Factorio Forums

Lore:
Today, after hitting that update button, I wondered why Factorio only presents the changelog window after a restart.
I do read the edit notes and while the update is downloading I just sit there and wait. The download is too fast to hop over to the forums to read the changelog there and too slow to keep waiting and staring at the screen.
We could use that time more efficiently. We're Factorio players, we like efficiency, right?

So here goes my
Suggestion:
Why don't you present a "Changelog" button in that menu which informs about updates?

Upon hitting that button Factorio would download the latest changelog and open the window respectively.
Or maybe hitting "Update" could always do that automatically. Downloading the changelog textfile seperately and displaying it during the download phase shouldn't be too difficult.

The advantage of a "Changelog"-button would be, that players can read first and base their update-decision on it.
Messages like "Fixed destroying rail with gate would corrupt save file." might make someone change minds from 'too lazy to update now, will do later' to 'well, good thing I read that just NOW. *update*'.

Conclusion:
Presenting the changelog during the update process is a matter of prioritising the download of that changelog-file and delaying the automatic restart (via button) for the player to finish reading.

Being the nerd that I am, I (almost) always read the changelog before applying an update. At the least this would give some reading material while it downloads and patches. Good idea.

There are also suggestions about having the update-check before the mods are loaded.

This is a good suggestion. Players need to be able to see the changelog before deciding on whether to update, since doing so might break mods and / or require you to start over on a new map, and things like that. It's a little cumbersome to have to go to the website and read the changelog over there, when you have the game already open and ready to update and display the log once you are done. In the same dialog where you click the update button, there needs to be an extra 'changelog button that opens the changelog.

I am some weird person who always reads entire changlogs, including bugfixes. Having the changlog quickly available would give some good reading material.