There are definitely troubling signs within the community. And this game and studio heavily depends on this community. There are no easy answers, the real world is a lot more complicated than our hopes and desires. People want a game to play but SBS is still essentially constructing a foundational infrastructure for the long haul, all while attempting to create the first batch of real content we'll get our hands on. This whole process has been far more complicated than anyone bargained for.

When it comes to the raw work the designers are doing and have achieved, the results are undeniable. What they're building has been excellent and true to the initial vision. If the conduct of a newbie studio wasn't over shadowing what these skilled people have created there would be far less people becoming dispassionate. In my opinion, as with most things, the underlying cause of the recent issues isn't a simple one. It's a mixture of factors, from how some of the developers [and moderation] has been behaving (specifically the over hyping for months which falls flat and the over saturation of monetization replacing content such as dev streams), to long time community members or leaders entering a healthy hibernation [people shouldn't be needing to sacrifice so much time in order to help show signs of life within the community].

I'm trying not to sound long winded. Although it's hard when you have to point out the nuances. My main point here is this isn't some kind of doomsday, it's the holidays, and although it's been years, this is so far the norm for any and every game development I've followed [in terms of the time line; Create Studio > Develop Starting Game Concepts > Begin feature Implementation > Hire as needed > Finish the testables]. Keep your chin up, and instead of worrying about the community - which may in fact feed into a vicious cycle - concentrate on what the Studio's real talent is creating, and if it's still in line with the game you hoped for. If you can't see the forest for the trees you might be getting too caught up in the day to day and the details.

The real test will be when the SoE gets realised in the up coming weeks, and we get a real time line update of what's going to happen this year.

I have been waiting since I found this game back in 2015, and I am still waiting with hope, if the game is anything like their plan for it, then in my mind it would be worth the wait.

The problem is, due to the slow progress on development most of the community is on hiatus from CoE, so there are only a few dozen active forum members who really contribute, you can't make content out of nothing after all.

This means, where in the first couple years after the kickstarter negative posts would be drowned out by people discussing and daydreaming about mechanics, ambitions, politics, lore etc; with the loss of the greater community now these negative posts stay on 'Recent Posts', and 'Staff Posts' so they're the first things seen by people visiting the forums. It also means when SBS fuck up it's much more critically received as people are starving for progress and everything that can be talked about has been discussed and discussed to the last atom.

Only way out of this is for some good quality, good quantity empirical progress to be made so there is more to talk about (or hopefully interact with).

We believed in this game, in the vision of the development team, and we all are to various extend and various degrees behind this venture.

I don't believe that serious delays have been made in regards to the development of such a game-- which is obviously a herculean task.

Risk, however, might be always apparent for the final success of this game. But, we.have progressed well so far, and you have some people-- which certainly are a small percentage of the whole community-- full of resentment and self-pity. For what reason? I believe we must censor them. The game progresses well and at this stage you have people overreact and some others spreading lies across the internet.

This situation right now might slow the progress and no one deserves that. During these days I demonstrated my trust in the form of financial support-- a small amount but enough to demonstrate my support.

I urge you to do the same.

Regards