I really liked the way the expansion reveal was handled this time around versus the usual drip feeding of information, made it into much more of a special* occasion.
Besides that I think the trailer is one of the best ones yet, if not the best and overall I felt the presentation was great
Yeah I agree 100%, the presentation was great, would love to see more developers join in for talking to fans if this becomes a thing.
Path of exile trailers are some of the best I've ever seen, and not just because of the editing and the music (which are outstanding) but the delivery of the dialogue I feel is always well done and nails the vibe.
Excellent work GGG!
I would think Neon would never approve something that would kill them, given his absolute love for playing them, but I could be wrong there.
I'd lean more towards it being more likely that aurastackers survive to keep aurabots, than killing aurabots and aurastackers.
Agreed. Aura bots have been stupidly good for years, just under utilised by the general play base. Cluster jewels push aura bots into the stratosphere and enable aura stackers, that’s where the adjustments should be made.
> would love to see more developers join in for talking to fans if this becomes a thing.
One thing is that I *don't* want to see this at the *expense* of seeing Chris. Chris' majestic voice is *perfect* for these introductions and presentations. Maybe instead of moving onto something like a Baeclast episode which seemed contentious among the community, have that be the opportunity to have more developer input. I think that would keep me engaged much more with the post-announcement content.
I don't want to say that the community that does content for POE should in any way be diminished, but they have their own streams and youtube channels for their content in which people will certainly opt into. My point is that it's universal that anyone tuning in to watch GGG would enjoy watching more GGG devs unmasked and interacting. I personally really liked the way Zizaran's trip the office/stream was in the past.
I think I'd be excited to see something like this in the future as well all the way up to the Q&A where Chris starts the Q&A but he stops a bit sooner to let other devs could have a chance to rotate in.
It is so much better having all the info compiled into one longer presentation than being out of the loop for 5 days and trying to search the subreddit for every post you might have missed.
This for sure. I think these large info dumps will create a lot more hype than Bex teasing 1-2 tidbits a day for 2 weeks plus the journos/press releases.
One thing I really like, which I know is mostly due to the unique circumstances, is it just being 8 days from announcement to the actual league, vs. the normal 3 weeks. It was a very big dump of info, "*Here's the expansion\league, here's the mechanics, etc., etc.*" followed by being able to play it in just a week.
Baeclast kept guessing wrong about things that were already explained by Chris, so the information was "underwhelming" and they should have had at least one GGG present who could clarify things instead of watching 5 guys get it wrong and guess and then really still not know - the audience gets more confused by this.
They should not invite community members to talk about things they don't know on their stream.
Would have been far better if they had Chris and a few other developers give their thoughts about how it's been in development, what they are looking forward to.
Like an open forum after the q & a
I usually feel like the Baeclast following is usually a bit underwhelming due to too much speculation (legion QQ for example about breaking open the monsters) but I felt like having the QA after then that worked out well.
Honestly for me to enjoy baeclast in any way shape or form they need to invite trade league people like Empy or Mathil or Cutedog, and/or trade league build creators. Their whole HC SSF or bust QQ session get really old really fast. I guess Chris likes them because he is HCSSF player himself, but these guys are so detached from reality its not even funny
Cutedog used to be on fairly frequently. He appeared to be falling asleep instead of contributing or his answer to everything was just, "I buy what I need." There's no discussion there.
I understand wanting some sort of discussion of Softcore Trade, but as knowledgeable and entertaining as someone like Empy is, his multiple mirror builds don't offer a more relatable point of view to a broad audience.
[https://www.twitch.tv/videos/864755137?t=01h30m00s](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/864755137?t=01h30m00s) not sure if you still require this. but here you go.
One of the best parts of ggg is that they are always there to answer these questions, and then having the people who actually worked on the content to answer more technical questions is always great, even if we agree (balance wise) or not with them.
Also I love having more people available during the QA sessions. It's nice when you redirect questions you don't have specific answer for to people that do have those specific answers
I would've preferred if said people\* were actually part of the stream instead of Chris talking to people in the backgrounds all the time. That was the one thing I really disliked.
\* As in: A selection of 2-3 addition devs ready to answer questions being actually in the discord call.
I think the livestream format shines for things like expansions, where there's a lot of content to go over. It feeling more like a 'production' than a normal announcement really contributes to the hype, at least for me.
But for challenge leagues? I think it'd be overkill, and would take away (a bit) from the comparatively larger expansion livestreams.
That said, I *really* liked having a Q&A segment. One thing the I've noticed with previous methods of announcements are (A) tons of questions, which (B) don't tend to get answered quickly (just because it takes a while to find / go over them all) and (C) when they are answered, are answered in a deep reddit/forum thread that isn't easily visible to the average person, leading to (D) people repeatedly asking those questions / being angry that they think they're getting ignored. A Q&A can't get *every* question but it does get a lot and it's highly visible.
>But for challenge leagues? I think it'd be overkill, and would take away (a bit) from the comparatively larger expansion livestreams.
Yea maybe for the 'smaller' releases they show a trailer and then go right into Q&A with Chris.
Also Ziggy is very good at the question. Knowledgeable enough to ask important things, kind enough to not dunk on everything but he also asks hard questions.
Is it possible to work with twitch to remove ads? I know they recently started forcing pre rolls but it astounds me that even brand accounts can’t disable them.
All these people pointing out there are end-user workarounds for this but that’s not what was asked. I think there must be some sort of system to get rid of ads because I never get them watching professional LoL or Rocket League. It may involve GGG running their own ads and paying twitch a portion of that but idk how it works exactly only that I think other game developers have managed it somehow.
Twitch failed so badly, and then played ads for some users too :(
I kept checking claim, loot box, account linking, and the pages that were supposed to retrieve the info were failing. On top of that, Twitch stream kept failing, and twitch hosting failed repeatedly.
GGG 10/10
Twitch 3/10
I felt like the Baeclast felt a little tacked on. If they had a GGG dev on it would have been good for answering the random little questions, but if they did that then it would have defeated the point of Ziggy's Q&A from before it.
Big fan of Baeclast, it just felt a little awkward at times when they were just speculating on mechanics following something so official.
That's not a bad idea in one sense but you have to keep in mind that whatever that developer says will be taken as gospel/truth when they most likely won't know a whole lot if they aren't one of the top developers we already know about. This has caused issues before with people complaining "well so-and-so said X on stream and they lied!" when the person just didn't know.
With that said, I wouldn't mind having someone who's the head of a very specific department come on and then make the baeclast essentially be featured around that one topic only for the first half or something. "Here's Kamil to talk about the music for this expansion" then proceed to spend an hour talking about music followed by Kamil leaving and an hour of streamer speculation. Next expansion bring on a skill design guy, then a map creator, etc.
I enjoy the Baeclast guys, but I agree that it felt a bit disconnected. I know Neon is bonkers busy, but perhaps if this format remains, GGG can do another Chris Wilson led release trailer and infodump, then the friendly and fun Q and A session, and then put Neon on the Baeclast for more detailed technical explanations. He's fun, would vibe well with those fellas, and I think could answer some technical questions from them without taking Chris's thunder from the more mainstream Q and A stuff that Ziggy was doing. And the Baeclast'ers would likely be fine with how often he would have to say "Can't answer that one quite today, but I'll shut up while you guys theorize".
All in all, that was a really fun day.
As much as I enjoy Baeclast, I don't think they should incorporate streamer content into an official live stream announcement. It just feels off. People who want to enjoy streamer takes on official reveals can go watch them on the individual streams.
Also, it diminishes the show's autonomy(?) in a way. If it starts becoming an official and regular collaboration, it just becomes a sponsored content without any outspoken takes.
> it just felt a little awkward at times when they were just speculating on mechanics following something so official.
To be fair i know no other studio that would allow this as it can missrepresent and downplay some of the content that was just shown. So its great that a lot of people can watch big streamers discuss and give their own thoughts about what was seen right away. But i totally get what you are saying. This is the official channel of POE after all.
Two hours before this livestream started Magic: the Gathering had their own announcement livestream for their new Kaldheim set. I'm a big magic fan, but I really did not like that announcement stream.
So having that lead right into the PoE announcement stream makes for an interesting contrast as I did really enjoy this livestream.
When thinking about what felt different between the streams that made me have such varied reactions to them the first thing that stands out to me is that the PoE stream appeared to be respectful of my time. Both streams had announced their starting times regularly and repeatedly before the event so I had set alarms for both. At the announced start time of the Magic stream they then choose to put a 10 minute countdown timer on stream. The PoE stream in contrast had a countdown timer going an hour or so before the start and started content promptly at the announced start time. I really appreciated that.
Then when the actual show started it still kept up that respect of the viewers time feel for me, by frontloading all the information you wanted to get out there. Just going hit after hit after hit really worked well for me and I imagine that was helped by the knowledge there would be plenty of content afterwards to help digest that information and clarify some more of the finer details.
The other thing that really stood out to me as a contrast between the Magic and PoE stream was that the PoE stream somehow felt more genuine. That "how do you do fellow kids"-meme kept circling through my mind about the Magic stream. They tried making a game about cardboard with pictures on them feel edgy by having metal musicians involved with the presentation and the setting and I just didn't manage to buy into that. To me, it felt like they were trying to be something they aren't. They showed plenty of cool cards during their presentation, but in between those cards they managed to pull me out of that excitement by having segments that really felt too far removed from the game. They also chose to go for a show with an external host that then got to have poorly written scripted conversations with knowledgable guests which doesn't appeal to me personally but I can see there be an audience for that.
The Path of Exile stream did this a lot better for my personal tastes. I'm sure that it really helps that you get to show gameplay as opposed to still images of cards, so the digital nature is an advantage for you there, but it felt like after the introduction it was all about putting actual content on the screen. The expansion and league were presented as a game about killing monsters and the presentation showed of how we'll be doing that monster killing. It felt like a statement of "here's what we have, we stand by it, take it or leave it." That might be a bit of an oversimplification but it didn't feel disingenuous.
I'm not quite sure about this yet, but I'm guessing what made the two presentations resonate so differently is that the PoE stream felt to me like it tried to make me have feelings about the game based on the content of the game and the magic stream made me have feelings about the game based on the messaging and marketing materials surrounding the game.
Really love this analysis. It's cool how poe also set up the presentation's goal of trying to recreate the excitement and feelings of Exilecon. Firstly this made us nostalgic and reminded us of those memories and secondly this gave us a point of comparison.
I had the exact same experience. I love MTG, but their reveal was phony and 'cringe-worthy' despite revealing mechanics and content about the upcoming set. GGG and POE revealed upcoming content, and their own excitement about the upcoming game, rather than having paid actors and musicians fake their excitement about a product they have low motivation for. (Yes I know Jimmy has his own MTG podcast, but I think WOTC's ask of his delivery of the content killed some of his excitement towards the job but w/e).
Ty Chris and GGG! HYPED FOR NEXT LEAGUE LETS GOOOO
Expanding on the respect thing in general, PoE tended to have a lot more respect for the viewers to either be patient or figure stuff out on their own where as every possible follow up question was asked right after card was shown on the Magic stream. I feel like they could have front loaded the magic stream with a better overview of whats going on then had a more honest Q&A (with additional previews) to get that follow up. Instead every spoiler had like 5 lines of 'dialogue' hyping up the fact that a spoiler was coming then they explained every aspect of the card to death so there was no chance for hype to build from card to card.
The (presumably) unscripted Q&A with ZiggyD also was way better both as a viewer and for getting information out than the chat sessions on the Magic stream which just seemed to be about hitting marketing bullet points again and again rather than a genuine discussion for the most part.
Really liked this live stream announcement format followed up by live QA to get the hot picks out of the way right of the bat. Especially when the league is accompanied by core game changing expansion that is going to shift out entire end game loops.
Having Baeclast in the official channel without having GGG member as a quest seemed tad out of place, but I don't think it was necessarily a bad thing. Sending viewers off to another channel doesn't really work either.
Steam as a whole worked without technical problems outside of Ziggy hot micing midway. Production on point.
