Originally Posted by DarthDymond

Heaven forbid game designers actually be in charge of the design for their game.

Developers should take player feedback into account as one factor --and an important factor at that-- that goes into their decision-making process for the game. But it is never going to be the only factor. Doing exactly what the players say is both practically impossible (so many different players want so many different things, there is no way they have the resources to implement them all at once) and logically impossible (some players want [X] and some players explicitly want [NOT X]). The playerbase isn't some monolith with a singular vision for the game anyway.

So sometimes they're going to look at player feedback and say "Hey, this player feedback has an idea we like that we can fully implement" (e.g. removing training costs).

Sometimes they're going to look at player feedback and say "Hey, this feedback has an idea we like, but we just don't have the resources to implement it right now, we'll keep it in mind for later" (e.g. everything they add to their "wall of crazy").

Sometimes they're going to look at feedback and say "Hey, we have one idea for how this should be, players are telling us they want something different, we'll try to meet them half-way" (e.g. taking their idea for GC to be the entirety of end-game gearing, players' feedback that it should be removed completely, and compromising by bringing back gear drops and gear currencies and moving GC to a supplemental role in gearing up).

Sometimes they're going to look at feedback and say "Hey, that's just not something that jibes with our vision for the game, so we're not going to do that."

IMO that's exactly the way designers should go about their game development, and it seems to be something BW is doing.