> I've put well over 100 hours of my time into it. Still running into a lot of people knee-jerk calling it "slop"

Indeed. The number of hours is my goto defence too. So far I've put in maybe 200 hours of time into design, iteration, playtesting, QA, and balance of my game. Sure - almost zero has gone directly into writing code but this is still a major project.

People who one shot a crappy game have no idea how much work it still takes to get something really good over the finish line.

>I'm not really sure what to do with people who dismiss AI-assisted projects

Mostly I've stopped worrying or trying to convince the haters. I'm having a blast and building great things (lots more than just Asteria).

Good luck with your apt project!