I've been predicting that guns would be in the game since June but nobody would believe me. Maybe now they'll believe my prediction about Smurfs secretly controlling the day-to-day operations of The Institute.

Well, here's a non-spoiler question.

Do the reactions and theories that you, or any Bethesda staff, read ever trigger any discussions regarding features or content amongst the team?

Not to say that everything you read has merit, or that nothing you read has merit, but I'm essentially asking if any feedback has ever actually triggered any internal discussion of ideas.

I'd be interested to hear your response.

Sure it does, Todd has mentioned in a number of interviews that we look at feedback from the fans on a regular basis. I think if you look at features from previous Games, patches and DLC's you can get a sense of us responding to what the fans ask for. We dont respond to everything obviously, but we definitely pay attention to you guys. Although we cant make everyone happy, we certainly try our best

And that's all anyone can ask for.

Thank you for your response, vsions and good luck with your future projects.

It's worth mentioning that Bethesda's done fan interviews for http://uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Fan_Interview, http://www.gamesas.com/topic/856489-fan-interviews/, http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1096751-fallout-new-vegas-fan-interview/ (courtesy of Obsidian), and http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1207390-skyrim-fan-interview/. So it stands to reason that GStaff or someone else will eventually open up a thread and invite us to submit questions to the devs - probably closer to launch. Lots of good insight in those interviews; worth the read if you've got the time, IMO.

I know the two major questions I would ask are what improvements they've made to stealth gameplay, and what Obsidian did differently than them in New Vegas that they took notice of.

Having heard gamers/fans and what not talk... God no, those poor employees. Save yourselves and keep a good long distance. Have someone else filter the few good suggestions and valid criticism and pass it on.

I think part of the frustration regarding perceived disengagement with developers comes from the long arm 'corporate/political speak' ya'll are forced to use when communicating with the public. Take "Todd has mentioned in a number of interviews that we look at feedback from the fans on a regular basis. I think if you look at features from previous Games, patches and DLC's you can get a sense of us responding to what the fans ask for." Not to be a jerk, but that's pretty empty language. Every game developer says "we listen to fan feedback" and "if you look at what we did in the sequel, we were clearly responding to what the fans wanted."
Turtle Rock Studios is good example of how to handle fan engagement. Not only do they respond on forums regularly, they are willing to go into specifics, explaining why they did things a certain way; throughout the production and release of Evolve (their latest game), they have been willing to go into specifics as to WHY a character gets balanced a certain way or why X feature was omitted.
Ultimately though, I imagine this is just a reflection of the realities of a big developer vs a small developer. As a small dev I imagine TRS has a lot of autonomy, and thus is able to have much more control over how transparent their development process is.

How ironic that your sarcastic and exaggerated view of the situation is a prime example of the most likely reason they don't talk to the FANatics more.....good job building bridges....

Yeeeees it's sarcasm... and not the fact that 83 percent of all posts are angry entitled fans, that doesn't even understand subjectivity and personal taste and time and again herald it as fact and as objective reason to boycot/hold off on buying xyz and when xyz finally does get released any and all public statements gets anolyzed to death for broken promises and arguments for getting money back.

I can't even count how many forums for how many games that has happened on.

PS: 83 percent... now that was an unscientific exaggeration, but by god it happens everywhere... Just take a look on how many post's and polls theres been on the voiced player character here.

I want a Fat Man in the next Elder Scrolls!

CD projeckt is 1 year younger than Bethesda games studios. Not exactly a new company.

Bethesda was founded in 1986, sixteen years before CD Projekt RED.

I hope not, I want those devs chained to their desks working on the game 24/7

No, Vsions went very specific. Go look up various interviews with Todd and pay attention to what he says about how they review feedback from their fans and discuss specific elements for inclusion (or not). Vsions post was not empty at all because he told everyone where to look and referred to the lead designer, Todd Howard. I have seen many interviews with Todd myself where he answered the questions posed for this entire thread, so I find it a very odd question to post, let alone for an entire thread. All anyone has to do is actually look up interviews and anyone here has access to the WWW in order to do just that.

Bethesda Softworks founded 1986 (Developer and publisher, publisher only from 2001)

CD Projekt founded 1994 (Publisher)

Bethesda Game Studios founded 2001 (Developer subsidiary)

CD Projekt RED founded 2002 (Developer subsidiary)

So, yeah, depends whether you're comparing subsidiary with subsidiary, parent with parent, parent with subsidiary, or what.

NDA's are a very real and legal binding. That language is used for a reason. Plenty of people are so careful as to what they say because they don't want to be the one to say the wrong thing, or say too much. I don't expect someone to risk losing their jobs over answering something now when they can wait 3 months and discuss things much more openly.

Yes. Sometimes, developers will read their own forums and even post at times... Though I rarely see Bethesda employees make posts myself but I know some other developers do it quite often.

I'm especially curious to see their retort to this question.For a game that is extolled among the fanbase, Bethesda seems relatively indifferent to it

If the question is asked in a fashion that calls for a retort, I wouldn't expect a developer to answer it. It would be a waste of his time.

Especially since FO4 isn't even out yet

That's a good way to put it. I was just going to ask "How did Obsidian's take on the Fallout universe with New Vegas influence your work on Fallout 4?" Although Bethesda has answered some pretty loaded questions before. Here's this little gem from a http://uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Fan_Interview_IV:

I linked that interview earlier in the thread, but I guess since I put it in spoiler tags to avoid taking up space no one seemed to address it. So screw it, here's another quote from that page that has everything to do with the topic at hand.

One point to note - while the second quote says that people are always right in their opinions if there's something about a game they don't like, and that the forums exist as a place where people can complain, the quote doesn't quite come out and explicitly state that Bethesda let the complaining influence them in whether specific features get cut out or re-introduced in later games.

Although "I expect [criticism] and welcome it, it’s the main thing that makes us want to make things better the next time" does very strongly imply that the influence is there

Still, I think it's important to bear in mind that while feedback on the forums is paid attention to, lots of other things are as well. On the ratings point in the second quote, Skyrim wasn't rated higher than Oblivion on Metacritic, but it sold way, way more. So any criticism of changes made from Oblivion to Skyrim would be fairly emphatically put in perspective by that fact