I would argue the fact that you care so much about positive and negative reviews means the system works.
I care in an abstract way, same way I care about sales or movies. Sure, it would be nice to get more positive reviews, more sales, or to watch a post-1991 Terminator movie that doesn't suck. Why I lump them all together? Because I can't do much about any of that.
Neither poor sales nor negative reviews drive me
or any other indie developer into action. For example, we'll continue supporting AoD for 3-4 months after release regardless of sales and reviews (but if the game sells better than expected, we'll add more content than currently planned simply because extra revenues will make this luxury possible).
Many developers would be influenced much more by their customers or ratings they receive then you are and yet.. you still know by memory negative reviews your game has gotten.
We got 33 negative review. I remember 5-6, reviews that struck me as odd, same way I remember some Codex threads. I never expected everyone to like AoD, not even on the Codex (and Steam is a much wider audience), so negative reviews don't really come as a shock to me. What surprises me are the negative reviews that aren't really negative. When Infinitron posted the article above, I checked the negative reviews and was surprised to see the same.