Can Matt Mercer recover from this? 

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I’m surprised how little you actually said in 5 min and 21 seconds like I wanna click of the video but wanna know please be better at this

I think a big part of it that's going unmentioned is that twitch is losing numbers across the board.

I think drop off in viewers is natural. The problem i see is that so much of campaign 3 relys on references from campains 1&2 and if you are new to watching CR you are gonna miss a lot of those references and probably dont have the time go back and catch up on previous events. They need a new campaign, with a new setting and characters that dont reference the old ones to bring new people into it...maybe even a new game.

The numbers first dropped when they stop playing live. When they do a live show the number shoot up.

I suspect it's a perfect storm of many factors... Viewer fatigue, a less exciting Campaign 3, end of the pandemic, and all the Hasbro/D&D controversy.

It’s a rare show, live or otherwise that can sustain an audience for longer than 5 years. 340 episodes in a regular 22 episode a season show is about 15.5 seasons. Now if you factor in time filmed at an average of 4 hours per episode that then turns into almost 62 seasons worth of content if it was a regular tv show based on time alone. That’s a lot. Because it’s so much it can be daunting to anyone interested to start watching. Even if each storyline is self contained, so to speak, unless you’re coming in at the beginning of an arc, it can seem nearly impossible to anyone new to get involved with. All of this to say that I think a large component that has to be factored in is that viewer retention is always a struggle so there’s always a natural fall off that is going to occur, but coupled with a genuine lack of new consumers then add to that them having what could be described as an off/lackluster season none of this should be surprising. I think the official release of Daggerheart could change things up if they lean into it.

I was expecting an actual crisis... Perhaps Hasbro trying to mug them of their pocket money or something... Not a perfectly natural dip in viewership that looks so bad almost entirely because of Covid. It both created a huge peak that was always going down, and then as nobody can watch hundreds and hundreds of hours of actual play content for years straight without burning out a little and needing a break - covid forced every single CR fan to be rather synchronised there... And they still get great numbers.

Multiple merch lines, animated amazon episodes, and vods on YT and Twitch...Nevermind the fact all of them are established in their own careers. Theyll be fine.

to be fair, there's not really any reason to watch them live when it's prerecorded

I would love for someone, anyone, to break the monopoly of D&D, but I just don’t see Daggerheart being the proverbial dagger to the heart.

18 minutes of yaping just to say "it is what it is"

Honestly, I like CR too, but this newest campaign is pretty boring. I honestly cannot connect with the characters. It feels like a giant filler. Especially, for a show that's 4 hours an episode. I still like the CR team as a whole but also all the other content is underwhelming. I'm not into Candela or Midst. So, every time those come up, I skip. I'm honestly looking forward to the next campaign, be it they use Daggerfall or D&D. I'm still a fan but not motivated to keep up with the show right now.

Any TV-series have it's run for a number of years until it will decline. I think it's a natural development that it will be the same for RU-vid series. Critical Role has been running for 9 years. I think it's really impressive what they have accomplished, even if it ended tomorrow. I did watch Critical Role, but I think that 4 hours was just too long for me. I would be interested in watching if they made a new Daggerheart show with a shorter format, preferable edited.

I just think campaign 3 wasn't as strong as previous campaigns overall. The story is slow, and the PCs aren't as compelling as in previous campaigns. For me personally, my interest died off when Robbie left. Dorian Storm was one of my favorite characters, and his departure left a huge void in my opinion. After that I felt my interest waning more and more, until finally I just stopped watching. I keep up with major plot points with recaps and episode reviews, and I plan on watching again once a new story starts up. I hope in the future they pace campaigns a little better. More condensed and shorter, making them easier to digest in the long term. 400+ episodes that are well over 3 hours long each is just a bit much for me. It's the same thing that keeps me from watching the entirety of the One Piece anime. I just don't have enough time for that, no matter how interested I may be.

I like the episode, but DaggerHeart is not a DND killer or even dick puncher. It's play style makes it completely a different game that will draw different players.

Maybe an odd compliment, but - one of my dogs gets scared at the typical curse-word BLEEP, so I really appreciate you using the duck sound instead. He is unbothered by that.

