Hi Frontier,
I have a counter plea. Please don't get your player community involved in design choices and development. Do not go down the path of design by committee. Make the game that you want to make with the long term vision of greatness, rather than short term appeasement changes.
You should however read suggestions on the forum. They can help with sharpening existing or planned mechanics, or even offer an idea that's still aligned with the overall vision.
You should listen to quality of life complaints, to give you cues on how the game's interface might be interfering with play in some cases, to help guide any redesigns you may choose to do.
You should pay heed to bug reports, and be more transparent about which bugs have been internally confirmed, and which of those are being prioritised by developers, even if you don't provide an ETA for release.
You should do sufficient public beta testing before any release, including ones as small as the minor updates you've begun.
You should hire a few play testers as full time players of the game, even when there's no specific testing required, as they can pick up on issues and give useful reports for bugs and QoL issues. They're also handy to run proposed changes by, and may identify balance problems with newly introduced mechanics before players have a chance to take issue with them.
You should continue to allow sufficiently long periods of time for major updates, such as you have for the 2020 one, and ignore those who keep screaming for information to be released about planned features before you're able to confirm their inclusion. A sticky thread on the forum giving a little insight into the development process, and why things can change may mitigate some of that, but expect people to complain anyway, while you remain firm nonetheless. The minor updates are a great idea to keep people interested in the interim, effectively giving the player base some entrees to sample before they receive the main course.
You've made a great game that thousands of people have enjoyed for countless hours. You've made some mistakes, but all development companies do. You've been seemingly lax on some of the problem areas of the game that need attention, in terms of integrity and robustness, but the hope is that from now until the 2020 update, a good chunk of that will be addressed.
Thanks.