It's so obvious he legitimately cares about what he makes and the experience people have tackling what he's put out. He's got a genuinely old-school work ethic, too. I can tell exactly where he's coming from with the skill set a company requires of any dev interacting with the community on a forum. It's just not natural. Thick skin is a must, but you can also barely act as though you're the normal human you are rather than an entity providing a business function for a project.
I still haven't hopped into World 2 yet and for all I know I'll think it's as horrible as Retro does, but even so I really, really hope that SAB still comes back and gets some love however long it takes. Based on his rather cogent analysis of the "perfect storm": a compromise on the reward structure, a smoother difficulty curve with fewer pits for World 3, and the fact that Trib Mode/The Infinite Coin will be old hat by that point, could make a future release just as successful as the initial one. I feel for the guy, because it must suck to pour your heart into something and have it received poorly, but he really seems to have his head on straight about it.
I know a lot of you don't care about SAB at all so it's probably not worth thinking about one way or another, but for some players out there it would be a real shame to see it go. There's nothing like it, not just "within MMOs" but really, of modern multiplayer games that exist. Beyond the nostalgia-inducing design ethic of negative reinforcement- so almost completely absent from the rest of the game- the fact that you can hop in and show another player secrets or shortcuts, or experience the brutally unfair and frequently hilarious instadeaths of Trib Mode alongside another person, is really quite unique.
They have the whole life cycle of the game to refine and augment it; it doesn't have to be on some sort of timed release schedule. Any chance I get to voice my vote to a dev, Josh and SAB get my full support.
