Do you feel that the developers' changes and choices are in-touch with the fanbase?

The devs seem to have a surprising lack of communication with DBD player base. I mean sure, they've held surveys, and have PTBs to gain feedback on their new releases, and changes, but I'm seriously not sure how much of it is read or even taken seriously. I don't see many suggestions from user feedback that reflect our thoughts, in-game. I don't feel like we're listened to enough. I used to have a decently active discord server with plenty of Dbd fanatics who felt the same way, and to no surprise a pretty large portion of my friends abandoned Dbd due to the lack of communication and the negative changes in-game.

I'm not saying all of the changes the devs made were bad because they didn't reflect the community's suggestions, because there have been pretty damned good changes. Examples: Exhaustion nerf, Doctor rework, the recent Freddy rework, the emblem system (as it wayyyy wayyy to easy to double pip back in the day), pallet vacuum, vault vacuum, insta-blinds (for those of you who were around back in the day), etc. Though a lot of bad decisions and failure to patch simple and frustrating bugs tend to outweigh the good, and the pessimistic side gets the best of me.

In short, the devs are disconnected with the community and have no doubt about that:

Playerbase: Gen rush is horrible, pls bhvr fix

BHVR: LeTs MaKe It WoRsE

For high rank players (actual high rank players, not the baby meg whose in red ranks because she got boosted there by David and Nea), not really (unless it's a complaint), especially killers. However, with the precious boosted ranks (green and up), yes, but not with killers. The devs do make some quality of life changes for killers but not enough to actually balance the game, they keep it around a grayish area which leans more toward the survivor side. To give an example:

Killer complains about survivors being OP: He gets lynched by the community and the Devs label him as nothing more than a whiny entitled baby with no valid suggestions to offer.

Survivor complains about killers being OP: Every single detail of the complaint is thoroughly read and taken into serious consideration and will most likely be put into effect. The Devs will never tell survivors to stop complaining or to get better, they will make necessary "changes" to ensure that they are having fun and to make sure the killer isn't over performing as to ensure the survivor isn't having a bad time.

Ruin nerf was a clear example of this. They also gave Doc a buff (a big enough buff that he's now B tier) but that's just to compensate for the ruin nerf. Again, they try to keep it in a gray area but it's always leaning more towards survivors. As a red rank survivor, if I make a suggestion on how to make things more challenging, such as making the objectives harder or to not buff per se, but to at least revert the nerfs to killers, my suggestion will never be taken seriously, it never will be. However, if I make a complaint about the killer over performing, my complaint will catch a few eyes in the balancing department. It's honestly just a big mess. Any time anyone tries to show the Devs what's wrong with the fundamental issues such as game mechanics and RNG, they brush it aside and only look at complaints which would require nerfs and/or buffs because that's their solution to everything. Nerf nerf nerf and maybe a little buff here and there. They'll never address the fundamental issues, which is what causes everything to be wrong in the first place. Survivor objective is too easy, even with No Mither and no items, and killer objective is too hard, especially with weak killers and with weak perks. I as a red rank survivor frequently run No Mither and blast music while playing because that's how easy the game is for me. With killer I have to absolutely focus and raise the game volume and constantly worry about every single move I make in green ranks (because matchmaking is broken and I get paired with red rank survivors who most of the time are swf). Anyone who has an easy ride at high ranks with killers is constantly going against boosted potatoes who don't belong in high ranks, plain and simple. No one is telling me with a straight face that going against a 4 man swf with 1000's of hours of experience is fun. But hey, according to the Devs it is fun, right?

This.

I feel there's only a portion of the fanbase involved in changes. I know you can't please everyone with every update, there's always going to be someone displeased. However, I believe the changes related to "listening to the community" are more aimed to less experienced players/new players.

Ruin is proof of that, most """pros""" or veterans said they had no trouble getting through the great skill checks or just looking for the totem, but the complaints mostly came from low ranks or people with not enough experience or time in the game. Hence Ruin got reworked and is now a completely different perk. Less annoying for survivors? Yes, maybe. But it doesn't have the same impact, and it's waaay less of a threat.

This is not always the case of course, but most of the time, changes seem to be more in favor of people who haven't played the game as much as others have.

So my final answer is a mix of yes and no.

Its just hard to please everyone.

Not at all I just posted mine and I saw yours pop up. I just wanted to know people's opinions of the current state of DBD and stumbled onto it. I just found it amusing and decided to mention. No bad intentions just amusement others are thinking similar.

I think what they are doing now with the polls in game is the right way to do it but there should be more of them and they should be more in depth for example if they were to ask the community Is generator speed fine at the moment i think they should do a follow-up question like Should we increase the time that it takes to do a generator or Should we add the survivors more optional tasks

i think that Old School RuneScape does it almost perfectly