add all fixes to the patch notes

add all fixes to the patch notes

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Posted by: LofS.9743

LofS.9743

Pretty much what the title suggests. Updates, design changes, fixes and bugfixes
I would really like to read all the patch notes, I’m getting tires of all the speculations about stealth nerfs, buffs or changes. Sure maybe a thing as a weapon detail changed isn’t a big deal to the most, but we the community should be able to get official notes about those stuffs aswell! Hope this is something that will be implemented in the future!
Tnx

add all fixes to the patch notes

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Posted by: Kantharr.2308

Kantharr.2308

This has been suggested but it would be nice to have.

add all fixes to the patch notes

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Posted by: DanH.5879

DanH.5879

you do realize it would generate even more drama, no ?

“our skill has been fixed by nerfing it !”

add all fixes to the patch notes

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Posted by: Kantharr.2308

Kantharr.2308

you do realize it would generate even more drama, no ?

“our skill has been fixed by nerfing it !”

That’s the life of mmo. Some skills have to be nerfed, players will cry but move on.

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Posted by: Lil Puppy.5216

Lil Puppy.5216

We fought like crazy to get them to give us update notes in the beginning of GW1, we got them and finally didn’t have to waste hours experimenting to figure out what they did.

Now if they can just go that extra step further and add a little bit more transparency like other game companies, that would be great.

But what details should be on the notes? should we be informed about all of the myriad bitwise operators that they may have had to reconfigure to smash a bug or do they just tell us the bug was smashed?

  • Changed line 1002342243 conditional from ‘or’ to ‘and’.
  • Changed line 1002324454 to include curly bracket that was missing causing class file to fail to initiate on load.

Or just dump the text difference list for the code files?

Oh, don’t forget, they have to translate that into several different languages before they publish it too.

Adding more work for the devs and designers at this point just so you can be confident that they didn’t change anything about the Necro class again is a huge waste of their time honestly.

Out of curiosity, I would love to have their bug tracking system report and watch it change over time. Watch as things get checked off that have nothing to do with my Necro

jk Anet, I know you’re working your * off and I see the changes. I’m patient.

add all fixes to the patch notes

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Posted by: Electro.4173

Electro.4173

Absolutely agree with this. Stealth changes are bad.

We don’t need to know the absolute inner workings of the game, we don’t need to know “code changes” or whatever as the above poster joked about. But actual changes that effect the gameplay for players need to be noted.

As an example, the patch on Monday fixed the Ranger traits Opening Strike and the other 3 traits based on it so that they work correctly. And yet those changes were not mentioned in the patch notes at all. That kind of info being excluded is bad.

add all fixes to the patch notes

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Posted by: Fildydarie.1496

Fildydarie.1496

Absolutely agree with this. Stealth changes are bad.

We don’t need to know the absolute inner workings of the game, we don’t need to know “code changes” or whatever as the above poster joked about. But actual changes that effect the gameplay for players need to be noted.

As an example, the patch on Monday fixed the Ranger traits Opening Strike and the other 3 traits based on it so that they work correctly. And yet those changes were not mentioned in the patch notes at all. That kind of info being excluded is bad.

I work as a software engineer. I don’t make games, but I manage systems that rival or exceed most in complexity, so I think I have relevant experience to say that you have no idea what you’re talking about.

I fixed a bug the other day. See, a database query was rather inefficient and so I poked around with alternate ways of fetching the same data until I reduced the execution time by 85%. This is good and should be in the patch notes, right?

Well, the problem is that this caused one bottleneck to disappear and a new bottleneck to appear elsewhere. Long story short, the optimization to this single query was reverted because it resulted in a cascading DDoS attack brought down 95% of our data center.

Compounding unintended consequences, you have forgoten intended consequences. Unless you can automate the generation of the patch notes, human error is a factor. Maybe somebody forgot to include the line about the fix, or the fix resulted from some other change, or who knows what happened to it?

Phantasm damage output was decreased; obviously this was a nerf, not a side effect of a change to AI, right? Everybody knows “Nerfed Phantasms” should be in the patch notes when the actual change could have been “adjusted weighting of various considerations in AI routines” or “tightened timing constraints in network code to combat bots (please don’t tell them we did this or they will immediately adjust and exploit again)” or possibly even “phantasms will now attack more aggressively, but when attacking moving targets will be more likely to miss because they attack from closer to max range.”

