The devs absolutely do listen. What throws people off, though, is that they listen to everyone and everything, not just the select few of us that post on the forums. They "listen" to commentary on a wide variety of social media, they "listen" to subscriptions, and perhaps most notably, they "listen" to engagement metrics they have on their end which shows what people are doing (or not doing) in the game.

For example, say I didn't like the Bicolor Gemstones grind associated with FATEs. So I come on this forum and make a post calling it trash. I get a couple dozen likes and a few other posters agreeing with me. The next expansion? Yep, another bicolor gemstone grind, so I go whining the devs "obviously" didn't listen to us and our little echo chamber here. Meanwhile, on their end, the dev team sees that a sizable portion of the playerbase actively completed the grind in both ShB and EW and actively uses the rewards from it. Perhaps that represents a few tens of thousand people. Put in that perspective, suddenly my whining that the twenty or so of us here on the forum didn't get our way looks like what it is - immature whining.

Now, if people didn't engage with the bicolor gemstone grind and it fell short of their goals on engagement, then it makes sense for them to do detailed follow-up and see what specific complaints people might have (is the grind too long, are the rewards not enticing enough, is the general idea itself just a non-starter, etc.) to see what changes might be in order.

But overall, it's just incredibly short-sighted to think the minuscule few of us on the forums here are representative of anything. Take for example the poster right above me with comments like:

"Healers are boring and they haven't changed for multiple expansions."

"2 minute meta is boring and they keep playing into it."

"Every relic step is tomestones."

And so on. Most of the comments are straight-up one person's opinions, nothing more, and others that are actually facts (e.g. tomestones) may be seen as a good thing by more people than not. Personally, I could turn most of those statements around and point out that I personally find healing enjoyable, I'm really liking the Variant Dungeons, I appreciate the relic this expansion just being tomestones, and I couldn't care less about housing or the 2-minute meta. That likewise wouldn't mean anything in the grand scheme of things, because it's just one other person's opinion.

We need to step back and realize that we here on the forums are effectively a single grain of sand on an enormous beach. The dev team looks at the whole beach, not just the one grain of sand, when they make decisions.