... this has been a rotten update for a minority of people, ive been a supporter of TANE financially right from the start on both PC and MAc and it's given me mostly frustration over its entire existence
Yes I agree, it has been a "rotten update" for a minority of users and I too have experienced periods of frustration, but not "mostly". One thing that has been clear is that different users with different systems, setups, DLS and third party download habits have had different experiences with TANE and its SPs. SP2 was the worst for me but HF1 has fixed all my significant issues. I am now more than happy with the product and, because I was a part of the "beta test team" for HF1, I feel some significant ownership of the product.
... we are all supposed to just be nice to the creators when they are giving us endless hours of angst rather than pleasure, I think we have every right to express our displeasure.
There are two sides to this of course. Without those creators there would be very little content on the DLS so "being nice to them" could ensure a steady supply of new content and, hopefully, they will improve their creation skills in the process. The flaw in this argument is that the skills needed to keep the content up with the latest version of the program are becoming more difficult to master.
Most content creators, I believe, are more than happy to accept constructive criticism and good advice on how to improve their skills and assets. You can find many such threads in these forums, particularly in the "Content Creators Forum". There are always going to be a few creators who will not take kindly to any advice. Unfortunately there are, it seems, plenty of content users who have no qualms about destructively criticising any free asset that causes their displeasure, for whatever reason.
As as been pointed out many times over the years, the penalty you pay for allowing any Tom, Dick (sorry boleyd) and Harriette to make their own content in a sandbox environment is that you are going to get some assets that worked well in TRS2004 with its lax standards but cause major problems when those standards are tightened. Remember those days when the config.txt files were full of tags with very basic spelling errors?
Perhaps N3V should have made a clean start with all new assets for TANE and no backwards compatibility - but perhaps not!
I am amazed so many people stick with the product , I know I am considering whether to continue with it or not or to move on to other things. To drop it would be to abandon years of work ,but one has to consider if it's worth all the angst in the long run.
Perhaps your own tagline provides the answer to that question.
Peter
