The game is still in beta, and quite incomplete, missing key components to make the economics work and support for competitive play, for example. So whatever new features are released they are in fact being tested and iterated on based on feedback from the current active players.
Up until now we had releases that were announced ahead of time, like the somewhat recent changes to Create and Thievery or the fixes to staking for example. But then we got a Battle Pass when no one was expecting it, which is the kind work that surely had to require a multi-month effort. However, the release was rushed, with glaring bugs that took a considerable amount of time to fix, and very barebones information content that was only properly fleshed out from player feedback after some of the details were announced and players started asking questions. And then there was of course a very questionable decision of offering pack value one order of magnitude higher than the BP cost.
Putting aside the team's current limitations and constraints, it seems clear to me that a lot of the problems that I listed could've been avoided or reduced if the players would have been involved in the process sooner. I don't understand the benefit of announcing a BP like it's a completed feature in a mature game with the game in its current state. What I do see is a benefit of creating hype and releasing a more polished and balanced product the first time by announcing the work on the BP with months in advance and working with the players to make sure the product details are fair and sensible, and at the time of the official release there aren't glaring gaps in critical information the players need to make a decision whether or not to buy. All of this happened, and could've been at least ameliorated by not doing everything in secret and asking for feedback instead.
