Guild Wars 2

So I decided that I would be interested in hearing the devs talk about the game and give previews to incoming changes in the ready up livestream. But right away I was thrown off by the bad quality. I think the content itself isn’t bad, but it had a “school project” vibe.

-MOST IMPORTANTLY the skill bar. I was excited to see the changes being made to the ranger, but holy crap. The guy reading the script was RIDICULOUSLY bad. He was stopping to squint at whatever he was reading off of, he clearly didn’t know what he was talking about, he was just saying the words. Once again, it seemed like he was a fifth grader reading a speech that he stole from the internet. It was as if you could have replaced all the names of ranger skills with names of mesmer skills, and said “here is the new script for the ranger skill bar” and he wouldn’t have known the difference.

-The keying job of the green screen isn’t atrocious, but it you can see that they are obviously in front of a green screen when you look at the people.

-the two hosts on the episode I watched didn’t know where to look. I guess it was one guys first time or he was new, but it was awkward to watch.

I understand that it is a livestream and you cant edit the video up that well to get some kinks out, but that isn’t the problem. It isn’t even an issue with money. All you need to do is tweak the chroma key settings or whatever key you used for the green screen effect, have your hosts relax, and have the skill bar guy either rehearse his bit a few times beforehand, or at the very least be familiar with the game so he knows what exactly he is saying.

Thoughts?

I think Karl probably knows what he’s talking about, but may be a bit camera-shy.

I don’t like Karl, either.

Bring me John Smith and have him give economy lectures.

He probably is camera shy, I know I would be. Cut him some slack, don’t be an kitten .

I like Karl!

Might be because he is a programmer, not an actor.

Karl is the best.

#believeinkarl

Maliel.8362:

Might be because he is a programmer, not an actor.

He’s still also a Warrior player on the balance team. #stereotypes

In his defense, he is reading super dry, factual material. You could be Morgan Freeman and still bore people to death, reading those kind of facts.

Also, FWIW, I’ve never felt like he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. In fact, I had assumed he’s the one making a lot of the changes.

My thoughts: These guys develop games. They aren’t actors or mouth pieces for Anet. In fact, I think the tactic works on a player level; I don’t want to see someone I can’t relate to as a player give me some scripted crappola about great changes will be … I want to see the biggest gamer nerds doing that. That for me is credibility. These guys like what they do, and care about it.

I agree, but more just on the general quality. The video/audio quality I thought was sub-par. But I guess it can be improved upon.

Maliel.8362:

Might be because he is a programmer, not an actor.

Yeah. Do you want a video by a poorly-spoken programmer talking about the changes they have planned for the game?

Or would you rather have a well-spoken video by some actor who has no idea what he’s talking about?

I’d rather get it from the horse’s mouth than from a talking head.

an actual person in front of a camera during a work day reading off game facts

Uh considering Karl is on the balance team and probably made a lot of the changes he’s talking about himself, he knows what he’s talking about.

You on the other hand sound like you don’t know what you are talking about.

Why people making fun of Karl? That’s awful, dude looks slightly terrified of being on camera. No offense intended to Karl, I’m reminded of my days in comp classes in college, most developers simply aren’t typically wired to give presentations. Usually that corresponds directly with how technically proficient said developer is.

why not do text presentation instead of video?

i would prefer to read text than watch video.

I dare you, name me without cheating or stuttering, every

-trait, weapon, utility skill
- name, effect, cooldown
- potential hidden game mechanic, like projectile, pbaoe, since that was also talked about
- for every class

End result?
Dont expect stuff a no lifer cant do from a game developer whos a normal person. Also #believeinkarl actualy is one the better and most knowledgeable ones

They could improve their audio a bit, but like they said, its better to spend time actualy working instead of putting make up on.

Give the guy a break. Have you every done a dry run live on video reading something?

I seriously doubt you or I could do any better. Poor Karl, I bet he did not sign on at Anet to be “The guy in front of the camera”. He is delivering what he and others working on skill tweaks have been working on, directly to YOU the gamer. You know, that communication people complain about Anet never delivering……

Some gamers……..

