Can we get "devs vs pros" matches as part of things like the community Q&A events?
Honestly, we need more events like the famous Cote hag match. I have absolutely no doubt that many of the devs play the game, nor even necessarily about their skill or knowledge of it. I do think there are constantly overlooked elements that they would absolutely benefit from being forced to experience, as the tidal waves of pointless complaints they get as feedback outweigh the constructive or cautionary ones. The whole thing about that situation was that they were forced to experience firsthand how oppressive the flashlight changes were, and boy did they get the message. that one time.
Its easy to dismiss everything as complaining, but its another entirely to experience it firsthand and judge the validity of said complaints. One of the best things you can do in regard to balancing adjustments for any type of game is putting good players into an enclosed environment, and having them try to break as many things as they can right in front of you. The sheer amount of perspective it can grant is massive, and you are a lot more likely to find and isolate issues before they affect the game's health.
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I'd pay good money to see the devs vs Tru3, Otz or Dowsey.
Yeah I'd love to see the devs play some killer.
Many of the devs play DBD, and fairly regularly, and some do play at higher end skill, although I think Mathew cote and ALMO, who are both crucial members of the team aren't that good.
I believe Not Queen still has some of her Nurse videos up and they do stream on Twitch form time to time.
McClean who was a long time senior dev who left the company last year also still streams DbD games on Twitch.
As far as the devs facing off against some Fog Whisperers, it would be fun but honestly I don’t expect the devs to be as good as professional full time DbD streamers. There’s a difference between your job being coding and designing maps and art content and looking for bugs and such and literally playing the game four to eight hours per day. If I had to take a stab I’d guess the people who do a lot of Q&A testing might be the best actual players in the company since they actually probably spend a larger chunk of their time literally playing the game, but even then I bet a lot of that time is spent testing versus simply playing normal matches.
And I don’t think this is at all unusual for game developers. Just because you work building cars for a living doesn’t mean you can beat professional drivers in a race.
Whether they win or lose isnt supposed to be the point, its an extremely important aspect of quality testing to have the perspective of the end user. Its supposed to be experiencing firsthand how much decisions will affect the end user's enjoyment of your product, and what options (if any) they might have to offset it. The best QA testers in the world can't account for the skill ceiling in a competitive game, and its why so many of them have balance patches in the first place. There will always be someone who understands your game more than you, and the most important part is being willing to understand and learn from that.