When you can reasonably say that a significant portion of current or potential players simply would not play your game at all without access to community support, it's worth asking whether that situation is optimal or desired. That isn't to cast blame or indict anyone, devs or players or whatever. It's just a thing worth looking at.
At the end of the day it is quite simple: FD needs to pay their employees money, and money is limited. The more they spend on documentation, tools and such the less they can spend on other things. Its why pretty much every single complex/complicated game I play requires the community to do that part. The only real alternative would be to spend more resources on documentation, and less on actually creating the game. Not that there is anything wrong with that choice, but there is no real and/and here, its always a form of either/or.
Its notable that this community would find this problematic, because similar choices also tend to baffle this community more than others. Most communities of other games not only easily accept the above, but also understand its either/or rather than and/and when it comes to actual features itself. The X4 community readily accepts there are no 1:1 scale planets to land on, or planets to land on in any form at all. The NMS community understands the 'flight sim' part is largely absent, nor do they expect any kind of sensible scale, orbits or any other astronomical realism. Not so with this community.
Q: Why doesn't FD not only create a 1:1 scale galaxy, full planetary landings, an engaging flight model, loads of ship tweaking, aliens, CGs, on-foot combat&stealth, a decade-long storyline and so on, but not also ELWs, EVA, more ships and base building? And why don't they also create all the tutorials, guide, apps, tools and videos to support it?
A: Because that would take more resources than a game studio realistically can spend on a single commercial product without excessive financial risks to the company.