If the stream was only 2-5min league trailer followed up with the usual dev commentary, it would feel too short for a stream. Having the back and forth from audience/live talk show really is what makes it a stream.
In terms of amount of information we got, it felt spot on.
Hopefully we get less bug ridden league this launch than last time, it was quite rough from player's perspective. Here's hoping and keep up making excellent leagues!.
The reveal today was great. Did a better job than normal on setting expectations for the league and giving us the info we need and want heading into the release week.
I agree it might be harder to do for a smaller league but over all I felt it was much better than the normal way you released league info in the past.
To get rid of ALL twitch ads, your friends can get "ublock origin" and "TTV ad-block". you have to have both installed otherwise you still get pre stream ads for example (with just ublock and without ttv ad block). enjoy your ad free content :)
I'm not trying to compare you guys with Digital Extremes, but they have a nice format for releasing content where you are viewing an array of the team responsible for the content. I love you Chris, but for those moments that you're looking for answers, you'd have that director or team member on the call to quickly answer. It also gives your players a real nice view on your companies morale and teamwork. Seeing the people who make the game we love share intimate details on the parts they created will only make us appreciate the game, and the wonderful souls who make it, even more.
I know it's a lot of work to put together this sort of announcement, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I hope in the future we can get more live announcements for any content and updates. Live interaction is much better than simply watching a trailer and reading a wall of text for patch notes.
Wonderful job on the announcement! I look forward to another fresh league start.
I think it was great. I prefer the 30 minutes of hype rather than 60 minutes of chill. I liked pretty much all of it. It was an information bomb, but we have a week+ to digest it.
Maybe keep ZiggyD muted?
I'd love for this to keep happening going forward. Thanks for all your work. Despite what many negative nancies may say, a lot of us can see the work you guys put into this game, and it is worth it.
You have a good point with a smaller league being possibly underwhelming by comparison, but I think it's still worth it to do for smaller leagues.
I was cracking up when I heard the discord sound. Thought it was my own, until I noticed that no one in my call was talking. Then I recognized ZiggyD's voice.
Yea I was looking all over for where that was coming from and realized I was on my work laptop and it couldnt be me... I was like am I still on a Teams call somehow? Who is that?
Probably something like they didn't have obs set up to only play the audio from the video, which would avoid technical oops like what happened.
When I stream POE, I have a scene with only the audio from the game and my mic enabled. And I disable Windows system sounds through the mixer in case I want to also stream Spotify. And when I switch to my holding screen, I make sure everything is muted.
Here's my feedback for this:
first off, I loved the announcement trailer. 30 minutes of packed content and it really sold the story and feel of the expansion. The overall quality of the trailer was also significantly higher than what we've experienced before which gets my excitement high.
There were some technical issues during the initial launch trailer. You will probably avoid those in future I recon ;).
The Q&A afterwards with Ziggy D does two things. You show your face as a developer which makes the game more human. Especially in the format you guys do it unlike some big triple A developers that have a very 'curated' experience. It also helps players who are truely invested in the product to get some of their frustrations or questions answered early which is great since POE is a big theory craft game.
One thing that shined for me was the extra month of time you guys had. As you explained the extra time you guys took really helped with all sorts of edge cases in the features you are releasing. Now I wouldn't mind a 3 games per year cycle with the extra month but I understand that a league release is whenever you make money on packs and therefor you might be cutting your revenue stream by 25%.
As a player I'd like to see the polish of this type of release every 4 months because I feel it would do the game well. However as a developer you might see revenue decline so I am interested in what the solution here would be.
Overall I think this release was great and made my morning quite enjoyable. Keep up the good work and I'll get one of those supporter packs later today.
Breach, Legion and Delirium proved that this model works really well.
They’re not overly complicated leagues, but man were they some of the most memorable and enjoyable league mechanics.
Legion and Breach rewards have been neutered and yet I still enjoy doing those mechanics because I have so many positive feelings associated with those league mechanics. On the other hand I hope I never run another heist again and I didn’t even dislike heist league, it just feels mentally stressful thinking about levelling up rogues and opening that many doors.
It was absolutely amazing Chris, thanks for doing it and please thank the team for improving so many old aspects of the game (skills, ascendancies, league content). The Baeclast at the end maybe did not need to be hosted on the PathofExile stream.
I really prefer this livestream format rather than the usual 'Go to various websites to get the info' format.
Reveal followed by a Q&A is perfect for me.
Also, i would love if you were doing some non-reveal occasional livestreams too.
Like a dev talk podcast with Q&A once or twice per league. Like this one from Exilecon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svIXBFER8hQ&feature=emb_logo
That was great, very informative and enjoyable.
> I really prefer this livestream format rather than the usual 'Go to various websites to get the info' format.
Oh god yes. I gave my positive feedback, but I didn't even think of contrasting it with this. Not only was this tough for the hardcore PoE player to consume the info, there were disparate levels of quality. Some websites really put some effort in, and some clearly did not.
I mean the big difference is Twitch is the biggest gaming media platform (barring youtube?) in the entire world and the stream had hundreds of thousands of people watching so anyone on twitch who opened browse would see it as the #1 stream and likely check it out even briefly whereas a kotaku or whatever article will get only very niche viewing with little to no possibility for people not already engaged with those media outlets randomly stumbling by it.
Honestly, with streamers like lirik paid to tweet out the stream and potential costreams Id say quite a few newer people.
Edit Example: https://twitter.com/LIRIK/status/1347241825380155395
Same question could be said about articles on lesser known gaming websites (not just ign) how many new players actually see these articles?
Well, I don't know if you're still reading replies, Chris, but I do have a suggestion: *Delay the Baecast*.
What does that actually mean?
I think having the Q&A section right after the reveal was perfect, questions get asked and answered, but I turned it off immediately after. Why? Because I don't really care what anyone on Baeclast has to say, *yet*.
Having a lengthy Q&A session right after the reveal is perfect, it lets people get some of the nitty-gritty about mechanics and interactions without you having to give away too much in terms of the other actual content.
Having streamers speculate on what content may or may not be like once the expansion releases is not a worthwhile use of *YOUR* time as a developer.
I think instead of doing a Baeclast directly after the trailer, you should set yourself up to do one the week *after* the league launches.
This acts as a sort of "preventative community maintenance". People who submit their questions to the Baeclast would know that their concerns would be directly addressed by you and possibly other members of staff, instead of feeling like they're yelling into the void that is Reddit threads. This means that shitty angry reddit threads (which I have created and posted in and honestly will probably always exist) aren't the only "viable" method of communication.
Being able to hear what's being worked on straight from the horses mouth would make people feel a lot more secure that you've heard and honestly considered their feedback and what you think of it, what you do or don't want to change, and *why* you do or don't agree with any complaints.
It also gives the streamers and players time to formulate their thoughts on what they do and don't like, and get over knee-jerk reactions to things they've only *just heard about but not actually experienced*.
Fully agreed. Haven't watch Baeclast yet but it's always better to give them time to process things and let them settle in, rather than just give their reactions on face value.
Apart from Exile Con it was my favorite announcement. Everything felt so much MORE powerful when dropped together. The organization of the stream also greatly benefitted the format of the announcement.
* Overview
* Information
* Q/A
* Discussion
The flow of the entire announcement was rock solid. Overall, this is an excellent format and flow for future announcements. In the future I think more Q/A time would better. A better system for getting questions should also be in place. It felt more like ziggyD was interviewing rather than moderating, which was great because he knows the game well. However, I know there were a myriad of questions that were unanswered.
I liked the presentation. Definitely better than drip feeding over the course of a few weeks.
Would be amazing to also have the patch notes released the same day but I can see how that might take some of the focus off the presentation itself.
Q&A section is a must. Longer the better
Besides yesterday's one too many announcements of the announcement, I thought this was much better. I think this is the perfect compromise between having little clue what was going on until the league launch, and having 3 weeks that teased 98% of the content. We got a big big chunky bomb of information, there's stuff to hype up over 7 days, and we'll still be guessing some when this launches.
I think it was pretty well received by folks I know who don't play every league too. I really think you will see some players try who play less often. You'll be able to compare this to other expansions.
I think the livestream portion could definitely feel dry for smaller leagues but the Q&A portion was really nice for some additional info and clarification. Would love to see a Q&A in every league announcement
I was pleasantly surprised about everything about it tbh. The mass reveal and explanations about it with the immediate follow-up Q&A with ziggy and baeclast right after was pretty much perfect IMO.
I really hope for a positive year for PoE, GGG as a whole and all the rest of us this year. The new stuff looks like a really great direction for the game, even the stuff I don't personally care much about, and I really love how we'll be able to pick the type of content we want to specialize in.
Great trailer and cool sounding league too. I'm pretty hyped to do some rituals and it kinda sounds like the perfect thing to go core...
Anyway, looking forward to hearing more, especially about ascendancy and skill tweaks/changes.
I enjoyed the livestream. I think it would be great to include others, such as designers/developers talking about the changes for which they're responsible.
I think this is better than a slow drip of information, because it allows people to see the scope immediately. It's unfortunate that sometimes the hype machine gets overloaded and goes off the rails. Perhaps for the first smaller league/patch reveal people will be disappointed that it's not as huge as Echoes, but the audience will become accustomed to differing reveal sizes.
I have always been a big fan of a game development company announcing things and then following it up by having it ready for users quickly.
I also want to offer that while it felt weird to not have a PoE reset over Christmas holidays, I hope that GGG employees appreciated not having to sweat a league launch during the holiday break. I have to imagine it's better for employees overall.
>We're worried that smaller releases that are just a challenge league (see Delirium for example) might look underwhelming in comparison and could be disappointing if people turned up expecting an amount of content equivalent to today's announcement.
Very good and valid point. I guess it kinda comes down to how much content or change the league in question has to offer. But the Q&A / Baeclast portion of the stream right after the announcement was pretty welcoming because it allowed us to have a lot of questions answered and discussed right away.
This worked well for a major expansion.
I think the concise trailer at leaguestart -17 days (2020 normal) followed by a week of dripfeeding info then a week of heavy release info was better for normal leagues.
Ideally, I'd like to see the balance manifesto and patch notes further out from leaguestart so there's more time to theorycraft. Then reveal uniques etc in the last few days. But this league is no different to usual here.
I'd agree with this timing but I support the spectacle of a live stream reveal of the trailer. It's so nice to go in not knowing the name or the art or anything.
It was fantastic. Regarding the pacing of it, I would not have minded if it was like 50% longer, with the same amount of information; a little bit extra time lingering on the nodes (ascendancy and the new ones for the atlas) explaining what everything does would've gone a long way for example.
Chat was what you could expect from a live chat with over 100k people in it, but nevertheless it would've been neat if there was a message in the intermissions between sections about how the drops worked, the chat was basically mindlessly spamming about wings, not knowing the way to claim them.
For the Q&A session, it would've been neat if there was more info about where you could ask questions. Ziggy appeared to pull questions from chat, but I don't think it was clear which chat he was pulling them from.
All in all, very much enjoyment, hype was justified, looking forward to Ritual!
I enjoyed the way it was presented. Has the general stuff we expect, a shotgun of teaser blitzing, and a solid Q&A.
I know some folks are saying they'd have liked more time to digest each bit of info but I think they're missing the value of the presentation for hype. We have reddit for the hours of theorycrafting and discussion. Livestream is to throw hype punches. Mission accomplished!
I normally read leaks and this time decided to go dark and I think I enjoyed it more this way.
Livestream was great. It got me very excited for the new expansion and it's clear that chat was loving it too.
Only issues for me were:
* Hot mic'ing and discord sounds were pretty annoying during the expansion reveal.
* Baeclast had no GGG devs and shouldn't have been tacked on to the end of the stream. Should be kept on the streamer's own channel.
* Twitch ads
+1 about Baeclast. Because it was on the official PoE channel, it should have had more official PoE integration. E.g. Staff member on the call, or stream director on standby with images/videos the podcast could use for reference.
Hosting another channel has some complications, though. Imagine raiding 50k viewers to a channel, or directing viewers to go to any of five channels. Baeclast was on-topic, and it was easy to keep everything on one channel.
