This point alone would vastly improve almost every other issue, not to mention that it would greatly reduce the wild speculations fans fabricate sometimes (I'll include myself here).
They have a gaming staff which mostly visits the forums (and I'm talking about the official ones) to regurgitate rehearsed marketing statements rather than to actually have a real communication with the community (and that's an absolutelly intentional redundancy there, the similarity is not precisely a coincidende etymologically).
I can get that they don't want to discuss business practices, or just answer with a simple yet understandable
"we can't comment on that yet"... but how hard would it be to answer questions about minor details and concerns so small that most likely won't even be referenced in the official announcements? What would exactly be the negative implications of coming to the forums and explaining, for instance, something as harmless as what's the argument behind keeping morrion helmets on imperial troops?
Why not have a regular Q&A in which they regularly address some of the community's questions and concerns? And not just from the community staff but also from actual designers, artists and programmers. Even if the answers were negative, an honest reply would get a much more positive response from the community than just overhyping the parts they can show off to later let the fans crash frontally with a hard wall of disappointment, with the subsequent tide of anger. And with Q&A I am not talking about
"ok we are going to speak about some stuff we had planned to announce to hype you" or just obvious remarks (such as
"yes we will add more factions in the next games", or
"yes we will still show more stuff before release") but as actual answers of fan questions.
It gets annoying that we know more about this:
... than about very commented topics such as the state of the imperial design or the exclusion of banners.
(By the way, I just visited the store and I found hilarious that they are selling this: )