I also majorly disagree with bringing discussions down to personal levels, bullying and so. It has to be noticed, and it must not become a norm. It must be said, there are few chosen ones that keeps on doing that constantly and they are under the wing of devs. Speaking of developers, I am against disrespecting any developers, except perhaps Ian Bell because he got overpaid, but it shouldn't mean that you can not be criticizing them.
I would be interested to know when S397 was too transparent. So far I think they aren't even transparent to themselves. They probably don't know what will happen half a year ahead. And most definitely they have best goals at their hearts, at least some of them. We must be aware that they aren't the ones that actually created rF2, and they have a tremendous task not to only handle it, but also improve and not break it. It must be a huge task, they deserves tremendous respect whenever they do something well, but at the same time they should be getting things well, that is in my personal opinion is beyond transparent.
I am unsure what success of player base increase of past years do you mean ? There was nearly none. Numbers has risen a bit due to COVID madness locking people indoors. And then after new UI plus COVID restrictions wearing out numbers went back, and actually dropped even slightly lower than they were at the beginning of lockdowns. Ever since new UI rF2 was constantly loosing players every month up till this month, and this month is not yet over. So by this day there were no increase in last two years. Meanwhile Assetto Corsa kept on climbing up, it has massive playerbase. ACC player base grew 300% in past few years. rF2 apparently grew in some other direction that isn't about playerbase.
Look:
https://steamcharts.com/app/365960