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I've been playtesting my own games (and other people's) for over 8 years, digital and tabletop. How to listen to feedback from playtesters of all kinds is an underrated skill and I want to share a way you can grow your listening-to-playtest-feedback-muscles.
A lot of this time I was testing multi-player games as well, so trying to get raw feedback from a group when everyone is excited to share (or not) can be difficult to organize. The period of time when everyone is winding down from the win/lose/unfinished results is valuable.
Look at the faces and body language of your testers and just kind of feel what they're feeling - hopefully they're voicing it in some way.
But then it's time to get organized. Before you get to the point of asking specific questions, just keep your mouth closed! Do not speak. Do not respond to the feedback at this time. Do not talk about what you were trying to do with the design.
I like to call on each person individually. With WFH and we're all on a call I just go down the list of people's names, but in person you can gather in a circle and just go around. Let this person speak and record their experience in your notes.
This lets everyone have a chance to sit with their experiences and they might have some additional thoughts on what was said before. It's very raw and you should take care on how many times a particular aspect is mentioned.
Usually testers don't ask questions at this time, but if they do, you can give a short answer to help them clarify their own feedback. Definitely don't start chatting about your design yet!
After each tester has had a chance to give their raw feedback, then depending on time I say "okay anyone who wants to discuss more design, we can do that now." Some people gotta go back to work ya know and don't always care about what your grand vision is and that's okay.
BUT LISTEN! Now is also not the time to defend or describe your design plan.
Using Crucible and the creatures I worked on for example, I was often told "why did you make the lurker move so fast, it's annoying" and instead of going into the future plans, I'd try to keep my response short to "I want you to feel like you have to think and move quick."
Often followed by "What do you (as a tester, playing Summer) think I can do to make this feeling come through more?" since I know everyone wants to be asked about their design opinion. I usually get a much more useful feedback that way.
Useful is "The rhythm was a unavoidable, maybe make it like pew peeew pew instead of peew peew peeeeeew" It gives me a measurable idea of what the other person if thinking was exactly wrong with the rhythm.
After this discussion, I say thanks and then I go write up more notes and an implementation task list while I let the feedback simmer in my mind. I don't ever get to the point of explaining my design to testers more than a few words and only to elicit better feedback.
I've gotten to the point where I have no urge to defend my design or tell the tester what they were missing because honestly, it doesn't matter. If your tester doesn't see or feel what you wanted, that's likely EXACTLY what will happen for players as well.
Obviously there's exceptions to this. You start the test in the middle of a story so maybe the tester is missing context for why a character should scare them. It's okay to pre-explain where the player would have been leading up to where they are in the test.
My overarching point is that if you want the most amazing design feedback from your testers, be quiet and really listen. Take so many raw notes that your hand hurts! Give everyone the opportunity to speak up before you do.
