Comments in this thread have ranged from eloquent to insane (sometimes a wonderful combination). Some of us may be a little peculiar, but the common denominator is some passion, and that's a rather nice thing to observe.
Dev interaction with the playerbase just fell by 80%.
Perhaps her expertise was needed in the planetary landing department. You know, those stupid NPCs keep slamming their ships into the deck, or canyon walls perhaps.
edit:
I wish i could rep my own posts.
When she comes back, can she have her own "Mistress of the Minions" page here?
https://community.elitedangerous.com/
Needless to say she has become rather beloved by the community and this is something Frontier should be happy with.
Some other projects I follow have handled this type of thing far better, they should check out how the devs lead by Richard Garriott handle themselves, one example is when discussing game features that haven't made it into the game yet are subject to change and not assume. If its secret as Sarah has said just state it that way.
Oh well, just throwing ideas out there, I was also hoping for better AI too and I hope it will be hot on the heals of 1.4 and various patches, really no need to wait for bigger updates for things like AI or PP improvements imho.
Given what previous frontier employees have had to say about the management... absolutely none of that would surprise me, and is probably closer to the truth than any other ideas put forward thus far.Very interesting... not only is she off the AI codebase, she's banned from public communication. I bet something she said online (not necessarily on this forum) angered someone higher up the foodchain and she's either being punished or "managed out" (given a task they know she hates until she quits in disgust). I've seen it happen before, it's pretty rampant in larger companies. If FD is that kind of work environment, then some of the weirder decisions they've made start making sense (think VP's pet project - remember Microsoft Bob? BillG's wife was the brains behind it).
Update to what?
https://www.frontierstore.net/
You're assuming Elite: Dangerous is where she is working, but they've already got the money they'd get from sales of that - they're not likely to sell any more copies because of improved AI. But Planet Coaster might be running behind schedule...