why is there never patch notes

bobby4700 · September 2018

week after week we don't get patch notes till after maintenance . Please can u post and thank you .

mantera47 · September 2018

I would assume that these will be the patch notes (from preview thread):

https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1242390/ravenloft-preview-patch-notes-nw-100-20180709g-14

bobby4700 · September 2018

Yes preview which is just in game beta . I m asking about regular game server patch notes seems of late they don't post till after maintenance.

bayaz · September 2018

Those above are the patch notes for the maintanance today, they are the same as the german PN, which are already on the launcher.

Normally the german ones are a bit later than the english ones, but it seems our translators were faster today.

German:

https://www.arcgames.com/de/games/neverwinter/news/detail/10997243

mantera47 · September 2018

The preview patch notes are ALMOST always the patch notes that go live. Most of the time, they just copy and paste into the live patch notes.

But I do get what you're saying. It would be nice to get the "official" live patch notes at a reasonable time prior to the patch.

kvet · September 2018

the last 3 patches, and this one.. only this one has not been published prior. In fact, the were published the day before, as I recall. Yes, certainly they're not always published on time, but... wow - One certainly is remembered more for their mistakes rather than their successes.

plasticbat · September 2018

kvet said:
the last 3 patches, and this one.. only this one has not been published prior. In fact, the were published the day before, as I recall. Yes, certainly they're not always published on time, but... wow - One certainly is remembered more for their mistakes rather than their successes.

I counted at least last 6 were posted one day before. They had a good streak.

empalas · September 2018

plasticbat said:

I counted at last last 6 were posted one day before.

Yes they have been pretty regularly posted around late afternoon day before patch. My guess it may be PAX West related as to why @nitocris83 didn't post it yet.

plasticbat · September 2018

empalas said:

plasticbat said:

I counted at last last 6 were posted one day before.
Yes they have been pretty regularly posted around late afternoon day before patch. My guess it may be PAX West related as to why @nitocris83 didn't post it yet.

I usually can read the patch note (and 'whine' about the prosperity insignia) before the midnight my time (EST) and that is about 6pm in the west just before they leave work. I assume Julia forgot or did not have time to do that before she left.

greywynd · September 2018

Julia normally has the patch notes up about 12 hours before maintenance time.

mantera47 · September 2018

Yeah, I wouldn't call it a mistake--merely a delay; sometimes stuff happens that can cause delays. That's why I pointed out the preview patch notes that are usually the ones that go live anyways.

Unknown · September 2018

This content has been removed.

cdnbison · September 2018

The patch notes are up the day before, but they're posted to the Preview forum. There hasn't been any up-to-date patch notes for the Preview forums in quite some time. I keep poking in to see what changes are coming, and see last weeks notes - patch notes that were never noted as having gone to the Preview server, just as going to Live during the coming maintenance.

I get why they don't post any sort of economic changes in patch notes (see also: run on t-bar coal wards before that patch hit), but it'd be nice to know that, say, a fix the CR bug that was wiping groups was up on Preview.

nitocris83 · September 2018

Hey folks! PAX West did throw me off last week but weeks prior I try to get them out the night before maintenance. I wait for the final version to be sent out in case there are any last minute changes from what's on preview. If I get the patch notes before 5pm, I can typically get them up before the evening. If they come in between 5-8pm, I am unable to post them until after 8pm (all times Pacific). Final patch notes don't typically come in earlier than the day prior to maintenance.

cdnbison · September 2018

What about Preview notes? I don't think you're just putting the patch onto the Preview shard the night before the patch goes live... ;-)

terramak · September 2018

Most of the time, I literally am (though I can see why folks would expect otherwise!). Usually the change list is small enough that we're not too worried about the build exploding, and it's long enough ahead of time that players can give us a heads-up about a patch note that reads incorrectly. It's totally reasonable to want them earlier, but I have a few different priorities to balance, and I don't usually patch the Preview shard without the build itself having a full test on it.

So it's a balance of: Non-build work, build finalization, build testing and approval, patch note writing, and server patching.

