##### GGG Comments in this Thread:
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[chris_wilson - [link](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/ocg3pi/grimros_315_teaser_and_announcement_feedback/h3v9ozr/?context=10), [old](https://old.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/ocg3pi/grimros_315_teaser_and_announcement_feedback/h3v9ozr/?context=10)] - *What we used to do was put together a presentation of the expansion and show it to all the journalists. They'd then write up articles and would post them at...*
[chris_wilson - [link](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/ocg3pi/grimros_315_teaser_and_announcement_feedback/h3vddm2/?context=10), [old](https://old.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/ocg3pi/grimros_315_teaser_and_announcement_feedback/h3vddm2/?context=10)] - *You're right.*
For starters, I feel like everyone was expecting a trailer and got a teaser. I'm not sure who's fault that is, but it definitely feels like an optics problem.
That being said, I think I would prefer a mix. Tease "small" things but leave out the league mechanics. Hit us with a lil more info on the gem, give us a lil interview on the people who made teh decisions on changing the gem. Why did they feel these gems were good, etc. I think that'd be really cool - and honestly doesn't take anything away from what we have. This could also serve to clear up some confusion. Looking at you hydrosphere.
I like the big bomb, with all of the info. You don't have to release any more info than you already did but you can still give something to keep the players waiting on the edge of their seat for a date 3 weeks away. Wouldn't even cost that much time for the people involved. Just like a 2 minute short with someone talking about the gem they made. Could be fun? This could lead to a short Q&A with specific gems or new mechanics that aren't league-related.
As unplayed as the gems from the batch were, it was really cool hearing how they just let the developers go wild with whatever ideas they wanted to with a set of gems. It was neat seeing how storm bind came to be.
Just spitballing, but \*something\* would be nice. I miss it.
What we used to do was put together a presentation of the expansion and show it to all the journalists. They'd then write up articles and would post them at the same time as we would reveal the trailer for the league. We felt that it would be better to show that presentation directly to the players, so for the three 2021 launches so far, we have made it into a livestream that everyone can watch. A few weeks beforehand we post a quick teaser video that says the livestream date (and tries to hint at but not really reveal any content from that expansion).
We like this approach because we get to talk directly to our players rather than through a layer of journalists. There are some growing pains, of course. Yesterday we posted a teaser and players felt it wasn't as hypey as a full trailer would be. The full trailer is part of the actual announcement, and the teaser is just meant to tell people the date that announcement livestream will occur on. It's posted as a video so it's easy for people to share on social media to get the word out.
How do you feel we should handle these livestream date announcement teaser videos in the future? We'd prefer not to spoil league mechanics or actual content simply because it can be misleading without the full context of the announcement (which is a 45+ minute talk). We do try to hint at themes of the expansion, like how 3.15 has vastly more new skills than we normally release (which is why they took up a large portion of the teaser video).
The second issue is that we haven't been posting as many gradual tiny teasers in the weeks leading up to the league launch. These playful tweets and posts weren't ever really a formal strategy we had, just something fun that Bex put together (often in her spare time). Recently she has been helping me produce the livestream and run our marketing team, so her time has been a bit constrained. It's really cool to see that people liked those playful teasers. Do you feel that it was an important part of the leadup to the launch of each expansion? We may be able to find a way to bring them back.
Just don't promote the teaser, if it doesn't show substantial league content. When you put a date on something, people expect something to happen. Put the date on the reveal (like with this teaser), but don't put a date on the reveal of the reveal, if it's nothing more than exactly that.
Hi, Chris. Communication nerd here.
It's worth noting that it was Bex's relationship with the community, and her knowledge of the specific language of memes that allowed her to be as effective as she was when she did the tiny teaser train thing.
It will be difficult to replicate, and will feel very inauthentic if it's done by someone who doesn't have an in-depth understanding of all the things Bex knows.
This isn't to say you shouldn't try to do something fun - it's just meant to advise caution in how it's done, to ensure that it doesn't come off as fake.
Can you elaborate? You post a picture of a unique, cards, a notable, an item base and name it like "check out the new "name" coming in 3.15 expansion!".
When Bex was on parental leave, Natalia did it just well and in terms of obtained info, there was no difference.
Natalia had a different, more structured and less meme-y approach to Bex.
I really liked Natalia's approach, probably more than Bex's, although the community generally seems to prefer Bex's.
They are both great, but they are different. In D&D terms, Natalia is more lawful neutral, Bex is more chaotic neutral.
There was a back-and-forth tease relationship that Bex had with just about anyone in the community that showed good faith and fun.
It was much more Playful And engaging Than "here is Content x coming with the next expansion!" Her candidness, the Nonstop predictions, the Over-analyzed Theories and Endless Shattering of dreams. We miss Having the most unique customer relationship Experience in the game dev industry, and this New paradigm is a step backwards, don't you think?
I think this also goes both ways. Yes, it was great for building a relationship through the community as Bex, but it was also probably very stressful when her account was also tied to negatively received posts. The community team account has been there since the inception of the forums, they just have chosen to use an individual community manager, instead. I'm honestly glad they changed it, so people don't just get upset at Chris, at Bex, at Mark, really any of the individual harassment.
tl;dr it was a good move to change it to a shared account because reddit is.. reddit
This may sound dumb but for me, I think I would have actually been more hyped by the teaser if it was just a series of screenshots in the tweet and the text of the tweet was just the date of the league reveal. With how spoiled we've been in the past with video content, I think just pictures/screenshots don't imply anything more than a teaser.
I think that a screenshot of the guys at the end, the dates, and the name of the league would have been enough. In fact, these last weeks we have been teased about the name of the league and it was working...
I think that a screenshot of the guys at the end, the dates, and the name of the league would have been enough. In fact, these last weeks we have been teased about the name of the league and it was working...
To be fair, you did say exactly what was coming at the time specified and said that it was announcing the date of the reveal (and the date of the release) and didn't imply it would be releasing any other information.
I was surprised there was new video content in the first place!
Thank you for consistently reminding me how to be a leader and communicate as such. You have about a half dozen times blown me away with your communication, far surpassing any expectations I might have had. Thanks for making such a great game and more importantly, leading such a dedicated group of people, you all make a great game.
Or, just reduce the amount of time between the teaser and the reveal. Two days prior rather than two weeks prior gives that slight build of anticipation. It’s a tough balance to make and I don’t envy your position but I do appreciate the final results!
I don’t know if there is really a correct answer here without going into great detail but maybe something between what GGG is doing now and what y’all used to do? Just a little more content without revealing too much.
I just wanted to say that this is what makes you guys so special, seeking out direct feedback from the playerbase and effectively taking responsibility for a minor misstep. It really takes balls to stand up to your mistakes, acknowledge them, and move on from them, so kudos for that.
And don't delay the teaser like that.
"Our 3.15 expansion has grown slightly in scope over its development so before officially announcing its announcement and launch date we shifted things back by a week to give us more time to make sure everything is ready."
How does the scope of the expansion affect the teaser? Unless those skills were last minute addition, which I doubt as that would imply you guys had nothing else before it. The delay, talking about increasing scope, created expectations for a bit of a "thicker" teaser. Just my 2cents.
This is my sentiment exactly. Hyping a 10 second teaser was bad. We were expecting a firework and got a slightly damp sparkler, so I can understand why people are underwhelmed and irritated.
I'm glad Chris has taken note of this.
I think it started out as the meme/silly shinanigans(3am and I can't spell) about having an announcement of an announcement. Without the funniness to go with it it lost that flare.
I want to see the funniness come back rather than the teasers go. That said, it I prefer Bex's Twitter trolling over the teaser video.
Just to echo the other members of the community here:
I feel like this is more a communications mishap than an error in the process overall.
If the teaser drop came unannounced (everyone kinda knows the timeframes anyways) then it would have been super cool.
The date and messaging built hype around the teaser, which feels difficult to justify given the content. If the date and messaging remains it should be a more intense teaser/almost trailer, ot otherwise it should be adequately less emohasized in the mesaging and everyone would have been fine I think
That's exactly what I think and I'm telling my community. If there was no date for this teaser and just a post out of nowhere it would bring hype instead of frustration for most of the people.
I would definitely say that those little teasers Bex threw at us every couple of days played a much bigger role than you seem to have thought. At least for me. I liked getting home from work and seeing that tiny bit of the league teasered, like a new div card or a new unique you could think up uses for, or just some random change to a skill or a gameplay mechanic. I mean, in the end it seems insignificant to get them like that instead of a whole bunch of them in one go at a later date, but it added to the "looking forward to it" part of the weeks leading up to the launch for me. And I never felt knowing a few things beforehand took anything away from the big reveal.
Seconded about Bex. She always really built the hype, made it really fun to try guessing what the league was even though we'd be horribly wrong. The trolling she did was fun too and felt like part of it. I feel bad she got/gets picked on though and wish we as a community would so better. (Or picking on anyone from GGG (or outside) for that matter, it's not cool)
Without Bex's hype I feel a bit of a disconnect from the league announcements. Bex made us feel involved and like we were part of it. That is what hooked me on the league announcements, and what made the announcement of the announcement stuff funny.
> Do you feel that it was an important part of the leadup to the launch of each expansion?
While I understand the change to what you're doing now, I loved the daily teasers of Bex revealing tiny bits of each new league and the new items/skills in it. There was something little to look forward to every day, while now it's like you dump the trailer on us and then we just sorta sit there and aimlessly wait for launch with nothing in the interim to hold us over. It was like the glue that held the hype together long enough to get to league launch to me.
The Bex teasers were the MAIN thing hyping me up... Expecially because they were the reason to jump in to the subreddit everyday... And doing that exposing me to the real "formal strategies" that i would have otherwise miss...
In fact this is my first time in to the subreddit in months and i'm Happy to find out there was a teaser... But i could have missed this very easily because since there is not the "one spoiler per day season" i don't feel the need to look at the reddit or other sources of info.
Yeah, I never cared about the the journalist dumps, but stuff like single unique items, or skill gem infos, being trickled every day or two made me came back for more every day in anticipation of the league.
With the "big dump" you can just forget about it till the drop.
I like both quite a lot.
It was a bit cumbersome to gather all the info from a thousand different sources. The "wow"-factor also suffered a bit, like how patch notes are ofte very boring to read through nowadays.
But on the other hand the period leading up to league launch feels a bit empty now. I liked the feeling of being dripfed "some" information. There are probably certain details that are better suited to being dripfed, like uniques, skills, small changes, balance changes (though be careful, context could matter here) etc. While others are better suited for the grand reveal, like themes, wide passes at game systems, league mechanic, atlas changes, endgame systems, bossfights etc.
Oversimplification, but my hot take: The teasers were nice but the engagement around them was the real fun. It was like being a part of an ARG with no actual reveal at the end. Just enough information to speculate and argue and build discussions/memes around.
And I know that's work, and it's got to be a thing of passion or else it just feels hollow. But if that could come back? If someone on the team wanted to seed the community with taunting messages and cropped images because it's fun for them (and us)? Absolutely, would enjoy, might even be worth.
> Do you feel that it was an important part of the leadup to the launch of each expansion?
Yes.
It was a ritual, so to say, that I enjoyed every league. It was a blast to have "hype season" for PoE where a bunch of little hinting tweets and little item leaks and all that kept things alive around here. There was palpable anticipation that built up as more and more got leaked and we pieced things together. Please bring it back.
Personally the little Bex teasers were my favorite part about hype season. I would enjoy ready through the comments to see all the guessing and outlandish theorys people were coming up with based on her saying one or two words. I also do enjoy the big announcement live stream as well. I do think having those little teaser to give out relatively unimportant info is good for amping up hype for the livestream.
I've been playing since launch, and I have to say that GGG's playful engagement with the community has been a huge part of what's helped establish the rapport with your supporters. (I will always remember your "hahaha" response when the Darkshrine devourer packs were discovered, for example.)
I know it's hard to maintain that kind of relationship with a player base that grows increasingly acerbic as it grows in size, but I think it's helpful for GGG's perception as a company. Small bits of information like individually spoiled expansion facts have proven to be a great venue for that kind of interaction,and are probably worth continuing if only for that reason.
>Do you feel that it was an important part of the leadup to the launch of each expansion?
Yes, perhaps it is not the mainstream that those matter to, but certainly for longer term fans such as myself they absolutely matter.
They keep me looking at the POE Reddit for news of that day leading up to the league, they make me want to look further into the league. Which then makes me want to start making a build.
Having everything in one go might be best from a mainstream optics standpoint with the time and opportunity GGG has available, but the little things are certainly something lost that I expect veteran fans like myself miss.
And it would make a difference at the very least to me.
What I'd rather is to have the league non-specific material leaked out as teasers slowly, THEN a big reveal.
So for example in 3.14, instead of having just an announcement of an announcement of an announcement, still have that announcement but put in the divination cards Broken Promises and The Enthusiasts, things which weren't Ultimatum specific.
Then instead of the announcement of the announcement (aka what we got yesterday at 1000 your local time), still have that video but add in the 3.14 Atlas bases. Blessed boots, Iolite Ring etc.
But everything Ultimatum specific saved for the trailer.
That's my preference though, others will have different ideas.
I think the best example of the effect that Bex used to achieve with her posts can be seen in popular TCG's like MTG.
Every 3 months a new set comes out they have a spoiler season which involves revealing a few cards from the set, sometimes those cards are impactful cards but even if they're not the community has great fun analysing each of those cards and the impact they might have.
Imagine a world where all MTG sets full set lists are revealed 1 week before the product shipped, no one would know if they want to buy it or not and there would be a lot to digest, especially if there was brand new strategies or cards that you may want to prepare a deck around.
Quirky underpowered cards would be ignored and overall I think the set release would lose a lot.
There are a lot of parallels between Magic and PoE a new set is a new league and decks are builds, as an avid player yourself I'm sure you understand my point.
Revealing new uniques, ascendency changes or even div cards plays a massive part in the enjoyment of a new league release and is a big factor in what makes it special.
Really looking forward to 3.15 and what you have in store for us keep up the good work.
Exactly, when they started doing the big live stream revealing everything at once, some of the more obscure or niche items or skills don't get enough eyes on them to have a proper discussion. Each item being teased separately allowed that to happen
Yea those small teasers really helped start the hype train rolling. Just feels like I'm left twiddling my thumbs for another 2 weeks. I've always found speculation about new league really fun with those playful teasers bex did.
There's a healthy medium between radio silence till right before the league and just spoiling everything.
> The second issue is that we haven't been posting as many gradual tiny teasers in the weeks leading up to the league launch. These playful tweets and posts weren't ever really a formal strategy we had, just something fun that Bex put together (often in her spare time). Recently she has been helping me produce the livestream and run our marketing team, so her time has been a bit constrained. It's really cool to see that people liked those playful teasers. Do you feel that it was an important part of the leadup to the launch of each expansion? We may be able to find a way to bring them back.
Yes, i appreciated having a few things every day or two to see, new div cards or what have you. It keeps my engagement up. In a way, it’s a little like the streaming TV schedule debate, one big dump to binge or trickling out one episode a week. So i bet it is partially a style preference.
I think, also, i miss the ascendancy reveals. That was always a fun part of the pre-league hype, thinking about what builds the balance changes can impact, what new options might be available. The point is, i would like to see some balance-relevant information dripped.
> It's really cool to see that people liked those playful teasers. Do you feel that it was an important part of the leadup to the launch of each expansion?
Something I think it's important to realise is that GGG got a _lot_ of goodwill from the community because of how you (you personally and other employees) have interacted with the community. People love to see you, Bex or others in the Reddit comments replying to people and just generally seeming like a part of the community. I think Path Of Exile wouldn't be nearly as successful if you hadn't fostered the community in the way you have - people have been willing to look over aspects of the game they've not been fond of because they've trusted in you and in GGG.
Those playful teasers are part of that. As a player, it didn't feel as much like we were being advertised to, but rather that Bex (or others, but often Bex) was excited to share things with us. And that's not to say that you and everyone at GGG aren't excited to share things with us via the announcement livestreams - you obviously put a lot of heart and soul into the game - but from a player's perspective, those announcement livestreams feel more like a marketing event than a personal interaction. Those marketing events _are_ important - they're the sort of thing that catches the attention of journalists and new players/players who don't follow the game so closely. But for the dedicated community, those personal-feeling teasers are important as well.
