Only Post Patch notes after a patch has been completely deployed

[devout epoch]

I have nothing more to say 🙂

[urban wedge]

why is that a problem

[devout epoch]

It kills the current flow of the game and matchmaking

The extra information disincentivises people to play the current meta since they know things that are currently working WILL change at any random point. Its an unhealthy circumstance imo

[brazen hollow]

I mean...... Isn't this already how the world works

[bright notch]

I think that the whole patch notes were a giant waste of time by the team and that it shouldn't work like that at all in the future. But I guess that's not the point of this proposal.

[urban sphinx]

The original intent was to post the patch notes with 2-3 days before the patch. So the players can have an idea of what's going on.

You can't 100% know if something will delay the patch or not, unpredictable things can happen all the time.

I've played endless games that had this approach, and in some cases even giants (riot, valve, ubi, ea) had delays.

These patch notes were dropped early to lighten up the mood. If the players think this was a bad approach, then we'll address it and release the notes when the patch is live. (As we did for the previous ones)

[devout epoch]

I personally feel its a bad approach, but its up to everyone else now

[noble galleon]

I think it's good it gives time to prepare for the patch. This one specifically has soooo many changes...

[devout epoch]

And when the patch is delayed 2 weeks?

[noble galleon]

Patch came out 1 week ago. I dunno...

I know I got a team ready to stomp everyone before y'all start copying it 🤣

But I get you, patch notes usually come after a patch is released

[devout epoch]

That's been my experience

But the risks go well beyond our current Arena. What happens when patch notes come out and everyone starts selling their rhamphyres. And then it goes through testing and the patch notes are changed.

its blatant market manipulation. The notes need to ONLY be revealed when the changes are made to the game.

Hey I got me a new video. This should be good 🙂

[north iron]

Yeah that’s a pretty legit concern.

[devout epoch]

The other option is reveal the patch notes early but only when the patch is complete and tested. Then release the actual update 3 days later, consistent and perfect, literally no such thing as a delay

[hexed wagon]

Patch notes shared once the changes have been validated in UAT. No dramas.

cc @lime parcel

[lime parcel]

https://tenor.com/view/salute-yes-sir-respect-address-aaron-eckhart-gif-14461605

[devout epoch]

Not sure what UAT means but sounds good 🙂

[bright notch]

User Acceptance Testing

[lime parcel]

I will say I’m surprised people didn’t like getting patch notes early

It’s like double content for you, make content about expected patch results, then make content post patch actual results, plus early theory crafting

[wary topaz]

we liked it ok 😛

[devout epoch]

I dont believe it's healthy no. Not 'this' early at least

[north iron]

https://tenor.com/view/too-soon-junior-toosoonjr-jr-gif-26390157

[trail orbit]

from what i read your issue is more about we never knowing WHEN will the patch be deploied than the patch notes early.
What about a proposal that says: every Tuesday = patch at 00:00 UTC (random time can be whatever as long as it's always the same one)

OR a proposal that goes like this:
What about planning and scheduling patches over the next 6 months and make that info public like TFT does, accounting for holidays and everything.

[devout epoch]

Yeah basically

Since patches cannot be guaranteed to come on time, and i suspect that will be the case for the next 12 months. We should only deploy notes when we KNOW for sure the patch is already or can be deployed

and I'd actually be quite surprised if Frost is updated this week tbh. But happy to eat my words

[trail orbit]

I still really don't get why do we have so many issues with the "deploy"... like do the people deploying have some super bad internet that sometimes take 1h some others 12h to upload the same file? like what is the issue with deploys? I thought the ONE major benefit of being on Epic games was the ability to deploy those more easily and quicker than before.

[devout epoch]

Its their testing phase, when things break they need to redo, thats what happened with the last patch.

notes should come AFTER its cleared UAT

[trail orbit]

Ok, I would agree with you there though. But some people have raised concerns in the past about the players not being able to voice their concerns before a change goes live.

What's your opinion?

