one would think that the boxes are bugged since they only drop cool/fancy/regal/divine, but they might just be doing what they did with regular slime lockboxes (which went from 000->009->gems/promos->qqq) but for this new box, which means that the first few will only drop certain colors before the later ones be a collection of all of them... which WOULD BE FINE if the changes to how you get boxes weren't so badly implemented that they're literally asking you to throw an entire FSC worth of grind (10kcr) away just to have a chance to get boxes at the terrible rates there are.
you can try multiple casinos that won't have any boxes. it's so bad people thought the GMs were turning boxes on and off, when it was actually just hard to find them in wheels sometimes (since now you can simply visibly see them in the wheel).
might just be better to wait for the "new qqq" or even the gems/promos variant of these instead of tossing millions of cr away to get basically nothing in return. hype for the few new items died out within a few hours, and i doubt prices will keep up as well once people notice what's ACTUALLY going on.

all in all, the update did nothing other than bait the entire community to collectively waste millions of crowns in hope of something new and cool just to have basically a 70/30 split between the new items that won't have their prices hold themselves for high all that long considering how hard and costly is to get each box.

This update effectively kills casinos for most of the playerbase.

Nobody wants to spend 4 hours in a casino rolling 1x roll at a time. Why remove the 50x roll? Good luck getting that achievement unless you have an autoclicker.

The new wheels are absolutely not worth it. As stated above, 10kcr for barely a chance at a lockbox that contains 4 different items with seemingly incomplete colors? That only can be paired with QQQ items? When the QQQ BOXES DONT EVEN DROP FROM THE CASINO? Yea, not worth my time.

Also mentioned above, this completely dumps energy prices, so theres literally no incentive to spend $$$ to buy cr. Why not make the new wheels take E to roll? That small change could have contributed so much $$ into GH's pockets.

It seems like this idea was cooked up with no thought about how it would impact the economy and health of the game, as well as completely ignoring past feedback of players. Grey Havents is always talking about how they want to improve the economy, but this effectively speeds up the economy off a cliff.

Please revert the changes to the basic wheels, and add some transparency to your community about the 10x wheels for gods sake.

seriously, who's idea was this? This update is genuinely harmful to the game.

I do like the new addition to the slime costume.
But the execution could be adjusted
- Return the x50 spins. Since this helped nobody and solved nothing. Just add more time to waste, and painful to cash out the reward
- The pool should be separated between the Animal slime box and the regular slime box. So the machine in the special room drops only animal lootboxes, while the old slot machine drops older boxes (not shared pool)
- Improve drop % for non QQQ slime boxes (seriously, shadow node slime mask is way rarer than the Totem trinket)

Side complaints.
- Nothing on the supply depot as the change to Flash sale is being implemented as featured depots and promised year-round features
I do buy energy to convert to crown. And all these crown sink + nothing interesting to buy on the depot with energy, simply put, my desire to spend cash in-game diminished, and I chose to farm crown in-game instead. Since the exchange rate does not feel worth it anymore.

The new high roller machines are just awful. How the hell can you justify a 10k CR spin when multiple outcomes are useless vials or minuscule payouts like x1 slime coin. What goes through a game developers head when they already have the kleptolisk as a "nothing" outcome from the wheel and they somehow decide that they should include useless consumables for an entire 10,000 CR price???

Not to mention the complete lack of transparency on the lockbox, the new machines or any changes related to the casino this update. It all creates the impression that they deliberately want people to be confused and in-the-dark so that they cluelessly gamble a couple tens of thousands (or even hundreds of thousands) of crowns on wheels that may not even have a prize box as a potential reward (because apparently you need to choose the "good" wheels to even have a chance, and then once you get a reward you need to go to a new casino or you get nothing???) and sink their crowns into a backhanded and disgustingly designed coin sink.

If this is how they intend to "improve" the game and build "good-will" with the community this year then it looks pretty goddamn bleak for the community.

I got my 50 coins removed and spined only once... so they either remove 49 rolls or increase the roll price to 50! or got absolutely nothing on 49 rolls... but literally NOTHING...
I agree on coin sinks in games. The problem is the "Vanaduke only" mentality that got everything on a price above 8k crowns... the coin sink should be in that case specially grinding to nothing those 8k coins + 30k per 30 tokens, to make things worse: Not everyone runs Vanaduke insanely nor should, on free will or demanded by popular pressure (stop saying new players: "RUN VANADUKE EFFICIENTLY THEN MAYBE PLAY THE GAME"), that being said, the coin sink should feel rewarding, add another token get bunch of them get a cosmetic, the "failsafe" of the random lootbox, IS grindy I know... lootboxes are getting banned across games in general for being a BAD DESIGN .