Thoughts? I thought this is one the most silly and ridiculously unnecessary complaints I’ve seen in recent times.

And rude :/

Don’t like it it for whatever weird reason? Just go read the text version. Geez.

#believeinkarl

I believe!

Being someone who was absolutely mortified at going up in front of people to give a presentation or speech until I was lucky enough to get the best Professor ever in a Public Speaking class during college (seriously owe her a lot)……. give Karl a break. Being nervous is one thing, but when it affects you to the point of being almost ill maybe you’ll learn something, and be able to empathize for people in those situations.

You can just tell Karl doesn’t feel comfortable at all with what he is doing, and if they are doing it last minute in a hurry up that only makes it a hell of a lot worse. Somebody just needs to do him a favor, and not make it a rush job, so he can get more comfortable with the material and then work on presenting.

I prefer to have the developers talk about their game in front of the camera than someone else who has nothing to do with the game!

I think he is probably the best choice for these pieces.

He may not come across as a paid actor, but he definitely knows what he’s talking about – which is what we really want.

Inform yourself before you write, OP.

To be honest i had some trouble to follow in livestream these changes, i prefer the old powerpoint slides they used in previous ready up edition to show balance changes.

OP just keep quiet man your complaining about the wrong stuff.

They said it takes them 11 hours of work to create this videos. If you want higher quality we may only see patches once a year instead of twice. Im completely for getting rid of them entirely, give us the kitten written version.

#karlsexyandheknowsit

the only thing that i could criticize would be the poor audio quality for the skillbar, but meh, you can understand everything karl says. the rest is fine, imo. ok, yes, you could tweak the greenscreen a little, but who gives a crap about the background anyway? i’d prefer a nice GW2 or Anet flag over animated stuff anytime. same goes for the pve spinoff. although kates guests tend to be more on the funny side, joke wise, there’s not much going in ready up. everybody’s always so super serious.

oh, and please, make a "rate your favourite forum post" section for the credits

oh and please, before a huge balance update, invite someone from the balance team to EXPLAIN WHY you came up with some of the balance changes. i think it would be a big step and i am genuinely interested, but i don’t have time to actually play all the professions in every build in every situation

I don’t even really know who karl is, but this thread made me like him more, so there’s a weird inverted bright side of this thread.

I just play, and it just sorta rains balance changes once in a while. But I must admit GW2 is the first game where I’ve seen a dev talk about upcoming changes to the game on camera and then later on see that same dev end up killing me in-game on a random day.

/datGrouch
/eff engineers

I would understand someone saying it’s a bit lacking in fast & super organized screen shifts, people talking do occasionally stutter ect… I’d much rather it this way though. Why waste resources on something showcasing the product instead of using the same resources on the actual product? Also it adds a casual feel to them (we all know Anet likes their casuals eh?).

Esplen.3940:

I don’t like Karl, either.

Bring me John Smith and have him give economy lectures.

Rup is fine, the OP is being a bit of a kitten tbh. Karl is a skill balancer and Grouch organises tournaments, neither of them are professional marketing/PR people, and I for one would rather hear things from the mouths of the people working on them rather than from some polished but soulless corporate shill. We don’t need it to be polished and shiny, we just need it to convey information. It does a good job of doing that and I’m grateful you guys put in the time. Of course that doesn’t mean I’m happy with all the news I got on that show, coughBALANCECHANGEScough, but I’m glad we got to hear them in advance

That being said, you should take Grouch’s and Jessica’s swivel chairs away, watching them rocking themselves left and right is incredibly distracting! :p

To put it in nerd terms:

Karl stacks tons of Int and Wisdom because that’s what he needs for his role, so don’t get all bent out of shape just because he’s not rolling on +Charisma gear.

Why is this topic even still open? It’s a ridiculous complaint and just plain rude.

