What's the point of PTB feedback.

There is probably more players than those that you consider the dedicated players or that share only your opinion.

also they confirmed that Onryo will get further changes down the line

They announced that they will change Onryo once more only 2 hours after the Developer Update.

PTB feedback is clearly taken into consideration. Also their watch list showed that they are aware of the shortcomings of the PTB and that they will monitor these possible issues (DMS + Grim Embrace is also on the list).

As such I think PTB is still valuable and the Devs read the feedback.

How do you know it was not considered? Are you psychic?

While I agree that devs have the right to change things based on their data and information, even I have to question why we have the PTB.

Public Tests are meant to stress test changes. That's been something with most games that use them. It's starting to feel like BHVR either looks at the least consequential problems and creates issues for the long run by adding/removing things people didn't have problems with while overlooking things they have found to be a problem.

I've said it a lot already but PTB needs to be a separate client with full access to the killers/survivors/perks being adjusted/added during a set time frame so tests can be more accurate. You also have to take into account how many people goof off in PTB and how inaccurate that makes the data.

The worst theory I've heard makes it make too much sense with that:

Sadako got x amount of moris in PTB compared to live, it was too similar so condemned got nerfed (despite it being a stress test and people adjusting to the changes, which I noticed near the end of PTB with them taking tapes ASAP.)

While Blight's addon changes maybe shifted him slightly down in power, despite the obvious flaws and clear power they still have so just adjust those slightly and call it a day. I mean, a killer who is doing slightly worse and considered a strong killer it MUST mean the data will trend correctly!

Meanwhile Billy is Billy but with a cooler chainsaw, which we should all love and support. Seriously, Billy deserved his buffs, no jokes or sarcasm.

Makes sense that they wanted to nerf her if they just looked at mori numbers or saw Willie destroying on stream not taking account that people were still figuring the new Sadako out.

I understand the devs desire to play it safe this time, especially considering how the last rework went. Last time on the PTB people complained she was too weak, which I stand by. In response, BHVR made a few changes like tapes breaking on hit rather than hook, and this made her stupidly strong and easy. I think as a result they are being a lot more cautions about community opinion this time around.

However, if they listed to a lot of the more critical feedback during the first PTB rework, many of us were saying global condemn was a mistake that was a balancing nightmare which required too many compromised and variables; some of these consequently making her boring to play. Had they just not gone through with the global condemn system instead of trying to salvage it, we wouldn't have had the 1st overtuned rework on live for 6 months.

I believe having broken releases are mostly avoidable when one considers how the game functions at its core and how players will interact with the mechanics.

For example with this new rework, it was obvious that once survivors learned how her power worked, they would have no issue avoiding condemn while working gens. This was because her counterplay was very straightforward and easy. Simply knowing tapes have no risk of holding and picking up, while also knowing condemn can only spread within 16m of a powered TV, leads to an obvious conclusion and playstyle of just grabbing a tape and then working a gen. This is not rocket science and in fact one of the easier counterplays in the game, made even easier with the TV auras of powered TVs.

The obvious conclusion of this is that that outside of low MMR, condemn will almost never be spread to survivors working gens, and as a result, condemn will mostly have to come by pushing survivors away and then teleporting during chase or hooking with her new add-on. This is why my own PTB feedback and other as well was directed and addressing the issue with TV auras and other aspects of her easy counterplay and how strong it was for survivors.

BHVR feeling like they needed to address "teleport spam to wrong TVs" just shows that BHVR has a complete lack of faith that survivors can do even the most basic counterplay. Or shows that BHVR wants to play things extremely safe this time, even if it is completely illogical.

Think about it, if bHVR had to respond to every idea suggested here, they would have to employ an army of community managers.

There is good reason why they cant respond to everything, but your suggestion are collected and taken into consideration.

They have said that multiple times on the forum, You are not the first to ask if they are really read.

Does this settle your uncertainty on this issue @radiantHero23 ?

While I’m not optimistic that the upcoming changes will not be a disappointment, I would say to withhold judgement till they announce the next batch of changes. If the changes still share the same pattern of “No one asked for this change, why did you do this”, then it’s clear the devs don’t really care about PTB feedback and spending time giving said feedback to them is clearly a waste of time.

As someone once told me:

"But the data says-"

Then again, if it's true that they have plans to add/remove things despite how well the PTB goes, it further confuses me as to why there's a PTB to test things on. Would we be as alarmed if those changes were in the PTB to begin with? We'd probably critique all the issues with them but we'd at least be aware of them beforehand.

All this just makes me wish we had a 2 week PTB period, on a seperate client that can be updated separately with changes, and they keep a close eye on both the data and player feedback. Not sure how you'd go around players goofing off to skew the stats, though.

I'm mostly confused what feedback the Devs got that made them think that those nerfs were necessary. They got clear feedback that Blight's new add-ons were actually a buff instead of the intended nerf, and then reacted accordingly. I also saw tons of positive feedback about Sadako's changes, where many long time mains acknowledged that it is overall a nerf but we were happy that some of the skill expression was back. While I'm glad they have stated she'll get more changes in the near future, I think the backlash was warranted and the simple solution would be to revert the changes from the PTB or at least explain why they thought they are necessary.

Calling Sadako players that intentionally teleport to other TVs in order to best build Condemn pressure cheeky is cute, but why is that problematic gameplay when it's also easily counterable and is a strategic choice that could backfire? The goal is high killer power interaction where there's a separate struggle where Sadako tries to give more stacks of Condemn than the survivors can cleanse. It felt very good and IMO fair during my time testing on the PTB. For real data, they could and should have let it go live as is, and then maybe they could justify these nerfs.