While you're in this thread, I have one question regarding specifically patch notes dev diaries. I have noticed over the years that there are some changes that are made each patch but are not included in the patch notes. Typically these are smaller things like numbers changes, but they can still have a noticeable impact on how the game plays. The most notable example I can think of is in 1.5, when soft attack was changed. The relevant section of the patch notes reads as such (copied from the wiki):I am sorry but its literally out of my hands to decide :/. As I said I reported the Byzantium issue today, ill make a note about the Icelandic stuff but as explained above I can't make any promises.
As for DD's well, people don't generally like filler DD's, or well some people do but generally it performs worse. I would love to explain some industry stuff more thoroughly for example, but it takes time, garners smaller interest and so forth, same with minor hotfixes.Its also more of a marketing question and not a QA question so its outside my field
I would love to see exact numbers changes in situations like these rather than approximations or percentages (what hidden bonuses, some explanation would be good to understand exactly how much bonus attack was being removed). Sometimes numbers are changed without being included in the patch notes at all, which can lead to players confused about why something is different and what change they missed.
Sometimes features are added but numbers aren't shown regarding the new features. It's understandable that numbers wouldn't be shown in the dev diaries about those features since everything is subject to change, but the patch notes don't cover everything either. Many of these numbers can be found by looking at the defines (if you know what to look for), but for people who aren't adept at that sort of thing it would be nice to have a dev diary fully explaining new features with relevant numbers.
For example, here are the defines regarding how likely an operative is to be detected while performing different missions, something that would be relevant to a player trying to learn how to use the new features introduced in La Resistance:
Easy enough to figure out from this that, say, an operative boosting ideology is three times as likely to be caught than one building an intel network. But these numbers aren't visible unless someone goes looking for them, so a player might decide he wants to boost the USA fascist and then wonder why all his spies are being caught instantly. The player would get frustrated and waste time constantly rescuing captured operatives instead of boosting ideology. The player would eventually reach the conclusion that boosting ideology is impractical and he should have been using his spies differently, but if the information had been more visible the player might have made a different decision in the first place. Or just have the information available in-game. Operations have a risk assessment UI that shows if an operation is routine or dangerous, but nothing similar exists for regular missions.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I think a developer diary before each major patch explaining in detail relevant numbers related to each new feature would be greatly appreciated by quite a few people, or the inclusion of relevant new defines in the patch notes themselves, or making more information available to the player in-game.
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