17 hours ago, BG109 said:

Good question, I can only speak from my own personal experience here so please keep this in mind

I usually like to iterate a few timesbefore getting external feedback, at least based on real gameplay. 

Also,I would say that I spend, maybe 40% of the time thinking about the design or designing on paper before doing anything else, then maybe 20% implementing it and another 40% polishing/iterating it. Figures can differ but main thing is that, at least for me the actual coding/implementatio  is a minor part

However, if you know that you want to have feedback start preparing early! Unless you already have a good followerbase getting people to actual playtest is HARD! I remember trying to get my first beta test going, finding playtesterstook a lot more time than i would have guessed

Concerning loosing a lot of time, yes that can happen. Right now I am working on a patch that will completely change the crafting system in my own game. The first version took countless hours to make but I decided to pull it out behind the barn so to say... The new version will be much better. Handling sunk cost can hurt a lot, but I think it is sometimes unavoidable in order to improve the product.

As for negative feedback, learn to love it Of course your style will not suit everyone so you can discard some, but getting proper negative feedback to act on is way more valuable than someone just saying "this is good!". 

As for a personal example: At one point I was getting feedback complaining about the difficulty at the start of the game. My gut reaction was "It is supposed to be hard, its simply that player that cant manage that type of game!" But then i had to remember I had countless hours of gameplay AND knew the ins and outs of every mechanic. Sure, a game can be hard, but if it is nearby impossible right from the start no player is gonna like it. So I dialed it down, a lot, at the start and introduced a more gradual difficulty slope. And the feedback became way better

Oh well, a lot of rambling sitting on a train with time to kill but maybe you could find some usable parts at least Best of luck!

That is a great answer! Surely there is more condensed wisdom here that lots of GD classes!