You underline perfectly two serious problems here.
1. The COMMUNICATION.
a. Yes Marin should not be harassed, he has enough on his plate and he shouldn't be the one communicating.
There's a community manager on Facebook who - from what I've been seeing - is completely useless the way he's communicating. Look at e.g his post on August 14 where he's asking whether we have questions for Marin. It's been a month and there has been no direct reply, no further feedback, no follow up. Nothing. What's the point?! Asking how our training went every week is not gonna entertain or calm people down. If you can help, do so. If you can't, say it. If you dont have anything to say, keep it down. Even keeping us updated about problems seems to be too difficult. And btw it's probably not his fault.
b. You are correct, indeed Marin is not the boss - players generally appreciate him, rightfully so - but they reach out to him because he's the only one they can manage to get in touch with!
Buzzerbeater is in crisis for a while now, WHERE'S THE TOP MANAGEMENT? Who are we even talking about?
You go down from 65k to 13k players, An app is announced for years but no update on the topic for ages, your product bugs big time, there hasn't been any visual or feature improvement for centuries. Where is the top management, where's their communication?
In a private company, do you really think it's up to the engineering to communicate with clients, especially in times of crisis? Don't you think the top sales or client services managers step up to try and keep the company's reputation safe? I imagine there isn't such an org chart but there's got to be other people besides Marin.
In a nutshell: WHO IS IN CHARGE? Who's driving the bus?? Marin is trying to prevent the bus from falling apart, but if there's no driver, you know how it ends.
c. I understand your point about BB being a free game - but I certainly do not accept that you use this argument to keep people quiet. Yes supporters are paying for extra features, but for a while now, even some basic features are failing to work. Plus I'm sure BB would be in an even deeper sh*t without the thousands of $ coming from the supporters.
2. The other topic is the eternal one - WORKAROUNDS.
Here again, i do not agree that workarounds should become the rule because the game is failing to propoerly work. There are established rules, people play with the rules. Period. If they want to try and attract buyers with low prices, that's their right and it's called strategy. If they want to bid late, that's strategy. If they want to scout teams and players, that's strategy too.
BB is a STRATEGY GAME FFS!! What's the point otherwise?? Where's the fun??
To summarize, I'm convinced most players would agree if the people responsible for this game would
- break their silence
- explain to us very clearly what the overall situation is
- let us know whether there's a strategy in place and in which step of this strategy we currently are
- be honest about the problems and whether (and when) they will be tackled
Is this really too much to ask?? I don't believe so, i think it's actually VERY easy.
Whoever is in charge, please wake up, smell the coffee and speak up!