Was Greater Conflag and Winter changed without notifying us?

So your saying the reason they forgot to mention the update is either:
1. They did the skill change last minute. I doubt they would forget to post the change if they did it just as they were streaming the update.
2. They forgot they changed the skill. Or they changed the two skills without changing anything else and the whole section of changed skills slipped through.
3. They intentionnally did a stealth update.
4. Some other reason. Typo that was forgotten, air headedness, whatever.

Now I can't figure out which of the top 3 is worse. And considering it's quite likely one of the top 2, that seems QUITE bad to me. I'd very much doubt they would forget to post something like "Ether Renewal now has a 30 second duration", but the fact that a problem like that might exsist is troublesome in the least.

Making mistakes in programing and website design isn't a capital offense. Not having any kind of review or error catching system in place for a multi-million person game seems like a rather large oversight. Or ofcourse they could just rely on us to do their beta testing when they roll their Builds to the live servers...

Good points. But thoese are the reasons I can think of, never said any of them were good or bad reasons.

Well Beta testers have been known to overlook and make mistakes about things. Same applies to the webprogrammers who look after the Guild Wars sites and post patch notes.

Same goes for the progammers who provide the list of changes.

Think this and all undocumented changes are a result of simple human error and mistakes do happen

But you right in the fact that mistakes shouldn't be made, but the fact is they do happen

I guess my whole point is that atleast more care should be taken posting skill changes, and hopefully more care in general about all changes, even tho most of them feel like easter eggs, which I really don't mind.

It's cool not posting everything for pve, but for pvp it seems obvious extra care should be taken. They seem to get every change to every quest, but I have no way of knowing if thats right.

Also I would be cool for an after-the-fact update. "We changed this to this and forgot to mention here, so we are telling you now". Not like they don't know they forgot to mention it, they read the forums right?

But of course that would have Anet admiting a mistake, something they seem quite bad at.

Edit: Sure, Gaile seems fine at admiting her companies mistakes, probably because she has experience in customer service and knows the first step to solving a problem is to admit to the problem.

If we accept this as true, the people responsible for those changes would seem very incompetent (due to the sheer number of undocumented changes). This most likely isn't the case, they just don't reveal many changes. Its no big deal. Most people have learnt to accept it.

The furor over the pet DP change was mostly due to Gaile's post at GWonline which seemed to imply that the testers were wrong and that pet DP was unchanged because they wouldn't hide such a big change from their customers.

Could you please give one reason why an update would need to remain undocumented ?

That's a pretty good idea.

Anet saying they made a mistake? Never

But yes your right, skill changes effect both PvE and of course importantly PvE as well, so its unprofessional for them to miss out any changes to skills in their patch notes.

I'm not asking for no mistakes, but that would be my pipe dream. What I am asking for is putting the the patch notes the changes that went undocumented in the past. Maybe have an 'almost un-documented' game updates section paralelle to the gameupdates page. Mistakes are inevitable. But confronting them afterwards isn't that hard.

I also ask for the original date GC was changed to 3s. Anyone, anyone?

Edit: I think we've talked this to death between us two...

A section on this site or GuildWiki would be helpful maybe?

Bots and farmers that sell on ebay. When they remove chests or add anti-farming code, it makes sense to no mention it to the public until atleast 1 week after it's live.

Thanks. Not that they would use it.

Already have undocumented changes for every update on GuildWiki, and some undocumented threads lying around. This specific problem seemed to slip through those cracks tho.

OMG stop this madness! This was a documented change!

http://www.guildwars.com/support/gameupdates/

July 13, Ranger Skill updates:
# Archer's Signet: no longer disables pet attack skills.
# Broad Head Arrow: reduced recharge time to 15 seconds.
# Determined Shot: now recharges pet attack skills if it misses.
# Equinox: reduced recharge time to 45 seconds.
# Famine: reduced recharge time to 45 seconds.
# Focused Shot: now disables pet attack skills when used.
# Greater Conflagration: reduced recharge time to 45 seconds.
# Lacerate: reduced recharge time to 45 seconds.
# Marauder's Shot: no longer disables pet attack skills.
# Oath Shot: increased recharge time to 25 seconds

The original poster listed update pages from May!

Everyone needs to relax, this wasnt a stealth update, next time read the GW.com site more thoroughly.

Case Closed.

OMG he's right

That change is documented.

i thought it was the casting time he was moaning about?

It is the casting time he was concerned with, which no one else cares about.

Lets say they forgot to add it to the notes on the update page, how are they going to remember when they have so much going on and other things to work on. They don't read everything on all the forums, they read what they want and ignore the rest of the moaning and complaints.

Maybe you should officially request (email them) that they waste their time going over every skill they changed since the games inception and report back on any updates they forgot.

Who cares, so they forgot to include it, everyone who cares knows about it and has adapted.. all 2 of them. Pull the stick out and live with Anets constant unperfectness like everyone else.

im confused.... what was the topic about?? PET DP? cast time? reset time? wait, did they change the energy cost???

j/k

clearly you dont pvp, gg you.

As I've said before and said again, I DON'T CARE ABOUT RANGERS!!! FFS!

What I do care about is 2 things:
1. People not knowing about the update and continiously posting on forums about a change.
2. Fansite listing of skills being all out of wack. Yes some fansites will eventually correct it, with GuildWiki being first(and only) place to notice. Some other sites might eventually catch on because of either this thread or because they noticed. Then what do you have? Some listing right some wrong and people being confused between the two unless they check in game. Some people won't check and just assume their favorite site is right.

How to solve these two problems? Post the change in the Update News and an appology for the mistake. Problem solved.

BUT STILL, DOES NO ONE KNOW THE DATE WHEN THIS CHANGE WAS MADE!

Current best guess: The update on the 23rd of May. Could be before.

Excellent ideas. I did a search for "undocumented" on guildwiki.org, and the results were (drum roll please) only 6 articles had the word undocumented in them... See for yourself.

http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Special...h=undocumented

Kinda makes me think all this uproar about guildwiki users catching thousands of undocumented changes is false.

Nevertheless I would love to see an article regarding undocumented changes maintained on guildwiki and would probably check it monthly or weekly.

I still give an A+ and 99% score to ANet their beta testers and patch notes. Compared to WoW where you have outrageous undocumented changes in the one-patch-every-three-months system they have there, I think Anet is doing a great job.

They changed it to GuildWiki Notes. Also, read what it says Gaile said about the pets. The dev team resposible "failed to follow procedure". Interesting. Rogue programers inside Anet? Problem with their update procedures?

Either way it's something that can be solved in the retrospect. But pet DP is another perfect example of doing the Update News retroactively so that past undocumented changed can be posted on the main pages so everyone can see, it would remove confusion.

With the change to warrior armor/shields/absorption runes can no one see a use now for Greater Conflag? Anti-warrior death toy.

God this topic is stupid. They do not do stealth updates on purpose just to make us go "WTF???" You need to calm down and relax on the caps....

They forget to add things by accident.....and your Greater Conflagration example was debunked above. Get over it and realize they tell you as much as they have documented. If you think its a simple thing to document every little change you make just so that the playerbase knows every little thing without ever forgetting anything, then you've never written a single simple program in your life and have no idea what you are talking about.

Stupid topic.....