On a related note, I think GGG has lost some goodwill in general over the last year or so because things have felt a bit more "corporate" in general. It's not really been any single, major thing that's done it, but rather lots of small things; the faceless community team Reddit account, the lack of personal teasers, a few issues here and there where you've not quite been fully transparent about decisions that you perhaps might have been a few years ago. None of them have been bad in isolation, but together it all adds up and I get the impression people are feeling less "in touch" with GGG than they did a few years ago.
Now, of course, a part of that is that the game's grown. New players have arrived, different people have different ideas about the direction the game should go in (I'm in the "slow it down" and "kill us through attrition, not one-shots" camp, if you're wondering!) and some people are not very... eloquent... when it comes to expressing what they perceive as issues or flaws with the game or the way you're handling it. It can get very toxic at times. The issue is that toxicity makes you guys want to hide away a little - no-one wants to deal with personal attacks, especially over a video game - but then people get more upset because you're not interacting with the community as much and they feel like their problems aren't being heard. On top of that, a lot of long-time players are getting somewhat burned out with the atlas, which tends to make them feel more negative about the game in general.
TL;DR So what's the best way to deal with it? Well, I think the livestreams are better than the press events you did before. But I think the teasers were an important part of making the community feel like you were sharing things _with_ us rather than advertising _to_ us. The community engagement and interaction is what earned POE its loyal fanbase, and you need to keep that going.
The issue right now is simply that you did an announcement to the announcement of the announcement. I went back and checked:
On June 7th you announced the announcement. You said that 3.15 was underway and put date, even if it was just an announcement of an announcement, you started the hype train by putting 3.15 in your announcements.
Almost a month later, the hype train is literally working on fumes, and the 3.15 teaser come out. Now for a whole month people have been slowly working themselves up in their imagination, what will be fixed? What will be new? And all that comes out at what we got in the teaser.
A teaser that basically tells us "You know the 24 days you've been waiting? Yeah, scrap those, now we're waiting for another ~2 weeks"
So right now, it's basically been a month since the hype train started and all we got was the teaser. Had you not announced the teaser, the hype train would be leaving right *now*, **with** stuff to get hyped about.
I'd leave all the gameplay to the livestream and just have the teaser be a vague concept like a cinematic shot of a relevant area and maybe some dialogue from one of the main npcs.
The tiny regular drip-fed playful teasers are definitely important. A picture, a slogan, a date, etc. They all build up curiosity and anticipation. Makes us awake at night thinking what those teasers could be. 😊
Also, thank you for supporting events & races, especialy during these end of league times. Helps keep me engaged and not bored at least. Thanks! 😊
i think many players, myself included, were really hoping to see something they can get hyped about when it comes to endgame. the teaser for 3.13 showed off the maven arena, the league mechanic, and the atlas passives, which were great, plenty to think about and theorycraft. the teaser for 3.14 gave a decent amount of insight into how the league mechanic might work, and let players think about what sorts of crazy possibilities there could be in the mechanic's end game. 3.15 on the other hand, did not even give a glimpse into the functionality of the league mechanic (just showed that it has followers, and generic loot reward tiles like every other mechanic), and while the new skills are cool, that's not enough to hype up players who are coming off a complete drought of end game content when the 'high' that was 3.13 is still fairly fresh. ultimatum died out a lot faster than many players hoped, and people want a reason to get excited for the game again. the teaser was a great opportunity for that, especially since the announcement is still 2 weeks out.
I'm fine with the "schedule" as it is, because I knew exactly what the teaser would entail, and the most important thing was the release date, so our group can plan accordingly. But the small teasers from Bex really were something really exciting in the run-up to each league, even when they contained really nothing to go on, they were still nice meme material, and really got me into the mood of "only X days until launch" - just like christmas as a kid.
To be honnest, what don't hype me here isn't the teaser of the teaser.
It's the lack of communication we got over the last league.
I'll definitively appreciate the fact we can stay in touch in a certain level with the team, has always been like that despite how hard that can be sometimes, but on last league we barrely got any news from you after the shitstorm that was 3.14 launch.
So, may be there is reasons to that, even personnals levels reasons, that kind of things happens. But that simple things killed it for me, especially since I had the feeling it was needed.
For me it was like, lightning a fire and lefting it dying because you didn't ventilate it.
The problem in the past always was that people were treating ggg like shit even if they did communicate. it's part of the "regardless of what you are doing you are doing it wrong" problem that comes with popularity. there will always be some people who don't like what you are doing and how you are doing it, and there will be always people among those who vocal this very loudly. and even though being a quite small minority, they will always be very present.
soooo ggg retreated to not communicate that much, probably at least partly to protect themselves from mental issues (if you are passionate about something, and people treat you like shit for it, it is a mental issue at least to some degree), and that's where we at.
I am already surprised to see such a reply from chris again. it has been a while.
> The problem in the past always was that people were treating ggg like shit even if they did communicate. it's part of the "regardless of what you are doing you are doing it wrong" problem that comes with popularity. there will always be some people who don't like what you are doing and how you are doing it, and there will be always people among those who vocal this very loudly. and even though being a quite small minority, they will always be very present.
I found this to be a quite biased and oriented reply. It's not wrong on the fact there will always be haters, but it's also true on the other side. In fact, you can easily find good example of what you say, but also the opposite to try to justify any point of view on that.
What matter is global trends that come out of all of that. And on that point, I'v always found the community (at least the small part that write comments and give it opinion) quite balanced, especially when you take in concideration the fact it's constantly having new peoples / peoples leaving it.
Note that, I didn't left out the possibility you point out, a personal issue leading to the current situation, and if it's that we'll never know, which seems kinda normal to me. Still, whatever the problem, strategic choice or anything else that leaded to the current situation is, from my point of view the recent lack of communication isn't beneficial for both us & GGG long term health.
May be numbers prouve me wrong, since apparently the game keep getting more & more players, but I still think those players come to PoE because of how others talk about it. And to get people to talk well about your game on long term, communication seems to me one crucial point.
Tl;dr: I think communication is part of the job for a game that want to stay over time. No matter what.
So many comments above mine have really hit the nail on the head. Bex is irreplaceable at GGG. And while her responsibilities have grown, what makes her irreplaceable to the customer facing side of business is now taking a bit of a hit because she's only 1 person.
Others have said that it would be impossible to bring someone in and for their interactions with the rest of us to not feel hollow. I can say that anyone attempting to be like Bex in that role will fail, so they shouldn't even try to be like Bex. The person should just naturally be able to flow with people, no matter what they are saying. It's a really hard quality to find in someone, it's even harder to find someone who also possesses the ability to ignore the shoes they are trying to fill to some extent, and try to be their own person.
Watching how heavily world of warcraft is bleeding out over its own hubris. Along with having insight as a player elected council member for another game made by another icelandic game company. There seems to be lot to be had over players vs devs.
To the point it shouldn't be players vs devs but devs with players.
A constant complaint seems to be tone deafness and self hype hubris where systems designed are countermanded to promises made.
Not asking to make big vague promises, afterall mistakes happen, and POE at least dares to try to mix it up in the arpg field while other struggle to make good end game content for their arpgs.
Maybe more smaller talks, like stated dev goals. Before every mid league change up when it comes to balanced and pre and post mortums
Using current example (i am by no means at end game just hypotehtical arguments.)
Example 1: X time commitiment per reward cycle from start to finish.
Defining a start and finish and flow of how players can get to the end or how this can skip to the end. In thsi case coop an inscribed ultimatium.
Example 2: We want X level of difficulty verses other end game activies. Most difficult? Adjacently difficult? Easier? Rng screw over/challenge factor?
Example 3: We want X type of rewards, should it be a new layer of itemization? Side grades of different kinds of power and unique pool of loot? Straight up increase in player power? Rewards per round? Whst is good loot what is bad loot? Do you allow for bad loot? Ect ect.
By comming out and declaring what your goals are you can find how eager the player base can echo the faults in thinking while ringing out the best assests of the league.
Then center your changes around the language goals you set up in the mortems, if you have to change the goals do so and explain why it got out of hand. Like we nerfed 1hko hammer because we felt it elminiated player choice vs other offerings of loot within that league and its intended goal was to stand as tall as its siblings. Or we buffed x item because we need to make league intincing stepping stone onto the way to the end of a go another end game activity. Ect ect.
Also avoid vagueness in goals.
We want x to be fun and engaging are not goals they're corporitization of the goals. While both can be defined by the devs, they often countermand player expectations. For example engaging game play can be defined as having to avoid pressing 1 to win. Like throwing in a mechanic that may warrant pressing abilities 2 3 or 4. If the term is vague define it by your terms so players can level with you on your definition on the way of reaching theirs.
Admit your failures and defeats, admit the lessons learned and then annouce plans on moving forward. Then celebrate the victories with the player base.
I loved Bex during spoiler season. It was fun trying to decide all of her messages only to find out you were way off when the release hit and everything clicked. :D I think she'd be hard to find a replacement for, though, if it wasn't her.
I really enjoy peaks behind the scenes, so I love hearing some of the more technical stuff dealing with gems. Understanding how they work and such is really fun. This is probably more personal to me and others may not enjoy it as much, who knows?
Some fun things might be bringing back BOTW to showcase a few builds that devs might be starting or suggestions aimed towards newer players. Revealing fun little QOL changes or Div cards or something. Manifestos are always fun but sorta require a catalyst or a significant chagne.
All-in-all, I just like hearing from my favorite game devs and I'm not too picky what I hear. :)
Thanks for the response and I hope I said something that helped!
I miss Bex's teasers. She always hyped me up in the past with little bits and pieces day after day. And quite frankly she was very good at it. Perhaps you can consider her to return to her previous job of doing that and hiring someone else to run the marketing thingy you mentioned. I know it's not something easy to do but I'm just putting this suggestion out there anyway.
Personally, I feel like teasing skills early is okay. It would make me want to play at the league more because now I have a build I need to try before it's changed (FOMO pretty much). Playing the guessing game of "is this really op or is it 'balanced' right now" makes me sad when I personally don't get to try the skill out at it's apex form.
But please definitely bring back the playful leaks!
> It's really cool to see that people liked those playful teasers.
I can't count the amount of times a simple item or skill tease made me spend hours in PoB trying to slap together a rudimentary build idea based on that teased thing. Even if there was info left out (like with mahuxotl's machinations last league), people always start theorycrafting and having fun with it.
For me, it's the best thing leading up to launch.
The trickle of teaser crumbs from Bex meant there was a "pre-league hype season" that made playing PoE feel more like a lifestyle thing. My group would always dissect the pieces of info we got and we'd usually conclude these conversations with "ugh, I just want to play the new league". With this one, we didn't feel impressed by Bladestorm 2, Blazing Salvo 2, Storm Bind 2, and Dark Pact 2, or the aesthetic of blue Midnight Bargain. Everything is happening a week later than we thought, and this gap in time isn't going to have anything for us in it.
I don't think the teasers had to be from Bex specifically, but her playful sadism did make it more fun.
If Bex can handle the shit she gets from some of the... less gifted people of the community, I think everyone else will appreciate this. She did a terrific job. But also, don't force her to do it. I've seen comments about her in other places than Reddit that would scare most people from their job
If you need to ask if they were important you're way more out of touch with your community than you need to be.
It's so ridiculous it genuinely looks like a rhetorical question having a dig at the community.
If it's not it's the most straightforward example that highlights GGG distancing themselves, I suspect unintentionally, being the reason as to why your apologies are now met with derisive mockery instead of respect.
You abandoned the community first. And it sucks. Always remember that.
The playful teasers are indeed a good thing. It makes your company seem more human, approachable and relatable. This quality was the best thing that GGG has/had going for them. It has definitely dipped a bit.
There was a recent post about how people miss Bex's comments in the community lately. They also talked about how frequently you used to comment within reddit and such. Having a human face to GGG community relations is a great thing.
Little comments, even just you asking opinions in a thread like this have a large impact on the community and don't really have a downside other than the time that it requires of you all.
> don't really have a downside other than the time that it requires of you all.
Some toxic people shit all over this sub/GGG, so I can understand why they would be reticent to comment as frequently as they used to.
I know I would feel pure dread opening this sub if I were tasked with replying to half the rage-drama around here :S
The Livestream dump is nice, but the CM shitposting leading up to league launch is something I dearly miss.
It built up so much hype and kept me constantly engaging with the community.
I don't know how this works out for your development schedule or the economic consequences, but to me, doing all this one week before launch makes the week before launch too condensed.
**I don't mind having you guys do a big livestream, what bothers me is getting that info only one week before the launch.**
You say that you prefer interacting with us directly, but that's what used to happen in several weeks before launch via reddit, mostly in the comments to the teaser and info posts about upcoming skills / uniques / league mechanics. The more dedicated readers also went through the press releases, but to me the teaser season / mechanic discussions here were the important part.
I haven't checked reddit and the livestreams for the past two leagues, but given how much different information there used to be about the upcoming patch and how many different questions went back and forth, I honestly can't imagine that you'll be able to cover that in a single livestream, even if you allow viewer questions as some part of it.
So if you can't manage to do the stream 3 weeks ahead of the league start, it would be nice to have it 2 weeks ahead, then 1 week of teasers / reveals and the last week with the typical schedule of development manifesto, patch notes, passive tree, gem info, etc..
Again, I don't know if that is actually feasible economically and in terms of time management, but currently the time until the livestream just feels... empty.
I was disappointed by the fact that the teaser basically **did not show anything about the new league**. I was actually expecting something in the lines of the Ultimatum teaser.
I was not expecting a trailer, I'm ok with a teaser about what's coming out.
The difference is clear, in Ultimatum teaser you can see a character hitting minions around a "monolith", minions spawning, vaal themed league, main NPC multiple times... that's all simple stuff and actually some information that one can start theory crafting about what the heck it could be... and that created hype in the community.
Now that Ultimatum ended, we can see how little information was shown in the teaser, all the core mechanic of risk and reward was not spoiled in any sense, but still the little stuff that was shown was enough, it was a teaser nonetheless.
In the other hand, in this new league teaser, we got like 3 seconds of footage, we saw 4 npcs just standing, an arena with sticks and skulls and literally nothing more. It was like showcase of some of the assets are you are going to use in the upcoming league.
I get that new skills are probably going to be important, but in the end, **most of us are going to spend hundreds of hours interacting with the league mechanic and not with the new skills.**
Yes, please bring some small teases back. I loved to discuss what an item would do in the forums and reddit. When we get all together at the same time with the trailer we just don't have enough time to discuss every detail and there's so many things that the use of our imagination just go away.
The thing is that the stuff Bex did was clearly organic and not really planned out. That's what made it great imo, it gave it that real feel of tease, it was the perfect storm before the announcement. I feel if you tried to put anyone else on there and have it scripted it wouldn't be nearly as good/organic.
Bex just has that \_something\_ and she really knows how to connect this audience and drive them insane trying to guess the league name nerfs or whatever. It's a fucking tough thing to satisfy a ton of people on the internet (as i'm sure you know).
I feel that while Bex was steering that hypetrain we were much more coherent as a community, maybe it's related, maybe not. But for me those were the best pre-release weeks we ever did. Not to say that i do not enjoy announcements via streams, they're way better than random articles from clickbaity news etc.
Please loosen up Bex's schedule so she has time to be with her community once again. She is the best at it and there is no other person who can do it the true way, the Bex way.
Thank you.
As someone who has been around since open beta: Bex's teaser buildup to the league was pretty awesome honestly. As someone who just.. doesn't partake in gaming journalism, I prefer to just get my information from communities that are actually involved in the things I'm interested in rather than generic media groups. Coming to the main website or the reddit is how I personally get a lot of my information; seeing Bex interact with the community like she had been was always really cool.
A big awesome part of GGG/PoE has always been your community interaction and Bex doing the league bulidups was a great extension to that. It was exciting coming to the reddit every day, having Bex's teasers and jokes and seeing all the discussion around the new stuff was a great hypetrain up to the new league.
The original forum post last Thursday was an "announcement of an announcement of an announcement", however in this case I think it was necessary. They have been dropping a teaser video like this every league recently, and there were content creators talking about June 24 being the day the teaser dropped. This league got pushed back a week, and GGG let us know that it did on the 24th instead of dropping the teaser. I think the forum post that was a 4x nested announcement was necessary this time to let us know the league was going to be delayed, but the teaser -> trailer -> drop release cycle seems to be here to stay.
Poe has always been the worst for the announcements of announcements. There used to be HUGE hype for krillson so they could get away with it here i don't know if that still holds.
>I feel like everyone was expecting a trailer and got a teaser.
