into the trap of thinking that a player just "doesn't get it," "didn't go into it with the right mindset," "doesn't have the same game design expertise that I do," "was too harsh with criticism for it to matter," etc.
The advice I've always gotten for creating is: If something tells you something's not working for them, they're almost always right. Conversely, if they tell you how to fix it, the fix is almost always wrong.
Take multi-attack for example: we might identify that the rule is vague, that it can be OP using anticipation, or that it doesn't make sense when you take into account how weapons work IRL. There are a dozen different fixes we could come up with, but the designer is going to understand their system the best, and will be able to create the best fix for it.
"Ignoring the critics" is not a good solution. Someone doesn't need to prove to you that there is a problem. They might not have found the right answer to fixing the problem, or maybe they've misread it. The latter is on the designer, not the player. If the rules are not clear, there is a problem with the rules.
For what it's worth my observation was only that a significant proportion of "haters" have chosen to be so without actually giving it a chance, and the survey results support this.
It really doesn't.
All we see is that about a quarter of the folks on these three communities neither bought the book nor pirated it, give or take 10%. Nothing in the survey asks if they gave it a chance, if they played it, if they played the quickstart rules, if they did a mission at digital gencon, etc. Nothing in the survey shows whether this group is one of the "haters" who posts about "dumpster fires" all the time.
Edit: HOWEVER, comma: the popularity of a game is NOT the same as the game's quality. It wouldn't matter if I had a perfect random sampling of 2000-odd purchasers of the 6e CRB from across all platforms, mediums, whatever. It doesn't matter if they all hate it. The quality of a game is certainly a
factor correlated with popularity, but it is NOT the same. I hope this hasn't been misconstrued.