Ideas for future streams

[MishaJ]

Dear Greenstorm, below is the link for the RU blade and soul server patch stream on twitch that was live today. I know you're just starting out to streams so I figured maybe you might wanna take a look at this when you get a moment and see how they stream their patches and maybe take some ideas down. I find their format is really easy to follow along and informative and they show all the systems and they take time to talk with players in the chat too. Answer questions and make sure everyone watching fully understands all systems and items and things the patch is bringing. I'm not saying our streams have to be 100% the same but they got some really good stuff going on and maybe it could help in future for our servers streams NA/EU region. I hope you are doing well and keep up the great work.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1623133598

Edited October 13, 2022 by MishaJ

[Green Storm]

Hi @MishaJ

 

Thanks for this, I'll take a look when I'm not as busy (which means probably sometime next week!). It's probably going to be hard to understand as I don't speak Russian. 🙂

 

I want to explain a few things about the October 4 stream I did:

• It took me months to get to the place where I had the understanding needed to be in front of players and tell them with confidence about an upcoming patch, that I had to study in depth as much as possible.
• I also had to work with various people on the technical setup, overcoming some obstacles along the way.
  • Fun fact: it took a ton of work to get our test clients to work at my office. It saved us thought because Brett's client had issue (welcome to a LIVEstream!).
  • Another fun fact: we were going to stream to Twitch, YouTube and for the first time Facebook! That last one didn't happen due to technical issues.
• Our streams will probably never be the same, because we're not working with the Russian publisher or share their experience and pipelines. A lot of things differ and we're focusing on what works for us.
• Interacting with the audience: I made the decision very early on to not do it for this stream, so that I could 100% focus on presentation and content. I wanted player to hear the content right and not see me go back and forth for too long. This may change as I like interacting with viewers but I want to keep more focus on the camera and the quality as high as possible.

Like I said in a different forum thread, I'm considering more casual streams where I play the game BUT I'm not sure they're worth it unless a big part of the community thinks it's important. Preparing for a livestream is a lot of work that I could be focusing on other things. I like doing them and it seems that the community enjoyed that first stream, but it's always a question of where to best spend you time!

[MishaJ]

2 minutes ago, Green Storm said:

Hi @MishaJ

 

Thanks for this, I'll take a look when I'm not as busy (which means probably sometime next week!). It's probably going to be hard to understand as I don't speak Russian. 🙂

 

I want to explain a few things about the October 4 stream I did:

• It took me months to get to the place where I had the understanding needed to be in front of players and tell them with confidence about an upcoming patch, that I had to study in depth as much as possible.
• I also had to work with various people on the technical setup, overcoming some obstacles along the way.
  • Fun fact: it took a ton of work to get our test clients to work at my office. It saved us thought because Brett's client had issue (welcome to a LIVEstream!).
  • Another fun fact: we were going to stream to Twitch, YouTube and for the first time Facebook! That last one didn't happen due to technical issues.
• Our streams will probably never be the same, because we're not working with the Russian publisher or share their experience and pipelines. A lot of things differ and we're focusing on what works for us.
• Interacting with the audience: I made the decision very early on to not do it for this stream, so that I could 100% focus on presentation and content. I wanted player to hear the content right and not see me go back and forth for too long. This may change as I like interacting with viewers but I want to keep more focus on the camera and the quality as high as possible.

Like I said in a different forum thread, I'm considering more casual streams where I play the game BUT I'm not sure they're worth it unless a big part of the community thinks it's important. Preparing for a livestream is a lot of work that I could be focusing on other things. I like doing them and it seems that the community enjoyed that first stream, but it's always a question of where to best spend you time!

For a first timer you did an amazing job and I wanna compliment you on that. You were nervous and it was your first "face reveal" and that was a lot of pressure. But in the face of that pressure, you still were very brave and showed yourself to the community and made an effort and we applaud that 100%. This was just to help maybe give some ideas to help you get some really awesome streams out to the community because I want to see people engaged in this game. I want people to see patches and feel encouraged to play and see how fun the new stuff coming out is. I want the community to feel like they can ask you questions on stream and feel like they can get some awesome answers. I hope in future to see more wonderful streams with you because you're actually making a difference to change the community and do something for us that can make this game a better place, a happier place.

[DenialOfTruth]

Honestly I think it would be very enjoyable to watch someone playing the game, joining random parties for content and exploring the game as a normal player. It would also completely stamp out the 'Green Storm doesn't even play or understand our concerns' comments for good which holds an immense value in its own right.

[Green Storm]

39 minutes ago, DenialOfTruth said:

It would also completely stamp out the 'Green Storm doesn't even play or understand our concerns' comments for good which holds an immense value in its own right.

 

That sentence struck me as I've been doing community management for long enough to know that "our concerns" means different things to different people. Some Blade & Soul players think that gear progression is the most important part of the game (and it certainly is important!), while others prefer that we focus on class designs/skills, costumes, PvP, or group play, to name a few topics. Of course, most people's interests include almost all of these categories to a certain degree, PvP being an exception as not everyone wants to play MMOs competitively.

 

Me showing you that I "understand" this while playing the game and talking in front of a camera doesn't mean as much as the work that happens once I've sent my feedback to the other teams (and sometimes follow on it as needed). You see and read me, but you don't see the people and teams doing all the work to bring these updates to life. This is something that I'd like to change a bit if I livestream more (but that's further down the road).

