Why should anybody of FDev reply here? What are the consequences of ignoring the forums? None, if you ask me. The more vocal and concerned community in the forums is only a small part of the active players. I watch this forums since I have the game (not very long, around 2 months now). I even participate from time to time, but I am about to give up to think about the game, or thinking of suggestions. All things here are just ignored. And why not? No consequences at all. Many here post angry or disappointed views. But they still play, at least most of them say they play, and they still buy things from the Livery store. All is well, from FDev's point of view.
What would bring a strong and fast response would be refusing to play, and more important, refusing to buy anything. No chance for this to happen. So they string us along with promises from time to time, and that's it.
The posters here (not including me, or only in a very small part) are all very interested in the game. But all I see are always the same people posting, discussing, (constructively) criticizing the game and making suggestions. I estimate there are around 50-100 very active long time members here posting often, and again 200-300 different players posting from time to time. This is less than 10% of the player base (around 7000 according to the last Steam charts, and this does not include people like me playing without Steam). Lets say that probably even less than 5% of all the players post here. Why should they react?
I have thought of posting several suggestions - but I will not take the time to do it. All the things posted are discussed here - by less than 5% of the players, and I am sure they all are completely ignored by FDev. They do not even read the threads, I think. No consequences, remember?
Bug fixes - the idea of 'voting for bugs' is just a clever plan to 'pacify the masses' here. What else should it bring? More attention to a bug? It is and remains FDevs responsibility alone to decide which bugs they fix. And looking at the last few weeks they have decided. So they can live perfectly without communicating, and they earn enough money without the need to fix any bugs. Why should they act differently? The 'professional pride' to have a program (or game) mostly bug free and working as intended is dead long since. Not only here.
The only thing of (rather massive) value these forums have is the help content and the willingness of experienced player to help others. This is the only reason I am reading the forums here. I would have given up weeks before without the hints here...
So - better play as long as it makes fun, and forget FDev. Forget about the bugs - I just avoid them by not doing a lot of so called 'content' which is buggy, not working or just not designed well to spare me the aggravation. And at some point in the future I fully expect to lose interest, and then, without regret I will - maybe - play the game every other week for a few hours. We will see...
(And no, you can't have my things)
I wish i could post this on the top of every thread. You just nail it here: from their perspective, it's a win win situation.
"Who cares if people stop playing now or are bothered by bugs. They'll likely give us money again down the line when we finally release the spacelegs. Not to mention all the new people coming in, and the hardcore guys who believe that Elite is the best game since Pong who'll keep buying paintjobs."
Frontier are a for profit company, and they can rely on a community of players who will keep the game alive no matter how slow, poor, bug-ridden and half-baked the development is. This is why they could say: "wait 18 months of radio silence peeps, the future will be EXCITING!!". Any other game would be doomed. Not Elite. For as long as people are happy circumnavigating barren planets in SRVs, the game will not die. Nor evolve.
