So after the last livestream (as if there was any possible doubt before that), it is abundantly clear that many of the head-scratching and frustratingly-incompetent balance decisions being made for Eternal Crusade are because the devs do not play the game themselves. From thinking that servo skull/auspex HP is fine, nerfing AG's DoT and breaking several other weapons and abilities because they didn't know they used the same DoT, introducing the bolter cannon to LSM and making it cost 60% of the LP for the AG despite having better stats and utility, not knowing how many entrances Agnathio B has, to just an absolute slew of problems, I believe that this is the main reason they continue to make so many poor decisions. So the question isn't "should they play their own game more or not?", because they absolutely need to play it far more than they do (IF they do at present). The question is, how many hours per week do they need to spend experiencing the reality of what their insulated and poorly-informed decisions mean to the playerbase? I've set up a poll here with what I think are the most likely choices. Please vote and let's see what the community thinks about this.
I would say at least an hour a night minimum. Stats are nice, but it's easy to forget what the numbers are showing and use them in a way that supports what you want them to support. I feel the devs having a greater pool of gameplay experience would help immensely, since it very much seems they're lacking.
I'd say at least 2 so they are sure to get that bang your head on the wall foaming at the mouth experience. Especially during guild down times so they get that full pug joy as well.
The whole team play the daily build every morning. I'm pretty sure the game designers, the ones who decide on the mechanics, play a good deal more. Do you really believe they don't play? Seems a bit naive.
And yet every time they speak about the game, it's clear they're not familiar with how things work or how balance is affected by things they decide on. Seems more than a bit naive of you. Got a source that shows they're playing 5-10 hours a week, every week?
You'd probably have to get a look at their BE studio only dev accounts (assuming they use a build hooked up to steam for internal testing), but some of the devs do play the game 5-10 hours a week on their public steam accounts. Michael Chan, Noah, and Katie play on their public accounts pretty frequently for instance. http://steamcommunity.com/id/katiefleming_bhvr http://steamcommunity.com/id/nward_bhvr/ http://steamcommunity.com/id/MichaelC_BHVR
Katie's profile had EC open 7.2 hours in the past 2 weeks, 3.6 hours per week. Noah's profile had EC open 6.3 hours in the past 2 weeks, 3.15 hours per week. Michael Chan's profile had 16 hours of activity in the past 2 weeks, 8 hours per week split among 3 different games he had open during that time. Because that's what Steam tracks, after all: the time that the program was running. As I'm sure you know, Steam is not reliable for gauging actual gameplay time compared to time having the game open. Staring at your loadouts counts just as much as actually playing, or having it minimized. Also, the point of the poll was how much time they should spend on the live server. Your stated time of 5-10 hours a week doesn't really hold up for 2 of your 3 posted examples, even if all that time was in-game on the liver server and not the UAT server or devbuild.
A solid hour where all they do is redeploy with each weapon and fire it from various positions IE behind cover, behind slanted cover on a ramp (this one screws up your aim try it out by getting close to a wall on a ramp and shoot the wall perpendicular to the ramp) firing each charge weapon, firing all the ailment weapons to see if they apply correctly (grav gun seems to have lost some vehicle snare), swing all the melee in rps to see if weapon types aren't behaving right (lookin at you powerswords ) and generally just run around between points to see what environment blockages need to be removed and where rNdom slow downs and unvaultable walls are (there are a crap yon of unvaultable spots on all maps) Also wish they'd remove some FoV blockers in some spots but add some in others. The pillars at Torias A come to mind as good candidates for removal. Also why the heck did they wall off the upper level entrance on Olipsis C point coming from B. Thats a huge deal for attacking/defending that point.