Honestly, season 3 just didn't catch me; I gave up on it. I LOVED Mighty Nein. Now it's just .... not for me. Maybe season 4. With CR now introducing Daggerheart, what's going to happen for season 4? We'll find out.

I expected some actual crisis. Not this.

I think there's probably additional discussion to be had around other groups that may be pulling away viewers. I can't imagine someone watching more than a couple of groups in any given week so if something about the current Critical Role game doesn't grab you you can always go somewhere else.

Poor Orym, Matt should give him a rank in cat herding.

I think it started out as them being just a group of friends having fun sharing their hobby. They were genuinely surprised and excited when they got so much response, just go back and see their live reactions when they launched their first merch and it sold out in less than 20 minutes after being introduced to their stream. And they played like the majority of us do, sometimes impulsive, doing sh*t for kicks and giggles, without to much worry about consequences. Like when Keyleth jumped off the cliff without judging the risk, morphing into a fish in the air and slamming onto the rocks beneath. The players reactions to being surprised or having laughing fits with their best buds were what drew us in. And then many years pass. This becomes the fulltime job for some of them. They are older, having kids, dogs, houses and now a media company they have to run together. They go through stuff irl and still join in on game night (whenever they record them) because its a job they are committed to. Its the time in peoples lives when most stop getting together with friends to hang out and play, because life gets in the way, but maybe its also because other things feel more important. And now they have other series, projects and events together, so its no longer this one night each week that they get to hang out as a friend group and share their hobby. Its just a great work day with their fave colleagues doing what they always do. And I feel like there is simultaniously less at stake and more at stake. They no longer spend the week in between live streams eagerly awaiting figuring out what happens next, texting each other challenges or coming up with character twists or planning the perfect spell list. But they also know that viewers get attached to anything they create, so even though they start each session looking like "So, what am I playing as and where are we again?" they also seem to avoid doing impulsive stuff just for fun. Its like they are putting more value in telling an immersive story with complex characters than in doing stuff that make them laugh or cry. And I think that is why people assume its more scripted. These actors are pro storytellers. They can improv better than most of us can do scripted drama. But there is a difference between doing a dramatic performance and playing a game with your friends. And they might have blurred the lines too much. I think its the same as with other youtubers. If this was a different job or hobby, something not shared with the world, we would think it was normal to change it up over a decade. Hardly any of us stay in the same job or stick to the same hobby all through our 20s. And maybe the Critical Role group would regain the spark if they stopped running an empire and just live streamed their game night once every two weeks, having a beer together and bringing an empty character sheet just in case somebody did something foolish. But I dont think any of us would ask them to do that just to please us. They grew up and became responsible adults and they did it well. They will figure it out and go on to do great things. And we can rewatch old seasons and find other roleplaying content, and still support Critical Role as they branch out and create stuff.

Doing the show pre-recorded doesn't exactly help. why tune in when you can vod it?

IMO they need to get back to live so it feels like friends hanging around a table again. Also, the plot and shear amount of lore/names is getting pretty hard to follow.

I also think it's time to put Exandria to rest, at least in its current form. I'm also not sure how enthusiastic the crew is for C3 anymore. Matt made the mistake to not do at least a big time jump (remember that all three campaigns are within about 35 years of each others) so they're rubbing shoulders with VM and M9 - which is fine in a one-shot - but boring and dangerous for C3 since it gets used as a crutch and takes the spotlight off the current characters. Bells Hells have their moments but are mostly bland and boring, plus they meander around too much. My own interest fizzled out around the time they got split and reunited. If the older campaigns are any indication we'll get another year of this and then they might switch to Daggerheart for a fresh start, either in a new world or an changed Exandria without the former campaigns ballast.

As far as campaigns go, #3 is my least favorite with campaign #2 being my favorite. But I personally think they are just spreading themselves too thin. I'm sure Matt has less than half the time to prepare as he used to. But that's just my opinion.

