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BHVR should use the PTB far more liberally outside of major updates.

ChesterTheMolester ChesterTheMolester
in General Discussions

There are currently things in the game that are arguably not worthy of an updates on its own yet very debatable, perks and mechanics like Gen regression, Bear Trap mechanics, Insidious, WGLF, PGTW, etc. should be tested in the PTB.

In order to solve that BHVR should update the PTB for small yet focused testings.

Example:

Week 1: Bear Trap rework: Replaced RNG with a channel, to see how long the channel should be and how perks and addons could affect it (ONLY TRAPPER IS SELECTABLE DURING THIS PERIOD)

Week 2: Insidious rework, all players get multiple versions unlocked by default to test out.

Week 3: Gen regression, regression is increased to see how it affects playstyles and how it can help against the gen rush.

Week 4: WGLF and No Mither, multiple versions...

Week 5: PGTW is now token based, to see how it would affect the Killers behavior and its usefulness in general.

Of course this means small surveys have to be set up regularly and players should be rewarded with iridescent shards to incentivize playing the PTB.

Tagged: Community ManagerDev

Comments

  • Blueberry Blueberry

    I wish they would get a little more liberal with the PTB to test some more drastic changes just to see what would happen.

    Even if it was just number tweaks since those would require very little work.

  • Peanits Peanits

    There's a couple issues with this:

    1. Making a PTB takes a lot of time. It's not quite as simple as uploading our current dev build on to the PTB (to put it simply, you know what happens when we do that). There's a lot of work to do to get it ready and we would have to put out only the changes we want to test.
    2. Having multiple versions of a perk ready for testing is also a tall order. We can take our best design, prototype it, test it on our internal build right away before sticking animations or anything in, then spot any major gameplay issues and scrap it in a short period of time. Making multiple somewhat polished variants and having them all in a test build would take a ton of time. We can't afford to spend weeks making options for one perk just to scrap all but one of them in the end.
    3. Beyond that, it's not exactly easy to test multiple variants of one perk. Someone could toss on all the variants simultaneously which defeats the purpose. Or in the case of insidious, if you know the killer's using it, that's going to make it even harder to properly test it (if you expect the killer to be using it, you won't get caught off guard).
    4. People are not going to play for a single small change. I'm optimistic, but while you might want to try all these little changes ahead of time, most people are not going to opt into the PTB just to test one small change. Even in the larger PTBs, most people opt out after a couple days. We'd ultimately be getting feedback from a couple people, at which point we might as well test it internally.
    5. We could always toss these things into one of the other PTBs. Just because it isn't the focus doesn't mean we can't try it. Take the PTB self care, for instance.

    Not to say that using it more is a terrible idea, but it just doesn't work well if it's always on with minimal changes. It's much more efficient for us and appealing to more people if we put a bunch of changes in at once.

  • LvGamer34 LvGamer34

    @Peanits said:

    There's a couple issues with this:

    1. Making a PTB takes a lot of time. It's not quite as simple as uploading our current dev build on to the PTB (to put it simply, you know what happens when we do that). There's a lot of work to do to get it ready and we would have to put out only the changes we want to test.
    2. Having multiple versions of a perk ready for testing is also a tall order. We can take our best design, prototype it, test it on our internal build right away before sticking animations or anything in, then spot any major gameplay issues and scrap it in a short period of time. Making multiple somewhat polished variants and having them all in a test build would take a ton of time. We can't afford to spend weeks making options for one perk just to scrap all but one of them in the end.
    3. Beyond that, it's not exactly easy to test multiple variants of one perk. Someone could toss on all the variants simultaneously which defeats the purpose. Or in the case of insidious, if you know the killer's using it, that's going to make it even harder to properly test it (if you expect the killer to be using it, you won't get caught off guard).
    4. People are not going to play for a single small change. I'm optimistic, but while you might want to try all these little changes ahead of time, most people are not going to opt into the PTB just to test one small change. Even in the larger PTBs, most people opt out after a couple days. We'd ultimately be getting feedback from a couple people, at which point we might as well test it internally.
    5. We could always toss these things into one of the other PTBs. Just because it isn't the focus doesn't mean we can't try it. Take the PTB self care, for instance.

    Not to say that using it more is a terrible idea, but it just doesn't work well if it's always on with minimal changes. It's much more efficient for us and appealing to more people if we put a bunch of changes in at once.

    The only reason most people don't stay in the PTB is they can't find lobbies... TAKE out KYF's and have NO rank in the PTB or reset it make everyone rank 20. GIVE everyone 1mil BP's too. It's not like anything you do in the PTB goes to live anyway.

  • Peanits Peanits

    @LvGamer34 said:

    https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/499094#Comment_499094

    The only reason most people don't stay in the PTB is they can't find lobbies... TAKE out KYF's and have NO rank in the PTB or reset it make everyone rank 20. GIVE everyone 1mil BP's too. It's not like anything you do in the PTB goes to live anyway.

    Removing KYF from the PTB might be counterproductive. If I'm having a hard time finding a lobby as is, getting a couple friends together to test might be my only option. In the example of testing killer perks, this would be even worse since the majority of people would want to test as killer.

    We are able to "disable rank" in the PTB though; last time we ran a PTB the game would accept any rank.

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