Guild Wars 2

Will there be a time when we are able to read patch notes in advance as opposed to 1 second before it goes live or after. I mean the content your releasing is known, you planned for it and presumably it doesn’t change every time up to the last second. So why the constant last minute posting? It wouldn’t bother me so much were it not for the fact that the overview notes were so poor:

“Now you’ll gain rewards for a much wider range of activities in the Mists – everything from destroying siege weapons, repairing walls, escort missions, and more.”

Do we not already get xp for destroying siege weapons and repairing walls? I would really appreciate an official response.

usually they put up patch notes a few hours before patch goes live.

i really hope they would put them up faster though.

well, personally it doesn’t matter to me. Like you said a lot of the changes they made sound very vague (not that certain tooltips aren’t vague enough already), some changes they don’t bother showing in the patch notes at all.

It’s just beyond me as to why it has to be a last minute thing.

They do it that way on purpose. Some time around the “expansion worth of content” comment, they realized that not everything lives up to expectations, and when they fall short, people throw a kitten fit. You guys did it to yourselves, really. I mean, what percentage of the official forums are complaints? 75%? 80%? I get it and all… the devs actually read this kitten so you want them to know what’s wrong, but you can’t blame them for controlling expectations at this point.

Yes, if they release any details earlier they will have pages and pages of moaning, whinging, complaining, nit picking threads to contend with, which 90% of the time turn out to be pure speculation based on limited info…hence pointless…

They also want to make sure what is actually in the patch notes is in the patch.
A thing can be pulled from a patch just a few hours before the patch goes live, therefore adding patch notes earlier than that would be quite silly.

Omne.4603:

It’s just beyond me as to why it has to be a last minute thing.

It’s perfectly logical to me, but that’s probably because I’m an oldskool gamer back when notes literally came with the patch exe itself.
Some people cry for a PTS, others whine for early notes. I think notes just have to come with the patch itself. In the end, it’s still up for change until the second it goes live.

Honestly, I love the way they’ve been doing these months. At the beginning it was bad since patch happened during the night for Europe and patchnotes were long after.
Now, they’ve learnt from these mistakes, or so it seems and they push the update earlier (for the evening in Europe GMT) and we have the patchnotes a bit before that, so we know what there will be and just a bit before, so we can read the notes while patch is downloading, or shortly before. This short time is handy since there won’t be a long period “omg omg I WANT that, hurry hurry patch I can’t wait !!!”
Honestly, for this, they have quite a good communication, when you know that, before, you get a teaser, then an outline/overview.
It’s a very great job on this imo.
I’d just love to know more about what is being worked on and current state of very popular suggestions (for instance : revamp of how conditions work —> do they have a global with some tweaks to be done ? Is it in final phase ? under testing ? …)

I think it’s more what players are use to, this genre has evolved so much and players today are far less forgiving as they were in the past, when the expectations of things common, like in this example an advance release on patch notes aren’t done in the same timely manner as one is come to expect from titles of similiar genres one tends to think why? and their answer was something like things can change until the last minute? that to me is just saying the content isn’t in a readily released state, it’s not really a good way to work in my opinion though.
They should finalise the release, send out the notes and spend the remaining time polishing.

dronzer.8392:

I think it’s more what players are use to, this genre has evolved so much and players today are far less forgiving as they were in the past, when the expectations of things common, like in this example an advance release on patch notes aren’t done in the same timely manner as one is come to expect from titles of similiar genres one tends to think why? and their answer was something like things can change until the last minute? that to me is just saying the content isn’t in a readily released state, it’s not really a good way to work in my opinion though.
They should finalise the release, send out the notes and spend the remaining time polishing.

You talking about a genre that rewards players with candy every time they hit a pinata. You’re talking about a genre where the game calls you “my hero”.

This genre is breeding these types of people.

dronzer.8392:

I think it’s more what players are use to, this genre has evolved so much and players today are far less forgiving as they were in the past, when the expectations of things common, like in this example an advance release on patch notes aren’t done in the same timely manner as one is come to expect from titles of similiar genres one tends to think why? and their answer was something like things can change until the last minute? that to me is just saying the content isn’t in a readily released state, it’s not really a good way to work in my opinion though.
They should finalise the release, send out the notes and spend the remaining time polishing.

And that’s exactly why notes are only released once the patch is released.

Omne.4603:

It’s just beyond me as to why it has to be a last minute thing.

It’s beyond me why you want it “now, now now!”

Its just so that the people have to do something (reading patchnotes) when waiting for the download to finish .. instead of staring on the progress bar

Beldin.5498:

Its just so that the people have to do something (reading patchnotes) when waiting for the download to finish .. instead of staring on the progress bar

I don’t think I’ve ever seen Arenanet release patch notes just after the patch hits. It’s always before hand, as far back as 6 hours to 10 minutes

There is a very logical explanation for why they do it this way.
They do it this way because sometimes stuff isn’t finished on time and doesn’t make the patch or has to be pushed back due to issues or creating bugs (One of the reasons that guesting wasn’t on live until January)

Every MMORPG works this way, you cannot post changes days or hours before hand because you cannot foresee what the new changes will cause. (Yes I know testing servers, but there is still a difference with the live servers)

They are already putting the notes up earlier then the actual patch comes, which is a big improvement from the launch of the game.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

usually they put up patch notes a few hours before patch goes live.

i really hope they would put them up faster though.

Dunno which forums you’re looking at but that’s not been the case from these forums. Unless they’ve been posting to Reddit before releasing it here or something.

By now they should have enough confidence to post earlier especially after almost a year.

tigirius.9014:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

usually they put up patch notes a few hours before patch goes live.

i really hope they would put them up faster though.

Dunno which forums you’re looking at but that’s not been the case from these forums. Unless they’ve been posting to Reddit before releasing it here or something.

By now they should have enough confidence to post earlier especially after almost a year.

The past 2 (maybe 3?) times they have released their patch notes 1-2 hours before the patch went live.