Guild Wars 2

I get on to watch it. Got more distracted by the chat constantly saying:

• ****ING MOVE
• give us cantha
• <insert url some random shmuck keeps advertising>
• you guys are boring!!!!!!111!!11one
• <snarky unrelated comment>
• <unrelated thing> CONFIRMED!!
• MOAR LEDGES/GLIDING

Real mature people. Get your kitten together and just watch it. I would have made a twitch account to comment but I didn’t want to dip my feet into that acid pit.

I look forward to the youtube video.

There was nothing to see, just three people having a chat…

i will say this blunt, this was the worst stream ever from guild wars 2 !!! it was so dam boring !!! they show nothing aside from press 1 !??! lol that was kinda more boring, HEY AT LEAST the only good thing we know the revenant icon

There’s a reason why you can hide twitch chat.

Basically their performance was lackluster, you know.
I did like the map, but I really wanted to see some more.

Show! Don’t tell! You can talk all you want about how each are themed. Or you can just show us the blasted map and we’ll see what you are talking about.

Y’know.

i hid the twitch chat and focused on noticing interesting things, like enemy names, and the fact that they have a festival on the dev client called “celebrate the year of the ram”.

also, that warrior had an F2 skill that was locked and hiding behind its F1 sibling for some reason.

and i’m not sure if we have all those booster icons in game (red MF booster for example).

Sororita.3465:

There was nothing to see, just three people having a chat…

Actually there was. Everyone was so busy trying to find all the things THEY wanted to see that they missed the conversation. Their loss.

I saw absolutly nothing. Waste of stream.

They know that we only watch this stuff for new information. They could have thrown us a bone at least.

If this really is the best community in online gaming, then I don’t want to live on this planet any more.

Edit: JK, twitch chat is horrible when there are more than 1k ppl.

They showed nothing more or less. Re-said already known information and basically stood in the same area for 30 minutes while chatting.

yolo swaggins.2570:

Sororita.3465:

There was nothing to see, just three people having a chat…

Actually there was. Everyone was so busy trying to find all the things THEY wanted to see that they missed the conversation. Their loss.

sorry i wasnt involved in whether who could get the high score..

I expected more but I wasn’t surprised at what little I got. I was curious about the ‘adventures’ concept, so I was content with the small demo.

Livestream notes for those who didn’t have time to watch it: http://dulfy.net/2015/02/06/gw2-poi-heart-of-thorns-gameplay-livestream-notes/

My suggestion to the team that makes PoI is to have one dev play while the other talks. The people making this show for our enjoyment are the highest quality game makers, not high quality game video preview people. It’s so hard to play and talk at the same time when you know upwards of a thousand people are watching. That’s why I think it would have been great to have one dev describe the action while the other guy who is playing just plays.

I’d almost suggest having Grouch play when you do this stuff since he is a really skilled player and could talk over it while he plays. Or just have him play while Rubi and whoever else is there can describe the action.

It was disappointing to hear them say things about the x-pac that have been said a dozen times already. There should have been something fresh other than the warrior having 2 “F” skills and seeing the Revenant icon by accident.

They could have picked a better activity to show as well. The sniper rifle had 1 skill and the flamethrower had two skills and the activity they were doing was the very first thing to do in the expansion. Nice as an introduction, not really as a presentation.

I hope the feedback helps.

You realize they’re Devs and not public speakers, it makes a difference. Not sure what everyone was expecting, but they gave glimpses of an Outpost, a portion of the first map in HoT, as well as a glimpse at the first Adventure, which you didn’t really think was going to be hard, did you? Pretty much what I expected…and keep in mind, that’s from the Demo that will be at PAX East.

Zaklex.6308:

You realize they’re Devs and not public speakers, it makes a difference. Not sure what everyone was expecting…

We were expecting them, as representatives of a company who wishes to sell us a non-luxury good, to entice us with their wares.

rip hype train

Too much hype too little delivery.

It is one of the few predictable constants in regards to GW2.

God forbid that gamers want to actually see the game and not some people chatting about whatever. If I want to see a sitcom, I have better options.

That’s why I always watch those POIs with bonuses once they finish it and I have the recording. So I can skip useless things like 9999th asura art and move to the meaty stuff.

