What I really meant to say is that imho any leader should share useful information with fellows .
Also: any fellow should share useful information with his/her fellows.
What we really meant to say is that in our humble opinion any game developer
should share useful information with players.
Why have they stopped using the in-game mass pm option for sharing important information with the community? We got word of the new year's forum game, we got word of the armory bug (albeit quite late) and we even had a pm about the launch of the AW's. In that video, there was no mention of them being mandatory... and since they weren't up until today, I never expected them to suddenly become mandatory.
It would have been so easy to mention that the tech tree would be locked down either in the pm about the AW's when it was sent out to every player in-game, or at least make some sort of mention about it in the video where the AW's were explained in more detail.
To be honest, I can't help but feel that this is either the result of lazy management (with the blame then being redirected in retrospect to the players for not reading the particular forum thread on a completely different forum concerning another server) or it was a deliberate plan not to share this information beforehand.
I'm not to happy with this update either.
But to the players that said that I didn't see the the information because it was only in the forum, my only guess is that you don't have any interest in this game at all. Especially older players. You should have learned by now that news from Inno comes primary from the forum and if you liked this game at all, of course you would want to read about what comes next and since you know that information is in the forum you would looked there.
If you are interested in this game. Check the forum sometimes and check the link below once every week and you will know about all changes at least 1-2 weeks before it happens.
https://beta.forum.elvenar.com/index.php?forums/release-notes.8/
Why should we be forced to read a forum in order to find important information when there are excellent in-game functions available for sharing such info with the community? Why should we even have to bother with what happens in the beta server?
I can understand your intentions are probably good, maybe even trying to be helpful, but people - and especially InnoGames - need to understand that not everyone likes forums, not to mention those who for various reasons have difficulties reading or finding the right posts or section in a forum. Not everyone will be competing for top rank either, but they might still be paying for the game and quit when they are surprised by something that they feel is taking away all the fun in the game. I know several people that have quit for this very reason, not only from this update but previous ones as well.
Seeing as how we have actually gotten updates _in game_ on a few occations before, I don't see why this is not being put to use prior to rolling out every planned update? Correcting or adjusting bugs is something that could probably be mentioned in the forum only, as most players are not as concerned about small fixes. But when they actually decide to change the rules of the game or alter how the game is supposed to be played, then I would consider it proper manners to use the same mass-pm function as they used before (and for information with less priority).