Good bye Changelogs: Good or Bad?

I like to know what's added. People who like surprises don't read changelogs. When I have no clue what was added, I don't know what to/where to look for new things. Please reconsider.

 

Everyone relax, this just means that their future releases will be perfection incarnate, and there will be no reason to look through the new content for bugs or errata, therefore rendering release notes pointless. Who has time to keep the plebs up to date, we need to release content and release it before anyone has time to question the logistical shit-storm of undocumented near daily up dates....

 

I'm not too happy with this. If people are concerned with spoilers then frankly they shouldn't be playing at this point in development, or should exercise some self-control and not read the changelogs. After a few months or so of playing quite honestly the game is boring as shit as it stands. If I'm not aware of any new stuff to test I'm not going to bother trying to discover it for myself.

If it's too much work for the developers to type out every last thing, at least give us the bullet points or a brief synopsis of what each patch contains. The addition of new items isn't a big deal to me, but I'd like to know about new mechanics and tweaks to stuff like speed/jump height or other stuff related to the performance of the game (engine optimization and whatnot).

Chucklefish already has my money and I'm aware that my bug reports aren't going to be sorely missed or anything, but it seems like bad form to not keep the early access customers informed on the new content.

 

the specifics of those changes. testers and modders need numbers, not just a notification of some undefined change.

 

I gave my perspective, that's all. I'd like to have as much info as possible, but if it's too much work I'll be "happy" with the cliffnotes. I'm not going to get upset on behalf of the modders because that's not my place. It's very unfortunate for the modders, but I can't pretend to know about the nitty gritty stuff involved in coding, I just mash buttons and play with mechanics and try to break stuff so forgive my ignorance.

 

I personally really like discovering new stuff in updates, but in content updates it would be cool if they had a roleplay aspect to them, for example, if penguin raids of villages were added.

*Penguins have begun to grow bolder, attacking small settlements across the universe. Save them!

 

Any "statement" of the devs yet in this thread? Like they read how we "feel" about this decision? No?
Guess we should go again to reddit... wait... chances are big that the hivemind there will nuke your post invisible...

Again very cynical behavior of me, sorry for that.

But seing the incomplete changelogs of todays "patch" is just disgusting.

 

I do not mind if there were no changelog, but a forum or news post of a general idea of what got added in, (like today's post) would be nice

 

Todays post is an abomination and an abuse of the word "changelog". Its basicly saying "I am working on the game, but I have no idea what we are actually doing" ("Some stuff got added, some might not work, some will").
Its not even worth to be called information... But well lets wait till they add a new weather system or something... as stated by me in another topic: Wondering if they provide a changelog if they would add a "singularity" or "chronovortex" destroying huge areas of planets... wouldnt be too suprised if they didnt...

 

The heck biome has several new bush objects, and two new containers.

Is it that hard for them to write what was added?

 

The new biome's treasure chests are causing me to constantly crash, and as a result, I have no idea which mod is conflicting with it.

edit: I'm a member of several gaming forums, one of which has a Terraria thread and they showed the changelog that came with a recent content update and oh my god I drooled at that changelog. Not that it was Terraria, but just at how comprehensive and well, complete it was.

Why couldn't we get the other dev? He's clearly taking notes when fixing bugs to put into a changelog.

 

I don't really mind, i'd like to know but to be honest, given their new ideas for throwing out patches every couple of days, me and my friends can leave the game alone for a few weeks, come back completely fresh and explore all the new content. And i'd rather them be working on more content than writing lists for us for us to look at and go "mhmm, yup, more items. yup, definitely more items."

 

it does not take any time at all to have a text file where you document what you do as you do it. they have a team member who's sole responsibility is supposed to be communicating with us (but she's been doing a lot of other non-game related jobs as well). therefore, molly can compile the lists from each patch and organize it for us. summary patch notes (such as we've been getting" are fine.... so long as FULL patch notes are also somehow made accessible to us.

 

If someone want to be surprised what is he/she doing here at beta stage 1 at the first place. (To be honest at this moment to me the game feels like it should be at alpha stage).

 

Just saw the changelog for the update...

This literally does not inspire confidence at all. I'm making a understatement.

 

I do not change my statement. Change notes do require work. Is it a lot of work? Eh, not really. But its still what? half an hour? Every day? That adds up pretty damn quickly. I think the devs have more than enough jobs to do right now without us inventing more jobs for them to do because some whiney forum users are desperate to know what hats have been added instead of waiting for a few days and seeing what the wiki turns up with. Would i like to know? Sure, i'm curious, colour me interested. Do i care enough to badger and poke the devs about it and take time out of their day? Hell no.

If you could have a change log at every patch, or... 10 hours worth more content at the end, what would you pick? I'd pick the content, no doubt about it. The actual important stuff, the engine updates, you know, the stuff that will change mods and the way the game functions entirely, thats very important and they know that, thats being documented. But i honestly couldn't give a rotten toss about what new shoes they've thrown in when they've told us they'll be updating the game every couple of days with new stuff anyway!

 

The developers can't win no matter how they go about it, trying to pleasing the playerbase while keeping things timely. I do believe that it's a bit more crucial to post at least some information regarding update features (just enough to speed up the wiki-editing process!). Even something as small as introducing the new Heck biome as an underground mini-biome as opposed to a just 'biome' might avert some confusion, since I immediately assumed it was a planetary biome and I spent a few minutes searching for it.

 

I'm sure they are documenting all the changes for their own records anyway. It's not taking time away from development to just release what they are already keeping track of. It probably needs a slight reformatting or whatever to make it easier to read for us, so just hire an intern. They cost next to nothing and chucklefish is not exactly hurting for cash at the moment. The game is selling VERY well.

 

I'd like to disagree with your statement by saying I can write up a basic list of weapons by [Ranged] and [Melee], Add in [Biomes] and [Sub Biomes], toss in a [Clothes] and [Accessories], slip in [Blocks] and [Background Decoration] subcategories, add in [Tools], [Techs] and [Foreground Decoration], then maybe finish off with [Unimplemented, TBA] list of the same things with Copy and Paste.

That took me a whole five minutes to write up. Could I get more complex? Sure. But using that on any spreadsheet program and just writing in things then moving them over when they're implemented is extremely taxing to do.

 

Just a heads up, but you fall under "whiney forum user" too because of this post only : p

And "some" is definitely an understatement, 90% of the people that have been posting on these four pages, most of the time different users, have shown their dislike towards the idea of "simplifying" change-logs. If one idea gets such a massive amount of dislike in a timespan of two days, I'd say it's a bad idea.

By the way, keeping notes of what you do is not a matter of work, it's a matter of discipline, or in this case, the lack of it. It takes time, but it also pays off in the end. What the hell are people going to test if they don't know what got added in the first place?