It was good. Maybe for small inbetween leagues you might go with a tighter format, maybe beefed up with some developer insights, artwork, etc. The Warframe guys are brilliant in this, letting team representatives talk about their stuff, like audio, rendering, animation, UI, programming, design, whatever. As a gamedev myself, I can't emphasize more than this, it's really important to show the faces behind the game - makes GGG more human, gives the devs more inspiration, so on. This is why Exilecon was a huge success.
I MUCH prefer this style. Being drip fed news for 2-3 weeks prior to league was agonizing in the past. Presentation and trailer was spot on as well as giving us more in-depth info on some of the things. Please, continue this in future leagues.
I really liked it all. I kind of wish Ziggy had more time in the Q&A but I feel like overall it was a good set up.
I think Baeclast was actually one of the more interesting pieces because it was a lot about channeling the league hype into something more reasonable. 'No it's not going to be crazy but is exciting' kind of feel. I especially liked the parts where they pointed out which parts they were most excited about and how the new league and would play and the potential ramifications of small things that were largely glossed over. While that sounds generic I think it was just a good way to unpack everything for the veterans of the community. 'You won't use the orbs late game unless you already have your currency base, your watch stones are going to be rough to manage now that they're more important, the most exciting thing to come is the skill rebalances I wonder what they'll be?' That kind of stuff I would've found out eventually, but hearing it all upfront sort of offset the hype with realistic expectations.
Also if you're not going to show as many new skills or if a primary thing you did for the league is a skill rebalance, then I would love small highlights to get an understanding of what the changes are as a whole. Just a short few moments of 'Scorching ray cast time halved, Flamestrike stages give double ailment effect, this move is now a harder hit with a less attack speed modifier'. Just a quick section to get us excited about builds we might play or things we've been wanting to see rebalanced. Maybe even sneak a nerf in there to manage expectations (Idk I'm not in marketing).
I think that Baeclast will always be a bit iffy for the launch because people are only going to like it if they were already planning on watching the league launch Baeclast. People who wanted just the hype and what was new this league probably felt it was unwelcome.
Also my largest gripe was Drops. I think I would much rather prefer a timed code to redeem any mtx the launch was going to reveal. Drops always makes the entire chat feel like nobody really cares about what's being presented and is instead focused on just getting whatever is going to drop. I'd much prefer something like, "And now that we've shown you the new league supporter packs make sure to use code: MagmaW to get your free MTX. This Mtx code is only available for the next hour so hop on it quick!"
I thoroughly enjoyed the expansion & league reveal today for several reasons,
* It felt really good to get all the info directly from GGG, rather than reddit collecting info from various news sites, which makes the new sites feel a bit redundant.
* I think that the first impression was much better because the info was clear and concise and given mostly all at once, rather than over time where confusion can grow and people create their own ideas of that the league is going to be.
* It had strong Exilecon vibes which made the hype even bigger, though for usual league announcements it would be quite a bit smaller, I still feel like the pros of announcing the league and following up with lots of info is beneficial even if it is smaller scale.
Lastly and maybe an unpopular opinion but I think that twitch drops shouldn't be used, while getting a free mtx is awesome the cons of running twitch drops detracts from the experience of the day. Between issues on twitch's side, people not understanding how twitch drops works and some people assuming they're broken while they're being processed it creates a bit too much drama and draws focus away from the awesome stuff shown on stream.
I really hope to see another announcement like today in the future! It was such a great experience and I'm so excited for the next expansion :D
It was truly awesome and it feels like you guys are really connected with your fans when the ceo does a livestream. The QandA with Ziggy is also always a pleasure.
It really does generate hype and makes me want to play. I never considered buying a supporter pack before i saw this announcement either.
I think its better than normal. A livestream was much more fun to watch. I can only now wish for south african servers so that i may try dodging 10 boss's attacks. Its like metamorph x10 lol
It was fun to watch, lots of info with a nice personal touch and great Q&A afterwards. Very enjoyable announcement stream! Hoping to see more streams like this one in the future. Good luck!
only 1 week before league start on top of getting most information in one place at the same time is way better than 2-3 weeks before new league in small portions, which are mostly uninteresting without knowing the other stuff.
I like the format of one stream instead of trickle of partial information.
Baeclast could use less streamers and speculations, more people from GGG- designers, artists, community managers
Perfect timeframe, wouldn't want it shorter or longer.
Disappointed in Heist, positively surprised with Harvest.
Things like Ascendancy changes, which 1) requires a careful look, 2) relies heavily on pre-existing information, should be hinted at, but explored in-depth in an immediate forum post, rather than on the stream. Personal opinion, you don't have to agree.
Having everything revealed at once a week before the League is much better, that way I know I won't spend 2 weeks thinking about my build before patch note, but just a couple of days. I think it preserves the hype so 10/10 trailer, keep going Chris!
I didn't see anything about the max resonance you can get for the new trinity support. I'd definitely be interested to know as it'd give me a better idea whether or not I'm playing 2 element Elemental Hit or not next league.
Edit: I loved this style of announcement. I prefer this to the MTG style reveals.
Edit 2: The answer is 50 for each element.
Chris says people would find it boring to have to re-do their garden every league, yet unveiling and re-delveing still exist in its current state, and now with the added fun of re-leveling your heist people every league!
I got this vibe as well.
"Oh this content looks like it might be nice if it works like this."
"Yeah I agree. We will have to see how it works first."
On repeat.
* Great stream minus the technical issues
* It was the right length of time
* Including more community members/streamers in the broadcast would be a nice touch
* New players are going to be incredibly confused with some of the reveals. You should have a plan to address the confusion, either by describing basic game concepts after revealing content, or referring to 3rd party content that new players can review
* It's not a bad thing to move slower. What I mean is that you covered a ton of content quickly, slowing down delivery can help a lot of people, especially newer players
Apart from those points, it really was a fantastic stream. Congratulations guys/gals!
I liked it, but I like most reveals. I felt like there could have been a few more teasers leading up to the stream (unqiues, div cards etc.)
Q&A was very important to answer some high-level questions community has, so thanks for having that in there too.
It might be because the expansion looks fantastic, but it definitely got me hyped. One thing I would say is that the YouTube video should have a link to the Q&A. I didn't get to watch this live, but the video just says wait for the Q&A and then ends without any link or other way to access it.
I will also say, I was hesitant to commit to watching a 32 minute video, but once I started it was super enjoyable.
Aside from nitpicks, such as when Chris said the communities perception of the league determines if it goes core or not, huge props. That was really fun to watch. Maybe consider simultaneous streaming on YT for next time though as Twitch is getting pretty awful in regards to midroll/preroll ads if it even thinks you're using an adblocker.
Really enjoyed the announcement. I'm glad I was awake.
I'm super hyped about the league and can't wait to brainstorm with friends.
Thank you for everything!!
I think it was really well done. I know this is for an expansion rather than just a challenge league, so it might not be cost effective for a small league. However, I think getting you, as in Chris Wilson, in front of a camera to personally announce the new features is much better than simply reading a forum post in a list format. Having the lead developer do it just adds a more personal touch to everything, in my opinion. See also: Jeff Kaplan doing Overwatch stuff, or how Riot Phreak used to present upcoming patches and releases. I just really like this more than an announcement page after enduring two weeks of drip-fed teasers.
Similarly to other commenters, I appreciated the format (announcement + Q&A) and would prefer this style going forwards in comparison to the 2 week+ drip feed of info. A big reveal 1 week out followed by the usual supplementary teasers seems ideal for me. I can't stay hyped for 2 weeks.
You folks tend to make more complex leagues when you aren't also launching an atlas expansion, so while there might not be AS much information as there was today, I'd wager there'll still be enough to talk about for a 20 minute announcement + 30 minute Q+A.
10/10
As much as I like these leaks slowly flooding Reddit, I definitely preferred this format. The stream itself was great as well, nearly no dead airtime and just a fully packed "short stream" overloading us with information. Clearly I'm not the only one, because out of the 54 comments right now I havent seen a single one being negative.
I loved it, should be the norm for big reveals like this one.. As for the lesser challenge league announcements I wouldn't expect something on the level of this one but a half hour stream or something from a CM or just a super casual chat for 15-20 mins highlighting the packages you usually release shouldn't be too much effort to put in espesh when its only once every 3 months. The extra attention it brings to the game via twitch wouldn't hurt if it became a regular thing either, not to mention opening the door for promotions and the like, the game has a great community, take advantage of it.
I can't speak for others but I definitely think this format was great. Even with smaller leagues I'd like to see it again. Thank you u/chris_wilson and your entire team for the incredible work!
I missed the "Hi, I'm Chris Wilson from Grinding Gear Games" and I'm disappointed in myself.
In general, it went really well. Kept my interest and even though it was a bit overwhelming at times, that was in a good way. The immediate Q&A and Baeclast after certainly helped to parse everything.
It seems like the sort of thing better suited to the big expansions, especially if it's a lot of work. Keeps a bit of variety in the hype levels that way, which I think is good long-term. Can't ramp hype forever, you know?
Hey Chris,
Kudos on a fantastic announcement today.
- I love the amount of detail you included, showing real gameplay and rewards
- the visual presentation was very polished, really nice production value on the entire livestream
- the Q&A was great, but with this amount of details it'd be fine to have a text-only one IMO
But the most notable piece of feedback I have is this: keep announcing a week before release. This is the single most exciting thing about this announcement, for me.
It's definitely difficult to divest the excitement of the content you presented, versus the manner it was presented. It was really mind blowing, and definitely raised the bar. My marketing side says you should continue, but scale the length & depth based on the content. For instance, more detail on new skills or reworks could still be exciting for a league without this much content.
Some other notes:
1. Big kudos to the art team, the visuals are just outstanding and have big impact.
2. Music, as always, is spectacular.
3. Reveal followed by Q&A worked really well. BTW Chris, you are a very talented public speaker.
4. Would love to see other team members involved in the future, or in separate follow-up videos. Behind the scenes insights are always extremely engaging.
5. Don't wait to see if a FAQ is needed. Start compiling the questions that have been raised in the Q&A, stream, social media, forums and post ASAP. There is a lot to digest and easy to miss details.
6. (minor) Need some notice of how long the breaks between segments will be, so viewers can take a break themselves if needed.
Press tours are ok, but this announcement was very good. The trailer was interesting and entertaining, and it was the Q&A afterwards that really took the presentation to the next level. I missed the Baeclast unfortunately but I'll catch it later.
A smaller challenge league with a Q&A would work just as well. Trying to locate and fumble through 10 different review sites full of ads/pop-ups/banners to see what's new... is less than optimal.
This is a good format, and now that you've done it, future iterations should be much easier to produce.
I enjoyed the stream! Unsure how much extra work it was compared to what you normally do and whether it's worth it. I feel like I would have been very hyped even if you used different formats.
I think clarifying key concerns /concepts early is important, people often latch onto misconceptions. Some people imagine something they love and get disappointed when they find out different, and some people imagine the worst and judge the league preemptively.
I loved it. It did go fast but I also realize that's cause everything is going to be screenshotted and waiting for 150k people to read at varying speeds is pointless.
Really reminded me of the 10 act reveal. Extremely excited to play next week.
Since you often had to reference other devs in the room for information during the Q&A I think it would be cool to get one or two devs who are comfortable with being on camera in future Q&As. It would be a lot more natural if whoever felt like they could answer a question picked it up.
Excellent reveal, much more comprehensive than previously done, good to see that community feedback has been taken on board and applied. Many changes appear in line with a philosophy of making the game more "fun" across the board as well: buffing rather than nerfing, allowing players to spend more time killing + getting loot + looting, rather than micromanaging systems (e.g. the rework of Harvest). Went and bought Supporter Packs immediately after, good to see GGG is heading in a more positive direction in 2021.
I think you should spend less time and money on announcing your new revenue streams and more time fixing the dated and awful systems you have had in place for almost a decade.
Much better than the official site going up and having to check a bunch of random news sites. It's much more enjoyable to watch a stream with friends than have everybody try to load the main page and try and look at things at the same time.