So yeah, to answer your question, Preview notes tend to go up 0-4 hours after Preview is updated, and Preview is often updated the day before. I don't like to post patch notes early, because if it doesn't pass testing, it risks being interpreted as "promising" a fix and then backing out on it.

Speaking of which, sorry @plasticbat , no Prosperity insignia fix this week. It's still on our radar.

nitocris83 · September 2018

terramak said:
Most of the time, I literally am (though I can see why folks would expect otherwise!). Usually the change list is small enough that we're not too worried about the build exploding, and it's long enough ahead of time that players can give us a heads-up about a patch note that reads incorrectly. It's totally reasonable to want them earlier, but I have a few different priorities to balance, and I don't usually patch the Preview shard without the build itself having a full test on it.

So it's a balance of: Non-build work, build finalization, build testing and approval, patch note writing, and server patching.

So yeah, to answer your question, Preview notes tend to go up 0-4 hours after Preview is updated, and Preview is often updated the day before. I don't like to post patch notes early, because if it doesn't pass testing, it risks being interpreted as "promising" a fix and then backing out on it.

Speaking of which, sorry @plasticbat , no Prosperity insignia fix this week. It's still on our radar.

What he said

plasticbat · September 2018

terramak said:

Speaking of which, sorry @plasticbat , no Prosperity insignia fix this week. It's still on our radar.

Ok, I will try my best to restrain my whining this week. Thank you.

bobby4700 · September 2018

so to see what is going to be maybe fixed or added to game we have to look on preview channel and not neverwinter , and hope that those don't change ?

cdnbison · September 2018

terramak said:
Most of the time, I literally am (though I can see why folks would expect otherwise!). Usually the change list is small enough that we're not too worried about the build exploding, and it's long enough ahead of time that players can give us a heads-up about a patch note that reads incorrectly. It's totally reasonable to want them earlier, but I have a few different priorities to balance, and I don't usually patch the Preview shard without the build itself having a full test on it.

So it's a balance of: Non-build work, build finalization, build testing and approval, patch note writing, and server patching.

So yeah, to answer your question, Preview notes tend to go up 0-4 hours after Preview is updated, and Preview is often updated the day before. I don't like to post patch notes early, because if it doesn't pass testing, it risks being interpreted as "promising" a fix and then backing out on it.

Speaking of which, sorry @plasticbat , no Prosperity insignia fix this week. It's still on our radar.

There seems to be some confusion here, so I'll try and clear things up.

Patch notes for live come out ~12 hours before the patch. I'm fine with this.
The Patch Notes for live get posted in the Preview section. Wait.. what?

The notes for Sept. 5, for instance, were for the patch on Sept. 6 on live, not Preview.

I can't recall the last time I saw patch notes that weren't for the Live server in the preview section. I'm fine if there is a list of "here's things we've implemented / are trying to fix in this patch" on Preview. I think we're more concerned about a perceived lack of communication about what is coming (see also: Strahd's 'Brink of Death' fix) more than anything.

terramak · September 2018

@cdnbison
Here's my distillation, because I love bullet points:

Patch notes for live come out ~12 hours before the patch, usually posted by @nitocris83 in public-facing news.
Patch notes for Preview come out on the Preview section of the forum ~0-4 hours after the Preview server is updated with the build.
During the weeks after a module releases, our release schedule and planning tend to end up with Preview being updated on Wednesdays, the day before a patch.
Therefore, the Preview patch notes on Wednesday tend to also function as an early glance at the Thursday PC patch, but it's not official until it's posted as a news entry.

So, you're right on for the first line, but it looks like our expectations differed on your second line. The patch notes on Preview are often identical to the live patch notes, but the only official patch notes for the live game are posted as news entries. The Preview forum is a good tool for quickly glancing back through patches, but a Wednesday 9/5 post does not always mean it's live Thursday, 9/6 (even though it usually is).

And, exceptions:

As we approach a new module release, the public test patches for live game updates tend to be posted to the (currently-hidden) Owlbear shard instead of NeverwinterPreview, but I still post them on the Preview forums.
In the meantime, NeverwinterPreview tends to see updates on Fridays, or whenever is convenient for pushing a new next-module preview patch.

Important note: This is not a promise to continue on the above timeline. I'm just distilling patterns we've followed in the past, and may choose to continue in the future.

