A potentially better way to handle the remainder of the DLC content

[HyperLordBender]

One mistake game devs do (in my opinion) is to say that a feature will be in some release, then have very little talk about it. With the Cougar, I think HL knows the risks of keeping the in progress stuff in house only. So why not post a monthly progress thing where you show off features, overhauls, ect so the community knows about them and can give more feedback, while the thing is in development? This also has the benefit of keeping the community informed as to the state of the development of the game.

The devs do have 'dev diaries', which do talk about these things, but they are often very scant on actual details of the features. 

[ManicManiac]

We know that this sort of thing has been on the Hinterland Team's minds... perhaps even more so in recent months.
We also know that they are working on several complex moving parts (so to speak), and I imagine time is always at a premium.
Over the last several weeks Raph has been sharing some behind the scenes stuff and in the past, occasionally some teaser type content as well.

Personally, I think the Dev Diaries have been wonderful.

Edited June 28 by ManicManiac

[Lexilogo]

It's probably a matter of wanting to stay flexible. If you're transparent about upcoming features and what's in development, it can be construed as a "promise", or it ends up as a "what could've been" for the community. (and those scenarios usually have a "grass is always greener" effect where players overlook the probably good reasons that plans changed)

 

For a great example of what happens if this goes wrong, try mentioning fireflies to a Minecraft player. You might want to wear a ballistic vest.

Or as an example of a disaster that was avoided, Left 4 Dead had prototype Special Infected, that were far into development and seemed like surefire ideas, that ended up being awful for gameplay after playtesting. It's easy to imagine a world where Valve marketed that game earlier, and ended up having "promised" the inclusion of enemies in the trailers which actually didn't fit the game at all.

 

So, it's a delicate balancing act. You have to be confident enough in what you show, that you know it isn't a darling you might have to kill later. With that said, obviously transparency is really nice when we can get it, and community input can genuinely help justify or guide serious decisions. Eg. I could easily see whether or not we should see the Trader as a human NPC being a question Hinterland asks the community about before making a final decision.