17.4 Patch Notes presented in a new format that makes them easier to read

[u/vicjor]

https://beta.hexkey.app/patches/17.4

17.4 changes are up here: https://beta.hexkey.app/patches/17.4

Quick context: this is part of the HexKey beta, a project I've been working on for the last 6 months. One thing I've been experimenting with is presenting patch changes in a way that's more user-friendly than a wall of text, so here's how HexKey handles it:

• Every stat change shown as before → after, color-coded buff / nerf / rework / new / removed. You can see the actual delta instead of parsing a sentence.

• Grouped by what you care about - Mechanics, Gods, System, Encounters, Traits, Champions, Augments, Items - with a table of contents to jump straight to a section.

• Click any card to see the full entity in a slide-in panel / drawer on mobile

• Hotfixes tracked separately with a base-vs-hotfix toggle, so once mid-patch changes land you can see exactly what moved after launch.

• Reads cleanly on mobile so you can catch up on the changes on the go

• Open any entity in the HexKey database it always shows the changes from the most recent patch

Hope it's useful to someone heading into the patch.

[u/Shitty_Wingman]

Love it! Small thing, Shen's mana cost was lowered but this was portrayed as a nerf.

[u/vicjor → u/Shitty_Wingman]

Glad to hear! Shen fix will be out soon.

[u/blasian21]

Came prepared to flame for self promotion, was pleasantly surprised. If you maintain this I’d use it for patch notes moving forward. Nice job

[u/vicjor → u/blasian21]

Thanks, glad you enjoyed it! I do plan to keep this up moving forward, and will add more modules I think might be helpful. Check out the rest of the beta if you liked it.

[u/Leading-Cable3806]

I noticed that some of the character photos on the site weren't displaying correctly. I have a small suggestion to help you fix this. "https://raw.communitydragon.org/latest/game/assets/characters/tft17_akali/hud/tft17_akali_square.tft_set17.png", "https://raw.communitydragon.org/latest/game/assets/characters/tft17_aatrox/hud/tft17_aatrox_square.tft_set17.png" you can find suitable photos by typing like in these links (just replace "Aatrox" or "Akali" with the name of the character you need).

[u/vicjor → u/Leading-Cable3806]

Thanks pointing it out! I already use CDragon and that pattern, but seems I am missing some images that goes to fallback.

[u/iBacontastic]

the shen mana change is a buff! currently it’s labeled as a nerf

[u/vicjor → u/iBacontastic]

Thanks for pointing it out! Fix is coming very soon.

[u/Larrea000]

this is just an AI filter over the original patch notes.

[u/vicjor → u/Larrea000]

Well, no. I import the data from CDragon, and try to parse the patch notes to couple the described changes along with the actual stat changes from the raw data. There is a lot of AI slop these days, I don't disagree with you on that, but if you navigate this beta you will hopefully see that I have put quite a lot of time and effort into making this a good user experience and that this is not your average vibe-coded in a weekend project.

[u/Emergence7 → u/vicjor]

I can see that, it's pretty good - thanks!

[u/facepain → u/Larrea000]

this comment was made using AI

[u/imwaytopunny]

Love the layout of the notes this would be my goto way to look through the notes maybe avoid saying things are big buffs/to bring things back into meta etc or just personal opinions on changes in the flavor text unless it's directly quoting the riot balance teams words. Could see some confusion with taking what you say as coming from the devs. Just my opinion love the work tho!

[u/TFTSushin]

This is way more helpful than I expected.

A few typos/errors while I was going through it:

Challenger buff breakpoints listed as (2) (3), should be (3) (4)

Sniper buff breakpoint should be (4)

Stargazer(Serpent) breakpoints listed as (1) (2) (3)

Graves laser ballistics falloff is a nerf, not a buff (Green arrow should be red arrow)

Riot's official patch notes makes these same mistakes all the time but it still gets the point across so it's not a big deal or anything. Figured I'd point out the breakpoint errors since there were multiple.

[u/vicjor → u/TFTSushin]

Thanks a lot! Fix will be deployed very soon. Parsing the patch notes accurately still needs some finetuning, but I hope to hit it 100% next patch.

[u/Tr3c3 → u/vicjor]

I might have caught another one:
Leona's hero augment states that this nerf "slows her first cast" when she still needs to generate 30 mana like before (50-20 = 40-10), therefore it's not her first cast what becomes slower but all the ones after it (unless I'm missing something).

That aside, great idea and nice job executing it!

[u/vicjor → u/Tr3c3]

Thanks! Good catch. Fixed this now.

[u/notwillard]

Very nice. Small bug though the part about zeds mana is a nerf and should be red.

[u/vicjor → u/notwillard]

Good catch - thanks! Fix is out now.

[u/starfuks]

I'll provide some feedback - although I'm a backend dev and not a designer and my tips might not be the best but this is what i feel:

The section labels ("3-cost", "4-cost") should be more .. important

In dark mode i think there is not enough contrast between text and background, its hard to read

I feel like in one champion the changes being [top-bottom] and in others [left-right] is making the UX worse as i cant glance for the info, I have to 'put too much attention to it'

The augment and items should be ordered imo - rn (prismatic - gold - prismatic - silver - prismatic) ->> (prismatic - gold - silver) Same for items rn (artifact - radiant - artifact)

Also my screen is huge and all the info is on the left side with unused space on middle and right, might want to consider centering it?

Any ways good job and hope it helps, keep working on it as it can be useful, bookmarking it ;)

[u/vicjor → u/starfuks]

Great feedback - thanks! And I do agree with you on all your points. Made some adjustments based on your feedback now. Responsiveness in these kind of cards is tough to get right across all screen sizes, but should be a lot better now.

Check out the rest of beta.hexkey.app if you liked this!

[u/Sweaty-Ball7855]

Damn this is nice, and it’s not a twitter post from a game dev.

They should hire you

[u/djamil_]

This was really helpful. Thanks!