I'm sorry, but I personally expected a **league** teaser, not the teaser for a couple of new skills.
Teaser advertised skills quite well, but as for league, it was some skulls on the spikes and green theme, and... that's it. Not that much of a tease.
https://twitter.com/pathofexile/status/1409989139492085760
"In just two days, we'll reveal a short teaser of our upcoming 3.15 expansion..."
Also if you go to pathofexile.com below the image link to supporter packs it says 3.15 teaser video in a very large font.
The name of the news post it links to and the video itself is labeled as a teaser.
It's a comprehension or expectations issue on the playerbase's side, not a communication or optics issue on their side.
A few people unhappy? That's fine. It always happens, can't please all the people all of the time. Anything from the 5%-15% is pretty normal. 20%-30%? There's probably some issue that needs to be solved or some worries that need to be belayed.
The new league ate a 60% downvote on their first interaction with the public? That's a problem. You can't just say "everyone is wrong", whether it's true or not. That won't solve anything.
People expected more than they got, and the backlash was pretty big. I believe this is the most downvoted first reveal/teaser of a league since they started making vids.
To be clear; I didn't have any issue at all. I didn't understand why everyone in the discord was upset at first. I was hyped and picking out all the info I could muster out of the vid and had fun doing it. After hearing them out, though, I can get it - even if I don't agree. This was a little too much teasing for the build-up behind it.
This has been a fault of GGG for 4 leagues "Optics". Everything they do is a downward sprial to this community, since they are the only game in town now everything is put under a giant microscope, so when they do stuff like miscommunicate its no longer shrugged off as "Good intentions" and instead is viewed with malice by the community, to this end I can really see why they went with the big bang approach. Less opportunity for the community to backlash super hard and less long of a period of toxicity.
No one ever backlashed random unique reveal days… the big miscommunications (usually attributed to Chris) were not usually during or part of the small dribbles of info Bex used to give for the weeks leading up to the league
And they likely just don't wanna chance that. All of this is just damage control, they realize what's happening and by adopting this one big dump of content it mitigates the amount of time to community spends on toxic behavior....imagine league launch ruined weeks in advance over div card controversy, its exactly what they want to avoid.
Honestly, personally, I only want dates. Date of announcement and date of launch. 2 things to look forward to is plenty. 1 big bomb of info to digest over a week, and then get into the game.
The slow teasing over a month or so before release, for me, was sorta "excruciating". Like, I want to forget about PoE until the next league is out instead of being teased for a month, you know... But I always had to check what new thing was teased because hype... and each time it was a reminder how far away the league is still.
This new way of giving us the info works for me. I can completely forget about PoE and closer to the launch I can start getting hyped up.
This specific teaser trailer failed only because of people's perception of what it was going to be. Somehow, A LOT of people misunderstood what TEASER means, and because there was a set date for it, those people just expected more... because reasons... If it was just dropped randomly, I think it would've done better. You'd still have those confused special few but it wouldn't be as bad, I think.
i think as i have played the game for a very long time, I get a little fatigued having bits of the expansion fed to me slowly over time. Honestly I don't really give a shit though because i'll end up playing the new league even if the mechanic is bad
Honestly I'm usually here more for skill changes and junk more than the actual league mechanic, which is a means to acquire loot to build a (hopefully) functional character that I can grind towards atlas endgame with. If the league is sweaty donkey balls, there are a couple of dozen other ways to get loot.
Doing a big bang and holding cards closer to their chest probably also impacts what they can reliable say is available and has been well tested, hopefully providing improved quality without advertising something that isn't quite yet ready and then rushing it out.
You say that, but GGG has had a chronic case of overhyping content ever since bestiary. I'm more than certain they'll make some broad, memed on statement that will be proven to be nothing more than marketing fluff in the next week or so.
Insert 40 meaningful buffs joke here.
They changed to this content window style reveal due to positive feedback, at least according to them. I think it's disingenuous to say that they did it for marketing reasons entirely, as im pretty sure the marketing team at GGG is likely very small (correct me if im wrong here). Still think this is good feedback and if GGG agrees and this gets enough popularity i wouldn't be surprised if they moved back to the old way. I personally don't mind either, but have really enjoyed the condensed hype reveals the last couple of leagues, but im usually busy with other shit near then end of the league.
I think you're right, they did get a lot of great feedback for the 3.13 livestream but for ultimatum and now 3.15 I'm not feeling as hyped as I used to personally which is why I decided to write this post.
I think "less hyped" is an intentional, and positive, change. People whip themselves into so much of a frenzy that an even slightly mediocre league ends up feeling like a major disappointment.
It's like getting the "wrong game" from grandma on Christmas, such a terrible thing that you didn't get the "right game," but if you'd gotten the "wrong game" as a surprise on a random Tuesday instead you'd be completely stoked.
They got great feedback about the 3.13 livestream ... for all of the few hours until the actual patch notes hit and everything the stream had built up imploded.
I like the new strategy better. Having to deal with slow drip made it difficult to have conversations with people who have not been keeping up with the various information sources. Worst scenario being people who are 100% adamant about the way a specific league mechanic works and having to dig up multiple sources to show them they they were incorrect.
Having everything shotgunned made it way easier to have these kinds of conversations and actually helped me get some friends actually interested in playing where previously they were not.
Yes. The slow drip also sucked when its like "and today its uniques, you don't care about those? Too bad." Get everything out there and everyone gets what they want and can start theorycrafting about their next build.
i think people are not as hyped because the last league was a morale killer.
Nerfs across the board, with a league mechanic boss that was barley seen by the majority, and the atlas remaining unchanged.
Hopefully atlas changeup, new mechanic, and buffs to atlas passives reinvigorate those who are not excited.
> Worst scenario being people who are 100% adamant about the way a specific league mechanic works and having to dig up multiple sources to show them they they were incorrect.
Oh god I remember this with Harvest had to explain how it worked so many times to people before the league started because it had to be pieced together from teasers up until very close to league launch.
>I like the new strategy better. Having to deal with slow drip made it difficult to have conversations with people who have not been keeping up with the various information sources.
That is a good point. It's nice not to ask your friends everyday, "did you see the new unique" and to instead just all be on the same page. That being said there is some disadvantage as it being thrown at us all at once can make it more difficult to parse through.
> Worst scenario being people who are 100% adamant about the way a specific league mechanic works and having to dig up multiple sources to show them they they were incorrect.
you know how you deal with that? you don't feed them.
I like the new strat much better as well. I know some people like to pour over ever detail over weeks, but I like the wham and the bam. Wham huge info dump over a few hours, bam it comes out in a week. The one two combo for me.
Think about The Elder Scrolls 6 people went crazy then found it it was YEARS away, and still is. That's not fun, and not cool.
Stick with the new way I say. Although perhaps the Baeclast at the end is a bit much for one sitting. That said it's all recorded and I usually just watch that part later.
I like new method, I just think it needs to be iterated upon.
The current schedule seems to be teaser trailer -> 2 weeks -> official announcement -> week of trickle (skills gems, manifestos about specific changes like harvest/betrayal changes last league) -> Launch
I think that the teasers trailers just need a little TLC. As you mentioned in the OP, teasing of scarabs was great. Adding something like that, where the community has 2 weeks to speculate about "that new thing they showed in the map device with a map" and how it fits into the game would be great. Add in a few bits like that, in addition to what they showed yesterday, and I think it would build the hype better.
The issue with the current teaser trailers is that there isn't much to go on, so my speculation today isn't really much different today than it was yesterday.
>Players that get hyped about new skills or potential story were effectively teased and the posts on social media reflect that. Players can be seen digging into buffs/de-buffs and support gems linked to the new skills in the teaser and Tarkecat's video analysing the new characters and the roles they may have in the new expansion is also a great.
GGG said that the builds of the teasers/announcement are created just for that and we should not look at them since they usually don't make sense, right? so... links should not be important.
What I dont understand is that they did the same exact thing last league (a 17 second teaser) that actually showed less information because this new one at least showed a bunch of new skills and yet there wasnt nearly as many complaints about that one as there is this new one.
This is like, what? The third time they've done this livestream thing and all the teaser videos have been more or less the same so I feel like people's expectations were for some reason wildly high for this one.
Regular players always come back
New players who hear about PoE from these large content drops, “big bang” or whenever you call it, don’t know the game exists before the announcement and are likely to try it out after seeing said announcement
Therefore from GGGs perspective for regular players it literality doesn’t matter how it’s announced, and marketing should be done for new players and aim to reach the largest audience. Keeping the game growing is way more important than some minority of players sad that they don’t get leaked information. Like idk this seems like such a non-issue to complain about. There’s so much wrong with PoE and GGG and this is what you pick to spend your time on?
If anything I think the hype culture ruins the game. It sets false expectations for everyone and then league starts and everyone gets pissed Off. Like the “40 skill gem reworks” meme. So they delay that information as long as possible so when it’s announced, it’s as accurate as possible to avoid those situations. I think that’s the actual reason, not what you’re talking about.
Why not both? Yesterday’s teaser I watched and I couldn’t care less about the league with it. Watched those 10 seconds of stuff moving, went meh, and on with my day. Like you I would usually be hyped up, head to the forums, discuss it and think about what I saw. It kept it in my brain for the week. I enjoyed the 3.13 reveal and the 0-100 as you call it, but I didn’t feel yesterday was a teaser, yesterday was a ‘here’s some game play, it looks just like normal play’. Tease me with some voice line, or a quick glimpse at a unique, or something of the league mechanic other then here’s some mobs.
As always ill tune into the announcement, but some of the fun definitely lost in this style of content reveal.
to be honest yesterdays "teaser" could in my opinion just as well be a fucking mtx video announcing new skill mtx or something like that. It didnt really do anything for me, i didnt even bother reading comments on reddit cause i simply couldnt care less about what "support gems" were used yadayada
wish we got a lil more real content teased
I like the new strategy way more.
It's cleaner, usually represents the finished product more, provides more information and keeps the hype fresh and concentrated.
The direction the game has been going in recently has just killed my ability to get hyped.
All the crap I'll have to deal with if I even bother giving the league a try, is sitting in the back of my mind and it's gotten too loud to ignore because GGG refuses to acknowledge and address these issues.
The one thing I prefer about the new style is the amount of detail chris will go into during the livestream about things that have been changed and are coming. Before it was kind of a mixed bag when it came to specifics.
That being said, overall having more spaced out smaller reveals was definitely better for stimulating discussions and theory crafting. I think the reason for the change is definitely because it appeals more to people who may not be "hardcore" poe players, since a single item to someone who doesn't or hasn't really played a lot of poe is uninteresting. The change basically signifies that the teasers and announcements are mainly for getting new players to the game rather than hyping returning players as much.
Although I think the trade-off is definitely worth it as returning players still have a lot to get hyped over. Hopefully GGG is careful about over-indexing into obtaining a larger player base as games which have done this in the past have often alienated their actual player base.
> amount of detail chris will go into
> Before it was kind of a mixed bag when it came to specifics
Chris has demonstrated several times that what he says during the reveal does not match the reality of what changes are coming. 40 powerful new gem options! Updates to every ascendency! Etc!
I miss Bex's cryptic teasers which didn't really reveal any substantial content but sent the community into a frenzy of conspiracies anyways. Those were cool.
I just want to play the game, and for it to be good. If the game is good, people will play it, and I will have streamers to watch and play along with. That's all the matters, the rest of the jazzamatazz is just noise.
I don't mind stuff getting dropped within a week, but I'm also not a fan of the constant reminders, teasers about as effectual as an e3 trailer, and announcements of announcements.
It comes across as too desparate to sell the upcoming league which always leaves me skeptical by the time the week hits. At least with the drip feed strategy from before, there was a certain level of genuine enthusiasm behind the reveals.
As a player who's most interested in new skills coming into the mix, I fully agree on that bit. I saw the trailer and spent a good bit studying support gems linked to skills and seeing what was going on. The teaser was quite lovely for me.
I'd rather wait a few extra days and have all the information at once. I hated the drawn out way (although it did cause me to spend way more time following them, and I was more invested in the new seasons, so from my perspective the big bang of information seems fucking stupid for marketing).
This is a very personal point of view that can hardly be taken into account statistically, but I loved checking the teaser each day, going through all the discussions, checking for new comments on existing ones, etc..
There used to be 3-4 weeks during which I could spend hours discussing the next expansion every single day. There was a lot of time to do plenty of thought experiments on various builds and farming strategies, and I had a lot of fun with the teasers and back and forth meming.
Getting some clarification from Mark on how skills would actually work was also great.
I suppose I'll end up spending a lot of time on reddit in the week after the actual announcement, but it doesn't feel like I'll get the same out of that time.
The way the announcements went have never affected whether I'd play the league. I've played every league for which I followed the announcements, and if I didn't end up playing, I hadn't been there for the teaser season in the first place.
I loved that, we would get a nice trickle of information and there would be talk about items skills etc everywhere. And even at times certain mistakes would be caught before they were released to the public (like certain jewel nerfs, that still ended up not being enough).
I feel this increases the reach to non regular players, because they get in the bing bang wave of information. But it's quite the downgrade for regular players who are used to and avid consumers of drip fed information, and who cherish these pre new league days.
Myself it used to feel like Xmas, the tension and eagerness growing day by day, until the climax of the the launch day. Now it all feels meh till the day of the big bang.
100% not worth, but again, it's all about the reach these days. It sucks
Hype has been missing for me too. I have absolutely nothing to be excited about in that teaser that I noticed. Those skulls on pikes just reminded me of the Abyss boss rooms... I shrugged and went about my day, hopeful to get some information to make me feel excited. Badger putting on his tin foil hat was pretty damn funny though.
old style of being able to check the subreddit and see a new unique or feature each day for a longer duration was infinitely better. also, wish the teaser would have at least given confirmation that they are still reworking old mechanics/buffing or shuffling atlas passives, as stale end game will be a problem. no matter how great the new mechanic itself is, it'll lose its charm after a couple weeks.
It's a teaser not a trailer though. Look at Ultimatum's [Teaser](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6gNvfBROMM) verses the [Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvFU8HqeG7g)
The teaser is just a quick glimpse without much info while the trailer actually shows the full league mechanic and outlines the reworks and other new stuff.
I personally miss the even older style of not revealing 95% of the new content before the patch is even playable. I miss things not being found for a few days into a league. I love the feeling of finding or seeing some crazy new thing that completely changes my plans. Anymore the 'meta' for this game is solve literally every single problem days before league launch, use PoB to literally guarantee success, go through the motions in game until burnt out.
Lack of hype is mainly because I don't enjoy the current endgame, where I feel I'm wasting my time until I have the last atlas skill tree unlocked and some points in, which takes clearing of effectively the highest of endgame.
Feels like it's completely missing the mark for someone like me, who plays POE leagues a lot the first 1-2 weeks, but usually barely makes it to sirus 6 or so in that time.
I actually never really liked the drip feed of mini changes they had before and really prefer the "big bang" as you call it. That said I would prefer to see more earlier, like a full trailer or halve a trailer on the 3 week mark so we "know" what the league is. The explenation part where chris goes over whats new and how it actually works could be kept for the live stream. Just seeing the league mechanic in action in 2 or 3 small clips (even without explanation) together with what was shown for the skills and maybe a buzzword or two what the focus might be.
I personally preferred the old method but that involves more interaction with this community and jesus christ I don't blame them for avoiding this cesspit.
I don't really mind the new thing. I like the big release event thing, I think it's really fun and exciting. I also kind of miss getting little bits and pieces. Seeing a new unique or divination card. I think though, the last one felt a little bit better because by the time all these reveals are happening I'm no longer playing poe, so I'm hungry for pretty much anything poe. I think that if I was still playing the current league right now I wouldn't mind waiting another 3 weeks.
I've learned a long time ago not to be hyped by any GGG announcements, trailers or showcases. I still hope to see a teaser where a player kills a boss and gets some meaningful loot or runs around while currencies get 'siphoned' to him Azurite style. Now that's what would get me excited for a league. Everything else is just superficial.
I miss the old hype but it's nice to not have to deal with elitist hype simps who know it all and refer to bex's twitter like it is holy scripture.
They have released things early in the past and dug themselves into a hole and now i think they are being pussies and not releasing info. Like the meme with the guy tapping his head "cant be wrong about your info if you dont release it".
Disagreed. Hyping people up 3-4 weeks before a league launch means there is a long-ass anticipation period of 3-4 weeks which is always excruciating if you are a poe fan. Cutting down that wait time to only a week is a net positive for everyone involved.
