What should the role of patch changes be?

Question

We've talked about the effect of patches on old questions/answers a couple times before.

However, after recent discussion I am more concerned with questions about the effect of the patch itself.

I can see two sides to this issue:

• On one side we have speculation before the patch (which is bad) and once the patch releases the information can become out of date (via successive patches)
• On the other side, this is deal with a real problem. Frequently patches spurn change in game-play. This knowledge continues to persist for players who have not played since the patch, as well as for people watch replays and don't understand why the game play is different (and might get the wrong idea).

Given our dodgy track record with supporting multi-player games with patch notes (League of Legends, Call of Duty Black Ops, etc), do we think that we should support these sorts of questions on our site?

Example

• Are melee and or unarmed builds more useful now than in fallout-3
• Starcraft-2 patch 1-1

Answer 1

I agree with Wipqozn that future patches shouldn't be on-topic, but that's a separate issue.

I think there's material differences between questions like the two listed and other patch-related questions: the former asks a general question about how the patch will affect the game as a whole, while the latter asks about a specific change and how it will affect a specific issue. If you'll forgive my Minecraft bias, the latter would consist of questions like:

• Where can I find tall grass?
• How to build elevators in single player mode?

But even StarCraft questions like:

• Since patch 1.1, are Hydras more viable against Terran?
• What zerg units counter Archons after patch 1.3.3

These questions, I think, are uncontroversially on-topic: wow, starcraft-2, and minecraft get these questions all the time and they're pretty important for understanding the game. Games that have perpetual updates are going to ellicit questions about specific issues once new changes are rolled out.

The questions you listed are a bit more tricky: they're not too localized (if they were, all patch-related questions should be closed as well), and they're not polls: they're not asking "What's your favorite feature from 1.11?" or similar.

The problem I have with those questions is the topic scope: I don't know what aspects of the changes to those units is going to affect your gameplay. Something I might find relatively minor might be a huge deal for your play-style. I effectively have to read your mind to guess what a correct answer to the question would be.

And because of that, they're invitations to create monolithic questions about the patch. But we should be encouraging multiple questions about the specific changes and how they relate to specific problems.

That is, patches are an excellent opportunity to show the true value of Gaming.SE: that when you have a question about a change that affects you, instead of trying to participate in that 300 page thread on Battle.net, ask it here and get a custom answer about the specific issue you're having.

So a better way to reword the StarCraft II question might be, "Given change X to unit Y, in patch 1.11, how do I pull off strategy Z?" where X, Y, and Z are very specific things. That'd turn a pretty general question about all the things one might care about related to a unit to a specific question of the form we generally like.

Answer 2

Questions before the patch should definitely not be permitted. As you said, they are speculation and are no different then questions asking about features in a game which has not yet been released.

As for asking questions after a patch has been released, I'm a little more uncertain. However, I only see one way for them to be acceptable on the site: that the question specifically references which patch it is talking about, this includes the release date of the patch and the version number (if it has one). This is to avoid any confusion on behalf of readers as to whether this is for the current patch, or a previous one.

In response to @tzenes comment I"m updating my answer:

The first question should be closed as too localized. It's asking how to prepare for specific future changes, so the moment the patch is released the question is no longer of any use to anyone. On top of that, the amount of time the question would be useful is very short to begin with.

As for the second question, this is not a question about patches, so I don't believe it applies.

As to tzenes last point, I agree that we can just edit in the patch number and release date, and so we should always edit that into patch related questions.

Answer 3

I would expect and hope that questions like this would only come after major patches. We can expect for this to not happen every week, which should keep the possibility of "patch questions" do a reasonable amount.

I agree with other members that future patches are off-topic because it is all just speculation on our part. However patch questions are on topic because that address a specific need, player strategy. Take SC2 for example, we have plenty of questions about build order or about unit counters. There are far too many of the questions for people to update these answers after every major patch. And yes I realize that not all these questions are affected by the latest patch, but some certainly area.

Now if a user is using a specific strategy and realizes that it is affected by this patch, then they have every right to ask a question about how to deal with it. This is no different than asking a build order question, it is just more localized. Additionally, patch questions generally deal with strategies or specific units, other users who read the answers get a better understanding of the game mechanics.

So in short, patch questions are very similar to already approved questions and address a specific need.

Answer 4

The problem is that these types of questions are too localized to an extraordinarily narrow situation that is not generally applicable to the worldwide audience of the internet.

There are drawbacks with keeping too localized questions:

• Later patches could revert/implement changes changes that invalidate information.

• The amount of people that benefit from the question is extraordinarily small and have alternatives like actually playing the game; as a result, the question is noise to almost all visitors.

Unless you rather want a community full of generic patch questions, I would suggest to close them.

Note: Balance questions have already been discouraged as they are usually not actual problems, the listed examples are essentially balance questions and they don't represent actual problems anymore.

Also note: The patch notes should be clear enough by themselves, answers are usually subjective.

Answer 5

The two examples you gave are essentially poll questions and hence shouldn't be allowed.