Seems like a pack of hungry wolves lol.
Keep the actual communication coming and responses from the community will be less like starving animals waiting to pounce on prey.
Thanks for the note. I'm a fairly early EU player (NOT PE) and have never seen a time when Mindark was interactive or it felt like staff/management were "part of the community".
Engagment with representatives, community managers and the like have been up and down. If you can engage directly enough with this community that we get past the stage of dozens of people lined up with long lists of 'concerns' and 'problems' to the point that it even feels like you are trying to listen, that would be wonderful.
As for going from zero to full public engagement. Good luck. There are literally people lined up ready to hit you with cut/paste list of every minor issue they've encountered for X or XX years. The are long, thoroughly curated lists of actual concerns and questions.
This is ignoring the emotional abandonment issues that some major players (and ex players) will instantly grab any opportunity to bring to the fore. It's been a downhill slide for so long, there's a real uphill battle ahead if you want to be the CEO of a game company with a happily engaged community.
TBF if you guys had a meeting where you sat down over a couple of those lists and just tagged each item with some status it would be frickin amazing. "On a List/being prioitized", "Already targeted", "Not In Line With Current Plans". A nod to the fact that "player concerns" are real entropia player issues, not general things that some hobbit gamers would randomly like to see out in the tech world from the latest issue of basement dweller monthly.
That's not who plays EU for the most part.
The letter is nice, quite frankly as good or better than most state of the universe have been, without being more or less useful. A review and no specific promises. Business or politics the forms are important. Get on those lists of existing issues.
A letter every couple of years and maybe a canned AMA is not how you "engage with the community". If you're not actually a redditor just be warned that an AMA with a controversial issue, or one who isn't prepared to be asked ANYTHING frequently go poorly, and are not forgotten.
That sort of public "appearance" is not going to be full of fanbois ready to cheer you on, at this time.
Get it together. Get out here in the mud. Meet some people and talk to us. It doesn't have to be the CEO every day.
After all this time it's good to get some announcement, nice to hear it. Here's looking forward to many more