Guild Wars 2

From the latest living store update, the Battle of Lion Arch, I found that many people don’t know about the content of each patch. I guess there are 2 reasons:

Problems:

• People have problem on reading English
  AFAIK, many players are from Asia, such as Taiwan, Japan, Korea, etc. Some of them are not good in English. Although there is fan forums will translate the patch notes into their own language, the translation may not be accurate or up to date.

• The patch notes are not eye catching
  The patch notes usually appears as a news in the game launcher or a reply of a release notes thread. For the game launcher, there is a auto-start option for the user to skip everything and start the game. So they may skip the news titles in the game launcher. Also, small patch notes are posted as a reply of the release notes. It is hard to notice players what’s going on.

Solutions:

• I think Anet should provide release notes and patch notes in different languages. Special terms such as event names, character names, skill names, can be reserved in English. This should make international players easier to understand what the updates about.

• Also, prompt the release notes / patch notes when first time login to the character after updates (even small patches) in form of an in-game popup windows or an in-game mail. This will be more eye catching and ensure more players will read the notes.

I don’t want to see people arguing in the map chat anymore because some of them didn’t read the patch notes. Hope it can helps to improve the user experience.

I don’t think it is a language issue so much as a TLDR issue because people can’t be bothered.
Same with map chat- you will always have the people who can’t be bothered.

The first night of this patch we had a 100 people afk at red while blue and green had maybe 20- then of course naturally all 100 at red woke up at the same time dps him down asap while we are all screaming in map to split etc- to no avail what so ever- because they just went back to afk and the event failed.

People are like sheep- they are difficult to steer and slow to catch on

I honestly think it is a player problem not an Anet problem

But today there are still many people keep asking “no loot?” in the map chat after killing the knights. They are definitely don’t know about the latest changes since it’s not easy to be found.

Gausson.7836:

But today there are still many people keep asking “no loot?” in the map chat after killing the knights. They are definitely don’t know about the latest changes since it’s not easy to be found.

yes you have a point.
A mail or pop up like you suggested might be the best bet then

It takes ArenaNet a good measure of time to translate anything they release. If we had to wait for translations on hotfixes, we would have to wait days, instead of hours…or weeks, instead of days, for any bugs to be fixed.

I am sure most people know that when the game patches, there are patch notes to be read. I know a guildie that just “can’t be bothered”, so I have to tell him what’s going on.

I think the vast majority of players just don’t want to read. Putting the patch notes in game won’t make them read them. Plus, they kind of are in game, they’re featured in the launcher.

Becka Williams.4978:

I think the vast majority of players just don’t want to read. Putting the patch notes in game won’t make them read them. Plus, they kind of are in game, they’re featured in the launcher.

But the problem is, the patch notes is really hard to find in the forum. They didn’t featured in the game launcher. It’s a wiki page or a reply after a release note thread.

Poping up in the first time entering the game, it can increase the chance for players to read it before they start to play the changed content. So they will not say “anet is buggy.”, “omg! how long does anet need to fix the bugs”.

FYI, Patch notes not equal Release Notes. Patch Notes is for small update such as bug fix after a release. Release Notes is about a big change like every two weeks.

I don’t know about them being hard to find. They are right there on the front page of the forums. And if anything new has been added, it changes from greyed-out to black.