Story Railroading.

[Creutzfeuer]

I have always been baffled by how little impact the roleplayers roleplaying on the roleplay server have on the story that they are roleplaying in. [...]
Yes, [..] listening to player feedback in regards to dev stories will likely lead to a drop in quality of the story beats that are provided, [...].

Agree to the first one, laughed heartily on the second one. XD
The "stories" provided can only benefit from player feedback, at least from those people in this community who have a baseline understanding of how to construct a consistent storyline.
Also could increase the speed of story development and therefore story progression.
I don't want to imply any complicity of you in this, but: These kinds of statements are water on the mills of the individuals who want to keep the drying-out playerbase as far away as possible from their ivory towers.

We're not playing our roles, we're along for the ride and reacting as spectators. Why do you think no one really wants to play anymore, and only does the bare minimum?

I have to agree to this sentiment. Started to be a Pen & Paper GM precisely because of my experiences of being railroaded by other GMs.
And it wasn't all too pleasant sitting around while your presence was "used" as a welcome flavour, but disregarded concerning the actual development of the story.
I was talking with some people about the new patch and most were having the same opinion as me: It's...odd...to put it mildly (and not only the story-things).