The revenant had Divinity Reach’ background so they test them in starter zones? lvl1
Sylvari enginer with lvl 1 and Verdant Brink’s background. I would like to see some round shaped areas to fight all vs sylvari. I see not so many reasons to move sylvari character there: 1 cuz of engi class (but it could be any profession, maybe engi is on order of what specialistion will be talk firstly beside warrior < only guess), 2 special race dialogues with npcs for sylvari.

darkace.8925:

Zaklex.6308:

You realize they’re Devs and not public speakers, it makes a difference. Not sure what everyone was expecting…

We were expecting them, as representatives of a company who wishes to sell us a non-luxury good, to entice us with their wares.

so you’d rather have the PR guys, the guys that actually know how to sell hype and “entice you with their wares”, to talk, instead of the guys working on it, that have no obligation to have PR skills, because they were hired to make games, not talk, but still want to talk about it?

The sad thing is that if they HAD been PR people we would have complaints about how it all just being PR talk.

Well people expected to actually see something special.
Masteries
Specializations
Revenant
Guild Halls
New pvp mode
New zone (as in, actually showing it, not just standing in one place the entire time).
Just something.. anything.

I can understand the disappointment.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Well people expected to actually see something special.
Masteries
Specializations
Revenant
Guild Halls
New pvp mode
New zone (as in, actually showing it, not just standing in one place the entire time).
Just something.. anything.

I can understand the disappointment.

it’s rather silly of them to expect the show to talk about something that hasn’t been blogged about before, because that hasn’t been their MO for the past year. they talk about things after they’re unveiled. and right now we only had masteries, adventures and outposts.

“They’ll venture into the Maguuma Jungle to show you one of the adventures we heard about earlier this week. Plus, they’ll discuss how some of the systems work.”

they showed an adventure, and described (with visual aid) how outposts will work like, in quite a bit of detail actually.

people really need to stop blaming the devs every time they can’t contain their own hype and start imagining things will happen.

thanks Rubi. I guess the “problem” here is that players are seeing POI as sort of a marketing thing (which is not its purpose generally) with some interesting reveals, so expectations are high and we wanted to see at least a few juicy details to feed our imaginations till the next blog or whatever. even if Anthony was just running around swinging at air for 20 mins, it would have showed us some more of the map.

also to address the OP – while lots of players on twitch were acting unruly, they had a point. when something is hyped up, the reveals better deliver SOMETHING at least. let’s not kid ourselves, HoT comes with a lot of hype, intended or not. I cant fathom how anyone could have actually enjoyed today’s POI or gotten anything out of it. even the game’s biggest fans were disappointed.

Public speaking is not easy, so let’s give the devs a bit of a break. I’m a bit surprised they expect them to present as much as they do themselves. I would think you’d have a public speaker who is versed in what they should talk about present most of it while the dev plays and jumps in to add a bit of color now and again.

As for the show, frankly my favorite part was Pop. Seems he was another dev playing a Revenant on the same map. Saw a few skills and a few weapon choices from him (Rubi, you looked like you saw it too and tried communicating to the team about it ).

P.S. I’m starving for anything Revenant to the point where I can’t even enjoy the other information as much as I should. Hope they do a full Revenant reveal soon so I can enjoy everything else too without being preoccupied.

They could just record 30 min of gameplay and roll it in the background while they were talking whatever. They don’t want to reveal the mini-map? Fine, just cover it with some GW2 logo and it will be fine.
You dont need to have live gameplay, a recorded good one will be much appreciated.

Maybe have someone else from the office playing around and wearing headphones while they sort of talk in the background?

Simply put there was an imbalance. I wanted devs to throw us a bone about HoT. Well the dino trailer and two huge posts on website were’t just throwing a bone. More like they took a tyrannosaurus sized hip bone and clobbered me with it. Hard.
Well played, a-net! :>

Then at PoI we get…well one tiny map with flamethrower and talk….that was like chicken-sized wishbone. A small, unfed chicken mind you.

Rubi, thanks for responding to this thread. It definitely helps.

I think Ronah makes a great point. Having pre-recorded footage seems to be the best scenario. You guys get to decide exactly what we see and we get to actually see things

My feedback:…

1. The thing was boring. If you have stuff to say, don’t open the gameplay footage just to have the character stand there.
2. The area it self looked more like Drytop and Sylverwastes! The trolls came directly from there, the biome could be any part of those 2 maps, I think the music was also from S2 living world instead of something new. PEOPLE WHERE EXPECTING TO SEE “HEART OF THORNS” IN THIS GAMEPLAY!
3. That crash (and I don’t mean the Airship it self). If you feel your build is unstable, give us a warning “We might experience crashes”.
4. From that crash, We took a glimpse of the Character Select screen… PLEASE TELL ME YOU ARE PLANNING TO REDESIGN THAT! I hate the current character select screen! Allow us at least to use a different, less white, background.
5. That Adventure looked like a classic MMO quest…

Also: #YouKnow

They were a bit nervous I think. But a better preperation about what to say could’ve made it so much better.

