I always think it's a good idea for a dev to be open to constructive criticism but i think it's all too common for folks to think their particular preferences fall under that banner when it's just entirely subjective. For example, a common one, and the one i saw the most of flicking through the last 2 pages of comments, is this idea of optional content. It sounds perfectly reasonable but it leads to an issue down the line, if content can be skipped then it either has to be isolated from the overarching story so as to not cause continuity issues, OR the dev has to incorporate an ever increasing web of checks and alternate paths for the choices each player makes and keep the story from falling apart with holes and inconsistencies.
It's easy for someone to argue for player choice, it's the particular brand of resolution that breaks people up into groups that are at odds with each other, if it's optional does that mean the player just doesn't see it but it still happens? Easier for the dev to keep a consistent story that way but plenty of folks scream bloody murder at that, so let's go with it doesn't happen if the player says no, well now the dev has to make the story make sense with and without the skipped content which leads to what i wrote in the previous paragraph... or how about the worst case, when certain players expect alternate scenes to replace the unwanted ones? More and more branching complexity foisted on the dev...
It all begins with the quaint notion of player choice but it ends with a dev having to satisfy an ever multiplying horde of self centered people turned gremlins arguing with each other over X, Y, Z, and it rarely turns out well, the dev either throws in the towel or leaves the thread and we're all worse off for it. The only positive paths for the developer are to either give the finger to tag whiners from the start or to get pretty damn lucky and have a breakout game that gets so big so fast they can afford to only give real attention to paying patrons.
I expect plenty of dismissive naysayers to take issue with this comment but i've seen it happen so many times now i recognize the pattern, it's why i made my first comment, i just hope MBS is right. The tag whiners don't realize they're the ones that miss out, they don't realize the contributions they make to a game getting abandoned, they just move on to the next one and do the same thing. I'd know, i used to be one, but after consuming several hundred games through this website i learned it's far better to just take a game as it is, skim through what i dislike or move on to something else if a game disagrees with me too much. There's always another game, leave those who enjoy the ones i didn't to enjoy them in peace.