itmeJP Community


itmeJP Community

[FEEDBACK] Blades

RollPlay: General & Archives
, ,
#84

Never knew JP had such a large European audiences. Would be helpful if JP give us a grasp on how far the number dips when blades comes up when compare to the other shows. I love the show myself but…

Personally I think it has to do with Blades being a new game and a slow start. The slow start might of not been able to capture enough people attention. I think I would of dropped Swan Song by the 5th episode myself if I never saw Sicarian went commando and murdered an entire spaceship of pirates in the 2nd episode.

4 Likes
#85

I love the show but as people say, start time is so bad for EU.

1 Like
#86

For me, the reason I don’t watch live is the time zone - show just airs too late so I prefer to catch the VOD.

Lately though, I’ve also found the direction of the story less interesting than it was at the start. For example, a lot of these scenes with aldo and rune I just don’t find as engaging as the cast seems to think they are. This isn’t putting me off watching the show per se, but I’ve definitely found myself not really paying as much attention during similar interactions while watching the VODs. I come primarily for badass assassins, the more dramatic subplots are nice and they flesh out the characters, but those should not be the focus imo.

2 Likes
#87

I almost always watch the VoD’s due to the fact that I work and can’t catch the beginning. I love the cast and GM. I think when you shift the time to Sunday’s like you stated was going to happen the viewership my get a significant boost live. I can actually catch it live as opposed to needing to catch the VoD.

#88

i’m slowly catching up on the vods and i’ll keep watching but so far the show is a bit of a clusterfuck

most of the time nobody knows what they’re doing and just go along with harpers suggestions and DJwheat’s character seems poorly defined probably because she’s strongest for mission prep work and the players don’t really do much prep work.

the setting is awesome, so far the story is intriguing, and once they get into it the roleplay is great
maybe the game is just too deep/complicated and learning by doing isn’t enough
maybe playing (professional) assassins was a poor choice making things more complicated

(and some general critique is wrote a couple days ago: (hopefully) constructive criticism )

2 Likes
#89

I subscibe to Itmejp so I do not have to watch live, and access to all of the Vods a mediately. I support the RollPlay shows by contributing at the $10 level on Patreon.

Question are the over all views lower for Blades vs the other shows as well [on youtubes and twitch]? I ask because I wounder who else subscribes for the option to watch when ever vs live.

2 Likes
#90

Europe here. Blades is currently my favourite show. Time slot is evil, starting at 2-3am (not sure). When I was on vacation, I watched live. I came to terms with always watching on an other day. This is why I’m subbed.

However currently I’m snowed under with work. I’m 2 weeks behind on all shows and watched only half of the live show. TheDesec is sad.

1 Like
#91

I am another European prevented from catching it live. The game and cast are great, but it is just too late to catch live with any regularity.

#92

Hmm, for me personally, actually watching live is just weird because of the timing. I work overnights in the EST, so I’m usually asleep at the time. But that is true for almost every rollplay show because my work schedule is Friday night to Tuesday night.

I normally just listen to the MP3s as they become available, although I did watch the first three hours or so of the Swan Song live, and then spent the last two days watching the Twitch And I think half of the most recent Nebula Jazz.

But, I do “watch” Blades as I am interested in the series. It’s just mostly through the MP3s.

So really, unless it was early in the afternoon for me(like 1pm or earlier; preferably earlier), I probably wouldn’t watch it live, unless it was on a wednesday or thursday. But I understand that’s just weird and not likely to happen unless there was a massive shift to cater to the European timezones.

#93

The timeslot is why I don’t catch it live.
In my opinion Blades is the best show of the 3 airing rn. Its dark and gritty with great roleplaying, I like the game system.

1 Like
#94

It’s really late for me (EU) and the show is super heavy sometimes. I can’t watch the sessions through in one sitting, even from vods.

#95

To me, the main problem is the time schedule. Having a show start at 3am, while having to get up to work at 6am, it makes it just impossible to watch the show live.

I would totally watch all shows on any day live (my preferred way of watching them) if they are not to late for us in EU (also taking into consideration the hour a show ends).
Of course I would not mind any time slot on Fridays and Saturdays as I don’t work the next days those shows (would) air (like Nebula, the only show I can watch from start to finish because no matter how late the show ends it doesn’t matter as I don’t work the next day)

So, personally, having Blades move to Sunday won’t change anything if the show starts at the same time as now on Tuesdays, because once again most people like myself living in EU have to wake early to go to work/school the next day.

1 Like
#96

For me, I generally don’t get to watch any of the rollplay shows live. Court of swords starts at 4PM eastern when I’m still at work, so I usually come home and start in on the vod before the stream is even down, and then with Blades here, it starts at 9PM, and I have to be at work at 8AM, so I’m usually going to bed well before that show would be over. However, usually a good portion of my Wednesday or Thursday is watching the vod for Blades because I think the show is fantastic. It’s been good enough that I’ve been binge watching bloodletters in my free time as a result.

I think that it probably boils down to 9PM not being a great time for anyone in the east coast or Europe, or that people just don’t have time for 8 hours of rollplay in a single day live, even if they might want to.

1 Like
#97

I guess the only odd thing is why the viewership dropped this episode in particular. Obviously we Europeans haven’t been able to watch it for the whole series, so why this one?

