I think one of the changes in the recent years was opening the game up to a wider type of audience which is, of course, good for revenue and the funding of the game. Ironically it is also bad for the community because the floodgates to the greater internet have also been opened which attracted a lot of those people who think gaming is where you notice an inconvenience in a game you are playing and then write a hate letter or an entitled rant saying how much this or that is not conform with all the other games where devs are but a gamer's slave delivering whatever they want.
It's drama and outrage instead of constructive criticism. Thinking of game devs either as oppressors or slaves creating content for them instead of people working on that game we all play, and that stance is, as infantile as it might be, quite widespread.
No! We can't just tell them what we don't like, but we have to weave in words like "pathetic" and "lousy" and "incompetent" to give our words more weight and have some flag to wave around...
There is a light and a dark side on the internet, and there is a immature side stuck in some kind of teenager rebellion which mistakes entertainment for politics and those cool people creating games for politicians who represent some shady agenda while in reality they just like to make games. You're totally entitled to not like something and also to say that, but if you do so, stay on topic and treat a game like a game.
Also this behavior seems to be that common, that forums usually don't even bother to treat an insult like an insult and thus a violation of the ToS. Insult any forum user, and a moderator will react. Insult a game dev and it will ignite a 200 pages discussion. Game devs are people and also forum users. But no, it's more diplomatic to not react because that could be seen as an act to silence critics... who are not critics but angry immature idiots who like their infant riots and fake dramas.
EDIT: totally forgot to react to the points in OPs post.

Yeah, I think communcating more openly and more frequently would be a very good thing. Though opening up can also have the exact opposite effect, more communication from Frontier might really help keeping the kids in check and would be appreciated by the adults as well.