As others have said, personal taste. There's no hiding what the issues are, even the CEO admits to it. So it's definitely caveat emptor at this point.
With that said, even with it's flaws, some people are having fun with this game. Personally, I have more regret in the $60 that I spent on Starcraft II than what I paid for Elemental. I've had no interest in picking SC2 back up once I completed the campaign. It's nothing against the game, it's well polished, made me laugh and have fun but it's not my type of game. I knew that going in but I took the risk hoping that I'd get hooked and spend a lot of time with multiplayer. Just didn't happen. So for myself, I find Elemental to be a better value just because it's my type of game, even with it's flaws.
The other thing though is that I pre-ordered this back in February. So my $50 was spent a long time ago. It's hard to say if I would have felt differently had I went to Gamestop and bought the game when it came out - the outlay of cash fresh in my mind. My experience was also tempered with the fact that I've seen this game in it's early stages and seen it evolve. It was pretty horrible back then so comparatively, it's a huge improvement over my initial experiences with the game. Having played it a few weeks before it came out, I also knew what to expect.
I guess the most telling answer is that I work with a huge MoM fan (as it turns out, I didn't know). When I had posted about this game on Facebook, he started asking a lot of questions and wanted to know how it compared to MoM. I was extremely hesitant in recommending it initially - mainly cause from his enthusiasm I wasn't sure this was going to be what he expected. After the launch and everything that happened I pretty much told him to wait for a few months.