Absolutely, unless they’re making some sort of crap nobody wants to see released.
There are a lot of slow devs, for various reasons. But there’s nothing worse than silent treatment.
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But also “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
See: launch. Very communicative, fell hard unfortunately. Yes it sucks we don’t have more info right now, but Fatshark has said before due to putting themselves into corners they don’t give solid comms anymore until they are 100% sure they’re ready to, in order to be safe.
I should know, I’ve done over eager comms and had to walk it back with my tail between my legs. An announcement with a blog let’s say 4 weeks later (not saying that’s when it will come out, I have no idea tbh) isn’t the worst cadence.
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Safe from what? I haven’t seen more hate than Fatshark gets to any devs, but real scammers.
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It’s to make sure they don’t over promise.
That’s difficult with two updates per year.
And I guess communication is the least of the problems with such scenarios.
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The have backed themselves in to the “Damned if you do, damned if you dont” corner of their own creation sadly. Its hard to get out of once a regular playerbase decides it is so, because it influences new players and easily transfers across to them, building expectations.
A good example of a game that was destroyed by players first, then suits afterwards is Anthem. People just decided based on popular reviews that the game was 
and while it had serious issues with connectivity at the start, if they had the backing of the suits after the initial poop show, it could have stood the test of time.
Players hit the first nail in the coffin, suits hit the final nail.
A good example of a game that DIDNT stay in the corner, ignored the players initial reactions and DID have suits backing it up is No Mans Sky.
They got some of the worst reception a game has ever recieved. It was branded a failure across the board. They went silent. But, they had suits backing, they also delivered content and went from strength to strength and eventually won players over again.
I see FS as somewhere in the middle of these. Players have gripes but want a good game. Suits seem to be deaf to concerns at some levels yet they are still even backing V2, a game many years old. FS has trouble giving regular content but when they do give content, its in bursts.
Sadly because of their lack of communication its never enough, they never capitalise and the playerbase remains indifferent or becomes indifferent after consuming the content and seeing a dry riverbed where once water did floweth briefly!
Only the diehards who love the core loop remain and new updates rarely bring a decent influx of new players, again failing to capitalise.
I personally would prefer they communicated more, much like Lohners chronicals. They could drop cryptic hints in there too.
Easy to say from the outside tho. Just my opinion.
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I think this is a very fair write up! Thanks for this! 
In any case, I’ve said what I’ve felt I wanted to say in this thread, so will be taking my leave. People can take it as they will. 
Lord knows posting here can make me a bit tweaky!
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I feel that. Peeps can be quick to judge and quick to jump down throats. Its taken a long time to get to the point in my life where I dont bite back (or at least bite too hard).
Tired. Im just tired. 
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That’s really a poor excuse for doing nothing.
More like Stockholm syndrome.
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Absolutely!
Still seems to be the truth tho. I dont see them suddenly puring out content or becoming champion class communicators so I think we are stuck with FS in the corner.
What do you mean? Do you mean that diehards have stockholm syndrome?
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I mean that you’re trying to justify and sympathize with what is wrong.
There was no “damned if you do” part, it was exactly the same silent treatment for like 2 years since release.
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The overcommunication wasn’t the problem - the lying or player hostile decision afterwards or treating their fans like idiots were.
Let’s pick three examples:
Solo mode was promised and then shelved which was only communicated after several inquires by the community. While not the solo mode we hoped for one possibility would have been to not limit private mode to at least two players but alow usage by one player. So there were no difficulties in delivering the promise (which was most likely made in good faith) but it was decided against because promises don’t count anything. That means those who received the promises (the players) don’t count anything either. a player hostile decision.
Crafting was described as driven by player agency with minor RNG and turned out a Casino in mobile gacha game fashion. A blatant lie
Fomo shop rotation was justified by claiming a constant shop interface like in vermintide would confuse the player base. This insults the intelligence of their fanbase directly and indirectly.
There is an alternative to bad communication and next to no communication - careful communication and respectful treatment of their customer base.
Which Would still be a huge improvement over the current „no talk and no work“ sentiment.
I mean once the framework and general direction of the new itemisation systems are decided upon it should‘nt take longer then one work day write together a short dev blog on it and another work day - maybe two to gather all necessary approvals before release. Taking weeks for something like this is extremely inefficient.
A dev blog could even contain a passage concerning the difficulties in developing implementing the new system thus generating understanding in the community for the glacier speed of development.
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Yeah, the “damned if you do” sentiment rings pretty hollow when you go back and look at the actual history of things.
Before launch and shortly after, they communicated things that were never going to happen - and then told no one about it. How can they be surprised the comms backfire, when they don’t tell anyone that planned features are cut?
