I Played The PTB So You Don't Have To!

This post is 90% data and 10% opinion. Opinions at the bottom.

I have played 4 games in the PTB (My usual amount), 2 killer and 2 survivor using whatever was changed or added.

NOTE: I do NOT own the Doctor and didn't get a chance to ask any killers about their experiences. If you have anything you'd like to add on your experience playing the Doctor, please do so! Any information I have on him is from survivor perspective.

Now, let's get into it!

PTB BUGS:

• sounds are bugged, again
• while playing the Spirit, the Yamaoka's Haunting icon was overlayed next to the progress bar for the phase action, and was really distracting. I have a custom power icon so it was even worse for me since it was really bright.
• when "snapping out of it" against the Doctor, the madness 3 sounds still play very loudly even though the survivor is no longer in madness 3.

NEW MAP:

• much too dark, but not Sanctum of Wrath level. mostly just has poor visibility due to ambient fog and dimness
• way too many ambient sounds, lots of which are too loud or too similar to gameplay sounds
• bad ambient sounds include dripping water, which sounds like a lit totem, banging doors, which is just very loud, crumbling rocks on walls, which sounds like someone walking
• hook auras are difficult to see. they don't outline the entire hook, and instead only show the top horizontal part and the hook itself. the base is not shown on the aura, and makes hooks difficult to find.
• again, some parts of the map are just really loud and hinder proper listening on both sides.

GATEKEEPER EMBLEM:

• i didn't really pay attention to this, but the changes don't seem to have much affect since I got Ruthless killer on the one trapper game I played where I got a 3k and all gens got completed. this change seems.. unecessary.

THE DOCTOR:

• the chase music is hard on my ears. it's very whiny and jarring
• chase music isnt as scary as I expected, more so annoying
• another survivor told me that they felt the madness sound was too loud, and once I experienced Madness 3 I agreed. It is much too loud and makes other sounds sound either far away or muffled.
• the shock sound when close to the killer is pretty loud, this could be annoying for some people.
• killer seems too slow, even from survivor perspective. he seemed to loose me too easily.

and now, the much awaited RUIN:

• it is much weaker than before
• someone else told me it is very strong with Surveilance now
• almost never lasts until endgame, even though that is what the devs want it to be used for now
• survivors commented that they did find it annoying, but it wasn't that bad. they did have to restart a couple generators, but they still completed them all and 1 managed to escape out the gates.
• I got lucky and the totem spawned in a hard to find spot on the Lery's map, so it didn't get cleansed. but it still did not really prevent gens from flying by.
• it is nice not to have to go and manually kick generators, but it renders PGTW useless. I didn't combo them on my second game but I did on the first, but ruin got cleansed in 20 seconds anyway.
• I think that it should be changed to a non-hex perk if it's supposed to be for the endgame. to balance this the regress speed could be reduced, but I personally think it's fine as-is if it were not a hex.
• if it is kept as a hex, totem spawns on certain maps (farm maps, autohaven wreckers) really must be reworked. otherwise the problem of spawning within 8 meters of a hex totem will destroy its usefulness.

MY OPINIONS (you don't have to care about this)

• Ruin was fine before. I play killer and survivor 60/40 and I never found it to be that bad, even when I was a new player. Either you find the totem, or you just power through it. I can now hit most great skillchecks and it was never a problem for me personally. As it is now, it's very weak and I may never use it again. It also renders PGTW completely useless unless the totem is cleansed, and wow, now you're out of ruin anyway.
• Old Lery's was my favourite map and now it's just as annoying as Hawkins. The sounds are very distracting and it's confusing and dark/foggy. Nobody used a fog offering during the games I played on it, and it still seems too foggy.
• The Doctor was always my least favourite killer to play against and his changes didn't make this any better for me. He may have even gotten worse, since his shock is no longer a cone, and instead is a circle around him. It makes it super easy for him to camp a hook during the EGC. I think the area that it covers is too large as of right now.
• I used a commodious toolbox in both survivor games and I got through at least 2 generators on my own each game. old ruin made me weary of when to use a good toolbox since I didn't want to waste it on the regressing of ruin skillchecks, so i'd hold onto it until the totem was found and then use it afterwards. Now that skillchecks are not affected, i have no reason not to use high-powered toolboxes and rush the heck out of the generators.
• I used to somewhat rely on ruin to give me extra time to get early hooks, but now it is as if i'm not using it at all. the point of old ruin was to slow down the speed at which generators were completed, but now it gives survivors more of an incentive to stay on a generator for the whole time and survivors now almost never get in the killers face. I haven't had anyone try to get my attention at all because all they want to do is stay on generators. Sure, that's their objective, but it seems like part of the regular gameplay is missing. They also don't go looking for the totem, so nobody is wasting more time like they normally would.
• ruinning Thrill of the Hunt and Ruin together is gonna be a dead build if they implement the changes.
• the PTB did not hide tally screen ranks, but if they do add this change, it'll just be the dev team's solution to fixing matchmaking. if we can't see ranks we can't complain about the bad matchmaking, riiiight?

please feel free to add anything I didn't mention or to state your own findings and opinions. thanks for reading if you got this far!

*edit: title change