What I want to know is why so many users here are so resistant to the idea that maybe Odyssey released broken. Why do so many of you go to such lengths to defend FDev for this?
Because they have the same mentality as Ponzi scheme victims.
Contrary to popular belief, many con victims don't direct their anger at the people who fooled them. Instead, they're so embarrassed and ashamed that they were fooled that they instead persist in the illusion that they're vanguards of a legitimate and successful product. That's why the most ardent defenders of Ponzi schemes are victims of Ponzi schemes.
In reality, just look for real screenshots and streams to see how Odyssey performs. And the blunt reality is that it's very much a broken release.
Exegious and Down to Earth Astronomy for instance have both released live play streams (11 and 4 hours long respectively). Now, I don't have time to watch the whole thing - and I suspect most people don't either. However, whenever I fast-forward to
any part of their videos you'll see them encounter some kind of bug within 5 minutes. Some are minor glitches like dead bodies floating in the air, but others are more annoying like connectivity issues or how you get bizarrely handed bounties for doing some ground missions.
Worse, nothing is really that great graphics-wise. To be fair - some folks have posted nice pics elsewhere in the forums - but you have to look for the planets with nice views and time the shots. The majority of planets by contrast still look like Horizon.
This is why I appreciate threads like these who post actual screenshots. It makes it unavoidable to confront the reality that this launch has a ton of problems. Over on the Steam forums, it's still an unending stream of basic bug problems - like Orange Sidewinder, unable to connect, or getting stuck in an Apex taxi. That's why it got such terrible reviews. The people too embarrassed to admit reality can talk all they want. They can pretend we are being "rude" by pointing out they have no clothes.
In reality, its likely the people who got trapped in an Apex taxi just gave a thumbs down and asked for a refund because that's such an unacceptably stupid bug that prevents people from playing - when it's a largely unnecessary feature in the first place (the base game gives you a spaceship, so why need a taxi?). Add on top of that the refund issues some people are experiencing, then it becomes unavoidable to start players from believing that Fdev is really a scam.