Why does it have to be all hush hush? Look what happened with regens, I don't know if it was mentioned in the beta forums but why did it only come to light about when best to have players age, people only realised and made a fuss once it was too late and the 1.3 update was finalised. If everyone was included in these discussions then these things are less likely to happen.

I don't want the game to be a democracy but SI can be more savvy in the way changes are made by communicating more.

If we were in a situation where the game was doing amazingly well where no one really had any major issues and SI invited a few of us down to form a council to represent the user base, then I think people might look on the idea a bit different.

But it seems to have been presented as some method to find a solution to issues that people have. I'm not sure what benefit there would be to me (yes I was invited, but I wont be able to attend, so don't panic ) and Jak meeting up to have a discussion about which FA structure would be the best! We've already done that on the forums ??

There are loads of ideas out there from different people. I think there would be benefit from official forum posts along the lines of “we are thinking about doing X & Y – discuss” With some more active discussion like you see on the beta forum. It's fine me or someone else hashing out big ideas but there's not always much point expanding on them or doing into detail if we are unaware if we are way off the mark and it's not something that would even be considered.

This council will have a small minority of vocal posters who are regulars on the forums. The forums are a minority of their customer base. A minority of those check back regularly. A minority of those are vocal. And a minority of THOSE will be attending this meeting.

The intentions are noble – but this isn't the way to do it. Engaging more openly with the forums and with their customer base as a whole is the best way of doing things. Personally, I don't want the game to be a democracy where the will of the people is encoded. SI should be the ones in charge – but good engagement with the community raises spirits, retains customers and attracts new ones. That's what we're all after, I assume.

“Of all the criticisms you can lie at the feet of SI and Sega, them not being involved and engaging is probably the most inaccurate!”

I don't think Jordan (or me ) was saying they don't do it – what we are saying is they don't do it enough !
And we see this “face to face” meeting style as a bacward step – not a bad thing – just an archaic thing.

Give me one good reason why they can't have someone responding to the community at large 24/7 ?

Let's see if they can do somethink. I'm sure they can do but i don't know if the really want to…

I think this is highly unfair in all honesty. Of all the criticisms you can lie at the feet of SI and Sega, them not being involved and engaging is probably the most inaccurate! They are very active on the forums – I sometimes wish Ov would spend less time posting and more time coding!! Much more active than what you see over on the FM forums too.

There has perhaps been a drop in responding to posts on the subscriber forum of late but with the hostile nature of the forum it's not exactly surprising. You have had Ov on the podcast twice and some Sega bods too ! What more do you want??

I just want them to act on stuff, I don't really care if they post about it on the forum or not. A guess some kind of live developer chat with users could have some benefit though.

On another note, I totally agree with what you said. The inadequate management of the forums and customer relations in social media (inadequate especially in response times, in my opinion) it's probably one of the causes of what I perceive to be poor knowledge management. Threads about the same topics should be analyzed and “official” replies should ideally summarize, give credit to posters and organize different point of views to spark constructive discussion. This unfortunately doesn't happen often (or it happens too late in my opinion).