This is what I'd like to call a fair assessment of the current situation. Be sure to read number four on the list extra carefully.:)

MG is not who the customers are paying, this is no custom product, the comunication is public in an internet forum, and there are a few more interested in damaging the image of the developer and/ or the game than solving their problems with it.
Is not the same scenery you describe Mike.

Excuse me but I can't help laughing at your delusional attitude!!
When you buy a piece of software,who's selling you the product needs to guarantee for the functionality of it. Say that you bought Photoshop or Dreamweaver, u install it and it doesn't work as it's supposed to,you have all the rights,as a customer,to ask for support and feedback from the seller/producer of the upsaid piece of software,otherwise it's a fraud,because you've been sold for functional and complete something that actually isn't. The truth is that they know this well and they're probably keeping quiet for this reason.
It's not the whiners that made Luthier disappear, it's his deliberate choice,and it's more and more evident that it's one dictated by the fact that they can't quite manage to fix bugs as they hoped. They have all my solidariety and support,but they should give their customers,people that invested in their talent,a roadmap,a situation update that makes sense. We don't need silly hints like "guess what we're working on next",we're not teenagers,we need them to be honest and upfront,or they will lose all of their credibility.

This individual seems to believe...?
That he/she represents Luthier....?

Based upon what is known at this time?
Why would anyone?
Believe differently.....

There are workarounds for anything really, the difference is where you choose to focus. I spend more time finding workarounds that enable me to fly the sim and after a while i've managed to not only have fun myself but also help others do the same. On the other hand, people are free to look for workarounds that enable them to clutter the forums instead of flying the sim.

Tree, you know i'm all for free speech and i've defended your right to have your say in the past, but repeating one-liners is doing nothing for us. We don't get any development updates any faster, same for patches.

What's more, the vocal group's skewed idea of freedom of speech is encroaching on that of the rest. When we can't have a single thread, however far the original topic might be from their preferred issues to talk about, without it descending into the usual sad situation, then it's time to reassess the whole matter and understand that they are detracting from the freedom of speech of others who want to talk about other equally valid issues.

In plain terms, the repetitive one-sided banter ("whiner" and "fanboy" alike) prevents anyone else from having a discussion about anything else. How is this freedom of speech when a vocal minority is effectively deciding what is ok to talk about and what is not, by pulling every thread in the direction they want? It's not, it's just some community members enforcing their beliefs on everyone else by disrupting any discussion that doesn't agree with or doesn't have a direct consequence of furthering their own agenda. It's more like an effort to monopolize the developer's attention and get their preferred set of toys before everyone else than freedom of speech really.

I don't want to have the same things crop up in every single unrelated thread and disrupting discussions that are equally, if not more, important to many people than the lack of AA or the kind of green used in the fields or the tracers. What can i do about it? Well, there are two choices here really: i can either do the same to them and derail their threads for a change to see if they can take a taste of their own medicine, or i can propose different moderating techniques and let the powers that be take it from there.

It just makes people bored having the same issues pop up in a dozen different threads per week and diminishes the signal to noise ratio. If some people had spent as much time reading a few helpful posts as they have repeating the same things for the past couple of months they wouldn't be asking how to solve issues that have been answered since April.

It's well within your rights to present an opinion and well within the rights of others to disagree, challenge and ignore it.

Let's face it, the strategy failed, it might have been annoying to the developers and the most hardcore supporters at first but it still didn't produce any tangible results. If anything, it has caused even the more level headed or even previously uninvolved people in the community to either get dragged down into slagging matches or become bored with it and openly start combating it, like i'm doing now.

Right now it's just an annoyance and the only reason it can't be easily ignored is the sheer amount of volume it takes up in the forums. And just to be clear, i don't mean the message (critical or positive) but the attitude with which it is conveyed.

Still, all it takes to change that is a bit of forum moderation. The mods don't need to delete the offending posts and stifle anyone's freedom of speech. All they have to do is prune and move/merge every such post or thread into a sticky complaint, speculation and arguments megathread that the rest of us can ignore at their own leisure while talking about more interesting things, while the so called "whiners" and "fanboys" are confined to their own private arena.

You see, it's not the opinion i take offence to. It's the aggressive proselytizing that i disagree with. In that sense the so called group of "whiners" is no different than the so called group of "fanboys": different agendas, same tactics, equal amounts of the false sense of speaking for the entire community, plus annoyance and lack of usefulness for everyone else.

Let them argue all they want to, as long as they don't aggressively try to drag everyone else in their feud. If they do, then it's time for the "peacekeepers" or "bouncers" to cordon off area so they can't negatively influence the rest of the community.

Getting the feeling that i'm having my eyes glued open a la A Clockwork Orange while being forced to watch grown men mud-wrestling in thongs every time i browse the forums is hardly synonymous to freedom of speech, it's merely being subjected to endless bouts of boredom against my wishes. And before someone says that it's well within my rights to ignore it, let me just say that i shouldn't even have to get that far if i'm within the forum's original focus: if i'm watching a sports game in a bar and two people come in, throw down an inflatable pool filled with mud, strip to their underwear and start rolling in it, it's not me who should be forced to leave the premises in order to avoid the spectacle but them.

Try reading one of your own posts Blackdog ;)

All those troubles on this forum are, in my opinion, started after luthier or who said him to do, stopped to interact with us. I was very enthusiast when luthier posted the roadmap about the sound to be fixed, about their progress and so on. I remember, before the release, when we were here the friday all waiting for Oleg to post his screenshots. I think that many people here don't ask a patch, but just a more interaction with the customers. As stated by luthier, this is not possible because they don't have the resource to do it. To be honest, if it was me I could find 10 minutes in my day to just write 2 lines. Probably what he would write could make more whiners than now, or probably less... but I saw for sure that everytime luthier wrote something everybody was happy to read it. this is my thought... call me whiner or troll or what do you want... but this is how i see it right now

Again. Why do you need a roadmap and situation updates?
It's not like you have stock in the company, is it?
And I hope you're not planning your life around this...
And while it would be nice, I don't see it as a must to know exactly what they are doing at the moment, I know that they are fixing the game and that's enough.

So tell me, why MG should take time off their work to post in the forum?
Just to appease a handful of people that for some reason feel that they've been cheated and can't play it cool?
And no, it doesn't take just a few minutes, because they have to consider what and how to communicate as it is official communications from developer to customer, they probably don't want to blurp out just anything.

If you really want proper communication you should probably write a letter or at least an e-mail to the publisher, not post on a forum of the developer.

it's called "keep your customers happy"... how it sounds? have you been in business sometimes?

Cheers for the laugh, it's so hard to find in these repeat threads.