It's amazing to consider how much of my mental territory the game has. I got a ping from His Senatorialness this morning, asking if I recall update xyz.17 and what it was they adjusted in things 9-13. The whacked thing was, I kinda, almost did. After I advised what I could recall, I pondered a bit, and remembered how much we BMs communicated with each other and with the game's developers about what we were up to.
So later today, in GuildVox on Discord with one other, I waxed poetic about what all we accomplished, and realised the reason we were able to accomplish so much was due, almost entirely, to the communications skills and the scientific-esque mindset in which we played our whole game.
When I became Senator, I spoke to the producer and many of the devs via PM on the forums, and occasionally, as needs drove, on Facebook and via emails. I was always unfailingly honest in my assessments of what we needed from them and in the adjustments we thought they should make. I had observed communities shoot for the stars when they'd have been satisfied with the moon, and wanted to let the devs know they could trust us: we were an analytical community, and we could take no for an answer, if there were good, rational reasons for the no. So I never padded our estimates for requests, I always furnished every link to every xl spreadsheet that pertained to the issues, I was always clear, especially when I wasn't as concise as someone else might have been (der, I like words. A. Lot.)
One of the first issues I managed to resolve was that on Double XP days, pet XP had no bonus. It sucked. So the first communication I had with TeeSquared was about whether we could get that addressed in time to participate in the Double XP. I discovered a key point in that conversation: Devs answer the first question in a message and apparently stop reading at that point. So, if you have a bunch of questions, only send them one at a time. When you get answer 1, say thank you and then ask question 2. It works on a lot of people in bureaucratic positions, as it happens!
The second thing I learned was that devs didn't read the Top Ten Issues lists which were stickied to the top of almost every forum. They didn't expect to have to, and did very little investigative research that way. It was my job to prioritise the items and make sure the most important ones were allocated enough time to address fairly. I was not always successful, as they definitely added more mutations in a rather slapdash way, long before we needed them, and before they'd fixed the extraction issues that led to the Tanray being unachievable for so long.
I also learned that if a Senator was to do a credible job, they had to have a dev who trusted them with an overview of a publish or game update, before it went to Test Center, so that those fixes that might be affected by the specific updates could be given enough attention. Trust does not come easily or quickly, and I am very glad I eventually earned it for my community, as I think that's why we stayed as long as we did, and why we are all so keen to be playing again.
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