It would be hard for me not to generally and broadly agree with a request for better communication and community engagement from Larian.
I have requested this as well in the past, with slightly
different arguments (mostly, not resorting to the argument "we paid full price, we could be given more communication at that price").
But as I was saying
more recently :
[...] I don't think it was irrational to expect some occasional report like "Feedback we are aware of (and conclusions about the design we are drawing from it)" or "What we are working on" between patches.
Instead here we go with thew secrecy, the pageantry, the attempt to build hype... And the LONG stretches of complete silence in between.
Not only some communication like that would not have been irrational or unreasonable, but it would also have been quite useful. Indeed, the process of gathering feedback would have been made easier, since a good chunk of the "feedback noise" and irrelevant requests would just not have been posted. And those who would have continued posting feedback would have turned their energy to where it could be useful. (*)
But hey, as I've said before, Larian must have had a pretty solid rationale for choosing to go along the minimal-communication route. So solid that the benefits of this communication policy still outweighed the costs, such as all the criticism they received for feeling out of touch with their player base (**). It's just a shame they never shared their wisdom with us. Who knows, it might have convinced some of us —pretty solid reasons can do that with reasonable people— and they would have received less negative feedback on their lacklustre communication. (See above paragraph about making feedback easier to process and focused on more useful areas.) * : By the way, is anyone vaguely hoping that a new community manager, or whatever related news is coming, has a chance of finally going into "some detail about how we process & parse feedback and data we get through talking with you, and the telemetry we have in the game" (as Larian announced in Hotfix #11, on 12/5/2021).
** : Fun fact, in a GDC talk about the making of D:OS1 (at about 6:50), Swen said "during the time of Ego Draconis, we had lost touch with our players behind a corporate wall of press releases and so we didn't really communicate with them anymore". Which sounds fun to me, because I feel this is exactly what's been happening during the BG3 EA, with "press releases" renamed as "Community Updates".
I would still be very happy to see Larian change their communication policy, and I would be very interested if one day we get to hear why they thought that going in with such a minimal communication was a good idea. But I don't entertain too high hopes of that happening.
All this being said, some things might, perhaps, potentially, change. We were told by Larian recently that we could
expect community manager news over the summer. So who knows ? On the other hand, we were
also told in the past that we'd hear some detail about how they process & parse feedback and data they get through talking with us, and the telemetry they have in the game. This never happened. So, again, who knows ? It could happen, it could not.
p.s. Also of note, perhaps, the idea of an AMA session is popular on Reddit. I'll try to find the links later, but I've seen it come up a couple of times.