That and others issues with the update (blast network) makes You wonder, Who approved this update for deploy?
I bet that this was going to be the Bomber Update, and I didn't Miss it basically exploded in our face...

Thanks for a unifying post About the Update. I WANT clear patchnotes I want clarity, I will NOT call it bad faith (yet), because there is no way someone pass this as an update to deploy... whoever it was had it mind elsewhere. However I want a hotfix with decent patchnotes and it better be accompany with a buff to the Mad Bomber set and the Mercurial Demo set (the one from SL).
Cheers!

@Gran-Faustinos, sure the game was rigged from the start, but no need to make it even more rigged lol

I'm not going to deign to start my post with sarcasm

Who's insanely stupid idea was it to put consumables in the Member's Slot Machines? The machines that require 50 coins or 10,000 crowns for a single roll? Two things I immediately want to point out:
- 10kcr is the price of a 4-star recipe
- An average Vana run will give you roughly 8.5k, maybe 9k if you're really thorough and lucky

You're not getting another shot at that machine if you run out of slime coins unless you spend an excessive amount of time farming crowns. And even then, you might have better things to try and get with your money. And that's not going into the removal of the 50x rolls button on regular machines, now making those machines a time sink on top of the crown sink.

But rather than tangent into that, lemme put the consumables into perspective:
The Member's Slot Machines have a pool of rewards ranging from the sought-after Slime Lockboxes to the Kleptolisk whammies, with several rewards and "rewards" in between. GH is likely never telling us the odds of these rewards because why the hell would they, they already don't tell us a bunch of other stuff, but they include several bundles of Slime Coins (250, 200, 100, 90, 55, 50, 10, 5, 1 at least that I've found so far) and consumables (health capsules, freeze/shock/poison/fire vials, Luck Potions, and Ocarinas of Slime). It is the price of a 4-star recipe for a single pull with a majority of the reward options being a loss. Because yes, those consumables are glorified whammies.

"Oh, but if you consistently get high Slime Coin payouts, then you don't have to worry," I hear you say. And I say, "You're not going to get consistent high payouts, that's not how slot machines work." They're always weighted towards lower rewards, and when these lower rewards are primarily whammies, that means an insane risk/reward ratio that quite frankly isn't worth spending your time or money on.

Please, consider the following:
- Detailed patch notes explaining what changed and how it's going to be from now on. We don't need lore/cryptic stuff to explain why we should waste our crowns (that take a lot of effort to grind for) to engage with your new content;
- Odds for ALL lockboxes. They're allowed to be bad, sure, but at LEAST let us know what we're getting into, as much as you disclose the odds for prize boxes;
- Not going to rollback the servers? Ok, fine, but at least give back to the community with supply depot and featured auctions. By this time last year we had way more than what we've got so far, and a LOT of people are just simply waiting to spend their crowns/energy they spent hundreds of hours farming in the game on stuff. It's really not that fair, to be honest.

Just trying to consolidate everything I've said on the other thread here as well:

- We need more open and honest communication lines between Devs and Community. Currently, it feels like we don't really have a concrete line to have our thoughts and feelings heard. Updates are pushed to the community with little warning, other than the message we get in game telling us the game is going down for a moment to receive the update. A little could go a long way here: A solid roadmap of the changes Grey Havens is planning ahead of them being implemented could do a lot to help people understand what's going on, and possibly offer feedback to the development team ahead of time to prevent catastrophic update fallout like we're currently experiencing. Not every suggestion has to be implemented into live, but having a place wherein we can actually talk with the developers, or even just a community manager acting on their behalf, may assuage the feeling of screaming into the void many have been reporting over the last few months.

- To be specific to the Casino: Removing the 50x Spin from the regular slots, as well as including consumables in the High Roller Slots, were, frankly, pretty disastrous and baffling choices. High Roller may help create something more exclusive for those with C.U.B.E memberships, but locking 50x spins to a slot that is mostly risk with little reward is both frustrating to those rolling on them, as well as making the Degenerate Gambler achievement much harder to obtain for those who are not C.U.B.E members. The 10k spin fee is also rather steep, considering the comparisons @Sonosuke made: That's more than an entire Vanaduke run, which may take the average player between 20-40 minutes to complete. Please reconsider the weighting of these slots, the items included, as well as the price of gambling on them. As it currently stands, the rewards do not justify the very steep fee.

