I think I do need to explain more what I meant here then. The forums are a great gauge of activity because it shows people are actively talking about the game. However if you were to try to discern the “state of the game” purely from forums you’d go mad, because the forums naturally are a bit more pessimistic. I’m not discounting any of the hundreds of feedback threads I read a day, there’s value in those and those players could be right. However that doesn’t mean the state of the game is necessarily bad because the top threads say so. That’s one avenue, of one demographic of players, that is most definitely not the majority (by a longshot), but these are passionate players that understand the game.
When I say its not a great judge of state of the game, I mean holistically how you’d assess it. It’s just not enough data. It’s can be very validated and opinionated but it’s not enough to decide if the game is good or bad, because according to the forums its more often than not always “bad”. That’s just how it is and has been for over 14 years now.
Sorry you feel that way but your posts are not a waste of time.