I read the thread title and the first post, and I don't think it's necessary to even skim through the rest of this thread.
If this isn't a joke, which it really looks like to anyone who's semi-regularly paid attention to Starfarer's development and has even the loosest grasp on average development cycles, especially for indie games with small teams, then shame on you. Shame on you for not knowing better.
The dev team's communication with the community has been impeccable. The rate of progress has been astounding. At no point since this website was accessible to the general public has this not been the case.
This has been so blatantly, objectively obvious that I can only conclude that the OP has fallen victim to a sort of confirmation bias, where they only care about updates and communication concerning one or two aspects of the game they find particularly interesting(campaign features?), while progress and information about all other areas are ignored and considered wasted time, despite their fundamental importance in the scope of the project as a whole, and in game design in general.
It just isn't an apple pie without the crust, even if all *you* care about is the filling, and Alex is making this one from scratch, so he must first invent the universe, you see?
Before the recent update, there had been many months since a release and a long time since any new patchnotes. I totally understands that people became inpatient
Disclaimer:
This is an opinion post as a free individual, not a moderator.
I think the main problem here is that people misunderstand what they are buying when they buy an alpha version of a game. I totally understand people getting impatient waiting for something that they really like. What they don't seem to understand is that this emotional response to complain should be repressed Mr. Spock style, because it is not logical.
Why? Go read the BUY -section of the Starfarer website. Where does it say that you are entitled to monthly or bi-monthly updates? Where does it say that every udpate has to have something that you really like? Where does it promise that the game has to be finished within a year or you get your money back plus a lollipop for your hurt feelings? It doesn't. Here's what it does say:
"When you preorder, you’re getting Starfarer in its current state."The fact that you get subsequent updates for free does not mean that you are somehow entitled to those updates. And just because there were a few quick updates in the past doesn't mean that now suddenly every update has to be released according to that imaginary schedule. All this should be painfully obvious to everyone.
Also, if you want the developers to work faster at something, does anyone think that calling the game "a great promise doomed to go nowhere", like the OP did, works as an efficient motivator? Here's the answer: No, it doesn't. In all likelyhood it has the exactly opposite effect, and if I wasn't a quasi-official appearing entity on this forum I would slap the OP in the face. But I won't.
This thread is just an incredibly silly waste of time. A year from now someone will accidentally find it somewhere in the depths of the forum, read it and quietly close the browser tab, ashamed that we even had to have this discussion.