It does work 'fine' but it is borderline obsolete (I said borderline). With Zbrush and Substance and Blender it's falling behind. I bought in because I liked that they were believers and I thought the update would bring them into a more competitive position.
About the release date, I think you develop a software until it gets to a nearly polished state and then you give people the tease and then a release date. You can even say, "hey guys, were developing this in the background but its going to be a while because its a massive update."
I think jumping the gun, postponing, and using it as a marketing ploy burns a lot more people. Of course you have a small group of people who swear by it and they are happy with whatever. But then you have people like me who are on the fence, or people who ideally you convert from other software who look at it and go, "Oh yeah. I heard about 3D Coat, they're decent but didn't they make an announcement about a revamp a couple years ago and it never happened." Or like me, "I invested in it because I believed in what they are doing but it doesn't look like they are ever going to come through." So when its released appreciation and excitement are replaced by feelings that a debt has finally been payed, or worse, it can't possibly live up to what's expectation and hype it built. It's just not a good look for a company trying to make a mark imo.
It would be better if they just said, "We jumped the gun, it's going to be a year." Because moving goal posts creates disillusionment and frustration. Break our hearts once and give yourself time, don't do it over and over and perpetually put yourself in a state of panic.
My fear is they are trying to be too much. If they are trying to beat Zbrush, Substance, and a modeling program like Maya and Blender I think that's bad news for us. Those programs have niches and a much larger base for funding so they can hire more devs and develop those areas much quicker than 3D Coat can which will leave us waiting and the dev's never quite "done."
This is all conjecture of course, they could totally meet their deadline.