May 2019 - last edited May 2019
Disclaimer: I still love this game and appreciate devs' hard work. To avoid being unreasonably whiny, I try to provide more context for my thought in this post, but I'm sure there're many other players with very different opinions in this sub. If you don't like people criticizing or complaining about a free-to-play game, consider this a friendly warning.
I also made this post on Reddit, and I just found this forum. Looking forward to you guys' thoughts.
It seems that there're increasingly polarized opinions about Apex and its development in the Reddit sub. No matter what's your stance, no matter you prefer to defend or criticize Respawn, I believe no one wants to see this once beloved game and community down-ward spiraling into a toxic mess.
Here's the suggestion: Respawn should reformulate the current community management policy while trying to figure out all the behind-the-scene technical issues.
Even the people who firmly believe in Respawn should agree that the polarized and unpeaceful discourse among the community could be mitigated by proper community management. Most discussions about Apex development become provoking and unproductive because both parties in the discussion are guessing in the dark. No one knows for sure what the devs' thinking, what difficulties they're facing, and therefore they make uneducated assumptions because there's no other concrete information to rely on. This is unhealthy for the community to say the least.
Some of you might say: "Why should devs talk to us if we're being toxic and disrespectful to them?" I agree that devs have no obligation to interact with us. They are absolutely free to do anything they want, but their decisions always have consequence, including the decision not to communicate with us. If they want this game to have a brighter and more sustainable future, I personally believe they should chime into the current mess and try to change our opinions.
People feel unsatisfied and disappointed for a reason, but most people will become very forgiving after they better understand the context of the problems devs are dealing with. In other words, I believe the polarized community is not caused by few toxic people, but mainly caused by the void of community management. And imo it's time for devs to roll up sleeves and show more sincerity to us, not for pleasing us, but for the game and community being able to keep thriving.
I hope there will be more "Dev Reply Inside!" flair on the Reddit sub. This flair is highly unexploited imo, since it's a good way to convey information without investing too much time crafting the words. They don't need to reply to every comment and post. They only need to make one comment and the flair will appear, and people will naturally read the post and comments.
Last but not least, some of you might say "Dev don't have time to deal with us while there're so many technical works to do", but I think community management is as important as any other bug fixes or contents, especially at this point in which people are losing faith and considering to give up on this amazing game forever.