Stating the truth is not "false statements" and "hateful speech." Not knowing the background of the rift, I'd guess your attitude is probably why some devs jumped ship and started ECA. On the contrary, a post in the ECA forum is met with enthusiasm and a helpful attitude. Have a fair day. Good luck with rules. I have abandoned using it. I have nothing more to add here.
The most current version of Rules is still in an "Alpha" release state, while ECA has a stable release for the most current version of Drupal. So your characterization of "intense development" could easily be cast back at Rules for still being in Alpha state all these years later. Support for Rules is largely dead and left to each individual to figure out, without waiting months for a ping from the community. ECA has a stable release for the current version of Drupal and has a very active developer community that rapidly responds to tickets. I'd imagine most of the rules installations are attributed to Drupal 7 websites. Rules worked on Drupal 7. I don't know why so much changed with Drupal 8, but it doesn't work like it did. ECA is an incredibly robust module that does everything Rules should do plus more. I'd encourage anybody to give it a shot with the expectation of phasing out Rules.
In case anyone is interested, I resolved this issue by switching to the ECA module, which appears to be better maintained and with more robust features than rules. Highly recommend making the switch.
Great! I just saw this after being away for a few weeks. I'll check the update soon and report back if any issues. Thank you!