- The lockboxes: I understand the desire for the community to pick apart and consolidate information, but I don't think a gambling mechanic is the best place to implement such a desire. This community can do incredible things with it dedication, but leaving the lootbox tables up to our discovery just means a lot of people are gonna get burned if they gamble for them, only to discover there's nothing in the boxes they want. Even if we're only gambling with in-game currency, we should be able to make informed decisions about whether or not we want to gamble for the lockboxes, and then also whether or not we opt to gamble on opening them, too. As they are, the odds of getting a slime lockbox seem infinitesimal, and the rewards you get from those lockboxes are not the best. Many have gripes with the art style, although as I noted in my previous post, I understand that there may be difficulties in this regard. Furthermore, the Fox Tails are not anchored properly and float awkwardly above the rear on many armours. This is part of a wider problem with the new cosmetics that could do with further consideration.

Overall, I'm grateful that Grey Havens are back and are clearly trying to give this game more love and attention. Unforunately, the new direction seems to be a bit misguided, and the community doesn't feel heard due to a lack of concrete communication. I love this game, and have many fond memories tied to it - As a place where I've sunk thousands of hours of my time, as well as a place where I have met some of my closest friends and companions. I make this post not to be cruel or demanding, but out of concern for the current state of the game and its new direction, and I hope that this thread can help Grey Havens and the community get on the same footing. Thank you for your time and consideration.

There are so many good points and concerns raised in this thread above. I agree with a majority of it and wish that the Devs and CM can see how passionate we are about this game and how involved we are in bringing this game not only back to life but into a thriving state. I understand when adding "new" content to the game its meant to be fun and engaging, this is perfectly fine and a response of "this is how the slimes run the casino" is a fine response when trying to be fun and add to the lore. But there are times where we as a dedicated community for over 10 years with and without the devs, deserve more. While we respect and appreciate the GH staff, we deserve a more transparent and involved team with the community. Although some things have always been a standard for GH's approach to SK, that needs to change. As a player base we have grown and changed over these years, but we have always had this game with us regardless of time. Its time for GH to respect our dedication and time put into this game, we are a reason this game is even still in existence, even if it was just on life support, we have always been there for this game.

We deserve a new GH that is more transparent and interactive with its community (like during the winter event involvement which we greatly enjoyed! except for the lack of SD sales), we are a small and dedicated fanbase, it is not hard to reach us, it is not hard to be more transparent or open about the future plans for SK, it is hard to please the SK fanbase so don't try to do it alone, take our input and outreach as serious and just engage with us in healthy way. In doing so I feel a lot of stress and problems from both sides can be relieved. I am not saying everything we say as a community is correct or congruent, most of what we say is passionate though, and while emotions run high sometimes, a serious and caring response from GH goes a long way in this community. Realistically speaking our player base averages a high of 150 to 200 players online, it is possible to have a communication with us and be effective. As others mentioned above, We are extremely grateful that Grey Havens is back, trying to put life back into SK and add new content, just dont forget about the playerbase, we have just as much heart, dedication and time put into to this game, we both want a new and improved SK.

I also dont think as a community we should bash you, insult, or ignore GH for trying new things and putting out new content, especially after so many years its quite unbelievable in a positive way, but there are some valid criticisms that should addressed or at least acknowledged in a serious manner. Even if there are disagreements with new updates or with different directions/visions for the future of SK within the GH and the community, communication would ease a lot of tempers/concerns about that future and direction of SK. Especially if the community and GH don't agree on somethings (like the most recent update), just chiming us in on the reasons or direction you have planned for SK and why this is on the roadmap, would help all of us understand more and be more patient with GH, even if we don't all agree with it.

The biggest issue with the new casinos is that it is not easy to convert Slime Coins to crowns. If you happen get lucky and amass 1,000 coins from the High Wobbler wheels, you cannot easily convert them to crowns. Your options are to vendor them for 100cr each (which is dumb because they are worth 200cr each) or to click and sit through the regular wheel animation 1,000 times. Watching a wheel spin 1,000 times is not riveting gameplay, it is punishment.

Bringing back the 50x roll at regular wheels would fix this issue completely. The 00A boxes would still be lacking and a problem, but it would be a much smaller issue.

