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.
Forum and other non game source feedback should be important I think. Some people play mostly in offline mode for various reasons (in my case it is due to late night internet issues), rather hard to analyze this data. Also, data analysis, while helpful, is probably only showing them a small amount of information. A high rate of death somewhere could mean hard content but also lag, the controls, stupidity, really anything. Petting the dog is an exploit to raise approval, it maybe shows how many people are using it, not how many would really pet the dog. Romances, well people are testing the game so there will be a high rate of this since people want to know what happens with everyone, not who they really like. Most people taking the "good" path doesn't show them how to fix the "evil" path.
