Make it clear what does an client update include

As a Roblox developer, it is currently hard to tell whether an client update brings new features such as redesigned UI or completely new features, or if it’s just an routine update that fixes some bugs. You can not even tell what is included with an update if you do not look at LuaCow’s posts on the devforum.
Here are some changes that I think should make updates more clear to users:

  • Redesigning the current version numbering; instead of just incrementing one number with each update, you could use the Semantic Versioning system or a system to actually tell you whether it’s update “8 major, 2 minor, 55 fix” and not just “This is update #455.”
  • Adding [Minor] and [Major] tags to release note posts, or even pinning the major updates to the category. That could be like 2 seconds to writing extra but can save minutes of users trying to find if it’s an really important update.
  • Like some games do, adding browsable release notes to the update window. It’s boring to just look at a screen saying “Upgrading Roblox”, and not even utilize the time to read what is new.
  • A “patch notes” button in the escape menu to view what’s new.

These quality of life changes could make a huge difference for people that don’t even know that the only way to view release notes is to look for LuaCow’s posts on the devforum. I originally thought that there were no patch notes at all and we just had to guess what’s new.

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Bear in mind that not all features are turned on immediately. A client update may include feature X, but it won’t actually activate until a fast-flag has been enabled.

This makes update logs a little more difficult as you’d then need to manually check if it actually is on or not, particularly when something goes wrong and they turn off the flag but the feature still exists in the engine.

That’s why they use #updates to let us know when there’s new features coming, when to opt-in to beta testing, and when that feature is fully released. That’s far easier to many developers than trying to track a specific flag and specific version numbers of both the client and studio.

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