I think it’s a combination of not doing live recordings anymore, but a good portion of us are just growing up. Critical Role is about ten years old now, and that’s ten years for us to grow up, have families, get new jobs, all the things that come with getting older. I started watching in college when Geek and Sundry first started the show, and now I am nearly thirty and have a ton of other responsibilities. I catch up when I can, but I’m still about eight episodes behind, and I haven’t even touched Candela Obscura because I wanted to catch up on the main campaign first, but catching up just isn’t happening yet. Same with Midst; I listened to the first five episodes and then decided to put it off until catching up on the other stuff even though I loved those first few episodes. I don’t think I am alone in this.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't Campaign 3 of Critical Role but generally less-well received? Might be time to wind that one down. EDIT: As soon as I posted this, you got to the reasons and now I feel like a fool.

Campaign 3 had way too much going on. Matt's central plot for the entire first arc was taking a back seat to all the characters' side plots. The climactic boss fight against the big bug queen thing felt like a side story despite being the *GM's main plot.*

A lot of the comments explain most of the things that I also think about Critical Role. I will say that for the most part critical role was watching voice actors playing LIVE and people could comment. The Players could interact with those people if they chose to do so. when they switched over to pre recorded, the fans carried over for a while to support..but it is a different feel. Not to say you cant do prerecorded stuff and be good. Look at Diminsion 20 but they are also short fast games. I think if they went back to live show it would help but I also know that it is hard for them to do that. They are all very active and Popular Voice actors on top of having kids and such things. I do hope that critical role can recover in a healthy way.

At the risk of getting flamed. Some of the critters can be aggressively toxic and bully people out of the community. Sadly Critical Roll has really done very little about it or to address it.

A big issue for critical role is they are too self-conscious about creating a show. It started and went viral because it was literally just a group of friends, who happen to be talented improve voice actors, putting their weekly TTRPG game in front of a camera. Rough around the edges, very spontaneous. Humor and drams just happened. Now it feels like they are drying to _force_ the drama (and sometimes the humor). For C4, they should try creating characters with no more than 3 lines of backstory each, and Matt should run it as a sandbox with a high chance of death. And they should literally film in someone's kitchen, family room, or basement. Get back to roots. Let the "story", drama and humor go where they may. Unfortunately it looks like Daggerheart leans heavily into story/drama, so they may end up even more self-consciously trying to force drama, humor, and big personal character arcs.

I think that at least part of the problem is the Legend of Vox Machina. people who have been brought into the fandom are used to its type of storytelling, and when joining campaign 3, were probably thrown off a lot by how much slower the pacing is. I don't think it's the whole problem or even most of it, but I think it's definitely contributing

I think D&D 5E's decline has dragged CR down a bit, too. The next version of D&D and how CR handles it will make or break the show.

There has been a drop across everything classed as 'nerdy'. The hype days are over, going back to the core fandom again slowly.

In my opinion, the scheduling has also kind of made it hard to get into the new campaign. A break at the end of the month sounds good, but it also means I never feel like im in a rythm with the campaign, you know? It feels like every time I start getting into it they have a break, and sometimes scheduling lines up in such a way that a new episode doesn't come out for another 2 or 3 weeks. It kills any momentum. Also it feels really forced

It’s ironic that this video comes out the same day as the episode that has reinvigorated life into this series

It used to be a game I could see myself playing. Now it is too overproduced, over-accessorized and overacted. I can't afford all those gadgets and extras that they use which makes me feel disengaged.

I have never watched them but I've tried. My major issue is I do not have 4 hour to dedicate to sitting and watching other people play a game. Not sure if there is a fix to that since playing D&D takes alot of time. But like you said, during Covid people had time to spare, now with things back to "normal" I cant imagine many people have that kind of time for a single content provider.

I completely agree. But I will also say that I think you’re missing some major pieces to the puzzle. Let’s not forget that Critical Role at the moment plays D&D, and what companies are behind D&D? WOTC and Hasbro. The companies that have had massive scandal after massive scandal for the past what 2 years? People are very dissolutions with D&D right now no matter how much they might love it. So watching a D&D actual play might not appeal as much to many people. On top of that, you kinda have to call it an actual play because Critical Role stopped recording live and has been pre-recorded since the pandemic. During the pandemic it made sense to go pre-recorded because of the restraints. But that’s not a hindrance anymore. Of course live viewers are going to go down if it’s already prerecorded and will be put on RU-vid later. But look at the numbers for the last couple times they were actually live recently being the 9th anniversary episode the Daggerheart open beta session zero and One-Shot, and the sick day. People want to watch and experience the show with them live. And with Daggerheart on the way many people are absolutely convinced that it will be the system for the next campaign so are also more than willing to bow out on their D&D stuff.

