I identify as a robot.
Some things had to be changed not because of player feedback, but because of the "ominous" source you all refer to: Statistics.
"Statistics" only show the number of people that play a certain world on a server, and sometimes those numbers can be off by a set amount of time (I heard like "5 months" somewhere back in this thread). Player feedback should be the point on anything as we go out and tell our friends, family, guildies, neighbors, and just about everyone in chat (you should drop in sometime). If this was my rodeo, I would focus on that rather than the number of people playing as those are the ones who were trying to wait for change to happen but never came.
When it comes to event planning or putting forth a new feature, one at Inno should keep asking themselves, "what can I do to make this (event/feature) better than the rest?" We've put in our dos centavos/zwei pfenning/two cents when it comes to feedback and we would get like 1% in response. The 99% is often ignored, and with that, the most important things we are still waiting a reply to or we won't get a reply to.
We don't need "gimmicks", we need results. We're the end users, the ones who are trying your product, and the ones who would spread the word so you can get more to try it. By having things that work, and a clear communication between users and developers, I am sure this will get more players to come play and buy. And yes, as a company (and/or representative), you will get natives (as in players) that are restless and would use heavy language (I got no problem in doing so since social media is my weapon and vehicle to convey my message if I have one to send out, that is).
Now, I don't know what happened or where Inno had fell for I know in the first year I had played (and took a vacation) they were doing good in listening to the players that they got awards than any other I had known (and I was going to quit the other game I was playing at the time because that developer was all about trying to push spending base events rather than just listening to the players, and I was told once that they had a source that said otherwise and that's why they were doing the things they were doing that pissed off a lot players and had a mass exodus.
Don't be that company. It's never too late.