CrustyBot.3564

It was a pretty awesome event, and demonstrative proof that high end GW2 streams are palatable to large audiences. Moving the conversation point from "oh no one watches GW2 streams on twitch because only losers watch a game instead of playing it" (as if we're not all losers for posting about video games on a forum anyway) to "well, it's insignificant because it didn't beat the numbers of the official expansion announcements that every account got notifications to go watch" is a significant step. People do watch GW2 streams if the content is there, and judging from this forum and the reddit, it drives a significant amount of the discussion in online spaces where people talk about the game. I hardly think twitch is the end all be all of advertising or community. But it does baffle me that so many people are adamant about shunning the entire idea. Throwing weight behind community driven initiatives seems a better use of marketing budget than Kung Fu Tea debacles is all I can say. I can understand why Arenanet didn't support this initiative, 3rd party camera breaks ToS and has big implications if the tool got in the wrong hands. Fair. But if anything, this should spur them to work with other creators and ensure that events like these won't just fizzle out and die. That said, this is probably a teachable moment 2-3 years too late. The issue of fixed PoVs and relying on inconsistent streams for camera footage has been a problem since ERP 1 (2 years ago) so there's been ample time to try and work with Teapot. Now it's too late and barring a change in course in Anet's philosophy with regards to marketing and community (not a realistic expectation), there aren't many people left with his clout that could pull something together for PvE. Hell, GvG players are still waiting for Guild Hall arenas to use WvW balance (if any are still left) and to have better instancing. Because I could totally see GvG becoming popular for streaming and building communities. There's just enough people to feel like you're going to war, without the crushing numbers of the zerg making the fight completely incomprehensible. But again, maybe 2-3 years too late on that front.

I don't really buy the arguments of GW2 being easier/better to play than watch as the sole reason. It's certainly true, but doesn't explain why GW2 viewership is so consistently low when you take into account similar MMOs like ESO have a viewership 5-10x larger. Not WoW, not FF, but games of a similar audience base and reputation within the market. Even BDO has a viewership of 10x GW2. I feel like GW2 attracts a lot of players who don't like interacting with people outside of structured and "safe" constructs. Like a guild. The game makes it very easy to be a solo player in a world full of other solo players where you never have to interact or be held accountable for anything unless you really want to. So it follows naturally that people of this sort don't see the value of community oriented platforms like twitch. Not saying twitch is perfect, or that it doesn't have downsides, or that people have to be interested in it. But it's one thing to say "I'm not interested in watching streams" to "anyone who even watches streams at all must be a loser" which seems to be a semi-common sentiment going by this thread.

In theory I am for multiple difficulties. I find it unfortunate that more people don't raid and I feel like the in-game tools to aid people in learning raids is subpar. However if we want to get more than one raid every 2 years, it would extract concessions from other types of PvE content as the raid team is not large enough to handle 3 difficulties (let alone CM on top of that). Would people be willing to wait 6 months inbetween each living world release and even more time for new fractal releases? I am not too sure. Guild Wars 2 is intentionally setup with segregation in mind. The endgame is a variety of different mini game modes which allows people to focus on their preferred type of mode, or allow people to mix and match at will. I don't think it's fair to raider focused players to have their favourite content schedule slowed down because Arenanet wants to outreach to people who lack the initiative to make use of the significant community efforts to teach newer players raids. Even speedrun guilds like Snow Crows will tell you where you can go for quality raid training if you are new and want to learn. On the other hand, it would be even more unfair if the release schedules for everything else were to be slowed if the raid team had to pull additional dev resources from other teams in order to keep up. What I would like to see is more open world bosses have similar mechanics to raids. We have the Unbound Guardian in Bloodstone Fen and while I wouldn't like 1-1 replicas of raid bosses in open world, having some mechanics be similar can give better context in training and make raid mechanics more relatable. I also wouldn't mind significant updates to the training golem (I know we just got one) to allow people to practice some mechanics from raid bosses. So stuff like blue circles at VG, poison drop at Slothasor, egg aoe at Gorseval, timed bomb at Sabetha, etc. Stuff where people can learn to practice elements of a raid without being spoiled on the raid before they try it.