Asking for complete patch notes makes the hostile assumption that they are witholding information and want to ruin your game experience. They make mistakes, and requesting clarification / verification is one thing, but the snarky insinuation that they are intentionally sneaking in stealth changes shows a profound lack of respect for a company that goes out of their way to promote a healthy, informed community.

-Fildydarie
Hutchmistress of the Fluffy Bunny Brigade [FBB]

add all fixes to the patch notes

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Posted by: robinsiebler.3801

robinsiebler.3801

Uhm….I worked at a company where all the bugs fixed were added automatically to the release notes by a script. No one had to do any extra work at all. Just sayin’.

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Posted by: kenshinakh.3672

kenshinakh.3672

I’m pretty sure Anet’s programmers have their own SVN or repository where commit messages are kept. But in real production, you don’t release every single commit note to the public. That’s potentially dangerous, and sometimes there are fixes/changes that you don’t want to be public. There’s a HUGE difference between internal team changelogs and public changelogs, and they’re kept separate for some really good reasons.

Don’t they already notify us of important fixes via the wiki patch log? It seems to show the important changes and that’s what most people care about. I don’t see the point of saying things like “Changed the code style of Elementalist spell script blah blah…” If it doesn’t impact the players, then it’s better to not show them extra.

Though I agree with how some fixes go unmentioned (though I can’t blame them. It’s a pain gathering up your bug fix list sometimes and you have to go through it manually to pretty up the language for the common patch readers).

add all fixes to the patch notes

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Posted by: Fildydarie.1496

Fildydarie.1496

Uhm….I worked at a company where all the bugs fixed were added automatically to the release notes by a script. No one had to do any extra work at all. Just sayin’.

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Did it also create the list of unintended side effects of the changes?
Did it also translate the bugfixes to meaningful statements for the end user? (The bug might be known as “race condition between triggers in Event #2318” but people want to see “Fixed a progress-blocking bug in Event XYZ”)
Did it extrapolate core engine changes to effects that users could recognize?

I tend to think not, which was the purpose of my post. You can either have a machine tell you the exact details but not the high-level description, or you can have a human-centric process that provides the high-level description but has the potential for error. People can make mistakes, and it is hard to identify all the bad things that can happen from good changes.

-Fildydarie
Hutchmistress of the Fluffy Bunny Brigade [FBB]

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Posted by: robinsiebler.3801

robinsiebler.3801

Developers were required to submit a comment with their fix that explained exactly what the bug fixed in a way that SQA could understand. Most of the people who want that information would be able to understand such a message.Your “race condition” message would be equally useless to me as an SQA engineer as well.

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Posted by: Fildydarie.1496

Fildydarie.1496

Developers were required to submit a comment with their fix that explained exactly what the bug fixed in a way that SQA could understand. Most of the people who want that information would be able to understand such a message.Your “race condition” message would be equally useless to me as an SQA engineer as well.

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Exactly; this wasn’t an automated system, you asked people to list what they did. Unintended consequences and “I fixed 92 bugs with ranger pets, I don’t remember what they all were” become issues. When you’re talking simple UI bugs, yeah, these changes are trivial to document, because the developer notes tend to be quite similar to the public notes. When the changes are getting down in the weeds, are highly technical in nature, and have potentially far-reaching consequences… how do you accurately document that?

-Fildydarie
Hutchmistress of the Fluffy Bunny Brigade [FBB]

add all fixes to the patch notes

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Posted by: Meeooww.3742

Meeooww.3742

Exactly; this wasn’t an automated system, you asked people to list what they did. Unintended consequences and “I fixed 92 bugs with ranger pets, I don’t remember what they all were” become issues. When you’re talking simple UI bugs, yeah, these changes are trivial to document, because the developer notes tend to be quite similar to the public notes. When the changes are getting down in the weeds, are highly technical in nature, and have potentially far-reaching consequences… how do you accurately document that?

By inserting the comments made by the person writing said “fixes”. It’s not hard to say exactly what is being done, the hard part would be getting everyone to understand it. not only people with knowledge in Computer Science. That being said, one does not code with their eyes closed, it’s all controlled. and therefore can be put on the patch notes.

add all fixes to the patch notes

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Posted by: robinsiebler.3801

robinsiebler.3801

If the developer can’t accurately document a fix they made a) they are not a very good developer and b) SQA can’t possibly verify the supposed fix.

And yes, a developer will upon rare occasion comment on a bug ‘I can’t be sure if I fixed this or not’. And it is assigned to SQA and remains open indefinitely unless a PM decides to close it.

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(edited by robinsiebler.3801)