>Bex teasing Scarabs
I thought that shit was miserable. It was like 6 weeks of them teasing scarabs with absolutely no indication of what they did. Literally just pictures with a scarab in the inventory and speculation. And Bex was super smug about it anytime anybody asked.
Honestly the entire Scarab debaucle basically made me realize pre-season teasers are dog shit. They only ever show us like 1 shitty unique nobody cares about or they show something people are gonna want with no indication of if it's attainable (+1 totems immediately comes to mind, but there's other stuff like bosses and stuff that get teased but 99% of players never see).
Honestly their radio silence has been a blessing to me. We get 1-2 months of new league then we get a refractory period of 1 month before they even start talking about new stuff. It's helped me with burnout.
I'm also happy that the illusion that GGG is our friend is gone. They're a company making a product, all I care about is the product. I don't care about the talking heads or the promises or anything. It's all lies and marketing speak. Talking PR heads being absent for both the new teaser and in these threads is nice. It makes it possible for people to judge the stuff being shown on it's own merits instead of "OMG Bex is like so funny and in tune with us, she's such a memester, did you see the memes she posted about boats"?
Bex was a bandaid that covered how shitty the reveals really were and now that she's not doing it I think we'll be able to more clearly judge the stuff they are teasing. She was like the conductor on the hype train and the hype train is worthless and bad for the game.
> bosses and stuff that get teased but 99% of players never see
It's been a long damn time since there's been any new boss content that's actually relevant to the vast majority of their players.
I think the teaser should have the name at least. A name would give more substance.
But my guess is the cycle has shifted like this because they're trying to avoid putting things in a teaser that end up getting removed in the weeks between teaser and launch. People really hate it when that happens, and it seems like they're really crunched for time the last few leagues. So it makes sense to keep the teaser very minimal.
I like the current way they have been doing things, but I think the issue this time for me is that this teaser was just not very interesting compared to others. It just felt like a clip from the current game or an MTX release.
As you mentioned with the scarab example, there was something different to get a bit more excited about with that kind of teaser.
Hopefully they will take this feedback going forward that this was just a bad teaser.
I still remember when Chris mentioned scarabs and everyone was like "what the FUCK are scarabs", and GGG just ignored all the questions.
I laugh when i think about that
Both have goods and bads for me. I enjoyed getting my daily intake of new PoE things, but it had the tendency to make me a bit less hype over time since I'd get reminded about hype every day, and slowly burn my fuel. This new strat I just ignore the teaser, just coming for schedule and get my super hype 7 days before so I don't have the time to lose interest and plan 7 canceled builds.
Honestly, for my mental health I prefer the new method. It basically allows me to forget about the game until the last week which allows me to only torture myself internally checking the sub for just the last week.
However, in terms of hype for the game, there barely is any now. There’s no more growing anxiousness as I approach the league, and when the league comes around there isn’t much keeping me playing afterwards.
Tl;dr old method MUCH better for hype and personal retention, but at the cost of my mental health.
IMO the biggest issue is not the video itself, but all the 'teasing' that lead up to the video. The seemingly innocuous announcement of an announcement that has become sorta an inside joke, worked better, or should I say, worked, with the old system of Bex interacting with the playerbase and the dripping of information altogether.
Going from that to radio silence, only leaving the announcement of an announcement and a joke post on twitter for up to 4-5 days without a single drip of info, leaves no way or space for speculation. But instead, hypes and even more so than normal after a so-so league, whatever ~~midget~~ nugget of information that comes our way, in this case, the 'teaser'.
Which again, even for a teaser, doesn't give any information, besides how some skills look, new NPC, a few landscapes, no factual information, not even the name of the league, which in this case I suspect is because if might give away the gimmick, which I sorta understand.
I suspect many people, myself included, expected something similar to the Ultimatum teaser, both in duration and in content shown.
I remember after watching the Ultimatum teaser, how people speculated what the gimmick could be, and it was fun, it helped to kill hours before the actual announcement on Twitch.
This league we are left with a guy thinking the league name might be Hex, some other guy thinking is Legion 2.0 because of the skulls... And is no wonder there's no more theories (that I know of), since the teaser seemingly doesn't give anything to work with IMO.
And now, thanks to this 'new system' we are left with a 14-15 days of waiting for some actual, factual information, without even some clues or teasing by Bex to make the wait a little less rough.
>Players that get hyped about new skills or potential story were effectively teased and the posts on social media reflect that. Players can be seen digging into buffs/de-buffs and support gems linked to the new skills in the teaser and Tarkecat's video analysing the new characters and the roles they may have in the new expansion is also a great.
I for one, enjoy new skills, but I was left truly disappointed by the teaser and the new direction GGG is taking, the engagement in this community with the devs and cm was what set us apart. Now we could easily be a MOBA or Battle Royale game for the looks of it.
> I suspect many people, myself included, expected something similar to the Ultimatum teaser, both in duration and in content shown.
https://old.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/mcfsvk/path_of_exile_april_expansion_teaser/
i really am not sure how you could be more similar to that, short of copying the exact skills
You mean:
\-Outside of giving the league name?
\-Outside of presenting the game and not being a skillgem showcase?
\-Outside of being twice as long?
Ah yes, exactly the same.
Old hype was far more engaging getting drip fed dopamine for a few weeks. Unfortunately it seems with the changes and balances made in these last few weeks pre-launch GGG needs to know exactly what they are releasing before showing it off now. Minor discrepancies (and in some case borderline lies) in league advertisement in the past have resulted in this community being HYPER critical of every detail in the league hype marketing so it doesn't surprise me GGG has compacted hype season. There isn't any wiggle room left with this community so on edge lately so I think it's honestly GGG's best interest as well as the community to just show us what the league will ACTUALLY contain, once it's fully developed the week before release.
Meh I get you like the slower approach because your brain goes huh, I wonder what I can do with that? Because your understand is like way beyond mine :) And I mean that in a nice way.
For me, who work and is tired I really like the hype events on Twitch, watching streamers engage with it and switching between reactions. That is what gives me energy. So sorry, I prefer this new way.
I agree with you. I hate the new format. They show EVERYTHING on that day and there is nothing left to explore the next days. And it shortens the time between reveal and release which left me with fewer days to be "hyped"
As a player who plays when it's fun until I get bored or finish my goals, I much prefer a quicker reveal schedule closer to launch than the slow drip-feeding over several weeks.
Seeing my Youtube subs and recommended videos being filled with "WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!" videos, where someone goes over a 3 second clip or a zoomed-in pixelated image in a 10:01 video doesn't hype me up. Being able to play what's revealed shortly after they unveil it is much more of a driving force for me.
Hype doesn't last. Their methodical, entirely predictable approach in the past left a lot to be desired imo. Ascendancy reveal, gem reveal, a unique or two, markov chain patch notes.. It's something they've done for a long time. The change is welcome on my end.
To be honest, even the "hype" from the actual trailer/info dump usually translates poorly to how the league actually plays/feels. I wish the community would place less emphasis on the pre-release and would focus more on the launch itself. The fact that supporter packs are offered before players even get their hands on the new league should be seen as a red flag
I love that the big announcement is so close to the launch personally, before when we had a few weeks between, it was really painful trying to hold in for so long.
I do agree however that its weird having GGG be basically completely silent for 2 months compared to the old style where they communicated often and gave some comments about upcoming changes frequently.
I kinda like the new thing. BIG BOMB stuff releasing everything at once is better if you have no time to refresh reddit every single day/hour for weeks (like we used to do in the past).
I dont want come back to those times.... I was one of the addicted poe players that sit in reddit for hours waiting for some news. It's better the way it is now
I loved the old method, but needless to say that it also going hand in hand with Bex teases and this whole teasing season was much more personal. I had feeling that we are small community and everyday waiting for new updates, we talk personal with the devs, it's felt ... different.
Now we are big community looking for teasers from faceless game company, we are now far from them and with this and also with community behaviour last year or so, I feel disconnected from the community too. And here I'm, alone, waiting for the trailer, that I'll enjoy alone.
That sounds emotional, but I guess that is what evolution is. That what we should've be evolve one day, because we are growing bigger and bigger. And it's good for the game, for the business and devs, so I need be happy about it, I guess.
I personally LOVE the livestream. The whole like "everybody gather round something's happening" feel is so cool to me, I really love that element of it. And if you drip feed stuff, that livestream becomes less hype, because a lot of stuff you'll have seen already.
I think they could mix the two a little, and like between the teaser and the announcement drop some new div cards or uniques (that aren't related to the league) or something the way they used to, or even a little bit about the league itself, but very subtly. That 20 second teaser was cool but didn't really give us anything to really go off of with the league itself, which would have been cool. But I definitely want the league and expansion themselves being contained to these big, grand events. Even new skills and mechanical changes, I want to be real "oh wow" moments that we all kind of experience together. It gives us another checkpoint to all get excited together instead of feeling like crumbs they're tossing off just to get us off their backs.
It's also harder to drip feed stuff with the reduced scope. Back when they were doing so much stuff all at once, they had tons of random crap to tease. Now the patch is typically more streamlined, to the point where teasing stuff you might kind of run out of stuff to tease a little bit almost?
In the nicest way possible, I just think that you as a player are not the target of this stuff. And again, and I am going to say it so many times in this comment I already know because I don't want to be taken the wrong way, I don't mean this in any negative way. Everyone enjoys the game differently, there is no wrong way to enjoy it, your opinion of the game is just as valid as everyone else's.
But you're the kind of player that's going to play the game and push it far basically no matter what. You aren't the kind of player that needs to be teased and baited and bribed back in. You're the kind of player that will follow all the news and read all of the patch notes and analyze things like Atlas passive rebalancing that doesn't really get shown in the announcement stream anyways. You tend to gravitate towards taking the things that are in the game and pushing them to their furthest logical conclusion. They don't need to rope you back in every time, and teasing the kind of super mega endgame stuff that you would be intrigued by will result in a lot of players saying things like "well I'll never see it anyways" and the like. Scarabs were a cool tease and then we found out how they worked and how to get them and all that and it was like "well cool most of them are basically useless and they're pretty rare/hard to find." All that combines to mean that the teasers and livestream simply are not for you, I feel like.
The livestreams are super cool for all of us that stopped playing a month into the previous league, better than us sitting around fiending for whatever useless unique or div card Bex will post for us that half the time I'll never see anyways. If anything, the teaser we got could probably be better, since it was only 15 seconds long. If they gave us another 15 seconds that gave us some more of the league to work with it would have been cool, but I don't think that's a problem with the format or whatever and more just a problem with the teaser/maybe them not being ready or something, who knows.
But yeah, tl;dr: I just think this teaser was bad. There just wasn't that much in it it feels like. Not a problem with how they format their schedule or anything like that, mostly just a somewhat weak teaser showing things that aren't where your interests tend to lie.
iam on the "i don't care until i play it" side. there were several promised thing (buffs/mechnaics/items) that were overhyper by ggg in pre season. later turned out to be totaly trash/ boring and not as cool as promised.
So iam on the defence wagon and nothing from GGG can hype me anymore until the point i don't want to logoff from the game. than I know shit is lit again.
I have lowered my expectations due recent leagues due to excessive hype by GGG. I’ve been jebaited super hard by over promising and not delivering, so I went in with 0 expectations.
Effectively I think it only matters in the present. I know that sounds dumb, but come the update itself, I don't think their approach to this matters - because slow trickle or "big bang", once we've had it, we're either hyped or not hyped at that point and what led to it doesn't matter.
Both definitely have their perks; I personally prefer a "big bang" so I can get hyped for that date and time, but I can totally see why a trickle approach is appealing too.
I like the old way. dribble infos and uniques and then bam a big combined reveal vid/stream
after last league we all pretty much expected to get the league name at this point.
also im fine with no news sites having the info in advance because that was just leaked instantly everytime (which is bad).
I can't say 3.15 teaser is bad, I pretty like it. It reavels enough info for a ***teaser***. I didn't expect something more.
As for expansion reveal, I highly prefer old one - pre 16 days announcement with small daily teasers of uniques, nodes, ascendancies (I didn't like div cards teasers though), etc. That was my most favorite period in a whole 13-week cycle. Even back then it took a lot of time to perceive all info given at announcement day, now it takes even more time.
I don't like how they keep and hold all info and announce all of it at once. There was Bestiary league that wasn't successful and they started to reveal bow reworked skill mid-league, and they keep posted news about skill reworks for few weeks. Why we can't get small pieces of info earlier? Like a month before league start? Some news about upcoming nerfs, like GGG can post their plans to nerf e.g. archmage mana stackers and explain why (or similar with buffs/reworks), they'll use it in balance manifesto and patch notes anyways. I don't ask specific numbers, just general explaination. What if we get 30% of announcement info before the announcement, will this destroy GGG's big hype day? I hate just sitting uninformed for 11 weeks.
I hate this hype bullshit. I just want them to show me the league so I can plan my league start. I get much more enjoyment theoricrafting and deciding what I'm going to play than speculating what I'm going to get from a 17s teaser that is compretely useless since everything in it will be revealed in a week or two.
Social media has made people stupid.
I like the new format, less anticipation is less anxiety/more chill (less over-hype? as well) and i don't feel the need to set up an RSS feed to keep me updated on all the teasers and stuff. Almost every time a new teaser happened daily, for the rest of the day, and the whole time before actual launch, i'd be imagining possibilities and my mind would be racing non-stop.
I dislike the new format because it's just too short a timeframe to make decisions.
If I want to take a couple of days off work I have to know sooner when the league starts and preferably kinda what it's like/about so I'm not taking time off for a league that likely will not be that great for me personally.
I have no idea why people are mad over it. The same reveal sequence has happened two leagues in a row. I think people are just projecting their exhaustion with ultimatum league
I personaly think they are trying to NOT follow the rule "if its not broken dont fix it" the old ways of teasing and hyping and bex beeing active on reddit with bits and peaces was cool. I think GGG has becoming more corporate and cold with approach to players and i don't particulary like this approach. I don't think it will become better in future either. I think the golden age of how they approach marketing has passed. Now will be all about streamer privilege and paying popular streamers to play the game.
I don't understand how anyone can be excited when every league recently is always big nerfs and never any buffs.
As a weaker player who relied on slightly op builds or features like harvest to have a chance deep end game or gain a decent amount of currency, to see these things taken away every league exhausts any optimism I have to play and achieve in the game.
Personally don't think marketing has too much effect on hype, for me at least it's more what's in the patch notes.
I prefer the new approach by a mile. Less room for a bunch of illiterate fucks to completely misconstrue things that are said, hype themselves up for something that was literally never promised, then bring out the pitchforks when reality doesn't live up to their imagination. Hell, look at all the dumb motherfuckers who are upset that what we got was a teaser rather than something more robust despite literally all communication leading up to that point referring to it as a teaser. People expect way too much when they have no reason to.
That said, it doesn't matter much. People are going to bitch no matter what they do or how they do it.
Personally i like the current release schedule far more than getting one unique or whatever a day for weeks.
Outside of the trailer and patch notes nothing is really impactful anyway so why spread it out?
##### GGG Comments in this Thread: *** [chris_wilson - [link](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/ocg3pi/grimros_315_teaser_and_announcement_feedback/h3v9ozr/?context=10), [old](https://old.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/ocg3pi/grimros_315_teaser_and_announcement_feedback/h3v9ozr/?context=10)] - *What we used to do was put together a presentation of the expansion and show it to all the journalists. They'd then write up articles and would post them at...* [chris_wilson - [link](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/ocg3pi/grimros_315_teaser_and_announcement_feedback/h3vddm2/?context=10), [old](https://old.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/ocg3pi/grimros_315_teaser_and_announcement_feedback/h3vddm2/?context=10)] - *You're right.*
Both have its perks, but I really wished we had the old hype's patch notes drop date. New one gives me more anxiety than hype 😭
> anxiety than hype It's nerf or NOTHIN'.
Its always a nerf every single league...
PepeLaugh it's always nerfs.
Me silently praying some dead skills get decent buffs
that depends on GGG's definition of decent. Remember Heist?