[devout epoch]

Not once have they changed the patch notes at the stage they have shared it based on the players opinions, that I have seen at least. Seems like its too late in the phase and these opinions get incorporated for the next patch. So really its only a net negative since opinions on an unreleased gamestate arent as coherent as opinions on a functioning gamestate, cause testing

If the community instead worked on the patch with the team then that would be good, but thats not how it currently works

[trail orbit]

Makes sense. Also community feedback is good but can also be a lot of meaningless noise with a lot of opposite opinions.

[devout epoch]

Without actually playing the patch its hard. Cant say I saw a single person complain about Jotun pre patch and post notes

[trail orbit]

I'm even not sure how much we want the community as a whole to contribute there. Like I said previously, the average player and from what i've read here and there even some "top leaderboard players" have no clue about how game balance works.

[devout epoch]

I'll leave that discussion to the experts, I dont know either

[trail orbit]

I did say multiple times post patch notes: Blazenite is back and Frost will be broken.
obviously with some reserves because like you said, without playing the patch we can never be 100% sure.

[devout epoch]

I apologise, I hadnt been in arena chat too much. I definitely missed that. But my point still stands on the team not implementing that feedback (yet)

[trail orbit]

Btw @devout epoch what about making a new idea that solves imo better the problem you identified?

I'd personnally support something like:
Release patch notes when they passed UAT.
They should always be posted at the same time (example 00:00 UTC) and the maintenance to actually deploy the patch always comes 24h after the patch notes.
This wouldn't include hotfixes.
Major patches should always coincide with Leaderboard rewards snapshot.

[devout epoch]

The initial post was a salty scoriox post. But yes this is a good idea.

I'd even say 48 hours before the patch

[trail orbit]

Yeah whatever time. we can even let the team decide that detail.
Point being that everyone would be happier if they knew exactly when does the patch go live.

What I would suggest though, would've been to decide based on what the actual patch schedule is.
If we're aiming at a rythm of 1patch/week -> 24h
1 patch /2 weeks -> 48h

Just because otherwise it means that the players will be in "patch waiting room" for ~30% of the patch lifetime and that's not great for DAU.

[devout epoch]

Patch waiting room was my biggest concern and the reason I made this initial post, since it was over 5 days

[frosty estuary]

I agree, patch notes should be released 6 hours before or at update. IMO

[idle lantern]

I think this is a relevant concern.

[trail orbit]

On this topic though. The testing they do has nothing to do with balance, it's only to see if they didn't break anything in the code by making the changes and check if the changes were well applied and that everything is working as intended.

So I think it's very unlikely that the internal testing phase would ever "change a patch note".

If they had decided to nerf Rhamphyre by 50 dmg on it's omega, there is no way that just 24h before patch they go, oh wait nvm we're not doing it anymore.
They'll still do it and just see how meta develops from that change before they decide to revert it or do anything else on it.

Balance related testing is done internally before redacting the patch notes by a different team than UAT.

[undone patio]

Forgive me if I’m wrong but doesn’t every game release patch notes before an update? It seems the problem is that the patch was delayed due to unforeseen circumstances which is going to continually happen for a little bit until things calm down it seems. I don’t think there is an answer to this problem atm and I don’t see it as a big enough problem to worry about too much personally.

[tepid wigeon]

I’m strongly against hiding the patch notes before the patch. Part of the whole process we plan for long term is to produce automated patches with degrees of severity to help voted upon. This would kill that.

Basically we want to give you options and you guys vote with ILV for how “thrashy” the adjustments are.

[brazen hollow]

Would that not be very biased for people who worked out a winning strategy that would be taken away?

[tepid wigeon]

I'm not sure I understand? Are you asking if taking away winning strategies is bad, or?

[brazen hollow]

Saying the patches should be a team decision based on metrics not on how people like it... there will be severe bias on voting.

[tepid wigeon]

The only thing they will vote on is how extreme the changes are. And yes there will be some bias, but it also makes it decentralised.