Developers want to claim a silent majority supports them without any evidence of how they reach that conclusion or evidence to support it ?
Yes, I call that dishonest, spinless and blatant bluffing.

He certainly fooled everyone by mentioning "forums" a dozen times then. Going to the forums to complain takes time and effort. Complaining in ESD doesn't.

"the fact that only the passionate and motivated will participate in the forums"

Only the passionate and motivated will talk in ESD?

Wise Nagus, you posted exactly what I was going to, right before I could.

Personally, I think that the in game optional surveys to gather opinions from the players would be a great idea (especially with the prospect of dilithium as a reward from them). We know the tech is sort of there already, with the reviews for Foundry content. However, I could see that this would annoy a portion of the playerbase as immersion-breaking. I'd say put a setting in the game (that's easy to change) that enables or disables the surveys, set it to disabled by default, and make it clear very early on (maybe right after the tutorial) how to enable it.

Incorrect. There are definitely ways to find out how the majority feel, such as the in game surveys that have already been mentioned in this thread.

Ok, I just wanted to be clear that you werent talking specifically about Cryptic, but in fact every single game developer who doesnt have a stat on their main page showing how many people are online.

Yep, the idea that forums only see the 'vocal minority' has some merit.

But theres also the fact that a lot of people wont bump threads (that have already been bumped) or repost ideas that already exist here JUST TO SAY "THIS... SURE... YES PLS..." Especially as its against the 'spirit' (or in some cases literally) of most forum's rules. (Look at some posts in the general forum with 1500+ views, and 50 posts.)

And this approach to the vocal minority idea ignores (and contradicts itself in a way) that there are possibly just as many people who wont even bother to visit the forums for a game they dont plan to play too much longer anyway. Or the forums for a game who's dev say the forums are mostly a home to complainers...

Apparently you have never heard of data sampling. You might want to do some research into nelson ratings or political polls. You might be shocked to discover that the "majority of TV viewers" do not pick what is on TV and that the "majority of people" in the US are not given questionaires in political polls. I will admit you need a quality data sample but putting a questionaire "IN" the game after several missions could easily generate that quality sample and represent the majority of the player population.

You mean like I just said in my last post?

Well given that such surveys currently don't exist.....

Anyways, I'd rather believe that instead of a vocal minority with different feelings to the silent majority, that the vocal 40% speaks for about 75 to 80% of the playerbase, its just that 60% doesn't want to wade into the forums.

"Forum goers, while a representative sample of players, do not represent the rest of the player base 100% accurately due to the fact that only the passionate and motivated will participate in the forums"

Also most people don't even read the patch notes, official blog posts or are not even aware that things have changed since season 1.