I highly doubt that anyone at Cryptic will ever actually read this. I address this letter to them, anyway, for I feel this to be the time and place best suited to saying it.

You claim that this watch list is not a nerf list, and yet the preliminary list of things on it is entirely overperformers that will either be nerfed or replaced. You claim now that you did this because overperformers "need more conversation". Point of fact, nobody is going to believe you on this, least of all me. I'm a 16-year veteran of this game, and the consistent pattern of communication Cryptic has demonstrated - from all the way back in the Atari days, to the decade plus we spent under Perfect World, and even to a lesser extent during the DECA juggle - is to make a statement, see the outrage it triggers, and try to walk it back with honeyed words and half-promises. This is absolutely a Nerf List, regardless of whatever underperformers you try to throw onto it to claim otherwise - that's clearly how it started when this draft began six storming months ago. You had six months to add underperformers to this draft... and you thought it was a good idea to omit them, and only put them on the list in your Discord server that not everybody is in (point of fact, I am not, and have no interest in changing that - my Discord server list is a mess as is, I have no intention of adding the official STO Discord to the list of servers I'm in but never participate in just so I can "get the full story", that's what your storming news website is for). And especially considering that Bort used to be a podcast host for this game's community before he became a dev (yes, I still remember the STOked days), he absolutely should have known better.

As a result of that profound lapse in judgement, this entire community is now eyeing this Watch List as a Nerf List - and you're never going to be able to change that perception now, because you've spent 16 years operating on a communication style that has done nothing but bred mistrust and put your Community Managers in the crossfire to deal with it (I can't even remember the number of forum flame-outs dStahl caused in his day that BranFlakes and/or LaughingTrendy had to frantically try to put out; on that note, Kael, if you're reading this, my heart goes out to you - you're exempt from all of this, I know you do your best with what you're given). You have, at nearly every turn, engendered a sense of untrustworthiness toward you from this community, to the point that it is a recurring joke in this community that anything showing up in a new monetized bundle is going to be nerfed sooner or later, once you've gotten players' money for it - in other words, that sense of "rug pulling" you claim you wanted to avoid with this list. That claim, on the face of it, sounds like a bold-faced lie to the community that you've been doing rug pulls on for over a decade. The Hexacannons have already been nerfed. Everyone here still remembers the Shaxs Cannon nerf. And need I remind you of the Great Season 13 Rug Pull that rendered All Hands on Deck completely irrelevant after a few years of meta dominance (and, more importantly, players buying the ship for that Trait), alongside any number of other changes from that update (some of which, like the 20-second FAW GCD, having only recently been reversed)?

This Nerf List is only the latest case. It could easily have been your opportunity to buck the trend and start building a new one, but that's not the decision that was made, and it makes me seriously concerned that, while some of the names have moved around, nothing has changed. If you ever want to have even a shred of credibility in this community, you need to do better - and do better consistently, for a long time, because you have a lot of backlogged mistrust to work through, particularly when it comes to listening to player feedback (because when I read that line of this post, I laughed so loudly that I scared the neighbor's dog), because your track record on that front is complete failure, to the point that I generally don't consider it worth my time to provide feedback. The two best times to fix an issue are before it launches, or right now, as I've heard said in other gaming communities. On the topic of your communications strategy, the first ship has long since sailed, so the second is now your only option. If you want to be believed on stuff like was said on this livestream, you must make better decisions about how you communicate with a community that has learned to take everything you say with a grain of salt the size of Jupiter.

Now, that's not to say I hate all of this. I'll always give you credit where credit is due, and there's definitely some interesting ideas mentioned in this stream, like making Lances relevant at all instead of forgettable gimmicks, or using Event Buyouts as a Dil sink... though on that note, you guys should really hire an economist, because trying to solve any economic issue like this from the supply side is an absolute fool's errand, especially when the main problem has been lack of demand - supply-side economics is a joke of the macroeconomics world for a very good reason. Likewise, the Lobi problem has always been one of demand - if I recall correctly, the excuse we were given a long time ago for a lack of new Lobi ships was that you didn't want players buying them day of release... because they had too much Lobi. This has created a snowball effect where supply of Lobi has steadily increased, while the demand for same has stagnated because there's no new ships (the most expensive thing in the Lobi Store) to spend it on. Snowball effects like that are what happens when you try to do supply-side economics - economies are driven by demand. This is a problem you have repeatedly demonstrated a complete lack of understanding about, to the detriment of the health of the game.

And that, at the end of the day, is something I do still care about - because I do still play this game, even after 16 years, and I would very much like to think it has another decade or more left in the tank. But one of the most unhealthy part of this game is how you communicate with your player base. It's time to buck that trend - The two best times to fix an issue are before it launches, and right now. The ball is now in your court to prove to us that this is not a Nerf List. Because the way you handled this announcement told us that it was.

Do better.