Removing the 50x rolling also makes the Degenerate Gambler achievement, already the hardest achievement to get, take over 100 times longer to get. It was already difficult to get with the 50x rolls, but it was still reasonable. Clicking 20,000 times is a lot, but clicking 1,000,000 times (and waiting for the animation 1,000,000 times) is absurd.

I support adding back the x50 option as it only makes getting the gambling achievements much harder to obtain and reducing the payment for rolls back to 200 crowns. Everything else can be left as is and while the new costumes and accessories are kinda meh, at least it's something new but not new content.

I've said this before in a previous thread and while I still support reverting back to the original options, I don't think there would be much done. We would need A LOT more support in order to get any meaningful changes; by the time I posted this there was only 21 people (unless I miscounted) that responded to this thread and it was most likely within a day span. Normally hundreds or thousands of us would be needed and while once in a while GH will listen to community feedback and revert/make changes, most of the time they don't do it because the majority of the playerbase (at least 150 - 200 players on normal and peak days respectively, 300+ if first new event) isn't there to give their feedback. We would need to pull years 2011 - 2013 numbers to make a difference, and normally these posts will have the same people putting feedback and no new voices unfortunately.

A while back iirc GH was stated to be a 'game museum' company, meaning they're only there to keep games alive for as much as possible. That means expected minimal content released (promos for example) and typical maintenance updates. Some exceptions like the gunner update and later missions were nice but I think it was during the time they had more devs available to create them; now it's been literal years since we had any actual new content. I'm getting off topic and apologies for it, but in regards to GH responding to community feedback will require a high amount of players old and new to voice out their concerns at the same time. Not just the same five to ten people.

I played this game for more than a decade and surprised I still play it (not as often as before), but I still support it's ongoing status and hoping that actual content were implemented. I'm not talking about repeatable events like tortodrones and such, I'm talking about actual new levels, new bosses, and/or continuation of the fate of Alpha Squad after we reached the Core since we have no idea where they are. Personally I want to know what the rest of the Crimson Order is like and if we'll face King Tinkinzar as an actual end-game boss that's harder than Darkfire Vanaduke. Or... maybe Devilite CEO T3 boss? There's also the need to rebalance gear so chaos/BK isn't the only choices, but for my part I wish for new NEW content.

Going back on topic, GH should put back the x50 roll option and decrease the pay needed for spins back to its original amount. However I did wish the community would voice out more concern about releasing new content and not ask for adding/reverting changes on existing content. I understand GH doesn't have much staff on their team to do that, but it's been years since the last missions were released. Even then this topic divides the players because there's the side stating 'that's a lot for GH to handle, don't have enough resources' and the other side stating 'SK needs more content and not repeatable stuff'. Like... some of us throw tons of money into the game and they had a huge amount of time to do it? If anything on my end I'm exhausted and just play the game to enjoy myself.

To reiterate, yes revert to the original casino rolls and keep everything else in place. Again we will need a very large turnout for them to take this seriously, not just the same people that voice out their concerns. At the time I posted this there's 185 players currently online; hopefully you can convince most of them and any offline players to speak out as well in this thread.

I'm not being pessimistic about this, I'm being a realist on this and I voiced out my concerns in the past. Now I just play the game to do dailies and run levels and if not, I play other games. Good luck.

I prefer not to leave more than one response to threads such as these — I wished to write this under Gyre's recent post, but the threads got merged, so I'll post it here.

As Sylvieon has put it, Grey Havens makes two steps forward and one step back, which is quite painful to watch for active content creators such as myself.

Gyre of Guile's most recent """spicy""" post continues the old-fashioned trend of terrible communication between SK staff and the players. The feedback is disregarded, some faint hints are signalled, which may or may not be followed through, and the community are treated like children to be asked to "play make-believe". Decisions are made without explanation, confusing additions are implemented, apologies & acknowledgments of mistakes are never delivered.

I wish I didn't have to spell this out, but this important point hasn't been voiced, I think...

It was understandable for OOO and early GH to disregard player suggestions & feedback on account of absolute majority of players being children and teenagers. Most of the posts produced were too individualistic, too full of wishful thinking, too disregarding of the nature of game development. HOWEVER, Spiral Knights IS 16 YEARS OLD! An entire generation has grown up by now! Nowadays most Spiral Knights players ARE NOT CHILDREN, they can't be called kids and asked to trust the bull like the one Gyre has posted independently (allegedly). Most of us are grown-ups who have already finished universities, found jobs, some of us are even programmers, and a select few have already attempted game development. A huge portion of us are artists and level designers who grew with Spiral Knights and its wonderful artstyle. The mods produced by modders rival the newest Wizard, Insect and Toyland boxes in terms of upholding the SK aesthetic and artstyle.