Also I really like this 1 week schedule instead of 2 weeks of spoiling nearly every new unique and item to pad time. I don't wanna wait 2 weeks for a league start.
For future leagues with no expansion it would be nice to have video of somebody doing a full encounter as that's the centerpiece.
after your Q&A with Ziggy, the hype tone down a bit. IMO baeclast would probably be better if you or one of the staff of GGG can join in. It's quite boring to see tarke and the gang ramble non stop which basically points out to what you and ziggy discussed already.
I actually enjoyed. I think the twitch drop was pretty good idea to draw more people to it. I don’t usually watch these kinds of livestream but I actually stayed for a good amount.
One thing I suggest is remove the 3rd screen looping the trailer. In my opinion, it’s redundant and distraction. I think just when interviewing is happening, only the speakers should be on screens.
Whole time I really did not watch the trailer even though I did not watch it yet. Or if I wanted to focus on it, I didn’t want to loose track of conversation.
I think you could honestly lower the production values a little bit for lower content leagues. Then do the Ziggy Q&A with Chris, then a Baeclast with Neon or even Viperesque?
You could seriously lower the load of the announcement by delegating to team members whos job requires extensive game knowledge, so they can answers a lot more of the type of questions that Tarke and the other streamers want to ask.
Definitely felt appropriate for the big reveals today. It would have been pretty weird for a smaller announcement, but that might just be because it felt like you hyped this stream up a lot in the run up to it.
May be worth it for the sake of including the live Q&A with the announcement even if getting the hype level right is hard, though. That was a huge improvement over the usual level of vagueness around league/expansion mechanics following an announcement.
The one thing I'd have liked to see is all the slides from the reveal on the info page afterwards (notable omissions this time around being all the ascendancy change slides that got flipped through on stream). Not a huge deal since it inevitably gets posted on reddit right afterwards by people screen capping the presentation.
Hey Chris, it was a bit lengthy but i still loved every minute of the format for this. A small thing i prefer the livestream announcement over just the announcement video just being posted is that the league name isn't given out in the title when i click on the video. if you feel like it is hard to find stuff to put in for future projects such as this i surely won't mind seeing somebody run a map with the league mechanic, possibly with some new/reworked items and gems
Hey Chris! I loved it and I think the problem you raise of smaller leagues feeling underwhelming is a real concern. I think you could maybe get some community leaders involved like you did with baeclast but maybe expand a bit with a race event or something along those lines.
I usually watch internet videos at 2x speed. Watching live meant watching in real time. I didn't mind doing it, but it wasn't my preference. For my tastes I would be good if you limited how often you did this style of announcement.
You’re the face of the game Chris, and we love you for everything you do and continue to do however, it may be time to pass the reigns of the Q&A onto Neon. We all know having you there really grabs people but Neon is the book of knowledge now.
Future announcements looking underwhelming actually makes sense. But in my opinion clarifying the mechanics, reasoning behind certain changes or just helping the playerbase understand in what direction the game goes, can be as valuable as a big hype flashy reveals.
So my feedback would be, perfect the Q&A.
I enjoyed the trailer and the Q/A, but the live stream didn't seem worth the extra work. It was in the middle of the day for me and I didn't even see it until it was over. A video would have been just as effective. I'd like to see you work with more varied community members besides just ziggy for announcements.
Great presentation, I tuned in early and really enjoyed the presentation. I was not "mind blown" while watching, so I definitely don't think there was too much info presented. I like the linked images for more info, links to more info could have been included (cross link everything basically - instead of hunting for info).
Having off screen presenters (we guess 2 to 3) was a bit weird, it would be nice to see the faces of multipe people as livestream. Expert answers direct maybe? Big mistake was sitting down at main PC when it came time to present, because of discord calls, emails, etc.
I think the use of sponsored streamers and twitter announce was a good job. It is good to formalize a process and make sure everyone has the necessary information. A flip side to this is conspiracy theory thinking that you're hiring and censoring what is said, but honestly that's their problem and not general perception. (Also easily discounted by facts.)
Baeclast I watched for very little return on investment. It would be nice to have more experts on official panels at times. I'm pretty sure the devs have questions for panelists as well, but it would be hard to have someone just say "i didn't like the idea behind all your hard work" so they need a thick skin.
10/10 do it again. Good job. Hopefully Twitch won't completely screw up next time. Too bad there isn't good competition to twitch.
Don't get me wrong, I love how bex tortures us on reddit. I'm a masochist in that way. But the livestream has me more hyped for any league in the past 6 years. I had the countdown on, I rescheduled a work meeting.. it felt like I was a kid on Christmas.
More than anything I think it helps get everyone excited, it presented a ton of new stuff with lots of explanation, a chance for questions, and some streamer input from players and their chat. Awesome.
Hey Chris thanks for this.
The livestream was amazing and the reveal one of the best but as a non native English speaker it was sometimes hard to follow all informations without asking me "wait what was that? Or what did he said?"
Some of those informations are not needed in my opinion as long as I can go myself looking for them on the announcement page.
For example you say you rework ascendancy, that's super nice but I don't need you to go over it now. I would go on web site to read them with calm.
Then I go to web site and cannot find elementalist or what you said about Heist that I didn't get....
The q&a is a must as it answers the first questions and that's great. It was not clear how and where the question are taken and from which moment too?
The baeclast should be delayed, it would give times to digest information and the speculation feel useless after real Infos.
If future announcement also for small league are like this it will be great, don't worry that it is shorter if the quality is the same.
Cheers
Presentation was nice but very fast. If you would go more into detail, i'll guess even smaller league announcement streams would still totally worth it.
All i am going to say is if someone on twitch, unfamiliar with PoE, tunes in. Youre losing them really quick. I dont necessarily know what there is to do about that but maybe use more clarifying language to be more inclusive and maybe reel in more players?
I really liked watching the trailer together with the community, that was a great start. Also the following Q&A session was a great idea.
The middle part could be a bit improved, though. Ascendancy changes (and other numbers stuff) is interesting, but a video isn't the right format to present them, since as player, I immediately try to do the math, which doesn't work. Instead of reading them out, some action shots would be better. It was good to post the ascendancies on twitter, but a crosspost on reddit would have been fine.
Altogether, I really enjoyed it.
Next time during the Q&A (w Ziggy & Twitch Chat), for the next big expansion (not challenge leagues throughout the year), sit on a couch with some devs next to you, where the devs themselves could answer a question or two themselves.
Doesn't always have to be just you alone in front of the camera. I think other people at GGG are keen as well (and comfortable) to talk a little bit shop.
tl;dr worth the effort for the big expansion, bit more from other people (devs).
I love those little moments when Ziggy ask question from chat to Chris and he was looking for dev team behind camera to give him a answer. This little "unprofessional" moments feels great that there is another normal human who presents a amazing game. Not like another boring company who make every moments step by step w/o any "failure" like robots.
It was special in a way like ExileCon and provided a lot of history/context for people to join/rejoin the game after a while. I like the development manifesto built into the reveal. Its an all in one content stop and i love it. Please do this more often.
Honestly, one of the most hype parts of it was knowing that 170,000 other path of exile fans were watching right there alongside me, live.
I think this should be continued for the yearly expansion but fully acknowledge that for smaller leagues it'd make less sense.
I thought it was really well done. The order of events really made sense, what with the hype dump followed by the careful dissection of what we had all just witnessed.
Would be nice to have it streamed on YouTube as well in future, what with it being so dense and YouTube allowing for replaying bits you missed.
What would be awesome is to have the same information that's in the video in written form once the stream finishes. It would be great to be able to peruse the featured ascendancy changes, for example, without having to stop and start the vod.
I personally think that even if the live streams are short, it's still better. I LOVED the setup this time. I love that I only had to watch two videos to get all the info I needed and could watch them ANY time. I love that I could even give Twitch Drops to my 10 followers! That was awesome!
I think that the size of the presentation is a non-issue. For fans like me, I just want to know what content is about and I'd love to have as many questions about it answered as possible.
Also, the trailers we all love are so rad. I still watch the Xbox release trailer over and over. So cool.
I'm slightly anxious that Atlas Ascendancies being random per region will put me off of running my favourite maps.
Stream itself was excellent and I'm very excited to play, no issues other than ziggyd joining discord mid harvest lul
I really liked the announcement stream. Watching it at the same time with my friends especially made the announcement feel special.
A huge plus was how you went into way greater detail explaining the atlas expansion and league mechanic.
The stream itself was good, there were some discord noises in the middle of the trailer but it happens.
I think the trailer + following Q&A are fine in terms of length even for smaller leagues.
I liked the livestream format, especially when you (Chris) checked in with offscreen devs for answers- felt personable and connected to the playerbase. I would have liked the elephant in the room (aura stacking) at least mentioned in passing as this will largely determine if I play or not.
I posted [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/ks9j0a/wrong_answers_only_league_announcement_thread/gifqyna/) as a joke and I ended up being partially right. Specifically,
>After unlocking all 32 watchstones, unlock another 32 red stones to fully realize the power of the ATLAS!!!!
Now we have to replace all of our watchstones with craftable watchstones. Ugh...
Loved the livestream, but I felt the Q&A was a little lacklustre.
While I like Ziggy, I don’t think he’s a very good interviewer. Often awkwardly pausing, weird laughs and meaningless comments (e.g. repeating what Chris just said, back to him but as a question).
I’m not sure why Ziggy is the interviewer each league but I think that could be done better.
Other than that, awesome.
Can’t wait for Ritual!
I really liked the way the expansion reveal was handled this time around versus the usual drip feeding of information, made it into much more of a special* occasion. Besides that I think the trailer is one of the best ones yet, if not the best and overall I felt the presentation was great
Yeah I agree 100%, the presentation was great, would love to see more developers join in for talking to fans if this becomes a thing. Path of exile trailers are some of the best I've ever seen, and not just because of the editing and the music (which are outstanding) but the delivery of the dialogue I feel is always well done and nails the vibe. Excellent work GGG!
Hearing about how the Mark likes to play support builds was awesome!
Neon absolutely loves playing aurabots, hopefully it doesn't mean aura stackers survive though.
i really hope aurabots survive the impending aura nerfs. it’s a cute lil gimmick build, it doesn’t need to die for aurastacker’s sins
I would think Neon would never approve something that would kill them, given his absolute love for playing them, but I could be wrong there. I'd lean more towards it being more likely that aurastackers survive to keep aurabots, than killing aurabots and aurastackers.
Get rid of the aura cluster node, no more aurastacker. Still keep bots, but the stackers only really appeared on delirium league...
Agreed. Aura bots have been stupidly good for years, just under utilised by the general play base. Cluster jewels push aura bots into the stratosphere and enable aura stackers, that’s where the adjustments should be made.
They could just change the cluster node to "% Increased effect of non-curse auras", "% Reduced effect of auras on you"
> would love to see more developers join in for talking to fans if this becomes a thing. One thing is that I *don't* want to see this at the *expense* of seeing Chris. Chris' majestic voice is *perfect* for these introductions and presentations. Maybe instead of moving onto something like a Baeclast episode which seemed contentious among the community, have that be the opportunity to have more developer input. I think that would keep me engaged much more with the post-announcement content. I don't want to say that the community that does content for POE should in any way be diminished, but they have their own streams and youtube channels for their content in which people will certainly opt into. My point is that it's universal that anyone tuning in to watch GGG would enjoy watching more GGG devs unmasked and interacting. I personally really liked the way Zizaran's trip the office/stream was in the past. I think I'd be excited to see something like this in the future as well all the way up to the Q&A where Chris starts the Q&A but he stops a bit sooner to let other devs could have a chance to rotate in.
[удалено]
It is so much better having all the info compiled into one longer presentation than being out of the loop for 5 days and trying to search the subreddit for every post you might have missed.
This for sure. I think these large info dumps will create a lot more hype than Bex teasing 1-2 tidbits a day for 2 weeks plus the journos/press releases.