Rubi, getting distracted while talking is to be expected as both things require a certain amount of concentration. Which is why I think you need to borrow someone to play the game off screen while you all talk, they can be completely focused on showing what is needed and the bonus is that when you are on the live server they can move the screen when players start to spam as the last time it happened it was incredibly distracting.

I have to admit I was a bit disappointed that I got to see so very little, but hopefully the next sneak peak will be better, especially if you show us the much desired hang gliding.

There were some interesting tidbits if you payed attention. Warrior F2 skill. Changes to Defiance. Ground-targeting enemies on the ceiling.
I will say that showing one fairly simple adventure wasn’t a lot for 30 minutes. Might also be a better idea to let Rubi play while the devs explain the mechanics.
Just some feedback, it was still nice to see the new map in a live environment.

screw pr guys anet should hire people in the community to talk about their game, i just watched wooden potatoes vid which took the same footage from the point of interest vid and made it sound quite exciting. from only watching that vid i didnt walk away with any of the complaints ive seen in this topic

Goatjugsoup.8637:

screw pr guys anet should hire people in the community to talk about their game, i just watched wooden potatoes vid which took the same footage from the point of interest vid and made it sound quite exciting. from only watching that vid i didnt walk away with any of the complaints ive seen in this topic

That wasn’t PR.

Thanks for addressing this Rubi. I was sad that we didn’t actually see much…but I understand how people can get caught up in conversation sometimes about something exciting and lose focus of what they were doing originally. Hope we get to see/hear more soon. Keep up the good work.

For the next POI, please:

don’t play the game in real time.
Record it, in this way you can:
-select carefully tailor the content you want to show us
-avoid unexpected issues (like the crash)

RubiBayer.8134:

Thanks for the feedback, all! I’ve found some constructive stuff here and there. As I’ve said elsewhere, it’s really exciting to finally show off Heart of Thorns, and we found today that we had a tendency to get so involved talking about it that we forgot to keep Anthony moving his character around. I’m going to be a little quicker on that front when needed from here on out.

Windu (and others who were expecting all of the things on that list), I’m not sure what to tell you. We outlined what we’d be showing in a news post, then put that news post on our main Guild Wars 2 site, the Heart of Thorns site, in the game launcher, and on all of our social media outlets, in four languages. The information was out there, and didn’t contain any of the things you mentioned.

We did know that people would want to see even more, which is why I decided to add a bonus episode in addition to the regular one. Which means I have a lot of work to do this weekend, but I think it’s going to be worth it.

I just say it that way:
I think the expansion is big enough, so that you can go around and show things off, without showing too much.
- Keep the camera low if you don`t want to spoil the enviroments.

- If you want to distract us with the enviroment, then focus there. That way you can show things, without giving other things away.
Visuals are always welcomened.

- If you don`t want us to see skills, then use a vanilla character and tell other beta testers to stay away or do the same. Apearently we had a specialization or Revenant jumping around you.

- You have control over what you are showing. Prepare for it.

- If it is supposed to be an adventure, then show something more elaborate. The one you have chosen was nothing special. If any, it would be one of the more boring ones. If you have confidence in your work, it is better to show it off, instead of cookie cutter shovelware quests.

And last: Your audience is smart and notices if you talk around subjects too much. I know you have to be careful about what you say, but if it sucumbs to “non-information” you create a feeling of “wasted time”.
In fact the most info people said they got, were of things you unintentinally showed off. What you were talking about was apearently not so “new”. (that being said, I still have to watch it in full and going mostly from the condensed form)

Kite.2510:

