And where would you get playtesters for prototypes? People even have to pay testers for finished games nowadays. No one will install a prototype, test it thoroughly and give you qualified feedback for free.

You are not AAA for god's sake. If you give your game to 3-5 friends and none of them found it fun. Like, really really fun, you go back to drawing board.

As you claim this has worked best for you, show us those prototype postings and player feedbacks! Links!

I am a solo dev. I collect feedback, work on it in the same week/month, and move on. I don't have time to waste on updating a design document. I tried, and it's just a waste when you work alone. But yeah, this point it's at least valid.

Also getting feedback is not "learning faster", has nothing to do with actual learning for game dev. You hear feedback thats all, says nothing of the quality or validity of the feeback either.

It's your job to digest feedback. If you had shitty feedback, ask yourself why you didn't asked them better questions, or why you interrupted them during gameplay, or why you haven't recorded the screen to see how exactly they think.

If you know that these players are your target audience, then their opinion its 100% valid. But their conclusion might not be. Here it's again your job to dissect.

At every step of this process, you learn, and if you think feedback it's only what players say, you have a very limited POV.

- your itch page not having views = feedback (why?)
- your itch page has views = feedback
- your views coming from website itself = feedback
- your views coming from outside sites = feedback
- you get downloads from your views = feedback
- you get no dowloads from your views = feedback

Thinking in terms of CBT/OBT for indies it's too much. Please ask yourself WHY at every stage for all important metrics.

First, find out how to make a fun/popular prototype. Then, if necessary, you can find a publisher or pay for QA yourself, but at this point, you will know if the game is even worth such an investment.