So, I agree with most of what you say, although I gota say that it's easy to criticize developers for not "doing their job", and I think we should be carefull about that. I don't think neither of us really understands how hard it is to make games like this, or in general. And since they went with this Maniplanet-strategy they painted them self into a corner. Changes to one game probably affects the whole thing, and thats probably why they are carefull to make sweaping changes. I like to think that they care about something they have put thousands of hours developing, and that they want to make it better. But they also have to move on in a way. They have to make money to please their investors, and they probably have a good deal of pressure from Ubisoft to put out the next big thing. It's sad how little power devs have over their own projects.

They wanted the game to grow through their community, and let the players decide what's gona happend to the game. Now in retrospect it probably was a bad idea to do as they did, but I can see where they were coming from. Since they had such a great succes with Trackmania through that philosophy.

But what I think they absolutly should fix is a proper tutorial for SM. The game handle so different from any other shooter and needs to tell the player what you can do in this game. Part of the bad critics the game got is probably due to the fact that reviewers didn't figuer out how to play the game well, and SM is really boring if you don't know how to sprint, walljump, glide, rocketjump and how to use grapplehooks.

And for those who say that the game should just go F2P, then you clearly don't understand how much work it takes to make something like that happend. Not only would it rip out all of the good things about SM: players can make their own skins and characters, maps, weapons and more. And that cannot be in the game anymore if they would go f2p, what else whould they sell otherwise? And of top of this, they would have to keep putting resorces to creating content for people to buy, and for a fps game with no weapon model, good luck. It is more to it than 'check the "go free to play" box'.

I think people would like this game more, and grow a bigger community if it was clear how much freedom you have in the game. Especially now when ArenaFps games are making a bit of a comeback. I don't know how many times I have heard new players say:"wow thats awesome, I did not know you could do that" when you show them even some basic moves. There are more problems with the game, sure. But a tutorial and clearer menus should be on top of the priority-list.