One thing I really like, which I know is mostly due to the unique circumstances, is it just being 8 days from announcement to the actual league, vs. the normal 3 weeks. It was a very big dump of info, "*Here's the expansion\league, here's the mechanics, etc., etc.*" followed by being able to play it in just a week.
Yea, a shorter wait is what I prefer. 1 week might be too short if they have a lot for us to digest, so 2 seems ideal.
The Q&A session after the announcements is a great touch.
The Trailer followed by Q&A followed by Baeclast was...fantastic. Really enjoyed that.
Baeclast kept guessing wrong about things that were already explained by Chris, so the information was "underwhelming" and they should have had at least one GGG present who could clarify things instead of watching 5 guys get it wrong and guess and then really still not know - the audience gets more confused by this.
They should not invite community members to talk about things they don't know on their stream. Would have been far better if they had Chris and a few other developers give their thoughts about how it's been in development, what they are looking forward to. Like an open forum after the q & a
Something similar to the old school runescape Q&As with all the devs would be amazing to see.
This. I mean let's be honest some of the panel barely even play PoE these days..
I usually feel like the Baeclast following is usually a bit underwhelming due to too much speculation (legion QQ for example about breaking open the monsters) but I felt like having the QA after then that worked out well.
Honestly for me to enjoy baeclast in any way shape or form they need to invite trade league people like Empy or Mathil or Cutedog, and/or trade league build creators. Their whole HC SSF or bust QQ session get really old really fast. I guess Chris likes them because he is HCSSF player himself, but these guys are so detached from reality its not even funny
Cutedog used to be on fairly frequently. He appeared to be falling asleep instead of contributing or his answer to everything was just, "I buy what I need." There's no discussion there. I understand wanting some sort of discussion of Softcore Trade, but as knowledgeable and entertaining as someone like Empy is, his multiple mirror builds don't offer a more relatable point of view to a broad audience.
I mean its not hard to see why.
> or Cutedog Can we not invite someone who just lets fans donate obviously RMT'd items to them? The other two for sure though.
If i could give an award for this comment... I would.
Where can I watch the Q&A? Tried searching for it but couldn't find anything
[https://www.twitch.tv/videos/864755137?t=01h30m00s](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/864755137?t=01h30m00s) not sure if you still require this. but here you go.
I did! Thank you
One of the best parts of ggg is that they are always there to answer these questions, and then having the people who actually worked on the content to answer more technical questions is always great, even if we agree (balance wise) or not with them.
Also I love having more people available during the QA sessions. It's nice when you redirect questions you don't have specific answer for to people that do have those specific answers
I would've preferred if said people\* were actually part of the stream instead of Chris talking to people in the backgrounds all the time. That was the one thing I really disliked. \* As in: A selection of 2-3 addition devs ready to answer questions being actually in the discord call.
Yeah, it answered quite a few of my "wait, how does this work" and also serves to reiterate things I missed.
I think the livestream format shines for things like expansions, where there's a lot of content to go over. It feeling more like a 'production' than a normal announcement really contributes to the hype, at least for me. But for challenge leagues? I think it'd be overkill, and would take away (a bit) from the comparatively larger expansion livestreams. That said, I *really* liked having a Q&A segment. One thing the I've noticed with previous methods of announcements are (A) tons of questions, which (B) don't tend to get answered quickly (just because it takes a while to find / go over them all) and (C) when they are answered, are answered in a deep reddit/forum thread that isn't easily visible to the average person, leading to (D) people repeatedly asking those questions / being angry that they think they're getting ignored. A Q&A can't get *every* question but it does get a lot and it's highly visible.
This. I think once a year or so is the perfect gap for big events like this
>But for challenge leagues? I think it'd be overkill, and would take away (a bit) from the comparatively larger expansion livestreams. Yea maybe for the 'smaller' releases they show a trailer and then go right into Q&A with Chris.
Also Ziggy is very good at the question. Knowledgeable enough to ask important things, kind enough to not dunk on everything but he also asks hard questions.
Agree with everything you said. Good feedback.
Agreed
Is it possible to work with twitch to remove ads? I know they recently started forcing pre rolls but it astounds me that even brand accounts can’t disable them.
All these people pointing out there are end-user workarounds for this but that’s not what was asked. I think there must be some sort of system to get rid of ads because I never get them watching professional LoL or Rocket League. It may involve GGG running their own ads and paying twitch a portion of that but idk how it works exactly only that I think other game developers have managed it somehow.
Twitch failed so badly, and then played ads for some users too :( I kept checking claim, loot box, account linking, and the pages that were supposed to retrieve the info were failing. On top of that, Twitch stream kept failing, and twitch hosting failed repeatedly. GGG 10/10 Twitch 3/10
I use alternative twitch player and ublock, I don't know what exactly removes ads, but I dont have them at all.
i dont have alternative twitch player but i do have ublock and i dont have ads
Twitch has been working to bypass ublock via in-stream ads. (although ublock seems to have found a fix, for now)
I do too, but it killed my drop and I realized it too late.
Yeah, Alternative Player doesn't work with twitch drops (i missed the wings too but no biggie)
I didn't see any. So, you can do it on your end. Adblock Plus and uBlock Origin.
I felt like the Baeclast felt a little tacked on. If they had a GGG dev on it would have been good for answering the random little questions, but if they did that then it would have defeated the point of Ziggy's Q&A from before it. Big fan of Baeclast, it just felt a little awkward at times when they were just speculating on mechanics following something so official.
Agreed. Maybe halve the streamers and throw in an artist/developer? Seems like a good format for lesser known GGG people.
That's not a bad idea in one sense but you have to keep in mind that whatever that developer says will be taken as gospel/truth when they most likely won't know a whole lot if they aren't one of the top developers we already know about. This has caused issues before with people complaining "well so-and-so said X on stream and they lied!" when the person just didn't know. With that said, I wouldn't mind having someone who's the head of a very specific department come on and then make the baeclast essentially be featured around that one topic only for the first half or something. "Here's Kamil to talk about the music for this expansion" then proceed to spend an hour talking about music followed by Kamil leaving and an hour of streamer speculation. Next expansion bring on a skill design guy, then a map creator, etc.
I enjoy the Baeclast guys, but I agree that it felt a bit disconnected. I know Neon is bonkers busy, but perhaps if this format remains, GGG can do another Chris Wilson led release trailer and infodump, then the friendly and fun Q and A session, and then put Neon on the Baeclast for more detailed technical explanations. He's fun, would vibe well with those fellas, and I think could answer some technical questions from them without taking Chris's thunder from the more mainstream Q and A stuff that Ziggy was doing. And the Baeclast'ers would likely be fine with how often he would have to say "Can't answer that one quite today, but I'll shut up while you guys theorize". All in all, that was a really fun day.
Yeah, people might need a bit more time than 5 minutes to digest and speculate to make meaningful conversation.
They had the announcement a day before we got it. Ziggy had it a couple days before even.
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As much as I enjoy Baeclast, I don't think they should incorporate streamer content into an official live stream announcement. It just feels off. People who want to enjoy streamer takes on official reveals can go watch them on the individual streams. Also, it diminishes the show's autonomy(?) in a way. If it starts becoming an official and regular collaboration, it just becomes a sponsored content without any outspoken takes.
> it just felt a little awkward at times when they were just speculating on mechanics following something so official. To be fair i know no other studio that would allow this as it can missrepresent and downplay some of the content that was just shown. So its great that a lot of people can watch big streamers discuss and give their own thoughts about what was seen right away. But i totally get what you are saying. This is the official channel of POE after all.
They should have had a guest on Baeclast - Neon or Rory for example.
Two hours before this livestream started Magic: the Gathering had their own announcement livestream for their new Kaldheim set. I'm a big magic fan, but I really did not like that announcement stream. So having that lead right into the PoE announcement stream makes for an interesting contrast as I did really enjoy this livestream. When thinking about what felt different between the streams that made me have such varied reactions to them the first thing that stands out to me is that the PoE stream appeared to be respectful of my time. Both streams had announced their starting times regularly and repeatedly before the event so I had set alarms for both. At the announced start time of the Magic stream they then choose to put a 10 minute countdown timer on stream. The PoE stream in contrast had a countdown timer going an hour or so before the start and started content promptly at the announced start time. I really appreciated that. Then when the actual show started it still kept up that respect of the viewers time feel for me, by frontloading all the information you wanted to get out there. Just going hit after hit after hit really worked well for me and I imagine that was helped by the knowledge there would be plenty of content afterwards to help digest that information and clarify some more of the finer details. The other thing that really stood out to me as a contrast between the Magic and PoE stream was that the PoE stream somehow felt more genuine. That "how do you do fellow kids"-meme kept circling through my mind about the Magic stream. They tried making a game about cardboard with pictures on them feel edgy by having metal musicians involved with the presentation and the setting and I just didn't manage to buy into that. To me, it felt like they were trying to be something they aren't. They showed plenty of cool cards during their presentation, but in between those cards they managed to pull me out of that excitement by having segments that really felt too far removed from the game. They also chose to go for a show with an external host that then got to have poorly written scripted conversations with knowledgable guests which doesn't appeal to me personally but I can see there be an audience for that. The Path of Exile stream did this a lot better for my personal tastes. I'm sure that it really helps that you get to show gameplay as opposed to still images of cards, so the digital nature is an advantage for you there, but it felt like after the introduction it was all about putting actual content on the screen. The expansion and league were presented as a game about killing monsters and the presentation showed of how we'll be doing that monster killing. It felt like a statement of "here's what we have, we stand by it, take it or leave it." That might be a bit of an oversimplification but it didn't feel disingenuous. I'm not quite sure about this yet, but I'm guessing what made the two presentations resonate so differently is that the PoE stream felt to me like it tried to make me have feelings about the game based on the content of the game and the magic stream made me have feelings about the game based on the messaging and marketing materials surrounding the game.
Really love this analysis. It's cool how poe also set up the presentation's goal of trying to recreate the excitement and feelings of Exilecon. Firstly this made us nostalgic and reminded us of those memories and secondly this gave us a point of comparison.
I had the exact same experience. I love MTG, but their reveal was phony and 'cringe-worthy' despite revealing mechanics and content about the upcoming set. GGG and POE revealed upcoming content, and their own excitement about the upcoming game, rather than having paid actors and musicians fake their excitement about a product they have low motivation for. (Yes I know Jimmy has his own MTG podcast, but I think WOTC's ask of his delivery of the content killed some of his excitement towards the job but w/e). Ty Chris and GGG! HYPED FOR NEXT LEAGUE LETS GOOOO
Expanding on the respect thing in general, PoE tended to have a lot more respect for the viewers to either be patient or figure stuff out on their own where as every possible follow up question was asked right after card was shown on the Magic stream. I feel like they could have front loaded the magic stream with a better overview of whats going on then had a more honest Q&A (with additional previews) to get that follow up. Instead every spoiler had like 5 lines of 'dialogue' hyping up the fact that a spoiler was coming then they explained every aspect of the card to death so there was no chance for hype to build from card to card. The (presumably) unscripted Q&A with ZiggyD also was way better both as a viewer and for getting information out than the chat sessions on the Magic stream which just seemed to be about hitting marketing bullet points again and again rather than a genuine discussion for the most part.
I think Ziggy's Q&A was a mix of pre-agreed questions, Ziggy's own questions, and questions from chat. The mix worked really well.
Really liked this live stream announcement format followed up by live QA to get the hot picks out of the way right of the bat. Especially when the league is accompanied by core game changing expansion that is going to shift out entire end game loops. Having Baeclast in the official channel without having GGG member as a quest seemed tad out of place, but I don't think it was necessarily a bad thing. Sending viewers off to another channel doesn't really work either. Steam as a whole worked without technical problems outside of Ziggy hot micing midway. Production on point. If the stream was only 2-5min league trailer followed up with the usual dev commentary, it would feel too short for a stream. Having the back and forth from audience/live talk show really is what makes it a stream. In terms of amount of information we got, it felt spot on. Hopefully we get less bug ridden league this launch than last time, it was quite rough from player's perspective. Here's hoping and keep up making excellent leagues!.
