The TF2 community (what's left of it) had this debate not long ago after the Righteous Bison's intended mechanic of dealing 12 damage every 45 milliseconds was declared a bug and removed (let me just reiterate the original designers had stated multiple times it was not a bug) in favor of just dealing 40 damage. It was discovered the coders responsible had played the game less than four hours, totaled up between both of them, in the two weeks preceding the patch

Anyway, about an hour a day seems like a good answer

Devs of most games usually spend the majority of playtime on closed internal builds or with alternate anonymous accounts so as not to get spammed the instant their state is shown as online. This has the side effect of making it impossible to prove they don't play their own game

Granted, if they were playing internal builds then that's not really the same on playing on live and still goes a long way towards explaining why devs are often bewildered by their own game mechanics, for example why Brent didn't know there were only two frontal entrances at Agnathio -after- the balcony was added.

Once this was pointed out to him by people that do play the game on a regular basis, he was surprised and within 3 weeks a side entrance has been added to live.

Aside from that I don't know that developers use anonymous accounts. I've never heard of it being done, nor have I heard a dev ever admit to it or suggest that it was a common practice (apart from World of Warcraft), although I could imagine. Maybe there's work accounts that they use for Twitch, community playtests and home play. You never know.

I normally just take the fact that some developers seem utterly clueless to be the strongest evidence.

Clanplayers, by contrast, usually are a wellspring of knowledge and good ideas because of their commitment to competitive play on major games. They typically have intimate knowledge of maps, bugs, weapons, exploits and commonly used but creative techniques used in competitive play. Why they are typically ignored by online communities is utterly beyond me. Having at least one high level player very close to the development staff would be a very good idea for dev teams.

I will either agree or disagree based on what the internal build is like. If it's like the old UAT where all but the newest maps are flat-out disabled... yeah that's not exactly the best way to check your older maps for bugs now is it?

Of all the available options I had to go with one hour, here is why =>

When you include all the developers who work on this game, the number of people who have solid influence on balance decisions is likely not so high.

I think that every EC developer, regardless of his or her work area, should spend an average of at least TWO paid hours per work week playing the game on the live servers - half an hour per faction - with a focus on whatever balance issue has current priority, according to actual stats. All these developers, again regardless of their work area, should have to take part in internal evaluations blablabla fuck this, you know what? Brink back polls to evaluate consumer satisfaction like we had them during the early alpha days.

As far as staff with solid influence on balance decisions are concerned, I think that between five and ten hours per work week should do the trick, as long as the time is evenly split between factions and classes with a focus on current balance issues, as current stats may indicate - not forum whine.

Might be a semi off topic, but i literally try to play this game from time to time, hoping for at least decently finished product after all this time.. and i have to make break again from it or just alt f4 every time.

Reason being, even after year or more on steam, im getting the FPS drops that are just unacceptable.

Sure Fps is up overall, and is around 50-60 on medium settings, but the issue are random drops to 15 that basically freezes the game. This Issue is present for my friends with better rigs to make things worse.

I dont know why even bother with a single content update if your game just doesnt run and has these technical problems, all of my friends that bought the game quit mainly cause of this reason, and the other that would like to try it or were interested are at the fence cause..why bother if its 30 fps or 10 when it happens randomly.

If devs are hoping everyone has i7 6900k and 1080 TI's, they have been drinking coo-lade for far too long.

As many or as few hours as they want to. 5 hours a week seemed like a good number, but really it's entirely up to them.