Why arent In-Game Patch Notes a thing?

General Discussion
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Seriously, I don’t understand why a list of patch notes or link to a forum post about them or something like that isn’t in game. I mean, you cant expect every player to be on the forums and all that, its just unrealistic.

Yes, I know, some may argue that the Casual player might not care about things like that. But, it’s the point, it should be there. Especially, for the real fundamental changes.

Let’s take Hammond, as an example. For the longest time, he couldn’t use Adaptive Shield in ball form. So, if you’ve been playing a while, but aren’t on the forums, you might not know he got the change. So, what? You’re just supposed to trial and error things every time there’s a patch? That sounds insane.

And that was just a tiny change. I wasn’t around, at the time, but I wonder how things like the symmetra rework, and the mercy changes, and all that, were handled. Did they really just dump a completely redesigned character into the game without warning? So, one day Mass Rez Mercy was a thing, the next day it wasn’t? If so, thats nuts. Casual player, or not, I couldn’t imagine just firing up the game, one day, and a character I used to play was completely different without any warning or notification. If that was the case, that stinks.

But, anyway, what do you guys think about all this?

Edit:

I should mention I’m talking about all this from the perspective of a console player. I don’t play on PC, and therefore don’t know how things are handled on that platform

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Patches notes are viewable on the launcher. In big orange letters

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On console?
I very much agree with OP. They should be there when you fire up the game. Really no reason to not have them there

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Oh, my apologies, I should state that I’m a console player. I forget that you guys have different stuff on PC, sometimes.

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But you have to download updates don’t you? Why not check the OW patch notes website when you have updates? Should they make it easier, yes, but you [should] also know that updates come with patch notes.

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On console you don’t have to do anything to download a patch. At least on ps4. It just starts downloading automatically.

The point was that a casual gamer might have no idea about having changes in patches.

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Makes sense. But I can’t think of a single dev that does this. For Smash Brothers they tell players that “some things have changed” but they don’t even put character patch notes online. Players have to find them out by trial and error.

I think if a player has to delete an other game to download a huge patch, it’d be nice to be upfront about the contents.

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While I get where you’re coming from, it’s a point of convenience. If you have changes within your game, then the access to the changes should be available within the game. Either as its own thing, or at least a link you can click on that will redirect you to a website or something.

There’s no reason for something like that not to be in a game, in this day and age.

Technically, that is true. I have mine set not to auto-update, but if you do have yours set to auto-update, you might not know anything has even been updated.

Really? A decent amount of the games I play will either have a pop-up about changes, some sort of patch notes section, or linked to a website that’s clickable to view such things.

OverWatch has none of that. The only time I’ve ever seen a pop up, is when something like a new hero or map is added. But never anything for patch notes

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That’s probably why I didn’t think about it being an issue. None of the games I play on console give any notifications either outside of the rare “x thing has changed” but no actual notes.