Eh, its the same for all rising gamedevelopers/publishers.
They start small, they are highly motivated and make 1-2 games they are passionate about. Their prime concern is to make a game their small-but-loyal playerbase will enjoy. The average player can come to the forums and be a part of it - even communicate directly with the devs on those very forums.
Then they start getting popular. An influx of money and new fans. The project list starts growing. The outside forces, like the Twitter people and the gaming world at large is slowly learning of your existence. The devs now also have to think of things that can keep the new players interested without investing a lot of time into reading game manuals and guides, but still closely listening to the old guard. The old guard grumbles sometimes from all the stuff made to appeal to newer players, but still enjoy the games alot.
Then they get popular and a part of the gaming mainstream. The devs are much less active on the forums because of the increased workload. Besides the games that started the company's ascent, there are also published games and an expanded list of own titles - no time to make everyone happy, while the overwhelming majority of players is now the "average gamer", brought to the company's produce by their successful PR practices. The average gamer did not play strategy games before and is unaccustomed to the challenge a good strategy game can provide. Not listening to those leads to the loss of revenue, so the new content is mostly made for them - easy to play, easy to win, colorful and memey, taking from the game's initial feel and spirit (also switching design focus mid-development leading to the dilution of the feeling of the game, technical debt, game slowly collapsing under its own weight due to tons upon tons of unconnected mechanics and so on).
I don't actually think it is bad, or that "new fans" are wrong, i just wonder if it is possible to become a large and well-known game company that makes strategy games without sacrificing difficulity, older fans and the initial vision, whatever it was. I also am not sure whether my post fits this thread, but eh, here it is.
With this said, it is rather logical, that the older players may feel grumpy and abandoned, missing the "good times", when both the game and the forums were better. Its also logical that some players don't like when old problems of the game only seem to get more severe. Hell, even i am somewhat salty now, despite being an active proponent of Pdx's dlc policy and still liking their games.
I don't actually think it is bad, or that "new fans" are wrong, i just wonder if it is possible to become a large and well-known game company that makes strategy games without sacrificing difficulity, older fans and the initial vision, whatever it was. I also am not sure whether my post fits this thread, but eh, here it is.