saintchuck, on 29 May 2013 - 10:21 PM, said:
Not sure which I dislike more, the change or not being told about it.
The latter. The change itself doesn't surprise anyone that much.
Niko Snow, on 29 May 2013 - 11:56 PM, said:
Please note that the change occurred before we started putting extra work into our more recent patch notes and hot fix details in the wake of period where the devs were killing off a much more sizeable pool of both bugs and scheduled content.
While I can appreciate a continued desire for more detailed notes, keep in mind a bit of perspective: We are already providing more complete notes than most released games despite being in Beta. We have been improving the level of detail being provided and often been available to answer any more specific questions regarding those notes. This one just got noticed a little later by the community, especially as those most directly affected by the change (ie, the farmers) would not have been inclined to admit to their activities.
That's a flawed perspective.
For instance, the recent change to the reticule staying on a target a little longer on the target's death was regarded as a
feature, yet none of it was posted in the notes. People kept thinking this was a
bug, due to people's natural reaction to the matter. Had the feature itself been better implemented, it would not have been characterized as such.
Here's another example: It took a patch or two later before the godawful laser recharge sounds were removed. Although these were actually removed, these were NOT covered by the patch notes. If you are not a player that plays regularly AND have noticed the awful recharge, this would have be a question that popped up by these people... and not to their own ignorance, but until you actually PLAY the game that you would notice that change. I'd rather have people be told "this change was in the recent patch notes" instead of checking the forums and finding a post titled "YAY, THE AWFUL LASER RECHARGE SOUNDS ARE GONE".
I've seen some nice bugfixes that have happened, but since these go woefully undocumented (like the bad/broken textures on the mechs, that was fixed recently) people DO ask whether these have been fixed or not. Patch notes are meant to cover this. Failure to do so just causes more problems than it solves. If one were to code AND not document the changes made to the code, it would take longer than it should to search and find recent changes that may or may not have caused problems down the line. Sometimes doing the little things is better than doing the bigger things that don't always work out. People do notice things to even the smallest minutiae... don't think for a second that people won't notice... but they will notice if you do it consistently and consistently well (or in some cases, consistently bad). That is the foundation of "getting it right".
Here's a thought.. after a number of patches ago, people have been created threads like "undocumented patch notes of patch date XX/YY". This is a result of the "poor patch notes" we have come to recognize. This is not an understatement what I'm saying that your patch notes
COULD BE MUCH BETTER than they are right now.
I would also like to point out that occasional "listed fixes" in the patch notes OCCASIONALLY are wrong. This may or may not be related to whatever process you do with respect to patch deployment, but there have been some instances where the patch notes are "woefully incorrect" and only get addressed in a patch AFTER the fact. These processes need to be refined further.
Here's another example of bad patch notes:
There has been recent changes to the way NARC interacts with ECM. NARC disables ECM apparently... but this info is kinda lodged away on the boards (I can dig it up, to my dismay)... and the sad fact is that NONE of this info is IN THE PATCH NOTES. Had we known changes in functionality IN the patch notes, people would be more aware. The Patch Notes are supposed to confirm what we know to be true, and something of that a magnitude (especially in the meta before the LRM splash nerf) would have drawn more people to use it and try it out. Instead, I have to keep copying and pasting this info when trying to convince people that the info is the case. I'm kinda annoyed and tired of doing it, but if it is to better serve the community and show proof of my word, I do it.
Heck, not a lot of people know that NARC puts a target on the mech for EVERYONE to see, even if THEY DO NOT HAVE LOS. I have to dig through the forum info for that TOO! Only because this info is NOT in the patch notes, as people continue to be skeptical on changes that were made to this weapon.
So to say that the patch notes are "better than other games" is a comparatively weak sentiment when we find the holes in said argument. If you want to say "we can do better", please show it and not tell us it is true. The facts resonate on their own, not something you tell us... it's what WE TELL YOU.
Edited by Deathlike, 30 May 2013 - 12:26 AM.
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Changes its not funny. Surely it wouldn't take much to parse the various commits into something semi readable if any changes were documents cleanly.
" Can test these implemented changes.But either way PGI think their patch notes and fine so guess it doesn't matter what us end users think.. Maybe this is another thing that separates me from the "target demographic".