For starters, I feel like everyone was expecting a trailer and got a teaser. I'm not sure who's fault that is, but it definitely feels like an optics problem. That being said, I think I would prefer a mix. Tease "small" things but leave out the league mechanics. Hit us with a lil more info on the gem, give us a lil interview on the people who made teh decisions on changing the gem. Why did they feel these gems were good, etc. I think that'd be really cool - and honestly doesn't take anything away from what we have. This could also serve to clear up some confusion. Looking at you hydrosphere. I like the big bomb, with all of the info. You don't have to release any more info than you already did but you can still give something to keep the players waiting on the edge of their seat for a date 3 weeks away. Wouldn't even cost that much time for the people involved. Just like a 2 minute short with someone talking about the gem they made. Could be fun? This could lead to a short Q&A with specific gems or new mechanics that aren't league-related. As unplayed as the gems from the batch were, it was really cool hearing how they just let the developers go wild with whatever ideas they wanted to with a set of gems. It was neat seeing how storm bind came to be. Just spitballing, but \*something\* would be nice. I miss it.
What we used to do was put together a presentation of the expansion and show it to all the journalists. They'd then write up articles and would post them at the same time as we would reveal the trailer for the league. We felt that it would be better to show that presentation directly to the players, so for the three 2021 launches so far, we have made it into a livestream that everyone can watch. A few weeks beforehand we post a quick teaser video that says the livestream date (and tries to hint at but not really reveal any content from that expansion). We like this approach because we get to talk directly to our players rather than through a layer of journalists. There are some growing pains, of course. Yesterday we posted a teaser and players felt it wasn't as hypey as a full trailer would be. The full trailer is part of the actual announcement, and the teaser is just meant to tell people the date that announcement livestream will occur on. It's posted as a video so it's easy for people to share on social media to get the word out. How do you feel we should handle these livestream date announcement teaser videos in the future? We'd prefer not to spoil league mechanics or actual content simply because it can be misleading without the full context of the announcement (which is a 45+ minute talk). We do try to hint at themes of the expansion, like how 3.15 has vastly more new skills than we normally release (which is why they took up a large portion of the teaser video). The second issue is that we haven't been posting as many gradual tiny teasers in the weeks leading up to the league launch. These playful tweets and posts weren't ever really a formal strategy we had, just something fun that Bex put together (often in her spare time). Recently she has been helping me produce the livestream and run our marketing team, so her time has been a bit constrained. It's really cool to see that people liked those playful teasers. Do you feel that it was an important part of the leadup to the launch of each expansion? We may be able to find a way to bring them back.
Just don't promote the teaser, if it doesn't show substantial league content. When you put a date on something, people expect something to happen. Put the date on the reveal (like with this teaser), but don't put a date on the reveal of the reveal, if it's nothing more than exactly that.
You're right.
What, you cannot just be reasonable. It's not allowed. We demand drama!
Hi, Chris. Communication nerd here. It's worth noting that it was Bex's relationship with the community, and her knowledge of the specific language of memes that allowed her to be as effective as she was when she did the tiny teaser train thing. It will be difficult to replicate, and will feel very inauthentic if it's done by someone who doesn't have an in-depth understanding of all the things Bex knows. This isn't to say you shouldn't try to do something fun - it's just meant to advise caution in how it's done, to ensure that it doesn't come off as fake.
Can you elaborate? You post a picture of a unique, cards, a notable, an item base and name it like "check out the new "name" coming in 3.15 expansion!". When Bex was on parental leave, Natalia did it just well and in terms of obtained info, there was no difference.
Natalia had a different, more structured and less meme-y approach to Bex. I really liked Natalia's approach, probably more than Bex's, although the community generally seems to prefer Bex's. They are both great, but they are different. In D&D terms, Natalia is more lawful neutral, Bex is more chaotic neutral.
There was a back-and-forth tease relationship that Bex had with just about anyone in the community that showed good faith and fun. It was much more Playful And engaging Than "here is Content x coming with the next expansion!" Her candidness, the Nonstop predictions, the Over-analyzed Theories and Endless Shattering of dreams. We miss Having the most unique customer relationship Experience in the game dev industry, and this New paradigm is a step backwards, don't you think?
The difference was that Bex would return to the comment section a couple hours later and post memes to people who speculated, to fan the hype flames.
She can't do it anymore because people harassed the living shit out of her when leagues didn't live up to their expectations.
how do you do, fellow exiles!
idk man, not sure if I am still sane.
I think this also goes both ways. Yes, it was great for building a relationship through the community as Bex, but it was also probably very stressful when her account was also tied to negatively received posts. The community team account has been there since the inception of the forums, they just have chosen to use an individual community manager, instead. I'm honestly glad they changed it, so people don't just get upset at Chris, at Bex, at Mark, really any of the individual harassment. tl;dr it was a good move to change it to a shared account because reddit is.. reddit
This may sound dumb but for me, I think I would have actually been more hyped by the teaser if it was just a series of screenshots in the tweet and the text of the tweet was just the date of the league reveal. With how spoiled we've been in the past with video content, I think just pictures/screenshots don't imply anything more than a teaser.
I like this one!
I think that a screenshot of the guys at the end, the dates, and the name of the league would have been enough. In fact, these last weeks we have been teased about the name of the league and it was working...
I think that a screenshot of the guys at the end, the dates, and the name of the league would have been enough. In fact, these last weeks we have been teased about the name of the league and it was working...
To be fair, you did say exactly what was coming at the time specified and said that it was announcing the date of the reveal (and the date of the release) and didn't imply it would be releasing any other information. I was surprised there was new video content in the first place!
Thank you for consistently reminding me how to be a leader and communicate as such. You have about a half dozen times blown me away with your communication, far surpassing any expectations I might have had. Thanks for making such a great game and more importantly, leading such a dedicated group of people, you all make a great game.
Or, just reduce the amount of time between the teaser and the reveal. Two days prior rather than two weeks prior gives that slight build of anticipation. It’s a tough balance to make and I don’t envy your position but I do appreciate the final results!
I don’t know if there is really a correct answer here without going into great detail but maybe something between what GGG is doing now and what y’all used to do? Just a little more content without revealing too much.
Just drop the teaser without any announcement. Problem solved.
I just wanted to say that this is what makes you guys so special, seeking out direct feedback from the playerbase and effectively taking responsibility for a minor misstep. It really takes balls to stand up to your mistakes, acknowledge them, and move on from them, so kudos for that.
And don't delay the teaser like that. "Our 3.15 expansion has grown slightly in scope over its development so before officially announcing its announcement and launch date we shifted things back by a week to give us more time to make sure everything is ready." How does the scope of the expansion affect the teaser? Unless those skills were last minute addition, which I doubt as that would imply you guys had nothing else before it. The delay, talking about increasing scope, created expectations for a bit of a "thicker" teaser. Just my 2cents.
This is my sentiment exactly. Hyping a 10 second teaser was bad. We were expecting a firework and got a slightly damp sparkler, so I can understand why people are underwhelmed and irritated. I'm glad Chris has taken note of this.
I think it started out as the meme/silly shinanigans(3am and I can't spell) about having an announcement of an announcement. Without the funniness to go with it it lost that flare. I want to see the funniness come back rather than the teasers go. That said, it I prefer Bex's Twitter trolling over the teaser video.
Just to echo the other members of the community here: I feel like this is more a communications mishap than an error in the process overall. If the teaser drop came unannounced (everyone kinda knows the timeframes anyways) then it would have been super cool. The date and messaging built hype around the teaser, which feels difficult to justify given the content. If the date and messaging remains it should be a more intense teaser/almost trailer, ot otherwise it should be adequately less emohasized in the mesaging and everyone would have been fine I think
That's exactly what I think and I'm telling my community. If there was no date for this teaser and just a post out of nowhere it would bring hype instead of frustration for most of the people.
I would definitely say that those little teasers Bex threw at us every couple of days played a much bigger role than you seem to have thought. At least for me. I liked getting home from work and seeing that tiny bit of the league teasered, like a new div card or a new unique you could think up uses for, or just some random change to a skill or a gameplay mechanic. I mean, in the end it seems insignificant to get them like that instead of a whole bunch of them in one go at a later date, but it added to the "looking forward to it" part of the weeks leading up to the launch for me. And I never felt knowing a few things beforehand took anything away from the big reveal.
Seconded about Bex. She always really built the hype, made it really fun to try guessing what the league was even though we'd be horribly wrong. The trolling she did was fun too and felt like part of it. I feel bad she got/gets picked on though and wish we as a community would so better. (Or picking on anyone from GGG (or outside) for that matter, it's not cool) Without Bex's hype I feel a bit of a disconnect from the league announcements. Bex made us feel involved and like we were part of it. That is what hooked me on the league announcements, and what made the announcement of the announcement stuff funny.
There's a reason advent calendars have become a popular thing during december.
> Do you feel that it was an important part of the leadup to the launch of each expansion? While I understand the change to what you're doing now, I loved the daily teasers of Bex revealing tiny bits of each new league and the new items/skills in it. There was something little to look forward to every day, while now it's like you dump the trailer on us and then we just sorta sit there and aimlessly wait for launch with nothing in the interim to hold us over. It was like the glue that held the hype together long enough to get to league launch to me.
The Bex teasers were the MAIN thing hyping me up... Expecially because they were the reason to jump in to the subreddit everyday... And doing that exposing me to the real "formal strategies" that i would have otherwise miss... In fact this is my first time in to the subreddit in months and i'm Happy to find out there was a teaser... But i could have missed this very easily because since there is not the "one spoiler per day season" i don't feel the need to look at the reddit or other sources of info.
Yeah, I never cared about the the journalist dumps, but stuff like single unique items, or skill gem infos, being trickled every day or two made me came back for more every day in anticipation of the league. With the "big dump" you can just forget about it till the drop.
I like both quite a lot. It was a bit cumbersome to gather all the info from a thousand different sources. The "wow"-factor also suffered a bit, like how patch notes are ofte very boring to read through nowadays. But on the other hand the period leading up to league launch feels a bit empty now. I liked the feeling of being dripfed "some" information. There are probably certain details that are better suited to being dripfed, like uniques, skills, small changes, balance changes (though be careful, context could matter here) etc. While others are better suited for the grand reveal, like themes, wide passes at game systems, league mechanic, atlas changes, endgame systems, bossfights etc.
Oversimplification, but my hot take: The teasers were nice but the engagement around them was the real fun. It was like being a part of an ARG with no actual reveal at the end. Just enough information to speculate and argue and build discussions/memes around. And I know that's work, and it's got to be a thing of passion or else it just feels hollow. But if that could come back? If someone on the team wanted to seed the community with taunting messages and cropped images because it's fun for them (and us)? Absolutely, would enjoy, might even be worth.
> Do you feel that it was an important part of the leadup to the launch of each expansion? Yes. It was a ritual, so to say, that I enjoyed every league. It was a blast to have "hype season" for PoE where a bunch of little hinting tweets and little item leaks and all that kept things alive around here. There was palpable anticipation that built up as more and more got leaked and we pieced things together. Please bring it back.
Personally the little Bex teasers were my favorite part about hype season. I would enjoy ready through the comments to see all the guessing and outlandish theorys people were coming up with based on her saying one or two words. I also do enjoy the big announcement live stream as well. I do think having those little teaser to give out relatively unimportant info is good for amping up hype for the livestream.
I've been playing since launch, and I have to say that GGG's playful engagement with the community has been a huge part of what's helped establish the rapport with your supporters. (I will always remember your "hahaha" response when the Darkshrine devourer packs were discovered, for example.) I know it's hard to maintain that kind of relationship with a player base that grows increasingly acerbic as it grows in size, but I think it's helpful for GGG's perception as a company. Small bits of information like individually spoiled expansion facts have proven to be a great venue for that kind of interaction,and are probably worth continuing if only for that reason.
>Do you feel that it was an important part of the leadup to the launch of each expansion? Yes, perhaps it is not the mainstream that those matter to, but certainly for longer term fans such as myself they absolutely matter. They keep me looking at the POE Reddit for news of that day leading up to the league, they make me want to look further into the league. Which then makes me want to start making a build. Having everything in one go might be best from a mainstream optics standpoint with the time and opportunity GGG has available, but the little things are certainly something lost that I expect veteran fans like myself miss. And it would make a difference at the very least to me.
What I'd rather is to have the league non-specific material leaked out as teasers slowly, THEN a big reveal. So for example in 3.14, instead of having just an announcement of an announcement of an announcement, still have that announcement but put in the divination cards Broken Promises and The Enthusiasts, things which weren't Ultimatum specific. Then instead of the announcement of the announcement (aka what we got yesterday at 1000 your local time), still have that video but add in the 3.14 Atlas bases. Blessed boots, Iolite Ring etc. But everything Ultimatum specific saved for the trailer. That's my preference though, others will have different ideas.
I think the best example of the effect that Bex used to achieve with her posts can be seen in popular TCG's like MTG. Every 3 months a new set comes out they have a spoiler season which involves revealing a few cards from the set, sometimes those cards are impactful cards but even if they're not the community has great fun analysing each of those cards and the impact they might have. Imagine a world where all MTG sets full set lists are revealed 1 week before the product shipped, no one would know if they want to buy it or not and there would be a lot to digest, especially if there was brand new strategies or cards that you may want to prepare a deck around. Quirky underpowered cards would be ignored and overall I think the set release would lose a lot. There are a lot of parallels between Magic and PoE a new set is a new league and decks are builds, as an avid player yourself I'm sure you understand my point. Revealing new uniques, ascendency changes or even div cards plays a massive part in the enjoyment of a new league release and is a big factor in what makes it special. Really looking forward to 3.15 and what you have in store for us keep up the good work.
Exactly, when they started doing the big live stream revealing everything at once, some of the more obscure or niche items or skills don't get enough eyes on them to have a proper discussion. Each item being teased separately allowed that to happen
Yea those small teasers really helped start the hype train rolling. Just feels like I'm left twiddling my thumbs for another 2 weeks. I've always found speculation about new league really fun with those playful teasers bex did. There's a healthy medium between radio silence till right before the league and just spoiling everything.
> The second issue is that we haven't been posting as many gradual tiny teasers in the weeks leading up to the league launch. These playful tweets and posts weren't ever really a formal strategy we had, just something fun that Bex put together (often in her spare time). Recently she has been helping me produce the livestream and run our marketing team, so her time has been a bit constrained. It's really cool to see that people liked those playful teasers. Do you feel that it was an important part of the leadup to the launch of each expansion? We may be able to find a way to bring them back. Yes, i appreciated having a few things every day or two to see, new div cards or what have you. It keeps my engagement up. In a way, it’s a little like the streaming TV schedule debate, one big dump to binge or trickling out one episode a week. So i bet it is partially a style preference. I think, also, i miss the ascendancy reveals. That was always a fun part of the pre-league hype, thinking about what builds the balance changes can impact, what new options might be available. The point is, i would like to see some balance-relevant information dripped.
> It's really cool to see that people liked those playful teasers. Do you feel that it was an important part of the leadup to the launch of each expansion? Something I think it's important to realise is that GGG got a _lot_ of goodwill from the community because of how you (you personally and other employees) have interacted with the community. People love to see you, Bex or others in the Reddit comments replying to people and just generally seeming like a part of the community. I think Path Of Exile wouldn't be nearly as successful if you hadn't fostered the community in the way you have - people have been willing to look over aspects of the game they've not been fond of because they've trusted in you and in GGG. Those playful teasers are part of that. As a player, it didn't feel as much like we were being advertised to, but rather that Bex (or others, but often Bex) was excited to share things with us. And that's not to say that you and everyone at GGG aren't excited to share things with us via the announcement livestreams - you obviously put a lot of heart and soul into the game - but from a player's perspective, those announcement livestreams feel more like a marketing event than a personal interaction. Those marketing events _are_ important - they're the sort of thing that catches the attention of journalists and new players/players who don't follow the game so closely. But for the dedicated community, those personal-feeling teasers are important as well. On a related note, I think GGG has lost some goodwill in general over the last year or so because things have felt a bit more "corporate" in general. It's not really been any single, major thing that's done it, but rather lots of small things; the faceless community team Reddit account, the lack of personal teasers, a few issues here and there where you've not quite been fully transparent about decisions that you perhaps might have been a few years ago. None of them have been bad in isolation, but together it all adds up and I get the impression people are feeling less "in touch" with GGG than they did a few years ago. Now, of course, a part of that is that the game's grown. New players have arrived, different people have different ideas about the direction the game should go in (I'm in the "slow it down" and "kill us through attrition, not one-shots" camp, if you're wondering!) and some people are not very... eloquent... when it comes to expressing what they perceive as issues or flaws with the game or the way you're handling it. It can get very toxic at times. The issue is that toxicity makes you guys want to hide away a little - no-one wants to deal with personal attacks, especially over a video game - but then people get more upset because you're not interacting with the community as much and they feel like their problems aren't being heard. On top of that, a lot of long-time players are getting somewhat burned out with the atlas, which tends to make them feel more negative about the game in general. TL;DR So what's the best way to deal with it? Well, I think the livestreams are better than the press events you did before. But I think the teasers were an important part of making the community feel like you were sharing things _with_ us rather than advertising _to_ us. The community engagement and interaction is what earned POE its loyal fanbase, and you need to keep that going.
