ICE have made absolutely no effort to reach out to the non-RM playing public for the public play test. There was no effort to promote the public play test across the blogosphere for example. Do you know of any efforts to draw in other communities?
Well, 'ICE' is, again, pretty much part time freelancers or volunteers that are scattered around the USA and UK. I'm not going to say those in charge couldn't have tried harder, but it's not as if I can really give them much grief over it knowing the situation.
It is the logical to then infer that if they are only asking us to play test then they are designing for us.
I was part of the process before the Beta went live and the stated goals were to simplify RM in order to gain new users (the only way RM will survive long term) and try to unite the RM2/RMC and RMSS/RMFRP crowds (in the hopes of obtaining customers in the short term). I won't go into detail on how things progressed from there, but I will say I've asked many times since which was/is the more important goal, because I don't see what we have appealing to non-RM users any more (maybe even less) than the previous editions.
If they were designing for new players then they would value the input of new players, not avoiding it.
I wouldn't say avoiding, I'd say not making a more concerted effort to seek it out (and, due to everyday life, may very well not have the time to).
Can you draw any other conclusion?
For some time my conclusion has been that there have been problems and road-blocks with the process, both specific contributors and the overall reality of the situation. Some, I think, could have been addressed much sooner and some were unavoidable. I also think the current problem is that, in my opinion, we have an RMU that does not address the issue of the perception of RM by non-RM users and that it will also have the same diminishing return of existing customers that RM suffered moving from the RM2 crowd to the RMSS one.
If RM is to be a 'hobby' done for the sheer pleasure of the creators without much concern to profitability, they should do whatever they want. If they intend for it to make a come-back and survive in the long-term we need to not be very concerned with what the current fan base thinks and focus on combating RMs past/existing reputation.