No, It is important to voice your opinions and for the devs to try and understand them. Again I will use another example from physics here. When one of my students asks a question they may not actually know what they are confused about, after all astrophysics is hard. It is my job as the teacher to parse what they don't understand. It would be better if they could stop sit down and think it through but there is likely a fundamental misunderstanding somewhere deeper that they may or may not be aware of. Some subtlety about quantum mechanics that they might have missed. By your standard the only people that should comment are other game devs because they are the only ones that can stop think it through to entirety and put it in exact words.
This is exactly play time. They're making a game that we play.
The answers they got back were all worth reading. Feedback is important to making the game functional and fun. Even if the feedback is "this game is shit" . You can do simple statistics with lots of bad feedback. The basic principle is if fewer people after a release say "this game is shit" than the previous release, you can pretty definitively say your changes have improved the game. Even the most simple feedback can be useful if you're smart about it.
you need to stop complaining about the community. A community that turns on itself is a disaster for a game. Look at what happened to starcraft. We can complain about the dev team and the game because they are iron clad and can take it. They are professionals. But complaining about other people in your community creates a toxic environment and a sure way to scare players away.
I do agree with the descriptive term "iron clad" here. I feel as if many community members in a lot of games tend to defend the developers to the very end yet I've mingled with game developers while working with and for some myself as a concept artist. Like being apart of any development team, the thick skin comes as a natural plus side when you've been trained through interdisciplinary work environments, getting critique or criticisms from those around you in the process. I also must add that defending the developers adds zero substance to any related discourse of game balances, game additions or future updates, I feel as if the developer team really wanted to be on the defense, they'd speak for themselves not needing the pathetic understudy of a loyal and sweaty nerd.
That being said, the feedback I've given them is that we as the player base need something quantitative to reference to. Some sort of time table, a graph or a developer milestone we can watch closely. While this might sound cold and a bit too cold, much like an employee check-in clock, it will allow the players to put further trust in the development team if they sore documented progress. Being an artist myself, I use to be resistant to the idea of documented work and putting time stamps on my sketched but when I revisited my portfolio, I was very pleasured at the ability to go back in time, revisit certain problems and measure how much progress I've made. There's just an unparalleled joy and feeling of accomplishment that I feel as if Schine could help the community realize. I'd say once a week at this point would be fantastic. Even if it's a measly shift in code, some sort of journal/forum thread to keep us updated is welcomed immensely.
Lastly, I can understand Edymnion's point of view as well as those who feel like they're stuck in a limbo, twiddling their thumbs as they await change. What's wrong with feeling the way they do? We all need to acknowledge Starmade as a co-creative product, the community creates a lot of promotional content and the developers or staff members like Saber are always on it with his ship review videos. The reason why I keep coming back into the game is because I've never seen such a rich relationship or an economy of interest occur between the players and the developers. These creators, video makers and ship reviewers truly resonate a signal that we as a community and as a game aren't exactly dead yet. Now with the new power proposal and changes underway, the creators are left in a situation where they either are driven to build for the present of for the future. I doubt a lot of people wouldn't disagree that future-proofing your content allows your ships to translate better to newer builds on the community dock. Hence, I suggested before and agree wholeheartedly with one of the points brought up by the video. We need to know some sort of release date or some sort of documented work process leading towards it. Anything to put the worrying minds at rest. The last thing you really want to do is leave your community in complete mystery especially after you've proposed something that radically changes a mechanic in your video game.