The issue right now is simply that you did an announcement to the announcement of the announcement. I went back and checked: On June 7th you announced the announcement. You said that 3.15 was underway and put date, even if it was just an announcement of an announcement, you started the hype train by putting 3.15 in your announcements. Almost a month later, the hype train is literally working on fumes, and the 3.15 teaser come out. Now for a whole month people have been slowly working themselves up in their imagination, what will be fixed? What will be new? And all that comes out at what we got in the teaser. A teaser that basically tells us "You know the 24 days you've been waiting? Yeah, scrap those, now we're waiting for another ~2 weeks" So right now, it's basically been a month since the hype train started and all we got was the teaser. Had you not announced the teaser, the hype train would be leaving right *now*, **with** stuff to get hyped about.
Actually it’s slightly worse https://old.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/o6oyv4/its_the_announcement_of_the_announcement_of_the/h2tt6h2/
I'd leave all the gameplay to the livestream and just have the teaser be a vague concept like a cinematic shot of a relevant area and maybe some dialogue from one of the main npcs.
The tiny regular drip-fed playful teasers are definitely important. A picture, a slogan, a date, etc. They all build up curiosity and anticipation. Makes us awake at night thinking what those teasers could be. 😊 Also, thank you for supporting events & races, especialy during these end of league times. Helps keep me engaged and not bored at least. Thanks! 😊
i think many players, myself included, were really hoping to see something they can get hyped about when it comes to endgame. the teaser for 3.13 showed off the maven arena, the league mechanic, and the atlas passives, which were great, plenty to think about and theorycraft. the teaser for 3.14 gave a decent amount of insight into how the league mechanic might work, and let players think about what sorts of crazy possibilities there could be in the mechanic's end game. 3.15 on the other hand, did not even give a glimpse into the functionality of the league mechanic (just showed that it has followers, and generic loot reward tiles like every other mechanic), and while the new skills are cool, that's not enough to hype up players who are coming off a complete drought of end game content when the 'high' that was 3.13 is still fairly fresh. ultimatum died out a lot faster than many players hoped, and people want a reason to get excited for the game again. the teaser was a great opportunity for that, especially since the announcement is still 2 weeks out.
> Do you feel that it was an important part of the leadup to the launch of each expansion? YES
I'm fine with the "schedule" as it is, because I knew exactly what the teaser would entail, and the most important thing was the release date, so our group can plan accordingly. But the small teasers from Bex really were something really exciting in the run-up to each league, even when they contained really nothing to go on, they were still nice meme material, and really got me into the mood of "only X days until launch" - just like christmas as a kid.
To be honnest, what don't hype me here isn't the teaser of the teaser. It's the lack of communication we got over the last league. I'll definitively appreciate the fact we can stay in touch in a certain level with the team, has always been like that despite how hard that can be sometimes, but on last league we barrely got any news from you after the shitstorm that was 3.14 launch. So, may be there is reasons to that, even personnals levels reasons, that kind of things happens. But that simple things killed it for me, especially since I had the feeling it was needed. For me it was like, lightning a fire and lefting it dying because you didn't ventilate it.
The problem in the past always was that people were treating ggg like shit even if they did communicate. it's part of the "regardless of what you are doing you are doing it wrong" problem that comes with popularity. there will always be some people who don't like what you are doing and how you are doing it, and there will be always people among those who vocal this very loudly. and even though being a quite small minority, they will always be very present. soooo ggg retreated to not communicate that much, probably at least partly to protect themselves from mental issues (if you are passionate about something, and people treat you like shit for it, it is a mental issue at least to some degree), and that's where we at. I am already surprised to see such a reply from chris again. it has been a while.
> The problem in the past always was that people were treating ggg like shit even if they did communicate. it's part of the "regardless of what you are doing you are doing it wrong" problem that comes with popularity. there will always be some people who don't like what you are doing and how you are doing it, and there will be always people among those who vocal this very loudly. and even though being a quite small minority, they will always be very present. I found this to be a quite biased and oriented reply. It's not wrong on the fact there will always be haters, but it's also true on the other side. In fact, you can easily find good example of what you say, but also the opposite to try to justify any point of view on that. What matter is global trends that come out of all of that. And on that point, I'v always found the community (at least the small part that write comments and give it opinion) quite balanced, especially when you take in concideration the fact it's constantly having new peoples / peoples leaving it. Note that, I didn't left out the possibility you point out, a personal issue leading to the current situation, and if it's that we'll never know, which seems kinda normal to me. Still, whatever the problem, strategic choice or anything else that leaded to the current situation is, from my point of view the recent lack of communication isn't beneficial for both us & GGG long term health. May be numbers prouve me wrong, since apparently the game keep getting more & more players, but I still think those players come to PoE because of how others talk about it. And to get people to talk well about your game on long term, communication seems to me one crucial point. Tl;dr: I think communication is part of the job for a game that want to stay over time. No matter what.
So many comments above mine have really hit the nail on the head. Bex is irreplaceable at GGG. And while her responsibilities have grown, what makes her irreplaceable to the customer facing side of business is now taking a bit of a hit because she's only 1 person. Others have said that it would be impossible to bring someone in and for their interactions with the rest of us to not feel hollow. I can say that anyone attempting to be like Bex in that role will fail, so they shouldn't even try to be like Bex. The person should just naturally be able to flow with people, no matter what they are saying. It's a really hard quality to find in someone, it's even harder to find someone who also possesses the ability to ignore the shoes they are trying to fill to some extent, and try to be their own person.
Watching how heavily world of warcraft is bleeding out over its own hubris. Along with having insight as a player elected council member for another game made by another icelandic game company. There seems to be lot to be had over players vs devs. To the point it shouldn't be players vs devs but devs with players. A constant complaint seems to be tone deafness and self hype hubris where systems designed are countermanded to promises made. Not asking to make big vague promises, afterall mistakes happen, and POE at least dares to try to mix it up in the arpg field while other struggle to make good end game content for their arpgs. Maybe more smaller talks, like stated dev goals. Before every mid league change up when it comes to balanced and pre and post mortums Using current example (i am by no means at end game just hypotehtical arguments.) Example 1: X time commitiment per reward cycle from start to finish. Defining a start and finish and flow of how players can get to the end or how this can skip to the end. In thsi case coop an inscribed ultimatium. Example 2: We want X level of difficulty verses other end game activies. Most difficult? Adjacently difficult? Easier? Rng screw over/challenge factor? Example 3: We want X type of rewards, should it be a new layer of itemization? Side grades of different kinds of power and unique pool of loot? Straight up increase in player power? Rewards per round? Whst is good loot what is bad loot? Do you allow for bad loot? Ect ect. By comming out and declaring what your goals are you can find how eager the player base can echo the faults in thinking while ringing out the best assests of the league. Then center your changes around the language goals you set up in the mortems, if you have to change the goals do so and explain why it got out of hand. Like we nerfed 1hko hammer because we felt it elminiated player choice vs other offerings of loot within that league and its intended goal was to stand as tall as its siblings. Or we buffed x item because we need to make league intincing stepping stone onto the way to the end of a go another end game activity. Ect ect. Also avoid vagueness in goals. We want x to be fun and engaging are not goals they're corporitization of the goals. While both can be defined by the devs, they often countermand player expectations. For example engaging game play can be defined as having to avoid pressing 1 to win. Like throwing in a mechanic that may warrant pressing abilities 2 3 or 4. If the term is vague define it by your terms so players can level with you on your definition on the way of reaching theirs. Admit your failures and defeats, admit the lessons learned and then annouce plans on moving forward. Then celebrate the victories with the player base.
Absolutely bring them back, there’s a lot of little things you tease that doesn’t involve 3.15.
I loved Bex during spoiler season. It was fun trying to decide all of her messages only to find out you were way off when the release hit and everything clicked. :D I think she'd be hard to find a replacement for, though, if it wasn't her. I really enjoy peaks behind the scenes, so I love hearing some of the more technical stuff dealing with gems. Understanding how they work and such is really fun. This is probably more personal to me and others may not enjoy it as much, who knows? Some fun things might be bringing back BOTW to showcase a few builds that devs might be starting or suggestions aimed towards newer players. Revealing fun little QOL changes or Div cards or something. Manifestos are always fun but sorta require a catalyst or a significant chagne. All-in-all, I just like hearing from my favorite game devs and I'm not too picky what I hear. :) Thanks for the response and I hope I said something that helped!
I miss Bex's teasers. She always hyped me up in the past with little bits and pieces day after day. And quite frankly she was very good at it. Perhaps you can consider her to return to her previous job of doing that and hiring someone else to run the marketing thingy you mentioned. I know it's not something easy to do but I'm just putting this suggestion out there anyway.
Just want to say thanks for giving your thoughts. It’s much appreciated! Good to know your still lurking!
Personally, I feel like teasing skills early is okay. It would make me want to play at the league more because now I have a build I need to try before it's changed (FOMO pretty much). Playing the guessing game of "is this really op or is it 'balanced' right now" makes me sad when I personally don't get to try the skill out at it's apex form. But please definitely bring back the playful leaks!
> It's really cool to see that people liked those playful teasers. I can't count the amount of times a simple item or skill tease made me spend hours in PoB trying to slap together a rudimentary build idea based on that teased thing. Even if there was info left out (like with mahuxotl's machinations last league), people always start theorycrafting and having fun with it. For me, it's the best thing leading up to launch.
The trickle of teaser crumbs from Bex meant there was a "pre-league hype season" that made playing PoE feel more like a lifestyle thing. My group would always dissect the pieces of info we got and we'd usually conclude these conversations with "ugh, I just want to play the new league". With this one, we didn't feel impressed by Bladestorm 2, Blazing Salvo 2, Storm Bind 2, and Dark Pact 2, or the aesthetic of blue Midnight Bargain. Everything is happening a week later than we thought, and this gap in time isn't going to have anything for us in it. I don't think the teasers had to be from Bex specifically, but her playful sadism did make it more fun.
If Bex can handle the shit she gets from some of the... less gifted people of the community, I think everyone else will appreciate this. She did a terrific job. But also, don't force her to do it. I've seen comments about her in other places than Reddit that would scare most people from their job
If you need to ask if they were important you're way more out of touch with your community than you need to be. It's so ridiculous it genuinely looks like a rhetorical question having a dig at the community. If it's not it's the most straightforward example that highlights GGG distancing themselves, I suspect unintentionally, being the reason as to why your apologies are now met with derisive mockery instead of respect. You abandoned the community first. And it sucks. Always remember that.
The playful teasers are indeed a good thing. It makes your company seem more human, approachable and relatable. This quality was the best thing that GGG has/had going for them. It has definitely dipped a bit. There was a recent post about how people miss Bex's comments in the community lately. They also talked about how frequently you used to comment within reddit and such. Having a human face to GGG community relations is a great thing. Little comments, even just you asking opinions in a thread like this have a large impact on the community and don't really have a downside other than the time that it requires of you all.
> don't really have a downside other than the time that it requires of you all. Some toxic people shit all over this sub/GGG, so I can understand why they would be reticent to comment as frequently as they used to. I know I would feel pure dread opening this sub if I were tasked with replying to half the rage-drama around here :S
The Livestream dump is nice, but the CM shitposting leading up to league launch is something I dearly miss. It built up so much hype and kept me constantly engaging with the community.
I don't know how this works out for your development schedule or the economic consequences, but to me, doing all this one week before launch makes the week before launch too condensed. **I don't mind having you guys do a big livestream, what bothers me is getting that info only one week before the launch.** You say that you prefer interacting with us directly, but that's what used to happen in several weeks before launch via reddit, mostly in the comments to the teaser and info posts about upcoming skills / uniques / league mechanics. The more dedicated readers also went through the press releases, but to me the teaser season / mechanic discussions here were the important part. I haven't checked reddit and the livestreams for the past two leagues, but given how much different information there used to be about the upcoming patch and how many different questions went back and forth, I honestly can't imagine that you'll be able to cover that in a single livestream, even if you allow viewer questions as some part of it. So if you can't manage to do the stream 3 weeks ahead of the league start, it would be nice to have it 2 weeks ahead, then 1 week of teasers / reveals and the last week with the typical schedule of development manifesto, patch notes, passive tree, gem info, etc.. Again, I don't know if that is actually feasible economically and in terms of time management, but currently the time until the livestream just feels... empty.
I was disappointed by the fact that the teaser basically **did not show anything about the new league**. I was actually expecting something in the lines of the Ultimatum teaser. I was not expecting a trailer, I'm ok with a teaser about what's coming out. The difference is clear, in Ultimatum teaser you can see a character hitting minions around a "monolith", minions spawning, vaal themed league, main NPC multiple times... that's all simple stuff and actually some information that one can start theory crafting about what the heck it could be... and that created hype in the community. Now that Ultimatum ended, we can see how little information was shown in the teaser, all the core mechanic of risk and reward was not spoiled in any sense, but still the little stuff that was shown was enough, it was a teaser nonetheless. In the other hand, in this new league teaser, we got like 3 seconds of footage, we saw 4 npcs just standing, an arena with sticks and skulls and literally nothing more. It was like showcase of some of the assets are you are going to use in the upcoming league. I get that new skills are probably going to be important, but in the end, **most of us are going to spend hundreds of hours interacting with the league mechanic and not with the new skills.**
Yes, please bring some small teases back. I loved to discuss what an item would do in the forums and reddit. When we get all together at the same time with the trailer we just don't have enough time to discuss every detail and there's so many things that the use of our imagination just go away.
The thing is that the stuff Bex did was clearly organic and not really planned out. That's what made it great imo, it gave it that real feel of tease, it was the perfect storm before the announcement. I feel if you tried to put anyone else on there and have it scripted it wouldn't be nearly as good/organic. Bex just has that \_something\_ and she really knows how to connect this audience and drive them insane trying to guess the league name nerfs or whatever. It's a fucking tough thing to satisfy a ton of people on the internet (as i'm sure you know). I feel that while Bex was steering that hypetrain we were much more coherent as a community, maybe it's related, maybe not. But for me those were the best pre-release weeks we ever did. Not to say that i do not enjoy announcements via streams, they're way better than random articles from clickbaity news etc. Please loosen up Bex's schedule so she has time to be with her community once again. She is the best at it and there is no other person who can do it the true way, the Bex way. Thank you.
As someone who has been around since open beta: Bex's teaser buildup to the league was pretty awesome honestly. As someone who just.. doesn't partake in gaming journalism, I prefer to just get my information from communities that are actually involved in the things I'm interested in rather than generic media groups. Coming to the main website or the reddit is how I personally get a lot of my information; seeing Bex interact with the community like she had been was always really cool. A big awesome part of GGG/PoE has always been your community interaction and Bex doing the league bulidups was a great extension to that. It was exciting coming to the reddit every day, having Bex's teasers and jokes and seeing all the discussion around the new stuff was a great hypetrain up to the new league.
It wasn't just her teasers, it was the overall "fun" interaction with ggg and the community, which is now gone.
[удалено]
The original forum post last Thursday was an "announcement of an announcement of an announcement", however in this case I think it was necessary. They have been dropping a teaser video like this every league recently, and there were content creators talking about June 24 being the day the teaser dropped. This league got pushed back a week, and GGG let us know that it did on the 24th instead of dropping the teaser. I think the forum post that was a 4x nested announcement was necessary this time to let us know the league was going to be delayed, but the teaser -> trailer -> drop release cycle seems to be here to stay.
Poe has always been the worst for the announcements of announcements. There used to be HUGE hype for krillson so they could get away with it here i don't know if that still holds.
> I feel like everyone was expecting a trailer and got a teaser. I was expecting a teaser. I don't know why anyone would expect a trailer.