I have a few things that spring to mind, as a disclaimer though I’m a pure VOD viewer, so salt accordingly:

  • Might be fatigue coming off the Swan Song marathon on the weekend - it feels like there’s a fair amount of overlap in viewers of that show so people might either be ‘done’ with RP stuff, or still catching up with it.

  • Anne not being on it means that the show has to be a bit more filler than normal (I haven’t caught up with it yet so I don’t know whether that’s true or not).

  • Plus with her having the highest sub count of anyone on the show (I think), that might pull down some of the numbers in her absence - which may be a problem/feature of RollPlay being very twitch-centric in terms of platform and visibility

  • It wasn’t clear at the end of the last full episode what the crew’s next job was going to be. It had an awesome emotional hook for the long term plans, of course, but maybe it needs a bit more of a ‘Next week… on Blades’ topper.

  • It’s taken the cast a while to really sink into both the ruleset and the characters (I seem to remember Wheat mentioning it that it took him a while to get to grips with it the way he has in the past). I actually think that this is a solved issue now, but I wonder whether it meant that some people dropped off while everyone got up to speed.

  • Similarly, John’s DMing style takes a bit of getting used to. With Steven and Adam being the de-facto ‘RollplayGM™’ style it’s quite a shift, particularly considering the kind of thing that seems to go over well on Twitch as a platform (i.e. bigger, louder, saltier). I think it’s a great thing for mixing up the content on Rollplay and introducing people to another way of doing things (in the same way that Steven blew everyone’ minds after Neal), but I wonder if he was a little underexposed going into it.

  • And, on the subject of Things-Live-Twitch-Like, the fact that it’s his game that’s only just been released means that there seems to be less room for them to be back seat drivers/rules lawyering arseholes. But maybe I just have an overly low opinion on Twitch chat, it’s not really my scene. :slight_smile:

4 Likes
#99

I love Blades! But it airs to late for me, as others said. I usually catch the VODs.

#100

I watched the first episode as a VOD and was very intrigued by it especially since different DMs bring in different styles. But as much as I want to watch it live - as that is the best way to watch with viewer interaction in chat - it simply is to late in my time zone, starting at 4am. And it is a very different experience watching it as a vod.

#101

I’m a European viewer so don’t get to watch any of the shows live due to my own schedule, but when it comes to VODs the reason I watch other Rollplay shows but not Blades is not a criticism of Blades at all. I got introduced to Rollplay overall by Day9 and his appearance on Court of Swords, and that led me to checking out Nebula Jazz which also featured skinnyghost, who I adored as DM in CoS. Having never come across any of the people in Blades, or having interacted with the system/setting before, I just have no drive to watch that in particular. So… in my case it’s nothing Blades or anything to do with it. It’s just that my interest is focused elsewhere.

#102

I need to say that I like the show, I love the cast, and John is doing a great job. In my opinion world in which the story is set is amazing, it’s interesting, it has depth. Now to go on things that don’t attract me about the show.
This is all my personal opinion and reflects only my view and my personal taste.

  1. To start with I’m from Europe and it’s too late to watch it live, but I watch every episode on youtube so I think that twitch is not only thing you need to consider when looking at what is the viewer base of the show.

  2. In my opinion so far players look op. Some player I think already have the highest skill in brawl or something like that that is used for combat.I feel that they can do whatever they want and “get away” with it or have some minor or medium repercussions. I know that they have rule set that is build for that thing, but I think that it should be more strict. Every movie has the point where everything goes wrong or there is something huge that is happening and I don’t see or feel it in this scenario.

  3. I feel that Zeke is too good to be playing a “bad guy”. The moment when Geoff’s character lies to him about his sisters diary and Zeke just took the easier route was bad decision and I think it isn’t playing by the character and that moment somewhat killed the “don’t know what is going to happen moment”. Now I know that Geoff will be dominant leader, dominate everyone in group and it will have no backfire from other guys when they should be playing bad guys. (I can allude to I think on first episode where Geoff said that he is usually dominant in group and would like to work on that, to become more “flexible”).

  4. The story so far doesn’t have clear adversary, yes they have “The list” and ingame factions, but it’s like in singleplayer games, you just play mission after mission and that’s it. In Swan Song you had many adversary’s, group had to make hard decisions and there was conflict inside the group.

Thanks for entertaining us!

4 Likes
#103

I love the show to pieces. The cast, the setting, the story. It’s amazing. Unfortunately I rarely catch any shows live. hopefully the new schedule helps keep the live numbers higher.

1 Like
#104

I don’t think @AnneMunition was in it because she was GDC if I recall correctly.

I think it’s just more that those who are interested in it are just operating at mostly different timetables than the show. Unfortunately, making the show earlier isn’t really an option since that would just be rude to the cast as most of them operate on PST I believed. At least @djWHEAT and @iNcontroLTV do, that much I can certainly say.

Maybe changing the day might help? But then you have the potential for schedule clashes so again, it could end up going many different ways, some of which would not be the way you want to go.

I kinda feel like making it a Friday show might be the way to go since Court of Swords seems to be doing good on its Tuesday slot. Enough people are getting off and then not having to worry about work in four hours and whatnot that they might stay up late to see it.