The whole reason for approaching data this way is to keep a good "overall" image and eleminate people demoting the product. Enhancing on aspects helping to promote the product is a secondary task.
I talk about this because for some reason people tend to bring this " Niche vs Majority" argument in discussions about features. "If the majority doesn't like it , then it doesn't make sense to even talk about it seriously". It's not the case. The end result will be a few % of people telling you not to buy bg and a few % telling you to buy it at all cost. The 2nd group should be higher than the 1st one.
When you think of it the idea of collecting feedback based of a forum is actually problematic due to this last paragraph alone. A person adressing an issue vocally and saying it's a gigantic issue might be a promoter in reality. The whole system exists as a customer satisfaction initiative aiming at controlling the image of a company and it's products. That's why it's problematic to apply it to software development in it's pure form too. But with the magic of "telemetry" implemented in video games you could go as far as trying to force the feedback via ingame pop-up at the end of let's say 10 hours of gameplay(after finishing a session for instance) just to get the " satisfaction" number. And then you would know if the majority actually matters.
I think I need to change my life choices and go to game dev, I'm so curious what this data could bring.
... Or you could just do what they're doing already, by the way welcome to 2020, have you heard of a defunct company called Cambridge Analytica? Or a small company called Facebook or a feature called Google Maps or Waze?
The best way is to look at actual player behavior and mine the players for information then construct profiles based on that and let that inform you while adding forum/reddit/whatever feedback as secondary sources.
Shouldn't the very fact that they have a heat map give you a hint as to what they're thinking and their capabilities? Or the fact that they know what the romance rates are or how many times people have pet a damn thing?
This is where the real data is at, not a stupid survey, not these forums, not reddit.