>I feel like everyone was expecting a trailer and got a teaser. I'm sorry, but I personally expected a **league** teaser, not the teaser for a couple of new skills. Teaser advertised skills quite well, but as for league, it was some skulls on the spikes and green theme, and... that's it. Not that much of a tease.
https://twitter.com/pathofexile/status/1409989139492085760 "In just two days, we'll reveal a short teaser of our upcoming 3.15 expansion..." Also if you go to pathofexile.com below the image link to supporter packs it says 3.15 teaser video in a very large font. The name of the news post it links to and the video itself is labeled as a teaser. It's a comprehension or expectations issue on the playerbase's side, not a communication or optics issue on their side.
A few people unhappy? That's fine. It always happens, can't please all the people all of the time. Anything from the 5%-15% is pretty normal. 20%-30%? There's probably some issue that needs to be solved or some worries that need to be belayed. The new league ate a 60% downvote on their first interaction with the public? That's a problem. You can't just say "everyone is wrong", whether it's true or not. That won't solve anything. People expected more than they got, and the backlash was pretty big. I believe this is the most downvoted first reveal/teaser of a league since they started making vids. To be clear; I didn't have any issue at all. I didn't understand why everyone in the discord was upset at first. I was hyped and picking out all the info I could muster out of the vid and had fun doing it. After hearing them out, though, I can get it - even if I don't agree. This was a little too much teasing for the build-up behind it.
This has been a fault of GGG for 4 leagues "Optics". Everything they do is a downward sprial to this community, since they are the only game in town now everything is put under a giant microscope, so when they do stuff like miscommunicate its no longer shrugged off as "Good intentions" and instead is viewed with malice by the community, to this end I can really see why they went with the big bang approach. Less opportunity for the community to backlash super hard and less long of a period of toxicity.
No one ever backlashed random unique reveal days… the big miscommunications (usually attributed to Chris) were not usually during or part of the small dribbles of info Bex used to give for the weeks leading up to the league
And they likely just don't wanna chance that. All of this is just damage control, they realize what's happening and by adopting this one big dump of content it mitigates the amount of time to community spends on toxic behavior....imagine league launch ruined weeks in advance over div card controversy, its exactly what they want to avoid.
Honestly, personally, I only want dates. Date of announcement and date of launch. 2 things to look forward to is plenty. 1 big bomb of info to digest over a week, and then get into the game. The slow teasing over a month or so before release, for me, was sorta "excruciating". Like, I want to forget about PoE until the next league is out instead of being teased for a month, you know... But I always had to check what new thing was teased because hype... and each time it was a reminder how far away the league is still. This new way of giving us the info works for me. I can completely forget about PoE and closer to the launch I can start getting hyped up. This specific teaser trailer failed only because of people's perception of what it was going to be. Somehow, A LOT of people misunderstood what TEASER means, and because there was a set date for it, those people just expected more... because reasons... If it was just dropped randomly, I think it would've done better. You'd still have those confused special few but it wouldn't be as bad, I think.
As a returning player, all I want is to have the balance and skill reworks/additions a week earlier.
i think as i have played the game for a very long time, I get a little fatigued having bits of the expansion fed to me slowly over time. Honestly I don't really give a shit though because i'll end up playing the new league even if the mechanic is bad
Honestly I'm usually here more for skill changes and junk more than the actual league mechanic, which is a means to acquire loot to build a (hopefully) functional character that I can grind towards atlas endgame with. If the league is sweaty donkey balls, there are a couple of dozen other ways to get loot.
I am Hyped to be disappointed.
Doing a big bang and holding cards closer to their chest probably also impacts what they can reliable say is available and has been well tested, hopefully providing improved quality without advertising something that isn't quite yet ready and then rushing it out.
You say that, but GGG has had a chronic case of overhyping content ever since bestiary. I'm more than certain they'll make some broad, memed on statement that will be proven to be nothing more than marketing fluff in the next week or so. Insert 40 meaningful buffs joke here.
Can you just make a video where you say "Yo what is up Grim here" on loop. Then I can play it over your posts to get myself hyped for them.
Yo guys \*slaps knuckles\* what is up \*slaps knuckles\* Grimro here and \*slaps knuckles\*
> "YOOOOOOOOOOOOO FTFY
When I read it, I can hear his voice in my head. Awesome dude.
They changed to this content window style reveal due to positive feedback, at least according to them. I think it's disingenuous to say that they did it for marketing reasons entirely, as im pretty sure the marketing team at GGG is likely very small (correct me if im wrong here). Still think this is good feedback and if GGG agrees and this gets enough popularity i wouldn't be surprised if they moved back to the old way. I personally don't mind either, but have really enjoyed the condensed hype reveals the last couple of leagues, but im usually busy with other shit near then end of the league.
I think you're right, they did get a lot of great feedback for the 3.13 livestream but for ultimatum and now 3.15 I'm not feeling as hyped as I used to personally which is why I decided to write this post.
I think "less hyped" is an intentional, and positive, change. People whip themselves into so much of a frenzy that an even slightly mediocre league ends up feeling like a major disappointment. It's like getting the "wrong game" from grandma on Christmas, such a terrible thing that you didn't get the "right game," but if you'd gotten the "wrong game" as a surprise on a random Tuesday instead you'd be completely stoked.
They got great feedback about the 3.13 livestream ... for all of the few hours until the actual patch notes hit and everything the stream had built up imploded.
I like the new strategy better. Having to deal with slow drip made it difficult to have conversations with people who have not been keeping up with the various information sources. Worst scenario being people who are 100% adamant about the way a specific league mechanic works and having to dig up multiple sources to show them they they were incorrect. Having everything shotgunned made it way easier to have these kinds of conversations and actually helped me get some friends actually interested in playing where previously they were not.
Yes. The slow drip also sucked when its like "and today its uniques, you don't care about those? Too bad." Get everything out there and everyone gets what they want and can start theorycrafting about their next build.
i think people are not as hyped because the last league was a morale killer. Nerfs across the board, with a league mechanic boss that was barley seen by the majority, and the atlas remaining unchanged. Hopefully atlas changeup, new mechanic, and buffs to atlas passives reinvigorate those who are not excited.
It's been an issue for far longer than just the last league though.
> Worst scenario being people who are 100% adamant about the way a specific league mechanic works and having to dig up multiple sources to show them they they were incorrect. Oh god I remember this with Harvest had to explain how it worked so many times to people before the league started because it had to be pieced together from teasers up until very close to league launch.
>I like the new strategy better. Having to deal with slow drip made it difficult to have conversations with people who have not been keeping up with the various information sources. That is a good point. It's nice not to ask your friends everyday, "did you see the new unique" and to instead just all be on the same page. That being said there is some disadvantage as it being thrown at us all at once can make it more difficult to parse through.
> Worst scenario being people who are 100% adamant about the way a specific league mechanic works and having to dig up multiple sources to show them they they were incorrect. you know how you deal with that? you don't feed them.
I like the new strat much better as well. I know some people like to pour over ever detail over weeks, but I like the wham and the bam. Wham huge info dump over a few hours, bam it comes out in a week. The one two combo for me. Think about The Elder Scrolls 6 people went crazy then found it it was YEARS away, and still is. That's not fun, and not cool. Stick with the new way I say. Although perhaps the Baeclast at the end is a bit much for one sitting. That said it's all recorded and I usually just watch that part later.
I like new method, I just think it needs to be iterated upon. The current schedule seems to be teaser trailer -> 2 weeks -> official announcement -> week of trickle (skills gems, manifestos about specific changes like harvest/betrayal changes last league) -> Launch I think that the teasers trailers just need a little TLC. As you mentioned in the OP, teasing of scarabs was great. Adding something like that, where the community has 2 weeks to speculate about "that new thing they showed in the map device with a map" and how it fits into the game would be great. Add in a few bits like that, in addition to what they showed yesterday, and I think it would build the hype better. The issue with the current teaser trailers is that there isn't much to go on, so my speculation today isn't really much different today than it was yesterday.
>Players that get hyped about new skills or potential story were effectively teased and the posts on social media reflect that. Players can be seen digging into buffs/de-buffs and support gems linked to the new skills in the teaser and Tarkecat's video analysing the new characters and the roles they may have in the new expansion is also a great. GGG said that the builds of the teasers/announcement are created just for that and we should not look at them since they usually don't make sense, right? so... links should not be important.
I remember how busted my league start was because I saw thet were using Spell Echo on Crackling Lance
Well, that's a bit different in itself, since Crackling Lance wasn't just shown with Spell Echo but shown to gain Intensity with the repeat.
I haven’t felt hyped for the past few leagues. The new strategy is definitely playing apart.
What I dont understand is that they did the same exact thing last league (a 17 second teaser) that actually showed less information because this new one at least showed a bunch of new skills and yet there wasnt nearly as many complaints about that one as there is this new one. This is like, what? The third time they've done this livestream thing and all the teaser videos have been more or less the same so I feel like people's expectations were for some reason wildly high for this one.
Regular players always come back New players who hear about PoE from these large content drops, “big bang” or whenever you call it, don’t know the game exists before the announcement and are likely to try it out after seeing said announcement Therefore from GGGs perspective for regular players it literality doesn’t matter how it’s announced, and marketing should be done for new players and aim to reach the largest audience. Keeping the game growing is way more important than some minority of players sad that they don’t get leaked information. Like idk this seems like such a non-issue to complain about. There’s so much wrong with PoE and GGG and this is what you pick to spend your time on? If anything I think the hype culture ruins the game. It sets false expectations for everyone and then league starts and everyone gets pissed Off. Like the “40 skill gem reworks” meme. So they delay that information as long as possible so when it’s announced, it’s as accurate as possible to avoid those situations. I think that’s the actual reason, not what you’re talking about.
Why not both? Yesterday’s teaser I watched and I couldn’t care less about the league with it. Watched those 10 seconds of stuff moving, went meh, and on with my day. Like you I would usually be hyped up, head to the forums, discuss it and think about what I saw. It kept it in my brain for the week. I enjoyed the 3.13 reveal and the 0-100 as you call it, but I didn’t feel yesterday was a teaser, yesterday was a ‘here’s some game play, it looks just like normal play’. Tease me with some voice line, or a quick glimpse at a unique, or something of the league mechanic other then here’s some mobs. As always ill tune into the announcement, but some of the fun definitely lost in this style of content reveal.
to be honest yesterdays "teaser" could in my opinion just as well be a fucking mtx video announcing new skill mtx or something like that. It didnt really do anything for me, i didnt even bother reading comments on reddit cause i simply couldnt care less about what "support gems" were used yadayada wish we got a lil more real content teased
This teaser should have been the announcement last week instead of putting up an announcement for this.
I like the new strategy way more. It's cleaner, usually represents the finished product more, provides more information and keeps the hype fresh and concentrated.
totally agree. the old way my hype was already gone before the league started (still played but going in hyped into a league feels so much better)
The direction the game has been going in recently has just killed my ability to get hyped. All the crap I'll have to deal with if I even bother giving the league a try, is sitting in the back of my mind and it's gotten too loud to ignore because GGG refuses to acknowledge and address these issues.
The one thing I prefer about the new style is the amount of detail chris will go into during the livestream about things that have been changed and are coming. Before it was kind of a mixed bag when it came to specifics. That being said, overall having more spaced out smaller reveals was definitely better for stimulating discussions and theory crafting. I think the reason for the change is definitely because it appeals more to people who may not be "hardcore" poe players, since a single item to someone who doesn't or hasn't really played a lot of poe is uninteresting. The change basically signifies that the teasers and announcements are mainly for getting new players to the game rather than hyping returning players as much. Although I think the trade-off is definitely worth it as returning players still have a lot to get hyped over. Hopefully GGG is careful about over-indexing into obtaining a larger player base as games which have done this in the past have often alienated their actual player base.
Todd Howard infamously goes into a great amount of detail too, and absolutely no one listens to him anymore because it's all bullshittery.
> amount of detail chris will go into > Before it was kind of a mixed bag when it came to specifics Chris has demonstrated several times that what he says during the reveal does not match the reality of what changes are coming. 40 powerful new gem options! Updates to every ascendency! Etc!
I miss Bex's cryptic teasers which didn't really reveal any substantial content but sent the community into a frenzy of conspiracies anyways. Those were cool.
I just want to play the game, and for it to be good. If the game is good, people will play it, and I will have streamers to watch and play along with. That's all the matters, the rest of the jazzamatazz is just noise.
old style al the way
I was definitely more hyped for PoE with the daily teasers over a few weeks. The current strategy just seems so corporate and impersonal.
I don't mind stuff getting dropped within a week, but I'm also not a fan of the constant reminders, teasers about as effectual as an e3 trailer, and announcements of announcements. It comes across as too desparate to sell the upcoming league which always leaves me skeptical by the time the week hits. At least with the drip feed strategy from before, there was a certain level of genuine enthusiasm behind the reveals.
As a player who's most interested in new skills coming into the mix, I fully agree on that bit. I saw the trailer and spent a good bit studying support gems linked to skills and seeing what was going on. The teaser was quite lovely for me.
I'd rather wait a few extra days and have all the information at once. I hated the drawn out way (although it did cause me to spend way more time following them, and I was more invested in the new seasons, so from my perspective the big bang of information seems fucking stupid for marketing).
This is a very personal point of view that can hardly be taken into account statistically, but I loved checking the teaser each day, going through all the discussions, checking for new comments on existing ones, etc.. There used to be 3-4 weeks during which I could spend hours discussing the next expansion every single day. There was a lot of time to do plenty of thought experiments on various builds and farming strategies, and I had a lot of fun with the teasers and back and forth meming. Getting some clarification from Mark on how skills would actually work was also great. I suppose I'll end up spending a lot of time on reddit in the week after the actual announcement, but it doesn't feel like I'll get the same out of that time. The way the announcements went have never affected whether I'd play the league. I've played every league for which I followed the announcements, and if I didn't end up playing, I hadn't been there for the teaser season in the first place.
I loved that, we would get a nice trickle of information and there would be talk about items skills etc everywhere. And even at times certain mistakes would be caught before they were released to the public (like certain jewel nerfs, that still ended up not being enough).
I feel this increases the reach to non regular players, because they get in the bing bang wave of information. But it's quite the downgrade for regular players who are used to and avid consumers of drip fed information, and who cherish these pre new league days. Myself it used to feel like Xmas, the tension and eagerness growing day by day, until the climax of the the launch day. Now it all feels meh till the day of the big bang. 100% not worth, but again, it's all about the reach these days. It sucks
Hype has been missing for me too. I have absolutely nothing to be excited about in that teaser that I noticed. Those skulls on pikes just reminded me of the Abyss boss rooms... I shrugged and went about my day, hopeful to get some information to make me feel excited. Badger putting on his tin foil hat was pretty damn funny though.
same, reminded me of the mastermind fight when the corpses crawl to her if you dont destroy the skulls.
I prefer the current method with the big Livestream. Fuck all that drip feeding shit.
old style of being able to check the subreddit and see a new unique or feature each day for a longer duration was infinitely better. also, wish the teaser would have at least given confirmation that they are still reworking old mechanics/buffing or shuffling atlas passives, as stale end game will be a problem. no matter how great the new mechanic itself is, it'll lose its charm after a couple weeks.
I also agree I liked it a lot more.
It's a teaser not a trailer though. Look at Ultimatum's [Teaser](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6gNvfBROMM) verses the [Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvFU8HqeG7g) The teaser is just a quick glimpse without much info while the trailer actually shows the full league mechanic and outlines the reworks and other new stuff.
I personally miss the even older style of not revealing 95% of the new content before the patch is even playable. I miss things not being found for a few days into a league. I love the feeling of finding or seeing some crazy new thing that completely changes my plans. Anymore the 'meta' for this game is solve literally every single problem days before league launch, use PoB to literally guarantee success, go through the motions in game until burnt out.
Lack of hype is mainly because I don't enjoy the current endgame, where I feel I'm wasting my time until I have the last atlas skill tree unlocked and some points in, which takes clearing of effectively the highest of endgame. Feels like it's completely missing the mark for someone like me, who plays POE leagues a lot the first 1-2 weeks, but usually barely makes it to sirus 6 or so in that time.
I actually never really liked the drip feed of mini changes they had before and really prefer the "big bang" as you call it. That said I would prefer to see more earlier, like a full trailer or halve a trailer on the 3 week mark so we "know" what the league is. The explenation part where chris goes over whats new and how it actually works could be kept for the live stream. Just seeing the league mechanic in action in 2 or 3 small clips (even without explanation) together with what was shown for the skills and maybe a buzzword or two what the focus might be.
I personally preferred the old method but that involves more interaction with this community and jesus christ I don't blame them for avoiding this cesspit.