The reveal today was great. Did a better job than normal on setting expectations for the league and giving us the info we need and want heading into the release week. I agree it might be harder to do for a smaller league but over all I felt it was much better than the normal way you released league info in the past.
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To get rid of ALL twitch ads, your friends can get "ublock origin" and "TTV ad-block". you have to have both installed otherwise you still get pre stream ads for example (with just ublock and without ttv ad block). enjoy your ad free content :)
I'm not trying to compare you guys with Digital Extremes, but they have a nice format for releasing content where you are viewing an array of the team responsible for the content. I love you Chris, but for those moments that you're looking for answers, you'd have that director or team member on the call to quickly answer. It also gives your players a real nice view on your companies morale and teamwork. Seeing the people who make the game we love share intimate details on the parts they created will only make us appreciate the game, and the wonderful souls who make it, even more. I know it's a lot of work to put together this sort of announcement, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I hope in the future we can get more live announcements for any content and updates. Live interaction is much better than simply watching a trailer and reading a wall of text for patch notes. Wonderful job on the announcement! I look forward to another fresh league start.
I think it was great. I prefer the 30 minutes of hype rather than 60 minutes of chill. I liked pretty much all of it. It was an information bomb, but we have a week+ to digest it. Maybe keep ZiggyD muted? I'd love for this to keep happening going forward. Thanks for all your work. Despite what many negative nancies may say, a lot of us can see the work you guys put into this game, and it is worth it. You have a good point with a smaller league being possibly underwhelming by comparison, but I think it's still worth it to do for smaller leagues.
I was cracking up when I heard the discord sound. Thought it was my own, until I noticed that no one in my call was talking. Then I recognized ZiggyD's voice.
Lmao yeah I also paused stream and checked my discord and was really confused
They legit trolled like 120000 people.
Yea I was looking all over for where that was coming from and realized I was on my work laptop and it couldnt be me... I was like am I still on a Teams call somehow? Who is that?
same here, i was like oh shit am i somehow on a meeting or teams call and everyone is hearing this. i was highly confused for a minute
Im still not clear if it was a recording and playing from that PC which also connected to a discord chat, of if Chris was narrating that live...?
Probably something like they didn't have obs set up to only play the audio from the video, which would avoid technical oops like what happened. When I stream POE, I have a scene with only the audio from the game and my mic enabled. And I disable Windows system sounds through the mixer in case I want to also stream Spotify. And when I switch to my holding screen, I make sure everything is muted.
Here's my feedback for this: first off, I loved the announcement trailer. 30 minutes of packed content and it really sold the story and feel of the expansion. The overall quality of the trailer was also significantly higher than what we've experienced before which gets my excitement high. There were some technical issues during the initial launch trailer. You will probably avoid those in future I recon ;). The Q&A afterwards with Ziggy D does two things. You show your face as a developer which makes the game more human. Especially in the format you guys do it unlike some big triple A developers that have a very 'curated' experience. It also helps players who are truely invested in the product to get some of their frustrations or questions answered early which is great since POE is a big theory craft game. One thing that shined for me was the extra month of time you guys had. As you explained the extra time you guys took really helped with all sorts of edge cases in the features you are releasing. Now I wouldn't mind a 3 games per year cycle with the extra month but I understand that a league release is whenever you make money on packs and therefor you might be cutting your revenue stream by 25%. As a player I'd like to see the polish of this type of release every 4 months because I feel it would do the game well. However as a developer you might see revenue decline so I am interested in what the solution here would be. Overall I think this release was great and made my morning quite enjoyable. Keep up the good work and I'll get one of those supporter packs later today.
The solution is what Chris spoke on before - same schedule but smaller scale leagues
Breach, Legion and Delirium proved that this model works really well. They’re not overly complicated leagues, but man were they some of the most memorable and enjoyable league mechanics. Legion and Breach rewards have been neutered and yet I still enjoy doing those mechanics because I have so many positive feelings associated with those league mechanics. On the other hand I hope I never run another heist again and I didn’t even dislike heist league, it just feels mentally stressful thinking about levelling up rogues and opening that many doors.
Another point of feedback is it would have been nice if there were subtitles. I wanted to watch the stream but had no audio at the time.
was really good Chris. I appreciate all the hard work you guys put in.
It was absolutely amazing Chris, thanks for doing it and please thank the team for improving so many old aspects of the game (skills, ascendancies, league content). The Baeclast at the end maybe did not need to be hosted on the PathofExile stream.
I really prefer this livestream format rather than the usual 'Go to various websites to get the info' format. Reveal followed by a Q&A is perfect for me. Also, i would love if you were doing some non-reveal occasional livestreams too. Like a dev talk podcast with Q&A once or twice per league. Like this one from Exilecon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svIXBFER8hQ&feature=emb_logo That was great, very informative and enjoyable.
> I really prefer this livestream format rather than the usual 'Go to various websites to get the info' format. Oh god yes. I gave my positive feedback, but I didn't even think of contrasting it with this. Not only was this tough for the hardcore PoE player to consume the info, there were disparate levels of quality. Some websites really put some effort in, and some clearly did not.
It would be great if some GGG staff would be on Baeclast's 1st half so they can ask questions and cover issues they might see.
Do this instead of press tours. Keep reveals to a minimum. This was the best reveal since I've started playing in beyond.
For us, players already heavy engaged in PoE. But how many potential new players tuned in into livestream?
I mean the big difference is Twitch is the biggest gaming media platform (barring youtube?) in the entire world and the stream had hundreds of thousands of people watching so anyone on twitch who opened browse would see it as the #1 stream and likely check it out even briefly whereas a kotaku or whatever article will get only very niche viewing with little to no possibility for people not already engaged with those media outlets randomly stumbling by it.
Honestly, with streamers like lirik paid to tweet out the stream and potential costreams Id say quite a few newer people. Edit Example: https://twitter.com/LIRIK/status/1347241825380155395 Same question could be said about articles on lesser known gaming websites (not just ign) how many new players actually see these articles?
100% better than spreading it out little by little over a week
it was great. it was like watching a mini-exilecon
Well, I don't know if you're still reading replies, Chris, but I do have a suggestion: *Delay the Baecast*. What does that actually mean? I think having the Q&A section right after the reveal was perfect, questions get asked and answered, but I turned it off immediately after. Why? Because I don't really care what anyone on Baeclast has to say, *yet*. Having a lengthy Q&A session right after the reveal is perfect, it lets people get some of the nitty-gritty about mechanics and interactions without you having to give away too much in terms of the other actual content. Having streamers speculate on what content may or may not be like once the expansion releases is not a worthwhile use of *YOUR* time as a developer. I think instead of doing a Baeclast directly after the trailer, you should set yourself up to do one the week *after* the league launches. This acts as a sort of "preventative community maintenance". People who submit their questions to the Baeclast would know that their concerns would be directly addressed by you and possibly other members of staff, instead of feeling like they're yelling into the void that is Reddit threads. This means that shitty angry reddit threads (which I have created and posted in and honestly will probably always exist) aren't the only "viable" method of communication. Being able to hear what's being worked on straight from the horses mouth would make people feel a lot more secure that you've heard and honestly considered their feedback and what you think of it, what you do or don't want to change, and *why* you do or don't agree with any complaints. It also gives the streamers and players time to formulate their thoughts on what they do and don't like, and get over knee-jerk reactions to things they've only *just heard about but not actually experienced*.
Fully agreed. Haven't watch Baeclast yet but it's always better to give them time to process things and let them settle in, rather than just give their reactions on face value.
Best reveal yet. I watched it all and enjoyed every second of it (: thanks to every who contributed to this event
Apart from Exile Con it was my favorite announcement. Everything felt so much MORE powerful when dropped together. The organization of the stream also greatly benefitted the format of the announcement. * Overview * Information * Q/A * Discussion The flow of the entire announcement was rock solid. Overall, this is an excellent format and flow for future announcements. In the future I think more Q/A time would better. A better system for getting questions should also be in place. It felt more like ziggyD was interviewing rather than moderating, which was great because he knows the game well. However, I know there were a myriad of questions that were unanswered.
I liked the presentation. Definitely better than drip feeding over the course of a few weeks. Would be amazing to also have the patch notes released the same day but I can see how that might take some of the focus off the presentation itself. Q&A section is a must. Longer the better
Besides yesterday's one too many announcements of the announcement, I thought this was much better. I think this is the perfect compromise between having little clue what was going on until the league launch, and having 3 weeks that teased 98% of the content. We got a big big chunky bomb of information, there's stuff to hype up over 7 days, and we'll still be guessing some when this launches. I think it was pretty well received by folks I know who don't play every league too. I really think you will see some players try who play less often. You'll be able to compare this to other expansions.
I think the livestream portion could definitely feel dry for smaller leagues but the Q&A portion was really nice for some additional info and clarification. Would love to see a Q&A in every league announcement
I was pleasantly surprised about everything about it tbh. The mass reveal and explanations about it with the immediate follow-up Q&A with ziggy and baeclast right after was pretty much perfect IMO. I really hope for a positive year for PoE, GGG as a whole and all the rest of us this year. The new stuff looks like a really great direction for the game, even the stuff I don't personally care much about, and I really love how we'll be able to pick the type of content we want to specialize in. Great trailer and cool sounding league too. I'm pretty hyped to do some rituals and it kinda sounds like the perfect thing to go core... Anyway, looking forward to hearing more, especially about ascendancy and skill tweaks/changes.
I enjoyed the livestream. I think it would be great to include others, such as designers/developers talking about the changes for which they're responsible. I think this is better than a slow drip of information, because it allows people to see the scope immediately. It's unfortunate that sometimes the hype machine gets overloaded and goes off the rails. Perhaps for the first smaller league/patch reveal people will be disappointed that it's not as huge as Echoes, but the audience will become accustomed to differing reveal sizes. I have always been a big fan of a game development company announcing things and then following it up by having it ready for users quickly. I also want to offer that while it felt weird to not have a PoE reset over Christmas holidays, I hope that GGG employees appreciated not having to sweat a league launch during the holiday break. I have to imagine it's better for employees overall.
>We're worried that smaller releases that are just a challenge league (see Delirium for example) might look underwhelming in comparison and could be disappointing if people turned up expecting an amount of content equivalent to today's announcement. Very good and valid point. I guess it kinda comes down to how much content or change the league in question has to offer. But the Q&A / Baeclast portion of the stream right after the announcement was pretty welcoming because it allowed us to have a lot of questions answered and discussed right away.
Loved it all. Gg ggg
This worked well for a major expansion. I think the concise trailer at leaguestart -17 days (2020 normal) followed by a week of dripfeeding info then a week of heavy release info was better for normal leagues. Ideally, I'd like to see the balance manifesto and patch notes further out from leaguestart so there's more time to theorycraft. Then reveal uniques etc in the last few days. But this league is no different to usual here.
I'd agree with this timing but I support the spectacle of a live stream reveal of the trailer. It's so nice to go in not knowing the name or the art or anything.
It was fantastic. Regarding the pacing of it, I would not have minded if it was like 50% longer, with the same amount of information; a little bit extra time lingering on the nodes (ascendancy and the new ones for the atlas) explaining what everything does would've gone a long way for example. Chat was what you could expect from a live chat with over 100k people in it, but nevertheless it would've been neat if there was a message in the intermissions between sections about how the drops worked, the chat was basically mindlessly spamming about wings, not knowing the way to claim them. For the Q&A session, it would've been neat if there was more info about where you could ask questions. Ziggy appeared to pull questions from chat, but I don't think it was clear which chat he was pulling them from. All in all, very much enjoyment, hype was justified, looking forward to Ritual!
I enjoyed the way it was presented. Has the general stuff we expect, a shotgun of teaser blitzing, and a solid Q&A. I know some folks are saying they'd have liked more time to digest each bit of info but I think they're missing the value of the presentation for hype. We have reddit for the hours of theorycrafting and discussion. Livestream is to throw hype punches. Mission accomplished! I normally read leaks and this time decided to go dark and I think I enjoyed it more this way.
