A message to both the community and the developers on proper communication

Let me preface this whole post by stating that I'm not trying to pick sides. I'm simply a fan of the CoD series with some experience with the gaming industry and software development in general. I just wanted to give some perspectives here for both sides to consider (in an effort to reduce toxicity and to promote productivity).

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First, to the community:

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- Don't ask for communication to subsequently shoot down the messenger: I know a lot of you guys and girls are frustrated with the failed promises. Who wouldn't be. It's pretty fucked up to make promises that fall through on paid purchases. But if you want the devs to communicate more on those promises, you can't shoot the messengers. It takes a lot of courage to post in the face of overwhelming criticism. Imagine receiving threats and insults for every post you make.

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- Treyarch is still working on the features. Those features won't magically be done. If you want them to communicate, you have to be prepared to hear "excuses": No matter how many posts you make, no matter how many times you trash David, no matter how many times you bring up the failed promises, the features you're looking for won't be ready until they're ready. If you can't understand this, and proceed to jump at a developer's throat anytime they say something, you don't deserve communication. The reality is that developers that are behind schedule are left with three options:

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1. Work on the features you promised, don't speak, and bear the hatred from being silent during that time period (and hope that your work is good enough to speak for itself)...... This approach is torture to wait through...... However, while many of you might hate the approach, it's very often the one that's taken (No Man's Sky used this approach to make a very respectable comeback).

2. Work on the features you promised, speak, and bear the hatred that comes after spewing "excuses" (and hope that your work is good enough to speak for itself)...... This is the ideal approach...... Both the community and developers begin seeing eye to eye and make compromises (Overwatch and Epic have been great about this during the "downtimes" of Overwatch and Fortnite). However, this approach only works if both the developer and the community are willing to put in their fare share of compromises. Otherwise it backfires as fans are left outraged and devs are left demoralized.

3. Present the features aren't ready to "satisfy" customers, and everyone proceeds to shit on it ...... This is suicide ......

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- Treyarch is not Activision - the $60 price tag, the $40 - $60 battle pass, the microtransactions, aren't decided by the software developers making the game. Don't shit on the developers for these things. Developers very often make more sacrifices than shown on the surface. A lot of them love video games. A lot of them are real people who aren't trying to scam you out of your money. Shit on them for missing features, but not for scamming their fans

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- It's okay to like more than 1 game - Fortnite, Apex legends, Overwatch, whatever. Just because one game is popular doesn't mean that Black Ops is suddenly shit. There are a lot of things we can grab from those games, but Blackout won't become great by playing catch up to those games. It has to focus on it's own redeeming gameplay mechanics. Stop trying to force the game to be like this or like that

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Next, to the developers:

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- Don't promise features and then pretend you didn't promise them - No one likes this shit. It's one thing to delay a feature by a week, it's another to delay it by months, it's another to delay it by months and then pretend that you didn't promise it by a certain date.

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- If you're gonna communicate, do it because you really want to engage with fans, not as a response to a major event - Do we really have to wait for another "Apex legends" launch to get a response on features? Will we only get a response if we make a huge enough outcry? If so, that's really shitty and makes me think that you don't really care about the community as much as good PR

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- Communicate with details - Saying vague PR phrases like "it's coming, trust us" or making speeches about the struggles of Software doesn't help us. It helps us understand the context on the shitty situation you're in, but it doesn't help the shitty situation that we're in. It's ridiculous that posts like these contain more detail than your responses lately (although this rant is cathartic for me so I don't mind writing it)

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- Officially acknowledge your mistakes - let us know that we're past the point of lies and that we can start fresh

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- We need a road map and soon - This may be counter intuitive given how I talked about how software development is tough to properly schedule, but Black Ops 4 is in the unique situation where it has 1 year before Infinity Ward takes the lead. In other words, waiting to have you features speak for themselves (like No Man's Sky) won't work here.

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TL:DR in bold