Critical Role Campaign 3 Isn't Connecting...But Does That Matter?

is critical role campaign 3 just not connecting with Critters I can't believe you just said that to me as 2023 comes to an end one surprising thing getting left off of many of the best of lists that are going around the actual play in tabletop RPG communities is critical role as the Third campaign stretches into a third year it seems like more and more fans are stepping away from critical role and in particular Bell's Hells so let's look at some of the potential reasons why some fans are stepping away from Bell's Hells how serious the problem is getting and just what could be done to reverse this drop and viewership or if the problems need to be addressed at all now before we get started let's be clear that this isn't supposed to be a we hate critical role video we love critical roll and its cast and you can probably tell that by how much we talk about the show on our Channel however we have noticed that campaign 3 seems to be a lot more divisive with fans and that's seemingly reflected in viewership numbers so this is purely an attempt to look at some of the fan concerns about the current campaign and you know try to do a little bit of a deep dive about some of these issues now to Stave off claims that any criticism of campaign 3 is purely subjective let's first look at the publicly available numbers of critical rolles viewership since 2022 critical rolles viewership has been substantially down with only four months of actual growth on Twitch over the last year and 8 months of substantial View viewership drops versus the same time last year which was already a major drop in viewership compared to their peaks in 2021 during the pandemic and the end of campaign 2 on YouTube the story is similar with lower view numbers of the live streams and their vods getting lower views over the same time period as campaign 2 for example you have to look back 4 months to find a critical role campaign 3 episode with 1 million views even pre pandemic campaign 2 was usually hitting 1 million views in the first month and based basically without Exception by month 2 so for whatever reason viewership remains trending down during campaign 3 across both of its major platforms now it's certainly possible that viewership habits have significantly shifted over the past year with more viewers moving towards the podcast but all the publicly available metrics indicate that viewership numbers are down despite an increasing diversification of content with candella obscura four-sided dive and midst all added to critical roles programming slate in the last year so why is this happening and what can be done about it and honestly does it really even matter to the critical Ro media Empire as a whole let's dive in and find out Dive Dive Dive so we've mentioned some of the reasons why critical role seems to be more divisive than ever with many fans criticizing the structure of the party the lack of stakes and the group's inability to focus on the main narrative one of the biggest issues at least According to some fans is the too many Jester problems the mighty 9's jester from C campaign 2 was such a great character because she served as a contrast to the more serious members of the group and had a sort of uh infectious ability to inspire chaos in the rest of the cast however she still had her limits and her serious moments too in campaign 3 you basically have five people playing a Jester like character all of whom seem to bring their own level of chaos that almost seems overwhelming at times Travis for instance is playing an actual meme character that he's on record stating he wanted to die months months ago chy should not be alive it's ridiculous that he's still here and every day going forward is both a gift and a curse Fern is a literal agent of chaos to the point that it derails the storyline most recently with her refusal to take the fire Shard which you know turned into a very convoluted M mess Ashton is a self-proclaimed [ __ ] looking to jump on board with any terrible idea put forward and Sam is playing a robot killing machine SL Southern creature while Marisha is playing the boogeyman all of these characters seem to be fighting for punch lines and the players are all one-upping each other in pure chaos decision often dragging the rest of the cast into the mix as well with so many chaotic unserious characters in the cast it's really hard for some fans to relate to them the way they did uh with you know the more uh serious characters of box makna and the mighty 9 because really just no one seems to be taking the game seriously L like 95% of the time with the exception of Liam to be blunt this makes for fun Vibes but not necessarily good viewing as for the stakes with all the chaotic decisions and the uh crazy messes that this party has found themselves in it's really hard to feel like there are any Stakes at all especially when some level 20 character or demigod relation will just swoop in and fix things for them the party hasn't had to deal with consequences uh with even decisions to stall moving forward with the plot met with very little push back for instance recently the group delayed going to investigate Pros again so they could have some trust building exercises in the F realm and that literally resulted with time