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Developers, We need more clarification on a patch note please.


tumpai

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In the patch notes for 2.2.2 it is stated that Bioware has made ''Multiple environmental art changes have been made across the galaxy''. It would be nice if a Developer or a Community Representative could elaborate on this change more to us then just saying it was included. Whether it is a significant change or not I would still like to see what was done in game no matter how large or minor it is.

 

Thank you

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Hi there tumpai,

 

This is actually a great question, and I'm a bit surprised it's not come up before. The direct answer is that the note is a conglomeration of several small art fixes, and we often add a note like this to give people in the studio their props for fixing the whole darn galaxy almost every patch. These small things are not always visual, and sometimes they include things like sound effects, text (such as spelling or punctuation errors), etc.

 

To be far more detailed though, when we do a query for patch notes, one of two things can happen:

 

The first thing that can happen is that the query has only a few small fixes. In that case, we'll generally leave them out all together. Why? Because they're exceptionally minor and go completely unnoticed by most players. (There are examples below to illustrate what I mean by "minor" here). That's not to say we'll not go ahead and add them when the bug is minor but amusing. For example, we fixed a bug in 2.2.1 where the ground sounded like dirt where it shouldn't:

 

The Ziost Shadow Mission Deck has been cleaned and footsteps no longer sound as though players are moving through dirt.

 

The other thing that can happen when we pull notes is that we'll see several (or many) small fixes of this nature, and that's where we'll consolidate. It can be on a particular planet ("Made many art corrections on Makeb, fixing issues like floating rocks and trees, map holes, and incorrect textures."), in an instance ("Made several art corrections throughout the Operation to fix issues such as map holes and incorrect textures."), or scattered everywhere ("Multiple environmental art changes have been made across the galaxy.").

 

To illustrate a bit further, I'll provide a few of the exact fixes that were made in the last two patches alone to spur the three quoted notes above:

  • Ilum: Western Ice Shelf: A seam can be encountered on planet Ilum at the given coordinates.
  • Makeb: Telemur Mesa: Floating antenna present in the Telemur Mesa Heroic - Regulator Foothold area.
  • Operations: Oasis City Spaceport: A texture is missing from the top side of the elevator, allowing the player to view outside the game world.
  • Ilum: Western Ice Shelf: A texture is missing, allowing players to enter the rock and see through it. (It's interesting to note that when drilling down into this bug, one has to move the camera around to just the right angle to get this to happen.)
  • Makeb: Imperial: Descent into the Core: Object from the indicated location in the "Maintenance Shaft" area has an improper collision with a metal object placed on the wall.

 

If we were to list out every fix of this nature, it would make the overall Patch Notes exceptionally long and unwieldy (both to write and read!). Game Update 2.2.1, for example, had almost 100 fixes of this nature, and when they're made en masse we want to be sure that we call it out. You can find examples of these types of notes for visual, sound, and text fixes going back to before launch.

 

Now, not every art, sound effect, or text fix falls into what I've listed above. Things that are very visible will generally get their own note. Anyone who has encountered the headless, floating-eyeballed NPCs since 2.2.2 should expect that to be noted, for example.

 

I hope this answers your questions and provides a bit of insight into the Patch Note process.

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Hi there tumpai,

 

This is actually a great question, and I'm a bit surprised it's not come up before. The direct answer is that the note is a conglomeration of several small art fixes, and we often add a note like this to give people in the studio their props for fixing the whole darn galaxy almost every patch. These small things are not always visual, and sometimes they include things like sound effects, text (such as spelling or punctuation errors), etc.

 

To be far more detailed though, when we do a query for patch notes, one of two things can happen:

 

The first thing that can happen is that the query has only a few small fixes. In that case, we'll generally leave them out all together. Why? Because they're exceptionally minor and go completely unnoticed by most players. (There are examples below to illustrate what I mean by "minor" here). That's not to say we'll not go ahead and add them when the bug is minor but amusing. For example, we fixed a bug in 2.2.1 where the ground sounded like dirt where it shouldn't:

 

The Ziost Shadow Mission Deck has been cleaned and footsteps no longer sound as though players are moving through dirt.

 

The other thing that can happen when we pull notes is that we'll see several (or many) small fixes of this nature, and that's where we'll consolidate. It can be on a particular planet ("Made many art corrections on Makeb, fixing issues like floating rocks and trees, map holes, and incorrect textures."), in an instance ("Made several art corrections throughout the Operation to fix issues such as map holes and incorrect textures."), or scattered everywhere ("Multiple environmental art changes have been made across the galaxy.").

