Having devs who plan and communicate better can go a long way to fostering goodwill, reducing frustration, and letting players feel like the devs actually care about our gaming experience.
Better Planning
Devs should plan ahead better, especially around updates.
Example: When updates like the current 11.3 update involve alliances being unavailable, alliance tasks should be ones that can be more easily completed in fewer days and should not involve raiding (i.e. scouting or stealing gold).
Better Communication
-
Bug fixes. Whether this is done via patch notes, in-game news, or Discord (e.g. a Resolved Bugs thread pinned to the top of Bug Reports), we should be informed when a widespread bug is fixed so we're not in limbo until we stumble upon it or hear it from another player in chat.
Example: The bear taming issue. There are probably players who completely avoided taming bears after discovering and/or reporting the bug, but they wouldn't know they can start taming again unless they're told when the bug is fixed. -
Minor changes with updates. The patch notes only report the major changes, but sometimes other things get changed and they're not mentioned in the patch notes at all, or they're included in a catch-all like "the update includes many small but meaningful tweaks". We should be informed about every change that gets made so we're not just stumbling upon them.
Example 1: When the level locks were changed (update 8.6 I think, and again with the t7 rollout), we weren't informed about it and had to find out incidentally, which lead to a lot of frustration.
Example 2: The change in update 11.0 to make event ring availability match the tier rather than be tied to specific levels. -
Advance notice about when temporary things will end.
Example 1: When Fred will leave the ranch after events.
Example 2: When temporary reward codes will expire.