paused so they could spend multiple episodes goofing off they took a lengthy delay and no consequences for it the one serious moment of Jeopardy uh they faced this campaign was the death of ladna which was solved ultimately by a Vox Mak Cameo and we'll not that the death of ladna and the resulting plot that was one of the high points of the series and created some uh you know must-watch moments and must watch episodes in fact from travel to equipment to leads on forthos Vox Maka or Mighty 9 members have shown up and have just handed things to Bells Hells on a silver platter to the point that it's become a running issue in the campaign so some fans just can't get invested when the party can seemingly make any wild or irrational decision they want and just be rewarded or at least not punished for it you need Stakes for good drama and you need good drama to keep viewers invested but by just letting them run wild with no real consequences that's all basically gone out the window and speaking of going out the window the cast refusal to move along the main narrative is the final Source spot for many fans imagine if in campaign one after learning of the Chromo conclave and you know watching you know Aman get destroyed the cast ignored the threats of the dragons for multiple episodes at a time Matt definitely keeps presenting them with options to lead them to ruus or to continue the main story it's really feels like the cast is afraid that going to ruis would eventually be the final Arc and not like a middle Arc of the campaign they really seem like they're dragging their feet with trips of the F realm and teleporting around xandria to try to prolong the campaign uh while the potential fate of the Gods and the world hangs in the balance as we mentioned before the party pushed off a trip to ruus to mess around in the Fay realm and that just really felt like a frustrating cap to end the year now these aren't uncommon complaints and while angry fans are often louder than content ones there's clearly an undercurrent of dissatisfaction from the fan base that we haven't noticed with uh when campaign 2 or campaign 1 was getting put out honestly a lot of these problems seem like they could be fixed by one simple solution consequences when the party tries to delay things increase the stakes to the point that they can't ignore them anymore consequences will tamper down some of the chaos and we saw a little bit of this with Ashton taking a permanent Constitution loss for his decision to try to have two shards a few episodes ago which you know he was repeatedly warned not to do but even that came with a mysterious and probably powerful new arm but you know when Bell's Hells came back from the F realm there needed to be more serious consequences for them for delaying their trip again and and there were none either the all their allies need to start withholding help because they don't see them as Dependable or you know maybe Vox machna and mighty 9 and the other level 20 characters they rely on need to be removed from the equation so they actually face penalties for off-kilter behavior and terrible decision-making without a constant supply of get out jail free cards I don't know have them be imprisoned by ludus or you know forced to leave uh Bell's hell behind to uh direct action themselves after so many delays just bring back the consequences and you can bring back the stakes tamper down some of the constant chaos of the party and get the narrative back on track now all that being said does it really matter honestly no critical role is clearly heading towards some kind of hard reset to xandria and basically everyone knows it this campaign is here to wipe the Slate clean for campaign 4 with a brand new or wildly changed xandria and the fans will come running back once that happens because you know the start of a new campaign is exciting seeing new characters exciting and seeing all the things and all the changes that's all exciting and even with dropping viewership the critical role animated shows are massive hits their merch is selling like crazy and Dagger heart is poised to be a massive success so even if they address none of these issues the fix is just you know moving on to the next campaign critical R is clearly doing just fine I mean tiet sales for their my live Mighty 9 Reunion in Wembley show how powerful this brand is even if campaign 3 is running on fumes a bit so what do you think has campaign 3 lost your interest or are you more invested than ever in the chaos and The Comedy of Bell's Hells let us know what you think of the latest season in the comments and feel free to hit those like And subscribe buttons on the way [Music] out

Channel: The Character Sheet on ComicBook.com

Views: 36,565

Keywords: the character sheet, character sheet, rpg news, ttrpg news, ttrpg, rpg, dnd, dnd5e, dungeons and dragons, critical role, critical role views, critical role campaign 3, critical role campaign 3 viewership, critical role campaign 3 problems, critical role deaths, laudna death, laudna and imogen, critical role vox machina, legend of vox machina, mighty nein, mighty nein reunion, mighty nein animated show, mighty nein animated, matt mercer, marisha ray, laura bailey, sam riegel

Id: gLKzC39Tg80

Length: 10min 2sec (602 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 28 2023