 

To illustrate a bit further, I'll provide a few of the exact fixes that were made in the last two patches alone to spur the three quoted notes above:

  • Ilum: Western Ice Shelf: A seam can be encountered on planet Ilum at the given coordinates.
  • Makeb: Telemur Mesa: Floating antenna present in the Telemur Mesa Heroic - Regulator Foothold area.
  • Operations: Oasis City Spaceport: A texture is missing from the top side of the elevator, allowing the player to view outside the game world.
  • Ilum: Western Ice Shelf: A texture is missing, allowing players to enter the rock and see through it. (It's interesting to note that when drilling down into this bug, one has to move the camera around to just the right angle to get this to happen.)
  • Makeb: Imperial: Descent into the Core: Object from the indicated location in the "Maintenance Shaft" area has an improper collision with a metal object placed on the wall.

 

If we were to list out every fix of this nature, it would make the overall Patch Notes exceptionally long and unwieldy (both to write and read!). Game Update 2.2.1, for example, had almost 100 fixes of this nature, and when they're made en masse we want to be sure that we call it out. You can find examples of these types of notes for visual, sound, and text fixes going back to before launch.

 

Now, not every art, sound effect, or text fix falls into what I've listed above. Things that are very visible will generally get their own note. Anyone who has encountered the headless, floating-eyeballed NPCs since 2.2.2 should expect that to be noted, for example.

 

 

I hope this answers your questions and provides a bit of insight into the Patch Note process.

It's great to know issues like these are being continually fixed (though I'd submit to you that people would NOT find their being listed and specified overly-cumbersome to read), it gives the game a veneer of polish that I think is essential in order to attract new players.

Edited by Machine-Elf
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[*]Ilum: Western Ice Shelf: A texture is missing, allowing players to enter the rock and see through it. (It's interesting to note that when drilling down into this bug, one has to move the camera around to just the right angle to get this to happen.)

 

I crawled inside of a large rock on Hoth last nite, okay, I drove my Kurtob speeder inside and it completely hid me. I was quite amused and have declared it my hidey-hole so no /bug report for you! (I really hope you read that in the Soup Nazi's voice)

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I crawled inside of a large rock on Hoth last nite, okay, I drove my Kurtob speeder inside and it completely hid me. I was quite amused and have declared it my hidey-hole so no /bug report for you! (I really hope you read that in the Soup Nazi's voice)

Reminds me of my Makeb run tonight... had to go to some spaceship after

 

dropping all the droids of the lightbridge

 

I just put up auto-move and started chatting, thinking the shuttle would stop me. Alas, I went straight through it and just prevented myself dropping down to my death off the shuttlepad (by sacrificing the message I was typing though).

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If we were to list out every fix of this nature, it would make the overall Patch Notes exceptionally long and unwieldy (both to write and read!).

 

I partially agree ( translations ! ) and I partially disagree :

 

Consolidating too many minor fixes into one thing lets the whole thing appear as if there had not been done much work at all. The image of "laziness" is created. simply, because few fixes are listed at all.

 

In my opinion, it would be far better to list as many fixes as posible. Why ? Because of the simple reasons :

 

- both transparency

- and let the players actually see that work is done.

 

I have found in a few times things and places I just could not understand. What has happened there ß I just couldn't understand it. And no-one was able to give me an answer for that.

 

My "worst" example was the PvP area on Tatooine :

 

- 2 traders have been removed (never mentioned in any patch notes !)

- in the place of 1 tader there is (or rather . was, when I was there for the last time) a droid lying on the ground which seemingly could be clicked on, but there never happened any thing.

 

No-one was able to explain to me what had happened there.

 

So, I'm holding the opinion that *some* "unnoticed fixed" imho *do* need to be shown and explained ...

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My "worst" example was the PvP area on Tatooine :

 

- in the place of 1 tader there is (or rather . was, when I was there for the last time) a droid lying on the ground which seemingly could be clicked on, but there never happened any thing.

 

No-one was able to explain to me what had happened there.

 

 

FYI, killed by player.

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Consolidating too many minor fixes into one thing lets the whole thing appear as if there had not been done much work at all. The image of "laziness" is created. simply, because few fixes are listed at all.

[...]

So, I'm holding the opinion that *some* "unnoticed fixed" imho *do* need to be shown and explained ...

 

 

I agree about consolidating too many fixes, and that's why we take it on a patch by patch basis. Some patches may list out more than others, or we may include multiple notes of consolidation around different areas to ensure that the work done is given credit.

