Video Game Tuesday: Patch Notes

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m back with a topic many gamers should read a heck of a lot more often. It’s all about Patch Notes!

Patch Notes?: Patch Notes are notes of any and all changes that occur when a game is updated. These are most of the time fairly boring reads, especially in the bug sections, but nevertheless such things are really worth reading. Especially the bug portions, because it might just help you avoid getting a game breaking bug, or getting corrupted save files and losing all your progress in a game.

All of your progress, really?: Yeah, really. In MMOs it’s especially worth reading any and all Known Bug sections of Patch Notes before playing. The ideal time to do so? While your game is updating. In fact it’s also worth having your phone or tablet’s web browser open to any community sites, be that a fan site like Blizzard Watch for Blizzard games or a really active subreddit like the Final Fantasy XIV subreddit. This should be done during any major patch, and especially during Expansion launches. They’ll put up things like PSA’s about what not to do. For instance in FFXIV’s latest expansion Stormblood, there was a particularly nasty bug with the first Primal fight players experience in the expansion at level 63.

If you entered the instance and were sitting or doing any emote at all prior to entering you would be kicked from your character and be unable to log in to that character at all once you finished the instance. This was particularly bad, and was just one of the many issues that were occuring during Stormblood’s launch. There were also congestion issues and server issues that were occurring due to DDoS attacks on the FFXIV servers, and later on to the actual ISPs themselves.

Okay so back to Patch Notes, they are not all boring. Some games actually have a ton of fun with their patch notes, and it’s just a fun thing to be reading when you are bored. Crusader Kings II is one game whose Patch Notes are genuinely hilarious almost all the time. Like this little jewel “-No longer possible for AI to plot to assassinate self (unless they are a lunatic).” Brilliant, and it’s actually relevant!

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday. Are the any particular Patch Notes that you remember just being absolutely hilarious? Feel free to share them below!

Video Game Tuesday: The Importance of Community Interaction

Hi all for this week’s Video Game Tuesday I’m going to talk about what a good Game Dev needs to do with their communities. It’s all about Community Interaction!

What not to do: Don’t advertise patch notes that are incorrect for weeks in advance of an upcoming patch and claim things are working as intended and that it was merely a misplaced decimal point. The Auto Rifle Buff in Destiny is the most recent example of Bungie’s latest fuck up and their handling of the situation was absolutely terrible. They claimed that it was working as intended, and the next day edited the notes to show what actually took place. It was a .07% increase to auto rifle damage rather than 7%. I don’t need to tell you how fucked up that is, not to even mention that such a small increase is so pointless as to make the entire change meaningless. Another thing not to do is blame your poor server structuring and maintenance issues on the players when it’s clearly not their fault. Another thing Bungie did this past week with the Oryx Challenge mode. There is a reason Public Relations is such a huge part of the business model of Game Developers and Bungie has been forgetting this for the last year on a regular basis. It’s disappointing that they have fallen to become a joke of what they once were.

Another thing not to do is to break your own rules that you set for yourself months ago, Square Enix did that with the latest Relic Weapon quest line in Final Fantasy XIV and it’s a disappointment after the wonderful way they handled A Realm Reborn and the launch of Heavensward.

What to do: Act like Naoki Yoshida (Yoshi-P) and be forthright in admitting your mistakes. Make up for it with earnestness and you will earn a lot of good will from your customers. In fact the way Yoshi-P has handled Final Fantasy XIV is such a good example that I’d love to see every game developer lead by such a person. It’d do the industry a ton of good.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday, check back next week for my Best and Worst of 2015!