Guild Wars 2

Example

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Reading those patch notes is not just reading a wall of text; it is an experience. There are pictures! Icons! Tables! Previous-to-new comparisons! Witty puns! And most importantly: dev feedback and rationale!

The last point is most important. ArenaNet, this is your opportunity to really connect with your community. Including dev feedback and rationale concerning changes into the patch notes enables the community to understand the devs’ reasoning on decisions, and improves the feedback that the community provides henceforth. It makes the community feel included, and not so alienated.

A good indicator of well-written patch notes is that the notes should be able to make some sense to someone who doesn’t even play the game.

Just my $0.02.

Evan Lesh is pretty good in writing stuff. Knowing how much programmers love to document, I bet he is an exception and a good one.

While I do like developers defending and rationalizing their changes, that LoL notes was just obnoxious.

The puns where totally unnecessary and just added clutter, and much of the information they did give could have been stated more clearly with less words.

That entire wall of text basically boiled down to “we are nerfing some things that we buffed last time, and are monitoring mobility creep”

The nav menu is good. Strike-through text to illustrate change is good. All the other images and tables and icons and badges and quotes just feel like UI vomit.

TBH I prefer gw2’s concise bullets to that bloat.

That was good patch notes? More like too much nonsense to read and not enough getting to the point faster.. I actually like the patch notes as I just skim through them to see what areas I want to read..

Disagree entirely with the OP. I want patch notes to be concise and boring. I find GW2’s easy to read and very easy to pinpoint what has changed.

Forums are for discussion about the specifics of the changes. Patch notes aren’t.

I like GW2 patchnotes…. Id like them even more if they were more complete… but well, wishes, horses etc.

I like how GW2 patchnotes are short, to the point and use a formulaic approach. That way you can skip a lot by just looking for keywords / key sentence structure.

The patchnotes are also nicely structured, making reading them even easier. I dont need a dev to explain to me why something was changed, especially NOT in patchnotes. If I want explanations, I expect them from forum posts and – more so – from GuildChat etc.

Those LoL patchnotes you linked, I didnt like them at all, they are cluttered, unorganized and uninformative. They are like GuildChat mixed with patchnotes mixed with a lot of BSing. I like my information source uncluttered by wannabe kitten comments, thank you very much.

Your “example” is actually the wall of text, I don’t wanna read all that useless fluff around the notes, gw2 patch notes are perfect for me, I get exactly the information I need quickly without all the BS around it.

Then maybe that game isn’t for you. I mean, if you need your enjoyment in the patch notes rather than the game. Personally, I’d rather get what I came for - the information - and then get into the game.

If you really want clutter, a long presentation and some thought process on changes, watch whatever the twitch shows are called (On Point and Points of Interest?).

PadreNike.1803:

Your “example” is actually the wall of text, I don’t wanna read all that useless fluff around the notes, gw2 patch notes are perfect for me, I get exactly the information I need quickly without all the BS around it.

Developpers insight and commentary is not “BS”.

I’d be satisfied if they put more than half the actual changes in the patch notes.

Anet has a long history of being very open and explaining to it’s customers it’s rationale. That’s how we know that the changes aren’t made randomly. There has also been consistent and fair minded game balancing at all times. This is reflected in the transparent and complete patch notes.

I can hardly comment strongly enough on the quality of anet’s interaction with the community.

As a pve eccentric person, I had no problem dealing with their patch note, like someone stated it’s directly on point and easy to understand, regardless around small changes which are crucial and means a lot, but some of the things unseen must be shared.
Fact that they can turn the tide around mostly in combat, like LoS Chill to the Bone even in melee range (unless they revert it back, hopefully not) as i play Thief and struggling on its current viability, those kind of intricacy makes me shiver and start working on the drawing board for team play and positioning references.
This game is no casual play I tell you.

Don’t really want to read a story or watch hours of streams. There is no need to sugarcoat anything or even hide it.
Any explanations which will take some time or any feedback needed can be done in the respective subforums. Wish they would start communicating with us again.

Are patch notes like these so much to wish for?:

Class A:

Changed amounts and numbers of mechanics/traits/skills:
+
+
+
-
-

Reworked or changed mechanics/traits/skills:
a.
b.
c.

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