If they had delivered the game they had originally pitched for Kickstarter it wouldn’t have nearly as amazing as it is. Smooth terrain and random worlds were originally a post release goal. They have far exceeded their promises and while its true the game isn’t finished it will be far more than what was originally going to be. AND you get to play it all the while it is being developed.
I am confident time will prove the Pimps are true and are not abusing early access nor are they mistreating anyone. Mistreating would be if they closed access to the other builds until A17 came out. But, no, access continues unabated and developers converse daily with people here in the forums and progress updates are also given at least once a week.
You can go to the Steam database and view the new builds being submitted as proof that work continues.
Honestly i've finally gotten with the "its done when its done" thing. Do I want a17e to mess with? oh defently, I'd even take it in its current half functioning state. Now I am not going to complain its not here yet, I just go and play other games while checking in every few days to see how its coming along. As for people complaining etc, all I can say is this, 7dtd has the most hours in a single title i've played on steam, I have over 250+ games not including their dlc. The amount of playtime I got out of 7dtd, and still get out of it, made it one of the best purchaises I ever made on steam to this day.
A large portion of the delay probally was caused by the engine change, not only do they have to recode alot of stuff probally, the shaders they had didn't work anymore so they had to make new ones and test them as well. A game engine update is often a big deal, and can introduce a hell of alot of problems. Another reason many 7dtd updates seem to be delayed is because the devs keep changing core mechanics and how progression etc works. To me the last few alphas never felt much diffrent, a17 however is nearly a whole new game with how everything just about has been redone.
People also forget how many kickstarter games ended up just disappearing after the kickstarter ended, it happens more often than not. Its been years, and 7dtd is still worked on by the devs, which is more than you can say for most kickstarted titles. Not to mention I have mutiple early access titles where they bascally got abandoned by the devs before any offical release version even existed.
If I was to worry about the future of the game, it'd be for the console version only, as the company that was porting it, is now gone.