[kendo65]

As a (generally) supportive member of the online community here, someone who appreciates BlackSixes efforts and someone who considers himself to be reasonably patient, I have to say that I think the current strategy of 'no comment' on the patch has become counter-productive and is only serving to increase the general disaffection of many here.

It is obvious that BlackSix is only the messenger and decisions about what info to release are taken by Luthier, so these comments should be taken as directed to him. It is also obvious that given past experiences the policy of 'say nothing' may have been viewed as the sensible one.

I think now though, when the ONLY issue of any importance on this forum to most of us (certainly the ONLY reason why I check in several times a day) is the question of when we can expect the patch, that the issue needs to be grasped in a more head-on way by the devs.

I take on board some of the reasons given by people here as to why they believe there is no need for the devs to address this. In the past I may have agreed with them, but now I think the reasons for not communicating on this are looking tired and unconvincing. I'll give my reasons:

"No need to communicate anything until the patch is ready for release."
It is now 6 months since the previous beta. Excitement has built since before Christmas when Luthier gave indications of expected frame rate increase. The policy of saying nothing is now (imo) needlessly antagonising people.

"People don't understand that B6 can't give any information about the patch or the time after, because they will kill him if something is not like "promised"."

This shouldn't be insurmountable. There is general info that could be given that would go a long way to satisfying people's anticipation and patience and making the atmosphere more 'supportive'. For instance I would appreciate confirmation about whether the next patch will in fact deal only with the updated graphics engine. If so, I would be really interested to be given just a rough sketch of the development progress made in the last 6 months on the other issues we are keen to hear about (AI, fm, DX11, etc) and the planned roadmap ahead for how they will be patched into the game.

I realise that decisions on giving us this info need to be made by Luthier, but once again I think that the current policy has stretched the patience of many of us to breaking point and a subtle rethink could go a long way to releasing some of the pressure that is building.