You're right; they definitely keep their finger on the pulse of these forums, but they aren't obligated to justify their design decisions to us. I feel like people in general overvalue dev interaction on online forums. It's cool to interact with the people that make the game, sure, but I generally see a lot of toxicity hitting devs that do interact with their community; there are a lot of entitled jerkwads and armchair experts on internet forums that relish the opportunity to "take them to task", as it were. I don't believe Bethesda doesn't listen to their community less than other devs simply for posting on the forums less.

For some reason, this post makes me think of the Destiny forums. A more toxic forum I don't think I have ever seen. The sheer hatred there is mind boggling. I keep dropping in every once in a while hoping things have changed, but they never do.

My friend tells me that Paradox keeps a good presence on the forums for their games, and by all accounts the community tears them apart for it. And, while Mojang doesn't really post on the forums (at this point there's just too much), I've never seen a greater lack of respect for the developer or for each other than within the Minecraft community.

What are the forums like for Bioware and CD Projekt RED? I could see CDPR's forums being more or less congenial, but I can't imagine that for Bioware, with how the community reacted to Mass Effect 3 (among other things, which to me seems to be blown wildly out of proportion).

The BioWare forums are actually pretty friendly. Even when ME3 was getting all the hate, I don't recall a single flame thread showing up on the forums. Sure, there were threads expressing the creator's dissatisfaction with the game, but even those tended to be pretty civil. Of course, that could just be because the mod team is quick to delete flame threads, but overall, the forums are friendly.

These forums probably not but popular mods yes.

Except all of that hatred on Bungie is well-founded.

Destiny : The Taken Liberties.

Given some of the suggestions I've seen on these forums, I truly hope not.

I don't think you've been on BioWare Social Network. It's flame wars every day there. Bring up Mass Effect 3 and you are going to get trouble. Everybody has an opinion on the controversial ending because everybody has their views on it. Regardless, BioWare is active on BSN and many times writers and devs have either come in to explain their rational or just talk with the community. They are incredibly active there, much like CDPR, where you will see some of the developers have a consistent presence on the forums and in social media. That's not to say BGS doesn't listen or at least read these forums from time to time, but they certainly don't have the presence BioWare or CDPR does on their forums.

You can thank all of the romance options in DAI almost exclusively to BSN. If there is anything as polarizing as the ending to ME3, it's sixual orientation and having more equal representation with respect to more options other than heterosixuality and even homosixuality. I wasn't as active on CDPR's forum for TW3 but I generally did not see a lot of flaming other than folks complaining about CDPR's paternership with Nvidia and how that was apparently screwing over AMD folks. Overall, the forums for TW3 were pretty positive and focused on how to improve the game and questions about particular characters as they relate to the novels.

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1529764-is-anyone-from-bethesda-reading-our-posts/page-6#entry24243866

Just thought to post this, because I do like to watch people react to evidence to the contrary of their incredibly impenetrable opinions.

No I don't.

FO:5 maybe but not 4.

On Youtube, there is a video called 'Fallout 4: Bethesda is listening to the community'

Uploaded by Matty who often presents his speculation as facts. I'd take his videos with a grain of salt.

Occasionally, yes. I recall when they took to this forum asking how people felt about multi-player in a Fallout game. So I think they have people that browse the forums every now and then, but it's nothing like the engagement you can find elsewhere (Blizz comes to mind).

Fallout 4? No, unless you're referring to the forums in general. However, I'm sure they'll be looking here for ideas for DLC.

I doubt this forum had anything to do with fallout 4. Now Nexus modding page, I am sure they got all sorts of useful ideas from that.