Karl gets me the info I need. I don’t need a professional actor to do it. Keep up the good work Karl.

smithkt.8062:

Why is this topic even still open? It’s a ridiculous complaint and just plain rude.

Karl gets me the info I need. I don’t need a professional actor to do it. Keep up the good work Karl.

^

He spoke clearly and knew what he was talking about, no changes needed.

bring Justin to ready up (the only guy who talked with comunity in this forum like he would care bout the comunity)

skill bar quality wa totally fine for me.

Fast enough and clear enough.

Still wating for changes no matterwhat was said to see end implementation.

Arenanet, i’m fine with it, don’t spend your money on this shiney.

#Believeinkarl

What a pointless post op, the ready up was meant to inform players about some upcoming balance changes and it achieved it goal. I guess some people will complain about almost anything.

This thread is actually a good example too why it is more complaints in the forums than praise posts. C’mon it is a game company and the update information is precented to us by programmers, storywriters and more. As Katzbach said they rather spend their money on improving the game instead on hiring actors or train original personal to be more used to the camera.

I think Karl made a good job explaining the changes and I have english as a secondary language and usually has a hard time to keep up when americans speak wich results in me missing half of the information. But I think Karl was very calm, and thanks to the few pauses he did I can keep up.

There is a hater in every section, Anet can’t even be so kind to make a clip to present any changes without getting complaints about how bad quality the clip has :P

Umm… By the way… why is this one in the sPvP section?

Lopez.7369:

ArenaNet is an absolute disaster by many accounts, but I’m surprised anyone cares enough to complain about a terrible livestream that averages a couple hundred views.

Couple of thousand viewers for the last few (5-6) streams.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

that same dev end up killing me in-game on a random day.

/datGrouch
/eff engineers

you must be a horrendously bad player then

The skill bar now is leaps and bounds above anything you have put up in the past. Keep up the good work.

skill bar is great, its a small part of the transparency that this game needs so we know what to expect,
as to Karl he just seems nervous, don’t give him a hard time for that, he gets over all the info that we need, sure some of it is a bit jumbled, but its not difficult to know what he meant to say.

Dahkeus.8243:

To put it in nerd terms:

Karl stacks tons of Int and Wisdom because that’s what he needs for his role, so don’t get all bent out of shape just because he’s not rolling on +Charisma gear.

/thread.

Wow. This takes QQ threads to the next level. Bashing a dev for delivering information that everyone is eager to hear just because of the way he speaks? As many have said, he’s a programmer, not an actor. It’s not his job to entertain you with amazing vocal skills, or to deliver you any information other than that which is completely related to the topic.

You’re complaining that he reads form a script, and squints? What the hell dude. That to me says: this guy has taken the time to prepare this and is making sure that he doesn’t leave out any information. If that’s not enough dedication for you, then I think you might have to re-evaluate whether you actually like this game, because if you did you’d be able to appreciate it, and would be paying more attention to the message instead of conducting a personal review on the presenter. If he spoke inconsistently with seemingly random pitch changes and or was difficult to understand, then okay, but he delivers the information clearly and factually.

You say he’s not a good presenter, but with respect to the above, he does it very well. However, just to humour you... Have you ever watched the news? Would you really want him to be like that? Sounding bored and immune to emotion? Not that it would be a problem or warrant this thread - I’m just reinforcing my argument.

If Karl reads any of this, I hope he listens to the responses and not the original post, and that it in no way changes the work he does. I’ll be shaking my head in despair at the original post for the rest of the day.

I have no issues at all with the Skillbar or Karl McLain, except one.

I have absolutely NO interest in PvP, but I am VERY interested in changes to skills and traits (from a PvE perspective). However, I still have to dig through a half hour of chatter in order to find the Skillbar segment. Which is prerecorded and not even a true part of the rest of the show.

So please publish any future Skillbar segments (whenever new upcoming changes appear) as independent videos.
That way, I can find the information I need, and can continue to ignore Ready Up, like I prefer.