Let's Talk Patch Notes

[michaelcshow]

The patch notes are routinely incomplete. Many fixes included in the patches are not listed. There is understandably a threshold of fixes that are included vs. those that are not, however there is clearly room for improvement here.

 

Currently the playerbase is forced to go through and retest their reported issues to see if they were silently addressed or not if they aren't listed. Often times recently, they have been.

 

Two quick examples of recent unlisted large fixes include:

- Guild Window steals focus from textboxes, fixed in 5.10.1, not listed.

- Dozens of decorations broken in 5.10 were fixed in 5.10b, not listed.

 

A line such as “various decoration fixes” in the notes of patch 5.10b for instance would have at least signaled that they were being worked on, rather than the blind testing that occurred and revealed that at least some were.

 

I've put together a short pro/con list of better communicating patch contents.

 

Pro (playerbase)

-The guesswork and detective playing post patch to see if reported issues were addressed is eliminated.

-We feel our issues are being heard and addressed.

 

Pro (company)

-The company looks as if they are better listening to and addressing reported issues.

-The dev team gets credit for the work they do fixing the issues.

-Less already fixed but undocumented duplicate bug reports need filtered through.

-The player communications appear (and are) more thorough.

-Issues that are thought to be fixed but haven't actually been are discovered and re-reported faster.

 

Con (playerbase)

<none>

 

Con (company)

-Compiling more fixes into a customer facing format takes longer.

-'What abouts' increase – players see deco A was fixed but not deco B in the list and the inevitable 'what about B' forum post appears.

-Issues that were not reported but resolved become visible

 

Whether the breakdown on these patch notes falls on internal communication issues (dev team not listing everything fixed in a manner that community liaisons can easily compile), an arbitrary mystery threshold of what is to be included in the notes or not, or just a failure to compile the notes thoroughly - we players can only speculate on.

 

There has been noticeable effort and improvement in community engagement, communications, incorporating player feedback, and resolving long standing issues recently. Thank you for that.

 

I hope that improving the patch note communication can also be added to that list.

Edited May 3, 2019 by michaelcshow

[michaelcshow]

5.10.4a's notes are not on http://www.swtor.com/patchnotes.

 

Hey folks,

 

Here are the patch notes for tomorrow's patch:

• Restored Conquest information to the Current Conqueror’s interface.
  
• The Conquest Leaderboard is no longer displaying random characters and blank spaces.
  
• The Credit Chit item which was generated from Quick Travel Passes can now be sold to vendors as intended.
  
• Preferred status players now have unlimited Medical Probes as intended.
  
• The Flair “Opulent Aristocrat” will no longer display as blank text in the Flair dropdown menu.
  
• The Medical Droid Stronghold Decoration is once again a vendor.
  
• Players who have the Phrojo or Quick Companions will no longer lose them when starting Knights of the Fallen Empire. Players who have already lost them from this issue have had them restored.
  
• The Steam Distributor Stronghold Decoration now appears for all characters on a player’s Legacy once unlocked.
  
• Removed an “interact” highlight area from the Steam Distributor Stronghold Decoration as it served no purpose.
  
• Corrected an issue where new players would be unable to create a Legacy in rare circumstances.
  
• Adjusted a number of visual issues when wearing the Intelligent Agent’s armor set.
  
• The Obsidian Squad Recon Walker can now be unlocked in Collections as intended.
  

 

-eric

[JediQuaker]

Currently the playerbase is forced to go through and retest their reported issues to see if they were silently addressed or not if they aren't listed. Often times recently, they have been. .

I understand your issue, and it might nice if they specified every niggly little item in the patch notes, but, no one is "forced" to see if they were addressed.

For example, they recently fixed the "medic" decorations in my stronghold, but I didn't immediately go check it out (nor did I read the patch notes ), I simply noticed the fix the next time I was in my Stronghold. No biggie.

Edited August 3, 2019 by JediQuaker

[Rolodome]

SWTOR isn't the only "live service" game that has this problem and I don't know why. It can't be that hard to automate a system where stuff that is considered fixed gets automatically added to a list and that list is reviewed by someone customer-facing to word it in a way that makes sense and then published along with the patch. And once published, the current items are pushed into a data storage for the data published, clearing it out for the next items.

 

Unless it's that they do something like this, but they're fixing things in a way that doesn't make it through whatever bug tracker system they use.

[Raansu]

Patches generally fix 100's of issues in every patch. This goes for ANY software as coding is just inherently full of human errors. It would take pages and a stupid amount of time to list every little thing coders fix in a patch. Patch notes focus on the core stuff and that is completely fine. Something minor that didn't have any real impact on the game itself has no real reason to be mentioned in a patch note and I imagine many times a dev simply fixes something and forgets to document it because it was likely an extremely minor thing.

[Rolodome]

Patches generally fix 100's of issues in every patch. This goes for ANY software as coding is just inherently full of human errors. It would take pages and a stupid amount of time to list every little thing coders fix in a patch. Patch notes focus on the core stuff and that is completely fine. Something minor that didn't have any real impact on the game itself has no real reason to be mentioned in a patch note and I imagine many times a dev simply fixes something and forgets to document it because it was likely an extremely minor thing.

Not every trivial thing has to be included, but one would think if it's an issue that has been reported by players, it's probably made it into some sort of bug tracking software if that's how they got word of it and thus it would be pretty easy to track the fixing of it and get it into notes.

[Darev]

Personally...I just need the highlights.