Feedback is easy when you have no real stakes in the game. This is Blizzard’s business and many people’s livelihoods while for us it is simply our entertainment. Not saying we don’t want the game to be its best just like the developers do but I don’t think it’s much of a leap to say they’re more invested. Not to mention, they’re working professionals who have been doing this a long time.
I’m sure they read the forums as much as they can. It’s always a good idea to gauge the player base. But a lot of us have a misguided notion on what exactly goes on behind the scenes, what it takes to actually implement a thing, how that thing can potentially affect other things, etc. Plus, we have no idea of what the future road map is; all we see are things we don’t like and want changed while Blizzard is juggling balance, content feed, social changes, E-sports, and whatever else they have in store.
But the mere fact that people are confused as to why they don’t ‘just listen’ goes to show how little is understood about the process as a whole. We have no idea who is working on what (besides the Jeffs and other big names), we have no idea how much resources they can manage to spend, we have no idea what changes are ALREADY in the pipeline that can render our suggestions irrelevant , we have no idea what simply won’t or can’t happen.
And finally, devs don’t respond to feedback because forums are a toxic wasteland most of the time. Imagine all the negativity in this thread alone. It’s not their job to respond to all of us, it isn’t even their job to respond to the broad strokes like they do. That’s a huge risk and 100% of the time they respond, there’s a huge portion of players who cry, quit, or are otherwise angrier than before the response. Imagine slipping up and saying the wrong thing as a Dev because the idiots here. That would end up on every gaming news outlet within the day and be blown out of proportion instantly.
When it comes to forums, there’s very little to be gained by engaging with the player base, we often don’t know what we’re talking about, and we incur exactly none of the risk with our suggestions no matter how good or bad they might be (or more accurately, how good or bad we THINK they might be) .