Because dictators kill anyone who hate him or jail them. Stop with this anti democratic bullshit and speak for yourself, not everyone hate developers because they trying to make game with asking what kind of game people want. Besides anyone can have struggle during any creative process, so he can trying to find most fitting solution for his point of view on game. I am sorry, If I sound rough, but I don't understand sometimes some people, who have butt hurt about balance, but when devs trying to figure out: "What the fuck you need guys?!?!" There would be always guy, who compare devs with politics and trying suggest to stop devs from it (in another words interrupt that they already started) "cus design is not democracy", while it never was about democracy to begin witch, it's was always common practice in business, when company trying find appealing things for their customer. Opposite of this would be communist slogan "eat shit or die", in another words "you should be glad that you have that delicious piece of spoiled bread and don't complain, because this is how we see bright future for everyone". It just a marketing movie, so they can sure that their game would be bought by anyone.
P.S. Sorry If my comment look as angry response, but I don't think that if devs want to know fetishes of their customers it's something bad.
You can be as rough as you like afaic, you are on the Codex.
People don't know what their significant other thinks after 20 years of marriage, and somehow we are going to understand our customers right after they fill in this well thought-out questionnaire. Yeah, good luck with that. Add to it a multi-million dollar marketing campaign, just in case.
My main point is that the results of the democratic process look like Frankenstein, ie they are completely incoherent and really satisfy noone (ofc I am generalizing a bit etc-etc). Still, democracy is a relatively stable regime, which is its major advantage and explains why it survives. Since we are talking about game design here, said stability will have nothing to do with the end result, while being an incoherent mess with no unifying vision will have a lot to do with it. That's what I meant. Note that I am not actually saying that Deadfire is an incoherent mess. I am saying that it should be careful that it does not become one.
In addition, you absolutely need your lead designer to be enthusiastic about what he is doing. I noted that Josh looked tired with life in Q&A10, and bells started ringing in my head. He may have just been sick, though, I have no way of knowing.