I've been a goldfish level backer since 2016 and following long before then. My son and I even made some fun Youtube videos of a series we had hoped to develop. Bla bla the usual. I don't play it often. I usually follow the development on the sidelines, catch up on videos from BoredGamer and others during the week. Every 6 or so months I update it all and play pretty solidly for a few weeks. These times are far enough apart that I get to experience the game as something approximating a 'new user' where I learn how to fly again and try to understand the universe I've been dropped into. There's a long post I could make regarding how poor the new player experience is. My own frustrations with game breaking bugs and also witnessing friends who I have encouraged to join during free fly events. It's not smooth, and often it's not fun at all. Death of a Spaceman / high cost of dying coupled with the frequency of dying (outside of intended gameplay deaths) has usually been the catalyst for me to put it down again for another 6 - 12 months. I mention this to give credence to why I watch the development from the sidelines. I am a Roadmap Watcher. The development of SC is interesting to me as a developer. I'm interested mechanically in development - how it works, how items are prioritised etc. It's a fascinating industry. I am invested emotionally in the game and the universe we are seeing generated before us. I don't have the patience to play SC in it's current state, so watching the development gives me a sense of involvement. From my perspective the issue that SC has had for many many years is communication. I know from experience that you can implement tools to solve problems. The Roadmap is a tool. I also know that tools don't fix underlying issues. I'm not surprised that the Roadmap is now seen as a blocker for them internally and why it hasn't really solved the issues it was created for. No tool can fix the problems that SC seems to have in clearly communicating. There are certain things that a culture of clear communication does, and certain things a culture of poor communication does. - Good communication works as a team. We had this a few years ago - weekly QAs and clear community involvement - Good communication over communicates. This is hard, but ideally you should leave no question in the mind of you stakeholders. - Good communication does not lie. Soon^tm has become a meme, and the sad downside is that it has eroded trust. I don't believe SC PU will be released any time soon. I'm not convinced that S42 is more real than past citcon 'demos'. That's a hard pill to swallow but that's where I'm at honestly. I hold out hope that it's all being developed stealth for a grand release, but nothing in the past 10 years has shown me otherwise. Calling this 'lying' may be harsh, I know it's not some deliberately malicious plan, and I do understand how tickets move between sprints more frequently than they stay. Regardless of intent, the result is still processed by the primitive component of our brain the same as lying; 'he say x and did not give x, me think he lying' - Good communication keeps promises made. We've all the seen the various 'unfinished promises' lists posted here. They are long sadly. This really falls into the previous point of lying and it has contributed greatly to my apprehension of buying any new ships. When I step into my Cutlass, the head position reminds me that fixing previously sold ships probably wont happen for a few years still. - Good communication recognizes fault. This is actually something that CIG has done a fair bit, and props to them for showing humility in the past. They can admit fault and it's fantastic! - Good communication keeps trying. There will always be toxicity, some from people who wish for SC to fail, but I believe most is simply from those of us who care enough to voice how we feel. Imperfectly. - Good comms can forgive the bad and respond to the good - much the same way the community has done with CIG for the past 10 years. - Good comms invites criticism. We are all human and are on a journey of growth. Marred often by our own shortsightedness and feeble nature. Good comms invites input from others to help them become better. - Poor communication blames. The tone of the update is really what reminded me that SC has a comms problem. I think I am still shocked that after so long it's still so prevalent. Those of you within CIG must also feel it during your day to day work - because if an outsider sees it, it must be very thick within those walls. - Poor communication lacks self awareness. Do people within CIG have the freedom to voice concerns over decisions made? If I was a lowly coder within CIG and saw that post could I email the PR team and tell them that they're insane if they post it? The lack of self-awareness expressed lately makes me think there's likely a culture of 'just stay quiet and don't point out fault' within CIG. I mean it's essentially what they told the community - Poor communication changes direction and does not bring the team along for the ride. We are all here on the journey of a lifetime. I'm excited for what CR is imagining with this huge space opera / sim game. It's like no other. I want to see this vision realised. As that vision evolves, it's imperative that we the community are there too - or decision made will seem very alien and upsetting. Recent ship debacles speak to this. - Poor communication silences. It's definitely the easier way - just tell your subordinates to go back to their cubicles and stop raising issues. Done, no more noise. It's a decent short term solution - and it only costs pretty much everything. Especially if the people you silence are your greatest champions. It's a very sad state to be in honestly. - Poor communication treats the team as less. Whether the community IS less or not, is open for interpretation. It doesn't really matter whether we are, but comms shouldn't be suggesting that. My guess is the rift between CIG internally and the SC community has grown a lot over the past few years. Perhaps CIG feels hostage to our demands? Maybe they feel like they cannot please us? Maybe it's true. But like a family, we are here and are not going anywhere because despite the faults we point out, we do really love SC, CIG, CR, and the whole gang. I can go on, but I think you get the idea. For the record I'm not opposed to cutting back on the roadmap. It's not a very useful long-term look at SC anyway. And yeah it will probably remove the teeth of some toxic community members... My criticism is that this cut-back is a bandaid to having to deal with valid criticism and I don't think it'll fix the underlying issue which is that there's a serious comms problem between CIG and the community. Both parties have fault here - however the dynamic is not equal. The community are stakeholders (emotionally, mechanically and financially) and CIG is undertaking a grand task whose complexity requires grander communication. 1 more deliberately left until last - Good communicators listen more than they speak. "Listening is not the act of hearing the words spoken, it is the art of understanding the meaning behind those words" - Simon Sinek