 

I get it. Players want to connect and see that you're "listened to." This is a genuine sentiment and I sympathize, but imagine how much time I would spend if I had to acknowledge every single post or even forum threads. I'm definitely not opposed to it as I said above! But my priority was since day one to strengthen our relationship with this community, and I've done that more effectively via feedback shared on the forums (and social media to some extent).

[DenialOfTruth]

22 minutes ago, Green Storm said:

 

That sentence struck me as I've been doing community management for long enough to know that "our concerns" means different things to different people. Some Blade & Soul players think that gear progression is the most important part of the game (and it certainly is important!), while others prefer that we focus on class designs/skills, costumes, PvP, or group play, to name a few topics. Of course, most people's interests include almost all of these categories to a certain degree, PvP being an exception as not everyone wants to play MMOs competitively.

 

Me showing you that I "understand" this while playing the game and talking in front of a camera doesn't mean as much as the work that happens once I've sent my feedback to the other teams (and sometimes follow on it as needed). You see and read me, but you don't see the people and teams doing all the work to bring these updates to life. This is something that I'd like to change a bit if I livestream more (but that's further down the road).

 

I get it. Players want to connect and see that you're "listened to." This is a genuine sentiment and I sympathize, but imagine how much time I would spend if I had to acknowledge every single post or even forum threads. I'm definitely not opposed to it as I said above! But my priority was since day one to strengthen our relationship with this community, and I've done that more effectively via feedback shared on the forums (and social media to some extent).

Agreed. Honestly the fact we're getting massive game improvements lately should speak more then enough volumes is plenty for me. I do look forward to whatever is done next, be it more streams, or simply just letting us know with forum and news posts.

 

Your post did give me a thought, though...I imagine the language barrier would make it not feasible but perhaps getting to see the artists and developers in some way. It would be cool to hear from the artists since the game has such amazing visuals, but since they're all in KR, it could be a challenge to find one of them willing to conduct a interview as it were.

[Green Storm]

3 minutes ago, DenialOfTruth said:

Your post did give me a thought, though...I imagine the language barrier would make it not feasible but perhaps getting to see the artists and developers in some way. It would be cool to hear from the artists since the game has such amazing visuals, but since they're all in KR, it could be a challenge to find one of them willing to conduct a interview as it were.

 

That's a good idea and something I was considering for the first livestream! But this kind of content requires a lot of time (and Korean developers being willing to contribute) and I didn't have enough on my hands over the past few months. (or to be more precise I would have had to sacrifice a lot of other work to do it) Maybe it can happen in a future livestream, or as a separate video for future content, but I don't want to promise anything.

[DenialOfTruth]

6 hours ago, Green Storm said:

 

That's a good idea and something I was considering for the first livestream! But this kind of content requires a lot of time (and Korean developers being willing to contribute) and I didn't have enough on my hands over the past few months. (or to be more precise I would have had to sacrifice a lot of other work to do it) Maybe it can happen in a future livestream, or as a separate video for future content, but I don't want to promise anything.

Always a good idea to never promise things unless it's absolutes. Here's to future streams though, regardless of content. There's also KR interviews the devs do that might be worth looking into if they can be translated, some of them got machine translated by various communities and provided some insights into the development of the game but I cannot think of any specific ones right this moment that would be interesting.

[Walex]

On 10/13/2022 at 8:54 PM, Green Storm said:

• It took me months to get to the place where I had the understanding needed to be in front of players and tell them with confidence about an upcoming patch, that I had to study in depth as much as possible.

Yet you've only talked about very few things which are the most important for NC (new class, class change voucher,

trove, mounts, new dungeon), and skipped tons of important stuff which isn't even listed in patch notes. Oh well.

Maybe next time just prerecord "everything" in advance.

[Green Storm]

1 hour ago, Walex said:

Yet you've only talked about very few things which are the most important for NC (new class, class change voucher,

trove, mounts, new dungeon), and skipped tons of important stuff which isn't even listed in patch notes. Oh well.

Maybe next time just prerecord "everything" in advance.

 

As I said during the livestream, I was not going to cover everything in the release as we want players to enjoy surprises and the stream's duration to stay reasonable. And as I said above, this was a first for me and I didn't want to pack it so it's more manageable for me and more "digestible" for the audience (reading Patch Notes is never fun). Pre-recording is a complicated process that requires more time that I did not have.

[Walex]

Being uninformed about important stuff (and there's plenty) ain't a good surprise.

[MishaJ]

@Green Storm Very sorry for the ping but I watched the stream today and you mentioned you watched the RU patch stream and got a few ideas from it. I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to watch it and also I am very glad you got a few ideas from it. I can't wait to see all you will do next year with streams and the content you present to us. Keep up the great work and have a very happy holidays.

[Green Storm]

2 hours ago, MishaJ said:

@Green Storm Very sorry for the ping but I watched the stream today and you mentioned you watched the RU patch stream and got a few ideas from it. I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to watch it and also I am very glad you got a few ideas from it. I can't wait to see all you will do next year with streams and the content you present to us. Keep up the great work and have a very happy holidays.

 

Thank you for mentioning this topic in the first place! There's a few things I wanted to do this time around but I couldn't get to all of them due to the lack of time. But also there's a few things I do NOT want to do, such as streaming for over an hour (unless it's required for some content) or spending too much time reading details that are not useful to everyone (or listed in blogs and patch notes).

 

As you said, more fun stuff for livestreams in 2023. And thanks for tuning in 🙂