We cannot be treated like kids! We have observed and played many more video games, seen how communication and community interaction is done by different teams! Spiral Knights currently lives only by virtue of nostalgia and the fact that there is no direct competitor with similar fluid gameplay. There is a reason why the "Spiral Knights 2" joke persists — there is no other game like SK!

Grey Havens are composed of the same people who worked on it before, in another time, and we now observe the continuation of the same terrible trends which arguably contributed to the failure of Spiral Knights in the previous decade! This is not "old school" — this is just incompetence and/or ignorance. We can rightfully suspect that GH keeps no statistics, doesn't know what players want, how their game works, what are the community traditions and practices! We have tons of circumstantial evidence compiled — GH are sailing blind! The ship has a ridiculous amount of small leaks which could've been easily patched, and I am not talking out of my backside here — I did peek inside of its components! Many problems of the game can at the very least be mitigated with mere number changes!

I have spent so much time and effort on my Super Brawl maps and the theoretical levels I posted on YouTube channel, and when Starfield was seriously added into the official Lockdown rotation, I felt like my entire work was invalidated to a substantial degree. Similar opinions were voiced by Crucible level designers — they couldn't understand whether they should've been so meticulous about their levels in the first place, if the likes of Starfield have more than a fair chance to be added officially. The decision was baffling and ignorant on too many levels.

The Slime Casino changes and the subsequent "explanation post" (if you can even call it a proper explanation) only reinforces the feeling of confusion and subsequent hopelessness — we cannot predict reliably whether GH will improve substantially or only slightly, relapsing into their old negative habits later.

P.S. Why Gyre of Guile's "explanation" did not help:

1. The community expected a practical response and received a whimsical lore message instead.
2. It continues the trend of looking down on the community and providing little to no communication or explanation
3. It contains what could be called "gaslighting" regarding slime boxes
4. It only raises more questions on things going forward, rathen than putting any outrage to rest.
Bonus point: were the changes even agreed on by entire GH team or was it like the Starfiled case where a single developer was the only one to implement the changes with no oversight? This is not explained in the post, no responsibility is taken.

The recent color changes to the slime costume colors makes them even worse than before to be blunt, now the people that liked them don't like them ironically.

Base costume designs off of existing creatures and themes in Spiral Knights, like rock jellies, lichen colonies, mercurial armor, and other existing slime armors. For slime, future promotional boxes the new themes don't feel like Spiral Knights they feel like another game all together and I'm here to play spiral knights not Clown Slime Simulator.

@Cronus

"These are generally freely obtained and their contents can, and do, change."
Did you just admit to rigging the contents of lockboxes? :skull:

"Little thing you stumble upon, drop a few golden slime coins into, and then continue on your adventure"

The current state of the casino achieves the exact opposite.

Before:
-You could go in, roll a bunch of 50xs, and have a decent chance of coming out with a profit
-A solid chance you could generate a box or two before you continue
-If you happen to have, say, 50-250 coins in your inventory, its actually quite nice

Now:
-Minmaxing for crowns by juggling both wheels takes extremely long
-Individually rolling the 200cr machine will make it take quite long for your crown count to move in any direction
-Generating a box takes is extremely long, and is an extreme crown sink that will invalidate countless arcade runs
-Golden Slime Coins you get by playing naturally are now practically meaningless, it pales in comparison to how the new high roller wheels can generate thousands of GSCs extremely fast, at the same rate as theyre individually way less valuable when spending in said machines

Everything encourages you to *not* even consider having a mere brief, small session in the casino.

