That isn’t indicative of what server you play on. You use the UI in similar ways regardless of what server you play on. People like or dislike the UI for personal reasons, not what server they play on.

Andy is not a developer, he is a community manager. Him knowing the game inside and out is not required and spending such time would be wasted. He’s also not only a community manager of Conan Exiles, but of the entire Funcom library. This is normal across the industry when a company runs multiple games.

Dennis is pretty competent (compared to most players, actually Andy is like the majority if we’re going to be honest here). He plays the game as well as pretty much every survival game that comes out for research purposes. The changes he makes are because of the deficiencies he sees in the game. Now you can argue on whether or not you believe those changes need to be, such an opinion is subjective. Its not representative of everyone, and frequently there is a bit of an echo chamber on things. Its funny that people point to polls as source of how many people are angry, but if I put a poll up that said ‘Why did you make a forum account.’ The answer of ‘The game is broke’ would get a majority response. But if you go ask normal players and poll them if they even made a forum account they would say no. Forum goers are naturally biased. Its this way in any game. Even I came to the forum because there was something ‘wrong’. I’m just aware of that fact.

I will say this, I don’t know of any of the devs that play the game on console outside of testing. Everyone who plays the game on their personal time (and personal steam account) plays on PC. This doesn’t mean that all of them do only play on PC. But I assume most do, and potentially all of them. Now this isn’t going to change, FC can’t tell its employees to play certain games when they’re not at work. And they are going to play the version of the game they want to enjoy. And given the limitations of the console, PC with mouse and keyboard is objectively the most complete way to play. So that’s the way they choose, and its not going to change.

As for testing with controller, I’ve seen this done. But yeah they aren’t Nintendo or Sony, so they’re not going to be as intimate with that control scheme as you’d like. But I do know several community testers who only play with controller. So they are getting early feedback. If no testing whatsoever was done either internally or by community, you would see a build pushed out that makes controller play impossible till a hotfix. There’s been some gnarly builds in the past. Just so you know, this happens to mouse too on occassion. But obviously its caught earlier.

But yes the game is being tested, the devs play it. They may not play the game in the same way you or I do. But you and I don’t play the same as each other either. Even without mods being in the equation (I actually haven’t played with mods this season), our server settings are probably vastly different (1.0x harvest and 0.1x all exp values just to name an example). And down to how we actually play.

If you want to believe that, then I will tell you that the next patch is going to delete all of your characters and brick your computer. You should uninstall and play something else. Even visiting the forums after today will glitch out your browser. Just quietly close the page and uninstall from all of your platforms to be safe. Good luck to you on your endeavors.