My feedback:…

1. The thing was boring. If you have stuff to say, don’t open the gameplay footage just to have the character stand there.
2. The area it self looked more like Drytop and Sylverwastes! The trolls came directly from there, the biome could be any part of those 2 maps, I think the music was also from S2 living world instead of something new. PEOPLE WHERE EXPECTING TO SEE “HEART OF THORNS” IN THIS GAMEPLAY!
3. That crash (and I don’t mean the Airship it self). If you feel your build is unstable, give us a warning “We might experience crashes”.
4. From that crash, We took a glimpse of the Character Select screen… PLEASE TELL ME YOU ARE PLANNING TO REDESIGN THAT! I hate the current character select screen! Allow us at least to use a different, less white, background.
5. That Adventure looked like a classic MMO quest…

well they probably aren’t going to redesign the character select screen but I will leave you with this very strange graphical bug when I logged in one day.
Screenie

Embrace The Bold.7619:

Kite.2510:

My feedback:…

1. The thing was boring. If you have stuff to say, don’t open the gameplay footage just to have the character stand there.
2. The area it self looked more like Drytop and Sylverwastes! The trolls came directly from there, the biome could be any part of those 2 maps, I think the music was also from S2 living world instead of something new. PEOPLE WHERE EXPECTING TO SEE “HEART OF THORNS” IN THIS GAMEPLAY!
3. That crash (and I don’t mean the Airship it self). If you feel your build is unstable, give us a warning “We might experience crashes”.
4. From that crash, We took a glimpse of the Character Select screen… PLEASE TELL ME YOU ARE PLANNING TO REDESIGN THAT! I hate the current character select screen! Allow us at least to use a different, less white, background.
5. That Adventure looked like a classic MMO quest…

well they probably aren’t going to redesign the character select screen but I will leave you with this very strange graphical bug when I logged in one day.
Screenie

That actually looked really cool.

Wish we had other “background themes”, though.
Hello Cash shop, i would even pay for them

Would have been nice to know if what we saw on the mini-map is the actual size of that map-plane or just a part of it. Since the POI I’m fearing we might just get maps that are smaller than the current cities.

As for the Twitch-chat…I’m always ignoring that, that’s better for my health.

My only gripe was that the developers seemed unprepared which resulted in a lot of “Uhm” and “You know”.

Edit: The best way I can describe the feeling is like someone interviewing a fireman who has just put out a massive fire and saved many lives. Everyone is amazed except the fireman himself. To him it’s just another day at work.

On a positive note I think what was shown was enough, unlike most people who want more. I just wish it was presented better to give it justice.

I missed something that showed how adventures are different to the activities we know. All we’ve seen is how we start adventures and how the player killed mobs while a number in the UI grew.

We didn’t see anything rewardlike
We didn’t see any UI that shows the points of our guildies/friends
etc.

It’s really difficult for someone who has no idea what an adventure is to get information out of this presentation.

Kite.2510:

1. From that crash, We took a glimpse of the Character Select screen… PLEASE TELL ME YOU ARE PLANNING TO REDESIGN THAT! I hate the current character select screen!

In that glimpse we actually saw a Revenant. And I was like “CLICK ON THAT REVENANT OMFG!!!”

The information presented was exactly what they promised to show us.

Putting on the back seat driver steering wheel/Monday morning QB glasses, I would have recommended they do just a few things differently -

• Set expectations during the stream. There is nothing wrong with saying, “Our only goal here is showcase how adventures will work so players can see the potential and how easily we can add cool content.” That would take the emphasis off of the actually adventure (which was a little vanilla, while still potentially fun) and put it on showcasing the system behind adventures instead.

• Once you set that objective, stick to that topic and forego the random running around. Save the stuff about outposts until you can show more of that system. Alternatively, if your goal was to showcase outposts as well as adventures, the same setup is required – set expectations.

• Finally, be clear about what you are not showing. The POI was not about map size, new professions, specializations, etc – say that up front so that people focus on what you are trying to showcase.

Again, take this for what it’s worth – Saturday morning advice from the cheap seats (even though I am an experienced public relations and media relations consultant in real life ).

Keep the POI focused and set expectations regarding what you are (and are not) showcasing. All told, I was happy with what you showed us, but I realize those who didnt read the intro may not have understood what you were trying to accomplish.

nGumball.1283:

They showed nothing more or less. Re-said already known information and basically stood in the same area for 30 minutes while chatting.

Glad I missed it then! That does sound boring and I don’t blame people for being bored also. Twitch isn’t there to be a youtube video and sadly youtube reviewers do a much better job even when they have alot of stuff to say about a product, this team could learn a thing or two from people like woodenpotatoes it seems.

There are two things happening here. 1) People didn’t pay attention to/didn’t know about what was outlined to be discussed at this POI and 2) People don’t care about point one.