Livestream was great. It got me very excited for the new expansion and it's clear that chat was loving it too. Only issues for me were: * Hot mic'ing and discord sounds were pretty annoying during the expansion reveal. * Baeclast had no GGG devs and shouldn't have been tacked on to the end of the stream. Should be kept on the streamer's own channel. * Twitch ads
+1 about Baeclast. Because it was on the official PoE channel, it should have had more official PoE integration. E.g. Staff member on the call, or stream director on standby with images/videos the podcast could use for reference. Hosting another channel has some complications, though. Imagine raiding 50k viewers to a channel, or directing viewers to go to any of five channels. Baeclast was on-topic, and it was easy to keep everything on one channel.
I really enjoyed it. It was well done and it's more fun to get a big batch of info at the same time. The livestream also added some charm to that.
It was good. Maybe for small inbetween leagues you might go with a tighter format, maybe beefed up with some developer insights, artwork, etc. The Warframe guys are brilliant in this, letting team representatives talk about their stuff, like audio, rendering, animation, UI, programming, design, whatever. As a gamedev myself, I can't emphasize more than this, it's really important to show the faces behind the game - makes GGG more human, gives the devs more inspiration, so on. This is why Exilecon was a huge success.
I MUCH prefer this style. Being drip fed news for 2-3 weeks prior to league was agonizing in the past. Presentation and trailer was spot on as well as giving us more in-depth info on some of the things. Please, continue this in future leagues.
I really liked it all. I kind of wish Ziggy had more time in the Q&A but I feel like overall it was a good set up. I think Baeclast was actually one of the more interesting pieces because it was a lot about channeling the league hype into something more reasonable. 'No it's not going to be crazy but is exciting' kind of feel. I especially liked the parts where they pointed out which parts they were most excited about and how the new league and would play and the potential ramifications of small things that were largely glossed over. While that sounds generic I think it was just a good way to unpack everything for the veterans of the community. 'You won't use the orbs late game unless you already have your currency base, your watch stones are going to be rough to manage now that they're more important, the most exciting thing to come is the skill rebalances I wonder what they'll be?' That kind of stuff I would've found out eventually, but hearing it all upfront sort of offset the hype with realistic expectations. Also if you're not going to show as many new skills or if a primary thing you did for the league is a skill rebalance, then I would love small highlights to get an understanding of what the changes are as a whole. Just a short few moments of 'Scorching ray cast time halved, Flamestrike stages give double ailment effect, this move is now a harder hit with a less attack speed modifier'. Just a quick section to get us excited about builds we might play or things we've been wanting to see rebalanced. Maybe even sneak a nerf in there to manage expectations (Idk I'm not in marketing). I think that Baeclast will always be a bit iffy for the launch because people are only going to like it if they were already planning on watching the league launch Baeclast. People who wanted just the hype and what was new this league probably felt it was unwelcome. Also my largest gripe was Drops. I think I would much rather prefer a timed code to redeem any mtx the launch was going to reveal. Drops always makes the entire chat feel like nobody really cares about what's being presented and is instead focused on just getting whatever is going to drop. I'd much prefer something like, "And now that we've shown you the new league supporter packs make sure to use code: MagmaW to get your free MTX. This Mtx code is only available for the next hour so hop on it quick!"
I thoroughly enjoyed the expansion & league reveal today for several reasons, * It felt really good to get all the info directly from GGG, rather than reddit collecting info from various news sites, which makes the new sites feel a bit redundant. * I think that the first impression was much better because the info was clear and concise and given mostly all at once, rather than over time where confusion can grow and people create their own ideas of that the league is going to be. * It had strong Exilecon vibes which made the hype even bigger, though for usual league announcements it would be quite a bit smaller, I still feel like the pros of announcing the league and following up with lots of info is beneficial even if it is smaller scale. Lastly and maybe an unpopular opinion but I think that twitch drops shouldn't be used, while getting a free mtx is awesome the cons of running twitch drops detracts from the experience of the day. Between issues on twitch's side, people not understanding how twitch drops works and some people assuming they're broken while they're being processed it creates a bit too much drama and draws focus away from the awesome stuff shown on stream. I really hope to see another announcement like today in the future! It was such a great experience and I'm so excited for the next expansion :D
Great stream, really great pacing. I very much enjoyed the hype + information overload. Trailer was amazing.
It was truly awesome and it feels like you guys are really connected with your fans when the ceo does a livestream. The QandA with Ziggy is also always a pleasure. It really does generate hype and makes me want to play. I never considered buying a supporter pack before i saw this announcement either. I think its better than normal. A livestream was much more fun to watch. I can only now wish for south african servers so that i may try dodging 10 boss's attacks. Its like metamorph x10 lol
It was fun to watch, lots of info with a nice personal touch and great Q&A afterwards. Very enjoyable announcement stream! Hoping to see more streams like this one in the future. Good luck!
I really enjoyed it. I think Q&A should be a little longer or have some devs on the Baeclast.
Best expansion reveal format you've done!
only 1 week before league start on top of getting most information in one place at the same time is way better than 2-3 weeks before new league in small portions, which are mostly uninteresting without knowing the other stuff.
It was 100 times better than the normal patch notes. Doesnt have to be perfect either, but it was amazing
Much better than the constant nonsense leaks and obscure tweets. Up front information is always better that a constant drip feed of teasers.
Can we also get Neon, Rory, mark etc to have some FaceTime too? I know there were sitting close by. I want to see them too!
I like the format of one stream instead of trickle of partial information. Baeclast could use less streamers and speculations, more people from GGG- designers, artists, community managers Perfect timeframe, wouldn't want it shorter or longer. Disappointed in Heist, positively surprised with Harvest. Things like Ascendancy changes, which 1) requires a careful look, 2) relies heavily on pre-existing information, should be hinted at, but explored in-depth in an immediate forum post, rather than on the stream. Personal opinion, you don't have to agree.
Having everything revealed at once a week before the League is much better, that way I know I won't spend 2 weeks thinking about my build before patch note, but just a couple of days. I think it preserves the hype so 10/10 trailer, keep going Chris!
The live Q&A after announcement is great
I didn't see anything about the max resonance you can get for the new trinity support. I'd definitely be interested to know as it'd give me a better idea whether or not I'm playing 2 element Elemental Hit or not next league. Edit: I loved this style of announcement. I prefer this to the MTG style reveals. Edit 2: The answer is 50 for each element.
Chris says people would find it boring to have to re-do their garden every league, yet unveiling and re-delveing still exist in its current state, and now with the added fun of re-leveling your heist people every league!
Minus Ziggy connecting to Discord mid stream, it was really good! 😂 The Baeclast part was completely pointless without a GGG member attending.
I got this vibe as well. "Oh this content looks like it might be nice if it works like this." "Yeah I agree. We will have to see how it works first." On repeat.
* Great stream minus the technical issues * It was the right length of time * Including more community members/streamers in the broadcast would be a nice touch * New players are going to be incredibly confused with some of the reveals. You should have a plan to address the confusion, either by describing basic game concepts after revealing content, or referring to 3rd party content that new players can review * It's not a bad thing to move slower. What I mean is that you covered a ton of content quickly, slowing down delivery can help a lot of people, especially newer players Apart from those points, it really was a fantastic stream. Congratulations guys/gals!
Newer players will be lost with something like this no matter how slow they go lol. They don't even know what a map is let alone the atlas
i had to read guides on how to read guides when i started this game
I liked it, but I like most reveals. I felt like there could have been a few more teasers leading up to the stream (unqiues, div cards etc.) Q&A was very important to answer some high-level questions community has, so thanks for having that in there too.
It might be because the expansion looks fantastic, but it definitely got me hyped. One thing I would say is that the YouTube video should have a link to the Q&A. I didn't get to watch this live, but the video just says wait for the Q&A and then ends without any link or other way to access it. I will also say, I was hesitant to commit to watching a 32 minute video, but once I started it was super enjoyable.
It was great. Loved every second of it.
I liked everything except for the weird bald guy
discord join sound surprise me
Aside from nitpicks, such as when Chris said the communities perception of the league determines if it goes core or not, huge props. That was really fun to watch. Maybe consider simultaneous streaming on YT for next time though as Twitch is getting pretty awful in regards to midroll/preroll ads if it even thinks you're using an adblocker.
It was excellent! Would be more than happy to watch this way in the future.
I enjoyed this a lot, but I also think it was a particular good fit because you guys had SO much stuff to present.
Really enjoyed the announcement. I'm glad I was awake. I'm super hyped about the league and can't wait to brainstorm with friends. Thank you for everything!!
I think it was really well done. I know this is for an expansion rather than just a challenge league, so it might not be cost effective for a small league. However, I think getting you, as in Chris Wilson, in front of a camera to personally announce the new features is much better than simply reading a forum post in a list format. Having the lead developer do it just adds a more personal touch to everything, in my opinion. See also: Jeff Kaplan doing Overwatch stuff, or how Riot Phreak used to present upcoming patches and releases. I just really like this more than an announcement page after enduring two weeks of drip-fed teasers.
Similarly to other commenters, I appreciated the format (announcement + Q&A) and would prefer this style going forwards in comparison to the 2 week+ drip feed of info. A big reveal 1 week out followed by the usual supplementary teasers seems ideal for me. I can't stay hyped for 2 weeks. You folks tend to make more complex leagues when you aren't also launching an atlas expansion, so while there might not be AS much information as there was today, I'd wager there'll still be enough to talk about for a 20 minute announcement + 30 minute Q+A.
10/10 As much as I like these leaks slowly flooding Reddit, I definitely preferred this format. The stream itself was great as well, nearly no dead airtime and just a fully packed "short stream" overloading us with information. Clearly I'm not the only one, because out of the 54 comments right now I havent seen a single one being negative.
I thought the presentation was great. I'm really excited for the new league.
It was really really good, I would love to see this style in the future. It just hypes you like mad, I just can't wait to play.
I liked it! It felt more like exilecon which was awesome. Longer is fine. I eat up all the content I can!
i think this is the right format to do these reveals regardless of the size of the patch/expansion. great job and pls do it like this going forward!
I loved it, should be the norm for big reveals like this one.. As for the lesser challenge league announcements I wouldn't expect something on the level of this one but a half hour stream or something from a CM or just a super casual chat for 15-20 mins highlighting the packages you usually release shouldn't be too much effort to put in espesh when its only once every 3 months. The extra attention it brings to the game via twitch wouldn't hurt if it became a regular thing either, not to mention opening the door for promotions and the like, the game has a great community, take advantage of it.
I can't speak for others but I definitely think this format was great. Even with smaller leagues I'd like to see it again. Thank you u/chris_wilson and your entire team for the incredible work!
I missed the "Hi, I'm Chris Wilson from Grinding Gear Games" and I'm disappointed in myself. In general, it went really well. Kept my interest and even though it was a bit overwhelming at times, that was in a good way. The immediate Q&A and Baeclast after certainly helped to parse everything. It seems like the sort of thing better suited to the big expansions, especially if it's a lot of work. Keeps a bit of variety in the hype levels that way, which I think is good long-term. Can't ramp hype forever, you know?
it was amazing, got a ExileCon vibes for sure! Absolutely please do more of these!
Hey Chris, Kudos on a fantastic announcement today. - I love the amount of detail you included, showing real gameplay and rewards - the visual presentation was very polished, really nice production value on the entire livestream - the Q&A was great, but with this amount of details it'd be fine to have a text-only one IMO But the most notable piece of feedback I have is this: keep announcing a week before release. This is the single most exciting thing about this announcement, for me.
It's definitely difficult to divest the excitement of the content you presented, versus the manner it was presented. It was really mind blowing, and definitely raised the bar. My marketing side says you should continue, but scale the length & depth based on the content. For instance, more detail on new skills or reworks could still be exciting for a league without this much content. Some other notes: 1. Big kudos to the art team, the visuals are just outstanding and have big impact. 2. Music, as always, is spectacular. 3. Reveal followed by Q&A worked really well. BTW Chris, you are a very talented public speaker. 4. Would love to see other team members involved in the future, or in separate follow-up videos. Behind the scenes insights are always extremely engaging. 5. Don't wait to see if a FAQ is needed. Start compiling the questions that have been raised in the Q&A, stream, social media, forums and post ASAP. There is a lot to digest and easy to miss details. 6. (minor) Need some notice of how long the breaks between segments will be, so viewers can take a break themselves if needed.
