They are vastly different skill sets (with some overlap) (Destiny)

by Blackt1g3r , Login is from an untrusted domain in MN, Thursday, February 09, 2017, 12:15 (2656 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY

So basically, I don't think game designers need to be particularly good at playing their games in order to do a good job making them... but I do think it can help.

I agree with you in that the game designers jobs are to understand the problem from a technical nature and then be able to fix it. However, to stretch your metaphor a bit if the customer doesn't come in and tell you what kind of problem they are having (my instrument keeps going out of tune really fast) then you can't just magically solve their problem. So I think it's important that as Bungie is working on making these changes that they have some highly skilled players available to test them, because seeing what kinds of problems are caused by the changes at that skill level is very different than seeing the problems at lower skill levels. Ultimately it's important for the designers to test a wide range of skill levels.