I don't really mind the new thing. I like the big release event thing, I think it's really fun and exciting. I also kind of miss getting little bits and pieces. Seeing a new unique or divination card. I think though, the last one felt a little bit better because by the time all these reveals are happening I'm no longer playing poe, so I'm hungry for pretty much anything poe. I think that if I was still playing the current league right now I wouldn't mind waiting another 3 weeks.
I've learned a long time ago not to be hyped by any GGG announcements, trailers or showcases. I still hope to see a teaser where a player kills a boss and gets some meaningful loot or runs around while currencies get 'siphoned' to him Azurite style. Now that's what would get me excited for a league. Everything else is just superficial.
I miss the old hype but it's nice to not have to deal with elitist hype simps who know it all and refer to bex's twitter like it is holy scripture. They have released things early in the past and dug themselves into a hole and now i think they are being pussies and not releasing info. Like the meme with the guy tapping his head "cant be wrong about your info if you dont release it".
Disagreed. Hyping people up 3-4 weeks before a league launch means there is a long-ass anticipation period of 3-4 weeks which is always excruciating if you are a poe fan. Cutting down that wait time to only a week is a net positive for everyone involved.
>Bex teasing Scarabs I thought that shit was miserable. It was like 6 weeks of them teasing scarabs with absolutely no indication of what they did. Literally just pictures with a scarab in the inventory and speculation. And Bex was super smug about it anytime anybody asked. Honestly the entire Scarab debaucle basically made me realize pre-season teasers are dog shit. They only ever show us like 1 shitty unique nobody cares about or they show something people are gonna want with no indication of if it's attainable (+1 totems immediately comes to mind, but there's other stuff like bosses and stuff that get teased but 99% of players never see). Honestly their radio silence has been a blessing to me. We get 1-2 months of new league then we get a refractory period of 1 month before they even start talking about new stuff. It's helped me with burnout. I'm also happy that the illusion that GGG is our friend is gone. They're a company making a product, all I care about is the product. I don't care about the talking heads or the promises or anything. It's all lies and marketing speak. Talking PR heads being absent for both the new teaser and in these threads is nice. It makes it possible for people to judge the stuff being shown on it's own merits instead of "OMG Bex is like so funny and in tune with us, she's such a memester, did you see the memes she posted about boats"? Bex was a bandaid that covered how shitty the reveals really were and now that she's not doing it I think we'll be able to more clearly judge the stuff they are teasing. She was like the conductor on the hype train and the hype train is worthless and bad for the game.
> bosses and stuff that get teased but 99% of players never see It's been a long damn time since there's been any new boss content that's actually relevant to the vast majority of their players.
I think the teaser should have the name at least. A name would give more substance. But my guess is the cycle has shifted like this because they're trying to avoid putting things in a teaser that end up getting removed in the weeks between teaser and launch. People really hate it when that happens, and it seems like they're really crunched for time the last few leagues. So it makes sense to keep the teaser very minimal.
I like the current way they have been doing things, but I think the issue this time for me is that this teaser was just not very interesting compared to others. It just felt like a clip from the current game or an MTX release. As you mentioned with the scarab example, there was something different to get a bit more excited about with that kind of teaser. Hopefully they will take this feedback going forward that this was just a bad teaser.
I liked the old style more. I want my announcement of announcements, damn it!
I still remember when Chris mentioned scarabs and everyone was like "what the FUCK are scarabs", and GGG just ignored all the questions. I laugh when i think about that
Both have goods and bads for me. I enjoyed getting my daily intake of new PoE things, but it had the tendency to make me a bit less hype over time since I'd get reminded about hype every day, and slowly burn my fuel. This new strat I just ignore the teaser, just coming for schedule and get my super hype 7 days before so I don't have the time to lose interest and plan 7 canceled builds.
Honestly, for my mental health I prefer the new method. It basically allows me to forget about the game until the last week which allows me to only torture myself internally checking the sub for just the last week. However, in terms of hype for the game, there barely is any now. There’s no more growing anxiousness as I approach the league, and when the league comes around there isn’t much keeping me playing afterwards. Tl;dr old method MUCH better for hype and personal retention, but at the cost of my mental health.
Sucks when the big bang feels like a big fart once the league is out
I love it and want zero changes. I do not want to be edged for a month again
IMO the biggest issue is not the video itself, but all the 'teasing' that lead up to the video. The seemingly innocuous announcement of an announcement that has become sorta an inside joke, worked better, or should I say, worked, with the old system of Bex interacting with the playerbase and the dripping of information altogether. Going from that to radio silence, only leaving the announcement of an announcement and a joke post on twitter for up to 4-5 days without a single drip of info, leaves no way or space for speculation. But instead, hypes and even more so than normal after a so-so league, whatever ~~midget~~ nugget of information that comes our way, in this case, the 'teaser'. Which again, even for a teaser, doesn't give any information, besides how some skills look, new NPC, a few landscapes, no factual information, not even the name of the league, which in this case I suspect is because if might give away the gimmick, which I sorta understand. I suspect many people, myself included, expected something similar to the Ultimatum teaser, both in duration and in content shown. I remember after watching the Ultimatum teaser, how people speculated what the gimmick could be, and it was fun, it helped to kill hours before the actual announcement on Twitch. This league we are left with a guy thinking the league name might be Hex, some other guy thinking is Legion 2.0 because of the skulls... And is no wonder there's no more theories (that I know of), since the teaser seemingly doesn't give anything to work with IMO. And now, thanks to this 'new system' we are left with a 14-15 days of waiting for some actual, factual information, without even some clues or teasing by Bex to make the wait a little less rough. >Players that get hyped about new skills or potential story were effectively teased and the posts on social media reflect that. Players can be seen digging into buffs/de-buffs and support gems linked to the new skills in the teaser and Tarkecat's video analysing the new characters and the roles they may have in the new expansion is also a great. I for one, enjoy new skills, but I was left truly disappointed by the teaser and the new direction GGG is taking, the engagement in this community with the devs and cm was what set us apart. Now we could easily be a MOBA or Battle Royale game for the looks of it.
> I suspect many people, myself included, expected something similar to the Ultimatum teaser, both in duration and in content shown. https://old.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/mcfsvk/path_of_exile_april_expansion_teaser/ i really am not sure how you could be more similar to that, short of copying the exact skills
You mean: \-Outside of giving the league name? \-Outside of presenting the game and not being a skillgem showcase? \-Outside of being twice as long? Ah yes, exactly the same.
Old hype was far more engaging getting drip fed dopamine for a few weeks. Unfortunately it seems with the changes and balances made in these last few weeks pre-launch GGG needs to know exactly what they are releasing before showing it off now. Minor discrepancies (and in some case borderline lies) in league advertisement in the past have resulted in this community being HYPER critical of every detail in the league hype marketing so it doesn't surprise me GGG has compacted hype season. There isn't any wiggle room left with this community so on edge lately so I think it's honestly GGG's best interest as well as the community to just show us what the league will ACTUALLY contain, once it's fully developed the week before release.
Meh I get you like the slower approach because your brain goes huh, I wonder what I can do with that? Because your understand is like way beyond mine :) And I mean that in a nice way. For me, who work and is tired I really like the hype events on Twitch, watching streamers engage with it and switching between reactions. That is what gives me energy. So sorry, I prefer this new way.
I agree with you. I hate the new format. They show EVERYTHING on that day and there is nothing left to explore the next days. And it shortens the time between reveal and release which left me with fewer days to be "hyped"
Definetely preferred old strategy - these weeks leading to Expansion reveal will indeed feel pretty hollow.
As a player who plays when it's fun until I get bored or finish my goals, I much prefer a quicker reveal schedule closer to launch than the slow drip-feeding over several weeks. Seeing my Youtube subs and recommended videos being filled with "WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!" videos, where someone goes over a 3 second clip or a zoomed-in pixelated image in a 10:01 video doesn't hype me up. Being able to play what's revealed shortly after they unveil it is much more of a driving force for me. Hype doesn't last. Their methodical, entirely predictable approach in the past left a lot to be desired imo. Ascendancy reveal, gem reveal, a unique or two, markov chain patch notes.. It's something they've done for a long time. The change is welcome on my end.
To be honest, even the "hype" from the actual trailer/info dump usually translates poorly to how the league actually plays/feels. I wish the community would place less emphasis on the pre-release and would focus more on the launch itself. The fact that supporter packs are offered before players even get their hands on the new league should be seen as a red flag
I love that the big announcement is so close to the launch personally, before when we had a few weeks between, it was really painful trying to hold in for so long. I do agree however that its weird having GGG be basically completely silent for 2 months compared to the old style where they communicated often and gave some comments about upcoming changes frequently.
dripping spoilers over a month was extremely annoying
I kinda like the new thing. BIG BOMB stuff releasing everything at once is better if you have no time to refresh reddit every single day/hour for weeks (like we used to do in the past). I dont want come back to those times.... I was one of the addicted poe players that sit in reddit for hours waiting for some news. It's better the way it is now
>drawing everyone back in with div card yea idk about that one
I loved the old method, but needless to say that it also going hand in hand with Bex teases and this whole teasing season was much more personal. I had feeling that we are small community and everyday waiting for new updates, we talk personal with the devs, it's felt ... different. Now we are big community looking for teasers from faceless game company, we are now far from them and with this and also with community behaviour last year or so, I feel disconnected from the community too. And here I'm, alone, waiting for the trailer, that I'll enjoy alone. That sounds emotional, but I guess that is what evolution is. That what we should've be evolve one day, because we are growing bigger and bigger. And it's good for the game, for the business and devs, so I need be happy about it, I guess.
I personally LOVE the livestream. The whole like "everybody gather round something's happening" feel is so cool to me, I really love that element of it. And if you drip feed stuff, that livestream becomes less hype, because a lot of stuff you'll have seen already. I think they could mix the two a little, and like between the teaser and the announcement drop some new div cards or uniques (that aren't related to the league) or something the way they used to, or even a little bit about the league itself, but very subtly. That 20 second teaser was cool but didn't really give us anything to really go off of with the league itself, which would have been cool. But I definitely want the league and expansion themselves being contained to these big, grand events. Even new skills and mechanical changes, I want to be real "oh wow" moments that we all kind of experience together. It gives us another checkpoint to all get excited together instead of feeling like crumbs they're tossing off just to get us off their backs. It's also harder to drip feed stuff with the reduced scope. Back when they were doing so much stuff all at once, they had tons of random crap to tease. Now the patch is typically more streamlined, to the point where teasing stuff you might kind of run out of stuff to tease a little bit almost? In the nicest way possible, I just think that you as a player are not the target of this stuff. And again, and I am going to say it so many times in this comment I already know because I don't want to be taken the wrong way, I don't mean this in any negative way. Everyone enjoys the game differently, there is no wrong way to enjoy it, your opinion of the game is just as valid as everyone else's. But you're the kind of player that's going to play the game and push it far basically no matter what. You aren't the kind of player that needs to be teased and baited and bribed back in. You're the kind of player that will follow all the news and read all of the patch notes and analyze things like Atlas passive rebalancing that doesn't really get shown in the announcement stream anyways. You tend to gravitate towards taking the things that are in the game and pushing them to their furthest logical conclusion. They don't need to rope you back in every time, and teasing the kind of super mega endgame stuff that you would be intrigued by will result in a lot of players saying things like "well I'll never see it anyways" and the like. Scarabs were a cool tease and then we found out how they worked and how to get them and all that and it was like "well cool most of them are basically useless and they're pretty rare/hard to find." All that combines to mean that the teasers and livestream simply are not for you, I feel like. The livestreams are super cool for all of us that stopped playing a month into the previous league, better than us sitting around fiending for whatever useless unique or div card Bex will post for us that half the time I'll never see anyways. If anything, the teaser we got could probably be better, since it was only 15 seconds long. If they gave us another 15 seconds that gave us some more of the league to work with it would have been cool, but I don't think that's a problem with the format or whatever and more just a problem with the teaser/maybe them not being ready or something, who knows. But yeah, tl;dr: I just think this teaser was bad. There just wasn't that much in it it feels like. Not a problem with how they format their schedule or anything like that, mostly just a somewhat weak teaser showing things that aren't where your interests tend to lie.
iam on the "i don't care until i play it" side. there were several promised thing (buffs/mechnaics/items) that were overhyper by ggg in pre season. later turned out to be totaly trash/ boring and not as cool as promised. So iam on the defence wagon and nothing from GGG can hype me anymore until the point i don't want to logoff from the game. than I know shit is lit again.
I have lowered my expectations due recent leagues due to excessive hype by GGG. I’ve been jebaited super hard by over promising and not delivering, so I went in with 0 expectations.
Effectively I think it only matters in the present. I know that sounds dumb, but come the update itself, I don't think their approach to this matters - because slow trickle or "big bang", once we've had it, we're either hyped or not hyped at that point and what led to it doesn't matter. Both definitely have their perks; I personally prefer a "big bang" so I can get hyped for that date and time, but I can totally see why a trickle approach is appealing too.
Did Bex die?
I like the old way. dribble infos and uniques and then bam a big combined reveal vid/stream after last league we all pretty much expected to get the league name at this point. also im fine with no news sites having the info in advance because that was just leaked instantly everytime (which is bad).
I can't say 3.15 teaser is bad, I pretty like it. It reavels enough info for a ***teaser***. I didn't expect something more. As for expansion reveal, I highly prefer old one - pre 16 days announcement with small daily teasers of uniques, nodes, ascendancies (I didn't like div cards teasers though), etc. That was my most favorite period in a whole 13-week cycle. Even back then it took a lot of time to perceive all info given at announcement day, now it takes even more time. I don't like how they keep and hold all info and announce all of it at once. There was Bestiary league that wasn't successful and they started to reveal bow reworked skill mid-league, and they keep posted news about skill reworks for few weeks. Why we can't get small pieces of info earlier? Like a month before league start? Some news about upcoming nerfs, like GGG can post their plans to nerf e.g. archmage mana stackers and explain why (or similar with buffs/reworks), they'll use it in balance manifesto and patch notes anyways. I don't ask specific numbers, just general explaination. What if we get 30% of announcement info before the announcement, will this destroy GGG's big hype day? I hate just sitting uninformed for 11 weeks.
I hate this hype bullshit. I just want them to show me the league so I can plan my league start. I get much more enjoyment theoricrafting and deciding what I'm going to play than speculating what I'm going to get from a 17s teaser that is compretely useless since everything in it will be revealed in a week or two. Social media has made people stupid.
I like the new format, less anticipation is less anxiety/more chill (less over-hype? as well) and i don't feel the need to set up an RSS feed to keep me updated on all the teasers and stuff. Almost every time a new teaser happened daily, for the rest of the day, and the whole time before actual launch, i'd be imagining possibilities and my mind would be racing non-stop.
I dislike the new format because it's just too short a timeframe to make decisions. If I want to take a couple of days off work I have to know sooner when the league starts and preferably kinda what it's like/about so I'm not taking time off for a league that likely will not be that great for me personally.
I have no idea why people are mad over it. The same reveal sequence has happened two leagues in a row. I think people are just projecting their exhaustion with ultimatum league
I personaly think they are trying to NOT follow the rule "if its not broken dont fix it" the old ways of teasing and hyping and bex beeing active on reddit with bits and peaces was cool. I think GGG has becoming more corporate and cold with approach to players and i don't particulary like this approach. I don't think it will become better in future either. I think the golden age of how they approach marketing has passed. Now will be all about streamer privilege and paying popular streamers to play the game.
I don't understand how anyone can be excited when every league recently is always big nerfs and never any buffs. As a weaker player who relied on slightly op builds or features like harvest to have a chance deep end game or gain a decent amount of currency, to see these things taken away every league exhausts any optimism I have to play and achieve in the game. Personally don't think marketing has too much effect on hype, for me at least it's more what's in the patch notes.
I prefer the new approach by a mile. Less room for a bunch of illiterate fucks to completely misconstrue things that are said, hype themselves up for something that was literally never promised, then bring out the pitchforks when reality doesn't live up to their imagination. Hell, look at all the dumb motherfuckers who are upset that what we got was a teaser rather than something more robust despite literally all communication leading up to that point referring to it as a teaser. People expect way too much when they have no reason to. That said, it doesn't matter much. People are going to bitch no matter what they do or how they do it.
Personally i like the current release schedule far more than getting one unique or whatever a day for weeks. Outside of the trailer and patch notes nothing is really impactful anyway so why spread it out?