Are Steam Reviews force of Good.TM or are they normie Borg machine that makes most RPG Devs conform to their cries and demands for "quality of life", "gameplay loop" and let's not forget "balance", which are all code words for: mechanically dumbed down games, with little to no challenge and artisticly the same experience? Many Devs are scared as fuck of negative steam reviews (they can kill any game, indie or AAA)
Whether Disco Elysium or Dark Souls, gamers just like women, are turned on by men with vision and principles. More Devs should make games that they themselves would enjoy, at least in Hardcore modes of their games. In past years too many indie Devs have replaced Publisher for steam normies as new Owners of their game's indentity and design
As Henry Ford (owner of first car factory) said : 'Consumers are wrong, ask average consumer what he needs or wants and he'd tell you "a faster horse". His mind is incapable of crossing borders of already familiar and well-known into new and innovative.'
TLDR: Gamers, are terrible co-designers of games. They should be always heard but not always listened to. Devs' balls are in hands of steam normies
You have summoned me, so here I am! I guess I should share my opinion on the subject of this thread?
Well I can only speak for myself. My team makes games for a tiny segment of a tiny (yet growing, thankfully) niche, that's why a huge percentage of people who discover our game are aristocrats, men of refined tastes and interesting opinions that coincide with our vision. I always gather feedback from Steam reviews and Codex reviews and stuff like that, because a lot of it is very good. We have acted upon many a demand from a negative Steam review, and from many a positive Steam review, and these suggestions made flesh turned our game into a better version of itself, without breaking the initial feel and ideas we wanted to see. That's why feedback is very important and I see it as helpful in a lot of ways.
However even in our case there is a need for a very strong filter.
Sometimes even reviewers who are Intellectual enough to discover our game in the first place and kind enough to buy and play it, suggest bad things that would hurt our games if implemented.
We've been suggested: quest markers, fast travel, tacticool combat, making graphic sex scenes, level scaling, adding rape, adding romance, marriage, and having children, adding political things from real life, essential-flagged unkillable NPCs, New Xcom combat, vehicular combat and lots more things that would be out of place in the game or ruin our vision. We never acted upon this, despite this meaning the author would not change their negative review, which in turn would hurt our revenue and plans for the future greatly. Reviews are a very powerful thing indeed. But following some would cause even more harm.