Tim Cain, the co-creator of the original Fallout game says devs don't know what you want, but neither do you, apparently. Speaking on his YouTube channel where he posts lots of videos about his time working on Fallout and industry knowledge at large, Cain says: "Do devs know what gamers want?
No. No, we don't know what you want. We have no idea, seriously, what you want." Making video games takes a long time. A lot longer than most movies and books.
As such, it's hard to chase popular trends without making a new game feel dated. If Warner Bros. hadn't patented the nemesis system from Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, we might have had a bunch of games come out five or six years later that all used it, but then we'd all be thinking of a game we played half a decade ago.
So, while we may know what we like now, we may not like it several years from now. Cain continues: "Here's the longer answer.
It can all be summed up as because you don't know either. But you've got to remember that I'm using the collective you. First off, many of you only tell developers what you hate.