First patch notes should try to include everything changed, updated if something was missed.
It creates a bad feeling logging in and your character is not in the same state. Although it was an almost innocuous miss this time, people logged excited to play start their play time by finding out they are a different weight class or encumbered even having to do a task before going to do their bounties/pestilence clear or whatever.
In a future update the missed patch communication could be something that won’t be so visible and more upsetting when people find out their favorite weapon has been “balanced.”
Communicating a change to items is better, but not best. I took for granted how legacy items in POE are such a good thing. Let people keep their items as they are unless they reroll them with an ember.
Having legacy items lets people log back in to their character with the items as they obtained them. It also allows the option to reroll them to the new version if they choose.
Legacy items allows agency for players to choose to keep their old items or change to the new ones. It will also prevent future patches changing what players played and rolled embers to have in a certain state. This will avoid any potential angry mob when a future change is missed in the patch notes and their items feel “bricked” in some way.
People are gonna be upset no matter what with balancing changes.
Legacy items are basically a way of letting early adopters cheat out of balance changes, and have a permanent advantage over later adopter players just because they found an exploit early. Just no.
Anger the people who want an imbalanced game, but it is important that the game be properly balanced for the long term health of the gameplay loop.
Early Access = Beta.
You signed up for not keeping stuff the moment you decided to beta test the game.
If you want to keep stuff, then wait for the actual official release of the game.
Steam labeling “Early Access” is misleading a lot of people into what it actually is, a beta test period for the game.
Please, developers, do not give into calls for FOMO items or design.
It works in POE, of course the main assumption here is that big content releases will be resets/fresh starts so that legacy items aren’t really part of tackling new content unless you play in whatever standard/no reset mode of the game.
I’m assuming everything will be reset and a fresh start for release, this isn’t about keeping anything from EA but solve this issue where they change items people “worked” to get in patches lacking info to even let people know what changed.
You’re assuming we’re having reset seasons. I sure as hell hope we don’t. I don’t want seasonal characters at all. A continuous progression design is so much better than Diablo/PoE style seasons where people just cycle through reset characters with every content release.
I like RPG’s where you can invest into a single character and carry that same character through the campaign and pick up from the progression you had when you finished the prior campaign and just layer into it.