Similarly, like you laid out, a lot of the comms were not only incredibly sterile PR corpo speak, but also alarmingly often full of straight up lies.
I suppose if you’re unable to communicate without lying, then “Damned if you do” holds true 
'Course, it also doesn’t help when suite in charge lies on record to gaming news websites. “It was impossible for us to know before launch” that the game wasn’t finished, was missing all promised features, crashed for enormous amounts of customers, etc.
Yeah sure thing. How could you possibly know.
I mean your employees knew. Their twitters were hyping the game, and then all of them mysteriously went completely silent the day of launch.
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Right, thats not stockholm syndrome, thats called empathy.
As for justify. Nah fam. Pointing it out isnt justification. If I was justifying it, I would be trying to say others are wrong for thinking its bad and THAT is closer to stockholm syndrome, although even trying to call it something so extreme as Stockholm Syndrome is hyperbole 
There is “damned if they do”. Have you ever looked in the steam forums? They have one of the worst cases of damned if you do that Iv ever seen! But again, its of their own making. Any update about something has endless comments not about that update with the same old comments. They release new weapons or gamemodes or levels and most comments are “dead game” or “why havent you fixed this thing I dislike” or “ah this is evidence that you have stopped work on V2/DT” (depending on which game u look in the forum for).
Now most games have a bit of that on most forums, but FS has it worse than Iv seen in any game, including Anthem and NMS.
Again, they made the corner and I doubt they will be coming out of it without some huge change of management or hiring some genius level marketing guru.
I dont like any of this situation and I want more updates + communication and less FOMO + money grabbing “premium currency”. I call them out of what I see as negatives and refuse to buy in to those perceived negatives and I highlight what I think are the positives. What else should I do?
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Have you ever seen Fatshark’s CM/dev response there?
Guess why?
For example, not to empathize with them.
Because this situation is not ok, and no, it couldn’t happen to anyone.
Fatshark worked hard for that negative reputation.
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For real, to communicate with Fatshark’s CM they need to leave the company first. (?!)
That’s not ok.
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More evidence that it’s not the CMs. The only difference between Ashqy now and Ashqy then is that Ashqy doesn’t have a boss.
It’s on Martin. Again.
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I’m not empathising, but I’m not ignoring that when CMs have tried to communicate people start to dissect everything to the point where there can’t be casual communication
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I will continue to empathise with people I dont know and even potentially dislike at times.
Its one way Iv remained on the forums otherwise Id be insulting people who disagreed with me many times over as we see sadly all too consistently from many.
Hows that worked out for everyone btw? 
Its not caused FS to become better communicators. Its not caused more frequent updates. It doesnt do anything except, imo, upset other forum goers and alienate the people who make the game that, btw, we love very much or why are we even on their forums?
Im not pointing fingers at you and nobody is an angel including me, but we all have a story, even the worst of us. Im not about to shut-down my empathy because other people cant handle it or dont agree with it.
I will continue to see peoples points, empathise with both forum goers who insult yet have a reason and a good point to make, AND with the Devs, who have a hard job to balance in an industry that many people dont even understand.
I dont have to like it and I do agree with some of the stuff you have said. For instance:
Pretty much no, again Iv already said I would love them to change how they communicate. We agree their communication is their own fault. They are in a corner of their own making.
I dont need to. Iv literally explained why. Is this being facecious or just rhetorical? We clearly agree on the reasons.
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see the wall above
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We agree again, this is not ok.
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We disagree, this could happen to anyone and surely does. I dont see all games forums in existence and I highly doubt there hasnt been a worse case. Its just the worst case Iv seen because of the games Iv paid attention to.
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We agree, again, a corner of their own making.
The reason I generally dont break comments down like this is because I find it to be, by and large, a waste of time, it almost never ends with something constructive and tends to be circular.
Im alrady explaining things Iv said several times already and then been told to change who I am as an empathetic person, so excuse me if I, in the most respectful manner I can muster, take very light offense to that, Im not hurt, but I feel strongly enough to write this wall.
Its your perogative and I accept it as how you feel, but this is my rebuttal to that.
I also dont want to write a wall and I would rather concentrate on what I feel is important i.e. they need to improve communication.
I think thats the most likely and easiest thing they can change first and will have the greatest impact on people in the short term.
There is other stuff but honestly, I dont see the updates becoming frequent nor do I see the FOMO premiun currency shop changing.
Anyway, thats enough from me for now 
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Congrats, you’ve discovered what happens when a community is left with no hope and way too much time on its hands.
People dissect what little FS says because it’s all the communication they get and because FS has a well known history of lying by omission and engaging in lawyer-speak.
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