 

Also, we try to ensure that only fixes are lumped, and things that are merely changed are noted (like the note about Kira's Focus Pants in the last patch). For things like your example, there's always a chance that a note was missed, rather than something that was consolidated. Removal of an NPC, for instance, is not something that is the same as what I gave for examples of "minor". Unfortunately, that happens sometimes in the writing process, and we do our best to catch it when it does and add the notes in where appropriate. If you notice something of this nature, feel free to report it via /bug and then here on the forums so we can look into why something changed without a patch note; it could have been unintentional and actually a bug!

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I agree about consolidating too many fixes, and that's why we take it on a patch by patch basis. Some patches may list out more than others, or we may include multiple notes of consolidation around different areas to ensure that the work done is given credit.

 

Since part of the issue is that lumping hides the magnitude of the work done & changes made, I suggest that you include a counter. So perhaps say, "Fixed 2+ environmental issues on Ilum" or "Corrected a total of 15+ clipping issues on Tatooine, Belsavis, Balmorra, and Coruscant." The "+" gives you leeway to not be pedantically correct while still sharing the magnitude of the effort and changes made.

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Hi there tumpai,

 

This is actually a great question, and I'm a bit surprised it's not come up before. The direct answer is that the note is a conglomeration of several small art fixes, and we often add a note like this to give people in the studio their props for fixing the whole darn galaxy almost every patch. These small things are not always visual, and sometimes they include things like sound effects, text (such as spelling or punctuation errors), etc.

 

To be far more detailed though, when we do a query for patch notes, one of two things can happen:

 

The first thing that can happen is that the query has only a few small fixes. In that case, we'll generally leave them out all together. Why? Because they're exceptionally minor and go completely unnoticed by most players. (There are examples below to illustrate what I mean by "minor" here). That's not to say we'll not go ahead and add them when the bug is minor but amusing. For example, we fixed a bug in 2.2.1 where the ground sounded like dirt where it shouldn't:

 

The Ziost Shadow Mission Deck has been cleaned and footsteps no longer sound as though players are moving through dirt.

 

The other thing that can happen when we pull notes is that we'll see several (or many) small fixes of this nature, and that's where we'll consolidate. It can be on a particular planet ("Made many art corrections on Makeb, fixing issues like floating rocks and trees, map holes, and incorrect textures."), in an instance ("Made several art corrections throughout the Operation to fix issues such as map holes and incorrect textures."), or scattered everywhere ("Multiple environmental art changes have been made across the galaxy.").

 

To illustrate a bit further, I'll provide a few of the exact fixes that were made in the last two patches alone to spur the three quoted notes above:

  • Ilum: Western Ice Shelf: A seam can be encountered on planet Ilum at the given coordinates.
  • Makeb: Telemur Mesa: Floating antenna present in the Telemur Mesa Heroic - Regulator Foothold area.
  • Operations: Oasis City Spaceport: A texture is missing from the top side of the elevator, allowing the player to view outside the game world.
  • Ilum: Western Ice Shelf: A texture is missing, allowing players to enter the rock and see through it. (It's interesting to note that when drilling down into this bug, one has to move the camera around to just the right angle to get this to happen.)
  • Makeb: Imperial: Descent into the Core: Object from the indicated location in the "Maintenance Shaft" area has an improper collision with a metal object placed on the wall.

 

If we were to list out every fix of this nature, it would make the overall Patch Notes exceptionally long and unwieldy (both to write and read!). Game Update 2.2.1, for example, had almost 100 fixes of this nature, and when they're made en masse we want to be sure that we call it out. You can find examples of these types of notes for visual, sound, and text fixes going back to before launch.

 

Now, not every art, sound effect, or text fix falls into what I've listed above. Things that are very visible will generally get their own note. Anyone who has encountered the headless, floating-eyeballed NPCs since 2.2.2 should expect that to be noted, for example.

 

I hope this answers your questions and provides a bit of insight into the Patch Note process.

 

Thank you very much Amber for your reply!

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(though I'd submit to you that people would NOT find their being listed and specified overly-cumbersome to read).

You might want to change that to "some people". Personally, I would find it overly-cumbersome to read through each and every visual/audio fix they made for any particular patch. I"m just happy to know they are working on visual and audio discrepancies. I don't need to know what they all are.

 

As someone else suggested, they could indicate an approximate number of issues that they fixed for the patch. Whether it be a planet by planet basis or a like-issue (ie; fixed 42 texture issues on Belsavis, Tatoonine, Makeb, and Tython) basis, doesn't really matter to me.

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