It feels like, when im watching, the cast is checked out.

There's a lot of reasons for the decline, but business decisions seem to be part of it. Campaign 3 seems specifically structured to kill off any remaining wotc trademarks. While a good business decision, not a very compelling story when the characters have little to no connections to the gods. No more livestreaming means little incentive to subscribe to twitch. Which if they're not live, why have the break in the middle? It used to be fan art and give you a vhance to hit the bathroom. Now it's ditched the fan art and doubles down on merch ads, which they also di at the beginning. And somehow Laura has gotten worse at merch plugs. Yes, hold up an item that is the size of a quarter, don't blther to zoom in, and tell me how cool it is. Her flustered and unprepared schtick isnt cute or endearing, it's grating on someone who has been doing this for 8 years. All this is not to mention they have fewer episodes per month, so things drag out more. All of the above make this feel more corporate and less "we just turned on a camera for our home game."

I think there are a few things that go into it, but I highly doubt this is the end of CR

Problem for me in 3rd campaign is boring. Problem started in beginning. One character died (and seemed it was planned), important npc was killed (harder to get into plot), and new players that were good add-ones, that then simply left. I think that plot was too confusing to even players. Also game doesn't feel natural anymore.

I stopped watching (in background while painting minis) because I started to cringe too much at what was happening and the show didn't inspire me anymore.

Oersonally for me it was them not being live that made me stop cuz it felt....more staged idono

Are we sure it doesn't have a lot to do with the fact that season 3 isn't nearly as good as season 2? Like, we went from Ruths Chris Steakhouse to Applebees. I WANT to love it all like in the past, but C.O. is....plodding.

I think you accidentally read a description of what my players normally do in my campaigns instead of criticism of campaign 3....

Jack sparrow was very popular in the poc movies, but his stand-alone movie flopped. He worked because others carried the drama. Same thing with campaign 3.

i used to watch every thursday night but it ends at like 2am for me and i have a baby now so i cant stay up anymore, i think alot of us are just growing up, to note, i do watch them on monday when it goes up as i have a wireless headset so i can care for bub and catch up :3

CR season 3 is lacking a lot. It drags, its slow, its boring. More dungeon crawl and less improv is needed, D&D is still the big seller. Although CR has a fan base, I don't think it will be as popular using another system.

You have been stating that D&D is dead for at least 2 years. Critical Role will likely have its ups and downs BUT they are talented people that will always be involved in gaming and succeed in any endeavor they see fit to follow. People may stop watching and followers may waiver but Critical Role will exist in some form. People will cry and hate those that continue to produce entertainment. But that never stopped talented people.

Do your view/watch numbers account for when they started streaming on youtube as well? Because I think a lot of people also stream there instead of twitch now.

I haven't watched in forever. Because of my timezone I'd have to stay up late to watch. I just find it easier to wait for RU-vid.

All the C3 characters have dead-end backstorys. All are either near death, dead, nihilistic, or righteously suicidal. Non have any plans or hopes for the future or growth. None of them have anyone depending on them at a personal level, none have anyone to let down or disappoint. Only FCG was actively pursuing growth, making commitments and connections, but at the same time also itching to do what he did. Thats why it actually had an impact, anyone else at the table could have rolled a D100 and died in their sleep or melted into slag and nobody would have really cared. At least that's what it feels like and in the end it's what a show like this makes you feel that is important

I'm a Critical Role fan myself, as little of the actual show as I've seen. It just seems natural for *anything* that gets this big to slowly decline after the explosion of hype. I'd honestly just love the next season of the Vox Machina animated series, and to see anything more about the Mighty Nein follow-up.

Honestly, the reason I stopped watching campaign three is that the cast seem to be bored and going through the motions. Its like its become their Job or something... The whole thing feels phoned in a lot of the time. Then there is the forced pace of the narrative that does not allow for moments when the group can naturally bond. All in all it just feels like a lot of the cast are less engaged and simply going through the motions.

