First, I want to say that I think SG could and should do a better job on this front.
However, it’s also not so easy…
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It does take up resources, because the people doing the communication and the people working on the game are not the same; in other words, the devs need to take time off what they are doing to explain what it is they are doing to the people who will then communicate it to the players
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communicating with players is not easy because passions rise quite fast and these efforts can easily backfire; I think most of us who have been here for a while have fond memories of UV and appreciated his involvement and frankness, but even so it’s not like his efforts were always universally appreciated by the community
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giving a vision or a roadmap is a recipe for disappointment and charges of unfulfilled promises. PP is being developed in an iterative manner; bugs are fixed, new content added and some content changed all the time. Something works, something doesn’t. A feature or a way the devs want the game to play a year from now might be scrapped in 6 months for a variety of reasons (players don’t want it, unexpected difficulties, devs stop liking it)
As I said, I do think that SG can do a better job at communicating with the community.
On the other hand, having spent a few weeks on the Steam forums myself I have to say I can’t blame anyone for not wanting to engage with that crowd 