Patch Notes: Make Them Complete!

Community General Discussion
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It is my hope that with this post Blizzard will re-evaluate their patch note process. I am really disheartened by the whole process. The idea of patch notes is that significant changes in game play are noted. I understand that they are not going to list everything as countless minor changes, bug fixes, etc. might make for a 100 page tome, especially with a large patch like 8.1.

However, they are leaving out major changes. As just two examples (feel free to list more if you like) I give:

  1. They took away the 30% weekly nerf to A.P. It was not in the patch notes at all. That is a huge change. I still don’t know if it is coming back. I’ve heard that it is coming back end of January. But it was not in the notes.

  2. They made massive changes to pet battles. They nerfed the XP on the trainer battles by about 90%. They also changed some other things with the battles. Now, if you are not a pet battler its not a big deal. But if you are, it is huge.

Again, these are just two examples.

But Blizzard, Please, make your Patch Notes complete.

This really adds a lot of confusion and anger when you drop a patch.

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This might be the first time I have agreed to a post by Rastlin, but here’s a +1.

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They also made level pets harder. It becoming harder now to get them to level 25.

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I agree. Minor things are going to slip through… but major ones like this? That’s a big deal.

:cookie:

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Dear lord man watch the QA it was addressed

That being said though, and I can’t believe I am saying this, I kind of sorta agree with you on this one. Insomuch an overhaul of the way notes are done needs to happen.

For example, the AP thing. It was addressed in the QA and just so it is out there now it will happen again season 2 at some point.

There needs to be a master file of all major changes that are slated, as it happens. So let’s say, for example, item A is slated for 8.2, but it is complete today, add it to the file. ALL OF THEM. Then as it comes time to release patch notes, fine tune the file in the Blizzard patch note kind of way and boom done.

This would help prevent changes they simply forgot to note, because the build was in for months already.

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Better communication, in many forms, has been addressed countless times for the last handful of years and it hasn’t improved. If anything, the communication from Blizzard to the player-base has gotten much worse.

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Oh it was directed at the AP comment specifically. I then went on to agree with the rest of what was said.

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Ah, mix up on my part. gg

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Ion did a pretty decent piece on this in the first couple questions of Friday’s Q&A. They also covered the AK pause and why it was overlooked in the patch notes, as well.

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Agreed that he covered it head on.

However, I do believe something needs to be done still to prevent stuff like this in the future.

I fully believe his answer thst the change was made months ago and it slipped through the cracks. Forget the question but for those that want t ok know they can watch the video.

The development team always asks for ideas not just inaction able complaints. This is why I suggested a master patch file. Everything major goes on it. Does not matter if completed today or a day before patch is finalized. Then Blizz can come along, organize the notes in a readable fashion, and greatly reduce issues like this.

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There is no excuse for things “slipping through the cracks”.

These patch notes should be easy to write for crying out loud. They have been doing poor patch notes for far to long.

Time to end it and make complete notes.

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Yep this has been addressed by many people including several greens such as Neall.

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Let’s ask a question. Please bear in mind when I ask this question, that I agreed with you they need tkk dkk better. Further I offered a suggestion to do so.

What experience do you have runni. G a multi million dollar game franchise? In any aspect of development.

My point is, we do not know their internal workings, we have no conceivable concept how it could slip through the cracks. But, and follow me here, for all we know they are juggling 1000 different things at once. In that case apparently mistakes happen.

Normally, I think your posts are off the wall. But like I said I agreed with you on this one. Instead of just call g them out, entirely justified btw, why not after calling them out offer a solution. Calling them out does nothing. Offering a solution is actionable feedback. See the difference?

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No, I do not have experience running a multi million dollar company.

Irrelevant.

I do, however, have experience being a customer.

And as a paying customer I have every right to demand good service in regards to patch notes that reflect the major changes being made in the game.

-They Buffed Island Expeditions big time: Nothing in the notes.
-They took away the 30% weekly AP reduction: Nothing in the patch notes.
-Pet Battles/missions, etc changed: Nothing in the patch notes.

It is a big slap in the face!

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Ahh. I remember it as if it was yesterday (actually 2 months ago) when they were saying something something about better communication??

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I still think you are missing my point. And it is not irrelevant. The point is you have no clue what goes on behind the scenes that can cause this to happen. Neither do I. But it is not just cut and dry necessarily.

But I agree with you, still. They do need t ok dkk better. But j still have not seen any ideas other than demanding to do better.

Let’s shift gears for a second. Do you cook for yourself and possibly family? Easy peazy right? OK Jack that up. You have 3 hours to cook that meal. But for 150 people. And you have limited burners, oven space, pots, pans, and. You are constantly bombarded with other issues that require your attention.

And put out the same quality product. I assure you it is not as easy as it might seem. That is all I am trying. Tkk get across with changes missing from the notes. There are issues we have no concept or clue about as players. Keep that in mind is all. But yet. I still agree with. You that they do need to do better.

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It still stands that stuff like this needs to be in patch notes, or communicated well before the changes go live.

The premise that there is something severely wrong with the way information is communicated from the team to the player base is sound.

And on the topic of Q&A? I am sorry, maybe I am alone in this thought but:

I sincerely cannot tell who is better at avoiding the issues; Mark Zuckerberg at his Senate hearing, or Ion during that Q&A.

Telling people after the fact on a major change that was not in the PTR is not okay. It just isn’t. It solves NOTHING in regards to the communication issue, and lends to the notion that team just doesn’t understand their player base anymore.

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ion did cover that in some detail, and admitted they are working on it. But laughably said they wouldn’t include everything as some if the smaller changes won’t matter to players.

I say laughably because that in a nutshell is the problem, they don’t know what is important to the playerbase.

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I’m sorry man. I’m not attacking you personally. Please don’t take it this way, but the notion of “it’s hard” is just bogus.

They have the staff. They have the means. They have the resources. They just don’t. Do. It.

They were doing it before in ye olden time. The team just stopped engaging with their player base in a meaningful manner and resorted to these wishy-washy Q&A videos

Heck a simple twitter post that is linked to the blue tracker is better than what we got.

Again I am not attacking you boss. I just vehemently disagree with the idea presented. :confused:

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Somewhere there is an internal master list of changes, there just HAS to be, right? Not hard to copy and paste…