1) I think the devs listen to the community more than we realize. An example would be when everyone complained after foods were drastically nerfed in H&H, then they decided to buff them back to some normalcy soon after. Another example is how people asked for a way to trash items for a long time, and we finally got it in the form of a giant lightning rod that “obliterates” your items.

2) I think they do play the game, but maybe only in certain sections. During testing, it’s likely they only test the game at the specific point of what they’re changing (e.g spawning in gear before going into a new biome to skip progression), and it’s possible that they don’t play through the entire game every time there’s an update to get the whole “feel” anymore.

3) There are a lot of optimization problems, especially with huge builds, so changing from unity could help. The issue is that they’ve built a lot of the game on it, so I don’t see them changing it anytime soon.

4) I remember riding my raft over to a new island and meeting a serpent on the way. It was stormy and dark, and I was terrified. I made it across, thankfully, and I was rewarded with the trader as well as a mountains and swamp. I found lots of new things for my discovery, so I wanted to keep on sailing!