This statement’s been bugging me ever since I read it. The inference here is that by listening to the players, the devs somehow made a mistake, because the ‘loudest voices’ were wrong and what the players asked for was disaster that didn’t even satisfy the people who were calling for it.
Now I wasn’t one of the ones calling for Acid to be buffed - I simply ignored it because it was so useless and figured out what I could use to do the job instead. But the players who called for Acid to be buffed had a point - Acid as it stood was completely useless in a game that seems deliberately designed to promote one-shot alpha-striking and swift kills.
What the players asked for was an Acid that actually did something useful and allowed the Squad to get some benefit from it before the fight was over.
What they did NOT ask for was that acid would then be given to the Pandas in such a way that 2 in every 3 Arthrons that appeared after the Leviathan Patch had acid-grenade launchers, and Acid-Lobbing Chirons seemed to appear 9 times out of every 10, lobbing double-damage squad-killers all over the map. I probably exaggerate about the Chirons, but I can attest from personal experience that 60% of Arthrons I encountered after Leviathan had Acid grenades - and hearing the cries of anguish from other players, I made it my business to target them first, even over Sirens.
THAT wasn’t a player request. Nobody was demanding loudly that two thirds of the Nasties should suddenly be armed with spiffy new acid weapons, when prior to that the only acid-lobbers in the game were Worm-lobbing Chirons. That was entirely a dev decision.
If the balance of acid weaponry had remained the same post-Leviathan as pre- (ie. the humans had Anu acid guns & grenades, and the Pandas had Acid-Worms), then I can guarantee there wouldn’t have been the outcry that there was. Players weren’t complaining about Acid not working properly for them - they were complaining about Acid suddenly being given to the other side in massive numbers, with no means of neutralising it, without any thought about what that would do to a Squad.
So I think that blaming the ‘loudest voices’ for the acid debacle feels like passing the buck.
That said: I think it is a very good thing that the devs have learned from it - and I think the whole Canny thing and the creation of a Community Council Playtesting group which can help you evaluate the relative strengths and weaknesses of any design decision is a fantastic step in the right direction.
I have to say that, despite being a great fan of this game, it does feel like a lot of ideas have been thrown into the melting pot without any real thought as to how they react together; and this has created a set of balancing issues that must be keeping the devs awake at night. So slowing down and examining the repercussions of these ideas before they are implemented is a good thing to do.