"Managing ones expectations" became "expecting nothing but disappointment". The roadmap became more of a "bug fixes log" than "what waits ahead".
That's unfortunately true. At first, it showed rough estimates for 1.1 and 1.2, but then they had to delay 1.2 and now they don't really communicate anything except the next-gen upgrade. (Which they had to communicate, since they announced it would be released in 2021.)
Or does this sound more logical?
Usually, you like to call out when people argue in the wrong manner and often rightfully so. Here, I would like to point out that the way you have formed this example makes people more likely to agree with your point of view, simply because the second statement also implies that the developers are lazy, while the first part does not.
Regarding the statement in general, I argue there can be multiple different reasons that the chart is like it is now. Once could very well be that they already know there won't be anything released in 2021, but they decided only to communicate the next-gen upgrade simply because they never promised anything else for 2021. (They released 1.1, 1.2 and a few DLCs.)
See, this is my point too in a perfect world, or even during a ''normal'' development cycle, but with Covid on the rise and the hurdles they've faced I would've wagered that an open line between the fans and the company akin to CIG would have done wonders in the long run and perhaps would have made the delays more bearable.
But that's captain hindsight talking, what's done is done.
From my point of view CDPR is now in a difficult spot where the receive backlash no matter what they do or don't do. Many - me including - complained about the lack of communication, but when they had the stream many complained about the stream and other things. The important distinction for me is that these complainers probably are not the same persons. Thus, CDPR has to decide who they want to tailor their communication to.
At the moment, there are probably these relevant groups:
- people who enjoy the game and are happy with the way CDPR handles the communication
- people who enjoy the game but are not happy with the way CDPR handles the communication
- people who complain...
(1) will probably be satisfied and content no matter what CDPR does, (2) would be happy with more communication, while (3) complains no matter what. From a customer-fan perspective, (1) and (2) should be satisfied, while (3) can be ignored for the time being. (Maybe (3) needs to see that the next-gen upgrade truly fixes the game for them.)
That being said, another way to interpret this would be that the attack surface for (3) is reduced the less the company communicates. Thus, less communication is better, because it results in less backlash.