Sandbox or not ?
In my opinion if the dev decides to make a choice rather than another it means that it should be able to manage it, therefore having preconceptions because some devs have not been able to manage their projects does not help any dev, indeed it could confuse him on what has designed.
If a dev is professional, he does not rely on the suggestions of a group of users but on the global evaluation of the game which concerns, from my point of view, in order of importance, the story, the characters, the scenes, the graphic quality and finally the gameplay (which if it is not free from bugs can be implemented through the reports of the players and testers).
Let him work and then our evaluations, in their globality, will judge whether he did a good job or not, but judging with preconceptions (I repeat) does not help.