to add to my previous comment, i'll preface this post by sharing the results of some speculative studies i've done with some QQQ data i've been able to collect. this has been done with the data of exactly 1188 QQQ's opened by multiple players in different quantities, and is probably not an enough amount to be 100% conclusive, but we can easily get something out of it. trinkets come in about ~2.9% of the time, whereas costumes/accessories about ~97.1%. in the trinket percentage slot, where we have the true chase items of QQQ's (daybreaker band and somnambulist's totem), they are divided among each other unevenly (by the looks of it) in about ~60% for early riser ring/dawn bracelet, ~25% for daybreaker band and ~15% for somnambulist's totem.
the true percentage values will probably vary up and down as i collect more data, and could be heavily skewed by people who, for example, unbox close to 1000 QQQ's and don't get a totem (or get one in only a few amount of boxes), but regardless of that we have a clear picture within the dataset i've managed to collect and speculate on so far: totems are a pain to get from QQQ's and slime lockboxes that contain them (008 upwards) in general. no wonder they go for so much in featured auctions, specially when we have a long drought of them.
Now, consider this section of cronus' comment:
"Along with the item update we needed to change some aspects of how boxes were given out to ensure they were more available to more people. These changes will make it harder for a few individuals to try to monopolize the prize boxes unfairly."
it's kinda funny how two phrases so close to each other can contradict the supposed intention of the recent changes. if you want to make it so that boxes are more available to people, and not have a few people monopolize them unfairly, this is clearly the wrong way to go about it since it not only takes more crowns to get one box in average, but it's also pricier to hunt for them and amass a good quantity, considering you can go through many casinos and not see any when spinning the wheels. these changes will, actually, make the players who have the so-said unfair advantage now have an even more unfair advantage, since 1. no one will want to roll for boxes given that it's way too risky and 2. people will rather buy boxes from those who already have it (QQQ's) to mass open and try to get a totem than try get the boxes themselves and be like 75kcr/box instead of 5kcr/box.
also we can't forget the main reason why rolling for QQQ's by yourself rather than simply buying from someone else (WHEN they're available): you have about a 3% chance to get a promo themed non-qqq (gem&others). this alone makes it worth it, because you can get qqq's at 5kcr per and sell them either for a break even price or slightly above, and either sell the non-qqq's for profit or open and have a ~18% chance to get an extra box that can give an item that will go for much more than the other node slime items. that's the whole casino economics broken down for you. :)

now with these new casino changes? we don't even have the chance to get special boxes, everything costs more, boxes aren't more easily available to people, casino is too risky and a crown sink with little to no payout, and those who already have hundreds/thousands of QQQ's to sell are going to take even more advantage of the chaos of the situation and the market will be even more skewed towards them, instead of the other direction. before the current casino, by the way, qqq's were barely going for 5-7kcr on AH every day. now i see many listings for much more. not that people are buying those, but the current holders are trying to push those prices. when people realize and understand the impact of these changes, QQQ's are sure to go for much more in no time.

to conclude this post, if GH truly wanted boxes to be more available they would simply abolish the system i mentioned in my previous post and make boxes drop during the whole duration of the casino, and make it easier to find or at least spot a lucky wheel. also make casinos with boxes more frequent instead of something that occurs only once or twice a year at most.

A month ago under Leidran's post Daniel promised Java modernisation and "listening to the community." The latter is a little vague, but we see the signs of incremental progress, and I can only hold a desperate hope that GH does not relapse.

This latest "small war" has shown that players need clarity more than any possible "joy of discovery" — an update is only great to explore if it is good and thought through. This fact is most relevant in regards to gambling mechanics where the players's wealth is at stake. It is true that Spiral Knights has a long history of concealing the details of updates, such as new lockboxes, for the sake of allowing players to explore them by themselves, but the "joy of discovery" wears down quickly. Ultimately, this practice feels... outdated! At least when it comes to risk mechanics, I firmly believe that the practice must change and lockbox chances revealed. We don't need to be left guessing for days if the suddenly shipped update is good, decent or bad — save the intrigue & suspense for updates with new rooms and levels! (whenever those come)

If the game's engine is being modernised, can't the methods of interacting with the player base also be brought up to modern standards? Most other teams utilize methods which clarify the state of the game and development for the players:

- Roadmaps;
- Devblogs;
- Teaser or Beta patch notes;
- AMAs;
- Streams;
- In-game or forum polls;
- "State of the game" letters of acknowledgment, etc.

Borrowing at least a few of these tools would drastically bridge the gap between the playerbase and GH and improve the clarity tremendously. They do not necessarily require a community manager if your engineers and staff are competent enough with the game and you can trust them.

Unfortunately, the most clarification we received was not in official announcements, but in spontaneous unofficial conversations with the CEO, which are already a month old, while the familiar style blunders keep happening.

If the changes are met with overwhelmingly negative reactions from the community, the people in charge should be willing to meet in the middle and make some changes