OOO responds to the playerbase all the time when they are responding to the playerbase.

And they're trying to do things like develop the iron slug into a better weapon, but they can't because they refuse to "just buff it". Like, all the players who care about balance want is for the slug to be usable with things. All the devs want is the iron slug to be exactly what they want so they can leave it and be happy knowing that it is their vision of an iron slug. So they can't "just buff it", they have to re-imagine it.

Kind of like when we said "A 5* shard bomb would be cool." a loonnngggg time ago, and then the devs a year or so later "fixed it" to their image of what it should do. People complained because the shard bomb was like, THE offensive damage bomb in lockdown. No one could resist it right without sacrificing precious weapon buffing armor, and it had a good attack pattern that threw people off when used correctly etcetera.

The bottom line is that balance isn't all that important in Spiral Knights. Its important to where we shouldn't have plate armor, but not important enough to make gran faust's charge be worth it compared to acheron's, or for the devs to make it so voltedge can compete with combuster in terms of damage/utility. But I wrote about this and like 3 people read it, so I can go f... procreate.... with.... myself.