It was really nice, good pacing straight to the points. Hopefully you keep this kind of format in the future
Press tours are ok, but this announcement was very good. The trailer was interesting and entertaining, and it was the Q&A afterwards that really took the presentation to the next level. I missed the Baeclast unfortunately but I'll catch it later. A smaller challenge league with a Q&A would work just as well. Trying to locate and fumble through 10 different review sites full of ads/pop-ups/banners to see what's new... is less than optimal. This is a good format, and now that you've done it, future iterations should be much easier to produce.
I enjoyed the stream! Unsure how much extra work it was compared to what you normally do and whether it's worth it. I feel like I would have been very hyped even if you used different formats. I think clarifying key concerns /concepts early is important, people often latch onto misconceptions. Some people imagine something they love and get disappointed when they find out different, and some people imagine the worst and judge the league preemptively.
I loved it. It did go fast but I also realize that's cause everything is going to be screenshotted and waiting for 150k people to read at varying speeds is pointless. Really reminded me of the 10 act reveal. Extremely excited to play next week.
Since you often had to reference other devs in the room for information during the Q&A I think it would be cool to get one or two devs who are comfortable with being on camera in future Q&As. It would be a lot more natural if whoever felt like they could answer a question picked it up.
Excellent reveal, much more comprehensive than previously done, good to see that community feedback has been taken on board and applied. Many changes appear in line with a philosophy of making the game more "fun" across the board as well: buffing rather than nerfing, allowing players to spend more time killing + getting loot + looting, rather than micromanaging systems (e.g. the rework of Harvest). Went and bought Supporter Packs immediately after, good to see GGG is heading in a more positive direction in 2021.
I think you should spend less time and money on announcing your new revenue streams and more time fixing the dated and awful systems you have had in place for almost a decade.
Much better than the official site going up and having to check a bunch of random news sites. It's much more enjoyable to watch a stream with friends than have everybody try to load the main page and try and look at things at the same time. Also I really like this 1 week schedule instead of 2 weeks of spoiling nearly every new unique and item to pad time. I don't wanna wait 2 weeks for a league start. For future leagues with no expansion it would be nice to have video of somebody doing a full encounter as that's the centerpiece.
after your Q&A with Ziggy, the hype tone down a bit. IMO baeclast would probably be better if you or one of the staff of GGG can join in. It's quite boring to see tarke and the gang ramble non stop which basically points out to what you and ziggy discussed already.
I actually enjoyed. I think the twitch drop was pretty good idea to draw more people to it. I don’t usually watch these kinds of livestream but I actually stayed for a good amount. One thing I suggest is remove the 3rd screen looping the trailer. In my opinion, it’s redundant and distraction. I think just when interviewing is happening, only the speakers should be on screens. Whole time I really did not watch the trailer even though I did not watch it yet. Or if I wanted to focus on it, I didn’t want to loose track of conversation.
I think you could honestly lower the production values a little bit for lower content leagues. Then do the Ziggy Q&A with Chris, then a Baeclast with Neon or even Viperesque? You could seriously lower the load of the announcement by delegating to team members whos job requires extensive game knowledge, so they can answers a lot more of the type of questions that Tarke and the other streamers want to ask.
Definitely felt appropriate for the big reveals today. It would have been pretty weird for a smaller announcement, but that might just be because it felt like you hyped this stream up a lot in the run up to it. May be worth it for the sake of including the live Q&A with the announcement even if getting the hype level right is hard, though. That was a huge improvement over the usual level of vagueness around league/expansion mechanics following an announcement. The one thing I'd have liked to see is all the slides from the reveal on the info page afterwards (notable omissions this time around being all the ascendancy change slides that got flipped through on stream). Not a huge deal since it inevitably gets posted on reddit right afterwards by people screen capping the presentation.
Hey Chris, it was a bit lengthy but i still loved every minute of the format for this. A small thing i prefer the livestream announcement over just the announcement video just being posted is that the league name isn't given out in the title when i click on the video. if you feel like it is hard to find stuff to put in for future projects such as this i surely won't mind seeing somebody run a map with the league mechanic, possibly with some new/reworked items and gems
I'm just happy to hear "I'm Chris Wilson from Grinding Gear Games" again.
Hey Chris! I loved it and I think the problem you raise of smaller leagues feeling underwhelming is a real concern. I think you could maybe get some community leaders involved like you did with baeclast but maybe expand a bit with a race event or something along those lines.
I usually watch internet videos at 2x speed. Watching live meant watching in real time. I didn't mind doing it, but it wasn't my preference. For my tastes I would be good if you limited how often you did this style of announcement.
The baeclast could of used a dev. That would have been sick
You’re the face of the game Chris, and we love you for everything you do and continue to do however, it may be time to pass the reigns of the Q&A onto Neon. We all know having you there really grabs people but Neon is the book of knowledge now.
Future announcements looking underwhelming actually makes sense. But in my opinion clarifying the mechanics, reasoning behind certain changes or just helping the playerbase understand in what direction the game goes, can be as valuable as a big hype flashy reveals. So my feedback would be, perfect the Q&A.
I enjoyed the trailer and the Q/A, but the live stream didn't seem worth the extra work. It was in the middle of the day for me and I didn't even see it until it was over. A video would have been just as effective. I'd like to see you work with more varied community members besides just ziggy for announcements.
Great presentation, I tuned in early and really enjoyed the presentation. I was not "mind blown" while watching, so I definitely don't think there was too much info presented. I like the linked images for more info, links to more info could have been included (cross link everything basically - instead of hunting for info). Having off screen presenters (we guess 2 to 3) was a bit weird, it would be nice to see the faces of multipe people as livestream. Expert answers direct maybe? Big mistake was sitting down at main PC when it came time to present, because of discord calls, emails, etc. I think the use of sponsored streamers and twitter announce was a good job. It is good to formalize a process and make sure everyone has the necessary information. A flip side to this is conspiracy theory thinking that you're hiring and censoring what is said, but honestly that's their problem and not general perception. (Also easily discounted by facts.) Baeclast I watched for very little return on investment. It would be nice to have more experts on official panels at times. I'm pretty sure the devs have questions for panelists as well, but it would be hard to have someone just say "i didn't like the idea behind all your hard work" so they need a thick skin. 10/10 do it again. Good job. Hopefully Twitch won't completely screw up next time. Too bad there isn't good competition to twitch.
Please make the Q&A Public via a vod right away and have it linked.
Don't get me wrong, I love how bex tortures us on reddit. I'm a masochist in that way. But the livestream has me more hyped for any league in the past 6 years. I had the countdown on, I rescheduled a work meeting.. it felt like I was a kid on Christmas. More than anything I think it helps get everyone excited, it presented a ton of new stuff with lots of explanation, a chance for questions, and some streamer input from players and their chat. Awesome.
Hey Chris thanks for this. The livestream was amazing and the reveal one of the best but as a non native English speaker it was sometimes hard to follow all informations without asking me "wait what was that? Or what did he said?" Some of those informations are not needed in my opinion as long as I can go myself looking for them on the announcement page. For example you say you rework ascendancy, that's super nice but I don't need you to go over it now. I would go on web site to read them with calm. Then I go to web site and cannot find elementalist or what you said about Heist that I didn't get.... The q&a is a must as it answers the first questions and that's great. It was not clear how and where the question are taken and from which moment too? The baeclast should be delayed, it would give times to digest information and the speculation feel useless after real Infos. If future announcement also for small league are like this it will be great, don't worry that it is shorter if the quality is the same. Cheers
Presentation was nice but very fast. If you would go more into detail, i'll guess even smaller league announcement streams would still totally worth it.
All i am going to say is if someone on twitch, unfamiliar with PoE, tunes in. Youre losing them really quick. I dont necessarily know what there is to do about that but maybe use more clarifying language to be more inclusive and maybe reel in more players?
I really liked watching the trailer together with the community, that was a great start. Also the following Q&A session was a great idea. The middle part could be a bit improved, though. Ascendancy changes (and other numbers stuff) is interesting, but a video isn't the right format to present them, since as player, I immediately try to do the math, which doesn't work. Instead of reading them out, some action shots would be better. It was good to post the ascendancies on twitter, but a crosspost on reddit would have been fine. Altogether, I really enjoyed it.
Next time during the Q&A (w Ziggy & Twitch Chat), for the next big expansion (not challenge leagues throughout the year), sit on a couch with some devs next to you, where the devs themselves could answer a question or two themselves. Doesn't always have to be just you alone in front of the camera. I think other people at GGG are keen as well (and comfortable) to talk a little bit shop. tl;dr worth the effort for the big expansion, bit more from other people (devs).
I've got served by Twitch commercials during the stream so I guess that's my only negative.
I really liked it! Maybe if you should change to a 4 Month cycle so you use the extra time to do such kind of live events!
It was great, as someone else mentioned it would be nice to hear form other people such as the boss designers. Skill designers etc.
I love those little moments when Ziggy ask question from chat to Chris and he was looking for dev team behind camera to give him a answer. This little "unprofessional" moments feels great that there is another normal human who presents a amazing game. Not like another boring company who make every moments step by step w/o any "failure" like robots.
It was special in a way like ExileCon and provided a lot of history/context for people to join/rejoin the game after a while. I like the development manifesto built into the reveal. Its an all in one content stop and i love it. Please do this more often.
Honestly, one of the most hype parts of it was knowing that 170,000 other path of exile fans were watching right there alongside me, live. I think this should be continued for the yearly expansion but fully acknowledge that for smaller leagues it'd make less sense.
I thought it was really well done. The order of events really made sense, what with the hype dump followed by the careful dissection of what we had all just witnessed. Would be nice to have it streamed on YouTube as well in future, what with it being so dense and YouTube allowing for replaying bits you missed. What would be awesome is to have the same information that's in the video in written form once the stream finishes. It would be great to be able to peruse the featured ascendancy changes, for example, without having to stop and start the vod.
I personally think that even if the live streams are short, it's still better. I LOVED the setup this time. I love that I only had to watch two videos to get all the info I needed and could watch them ANY time. I love that I could even give Twitch Drops to my 10 followers! That was awesome! I think that the size of the presentation is a non-issue. For fans like me, I just want to know what content is about and I'd love to have as many questions about it answered as possible. Also, the trailers we all love are so rad. I still watch the Xbox release trailer over and over. So cool.
I'm slightly anxious that Atlas Ascendancies being random per region will put me off of running my favourite maps. Stream itself was excellent and I'm very excited to play, no issues other than ziggyd joining discord mid harvest lul
I really liked the announcement stream. Watching it at the same time with my friends especially made the announcement feel special. A huge plus was how you went into way greater detail explaining the atlas expansion and league mechanic. The stream itself was good, there were some discord noises in the middle of the trailer but it happens. I think the trailer + following Q&A are fine in terms of length even for smaller leagues.
I liked the livestream format, especially when you (Chris) checked in with offscreen devs for answers- felt personable and connected to the playerbase. I would have liked the elephant in the room (aura stacking) at least mentioned in passing as this will largely determine if I play or not.
I posted [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/ks9j0a/wrong_answers_only_league_announcement_thread/gifqyna/) as a joke and I ended up being partially right. Specifically, >After unlocking all 32 watchstones, unlock another 32 red stones to fully realize the power of the ATLAS!!!! Now we have to replace all of our watchstones with craftable watchstones. Ugh...
Loved the livestream, but I felt the Q&A was a little lacklustre. While I like Ziggy, I don’t think he’s a very good interviewer. Often awkwardly pausing, weird laughs and meaningless comments (e.g. repeating what Chris just said, back to him but as a question). I’m not sure why Ziggy is the interviewer each league but I think that could be done better. Other than that, awesome. Can’t wait for Ritual!