Regarding communication about what's coming up: The timing of talking about a given change is really case-by-case.

In general, I personally don't like saying "this will be fixed" until it's already in a build and handed off for testing. Others may choose differently, I just don't like being perceived as promising a fix when it's not verified.
With high-level balance changes, depending on the impact, we may talk about them earlier, or may not.

Dunno if this catches all your concerns though. It's a balance between "communicate when the change is real" and "pre-communicate when it'll be impactful." A lot of games only announce changes after the fact, unless they're actively soliciting feedback and iterating on balance or high-profile bugs.

cdnbison · September 2018

Ah. I think that's where the confusion was setting in. I was under the impression that Preview was updated Friday (standard), not Wednesday. I'm following the timelines you're working with now, and it's clear where things were getting crossed up.

Thanks!

ragnarz2 · September 2018

Just an observation, but there are still no patch notes for today's maintenance. Even if there is no game patch there should be an announcement regarding what the purpose of the maintenance is.

kvet · September 2018

ragnarz2 said:
Just an observation, but there are still no patch notes for today's maintenance. Even if there is no game patch there should be an announcement regarding what the purpose of the maintenance is.

They announced the downtime here:
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1242431/september-2018-maintenance-schedule

Since there were no patch notes in Preview, it stands to reason there's wouldn't be any here. That said, they used to post a news item every time there was downtime and simply mentioned something like "There's no patch notes today." They rarely give much of an explanation, perhaps beyond system/server maintenance or something like that, and I wouldn't really expect them to.

dread4moor · September 2018

ragnarz2 said:
Just an observation, but there are still no patch notes for today's maintenance. Even if there is no game patch there should be an announcement regarding what the purpose of the maintenance is.

This is a server maintenence, not a program patch.
Julia was very clear about that yesterday:

nitocris83 Posts: 1,514Member, Administrator
Administrator
September 11 Edited September 11
Sept 11 maintenance:
-Confirming no patch notes, server specific maintenance.

ragnarz2 · September 2018

dread4moor said:

ragnarz2 said:
Just an observation, but there are still no patch notes for today's maintenance. Even if there is no game patch there should be an announcement regarding what the purpose of the maintenance is.
This is a server maintenence, not a program patch.
Julia was very clear about that yesterday:

nitocris83 Posts: 1,514Member, Administrator
Administrator
September 11 Edited September 11
Sept 11 maintenance:
-Confirming no patch notes, server specific maintenance.

Can you link it?

There are plenty of places to make a visible announcement. Now I could have overlooked it but I did look. I do not think it is unreasonable to want information on the logon screen whether it is a game patch or just maintenance. Even a banner on the forums would be an improvement. The way they do this is amateur.

sanatory · September 2018

from 6h to 8h.... with no worth while changes or fixes... sigh... get ready for a 12h, I smell a failswinter coming along

kvet · September 2018

Typically the off-day maintenance and scheduled extended maintenance windows are due to hardware updates or something related to the data center. They should have a high availability landscape in place so they don't need to bring the whole thing down to replace any single system, but.. whatever. Point is, these extended maintenance windows frequent have to do with hardware or at least underlying software not directly related to the game. This is particularly likely given there's no patches.

Then, when it's extended, it usually means something messed up and they're having to either restore to LKG and try again...

Or maybe someone spilled their latte on the server. Who knows.

That said, when it was hardware related, Cryptic used to tell us, at least in broad strokes, what's going on.

sanatory · September 2018

By my experience an extended maintenance will be extended again and maybe again once more Eu suffer the most be prepared

crystalcritter · September 2018

So another shard maintenance and still no notes from the last one? Come on.

lowjohn · September 2018

crystalcritter#0591 said:
So another shard maintenance and still no notes from the last one? Come on.

Neither yesterday nor Tuesday involved any changes to Neverwinter. There's no patch notes because as far as we're concerned, it was "just a server reset".

It was a massive maintenance that went way over schedule because the changes to the underlying servers that run Neverwinter didn't go smoothly. But once they came back up, the same version of Neverwinter as before the maintenance started running.

why is there never patch notes

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