Great video boss. I appreciate you going into the weeds

This has been happening to a lot of RU-vid channels since January 2024. Something in the algorithm has changed and subscribers don't get the notifications when creators post videos. Would be strange that RU-vid would do it to Critical role given how huge they are but I know it's happening.

Campaign 1 was their masterpiece. Campain 2 was 'hey, we're familiar with DnD now, i want to try this class next' Campaign 3 seems more like them trying to figure out how to play classes they're not invested in. But overall, they've made a multi-million dollar empire, they have 2 TV shows, and just sold out Wembly Stadium. I think they'll be ok.

No the answer is simple. It's no longer a group of friends having fun with a silly little game of DnD. It's now a large scale corporation producing a high quality game of DnD to then broadcast at a later date. They are also prolonging the current season of this show because they need to wait for an in house product to be finished, and the writer of the show(Matt Mercer) now need to drag out what was clearly meant to be a short low level campaign far past its original time frame.

This "Doom Rambling" seems a tad disingenuous. Seems like your just trying to have a spicy take with a "CANCELLED" written in big bold red across the CR crew in your thumbnail to grab rage bait views. A standard episode of Critical Role from 3 days ago is over a quarter of a million views. Seems like they're doing the same numbers they used to. After 2020 people switched to watching videos after they streamed, when they have free time. I don't quite inderstand What your take in this video is. The views are basically the same as 2023, they're just shifting from Live views to after views. Every single TTRPG channel lost live viewers after the pandem...

If I'm honest campaigns 1&2 were the best.

This is about the fourth time recently that I have heard about viewer numbers falling off a cliff since January. It seems to be happening across many fields and is irrespective of subscriber numbers.

Would you have any interest in cool terrain for your DND table top sessions? Not sure if you play more digital or physical.

The best thing CR has ever made was when Brennan Lee Mulligan was the DM for EXU Calamity. Nothing they'll make will outdo that.

I watched every episode since number one on G&S when they had folding tables and terrible audio, but I ran out of steam by episode 65 of season three. One of the cool things about the first season is that because they started publicly streaming with higher level characters (level eight I think), we got to see them ascend to demi-gods. Season two felt like a missed opportunity, that we never got to see the full potential of those characters through a natural story arc. Season three just felt like such a slog, I kept trying to chew through it to episode 70 so far.

I tried to watch all the Candela, but lost interest. The reason I think, is that that type of show and game is very hard to make interesting. Mystery and especially horror mystery, can be really boring to watch. Its like you are just watching people in vintage clothes sit around and talk.

How often does someone actually 'deserve' the internet's ire? The internet is like a blind sniper. They might target someone that does deserve it once in a while, but more often than not someone just gets caught in the crossfire for no good reason at all.

The general feeling of the show has changed since they moved to pre-recorded, but more importantly the campaign just hasn't been very engaging. It's been painfully slow at times and the cast avoided progressing the intended narrative every chance they got. At this point I prefer CR one shots, or smaller scope campaigns like Exu.

I don't think Daggerheart has a chance to overtake D&D as the de facto game of the hobby. Not even remotely. From what I've seen of it, it wants to boast about being fresh and new, while simultaneously being a close to 1 to 1 conversion of 5e concepts and rules. Similarly, it wants to be "easier" to play, yet has the players and GM having to micro manage different cards and tokens, on top of dice and character sheets. And let's not even get into the whole "no initiative" thing. There are three sorts of people I can imagine adopting the game. First are the Critical Role die hards. The people responsible for the whole "Matt Mercer Effect". They don't really care about the D&D aspect of the show at all. They'll get the Daggerheart book because it says "Critical Role" on the cover (actually, I don't think it has a cover yet, but figure of speech, you get the idea) Second, the D&D players that also watch Critical Role. These people played TTRPGs well before Critical Role was a thing. They like the show, but aren't fanatic about it. Third, people who have no idea, at all, what Critical Role is. They do exist, rare unicorns though they might be. Might pick up the book completely without bias.

I've watched about 108 episodes of campaign 2 and that required me to almost live the show. I didn't stop liking the content, but it felt like, with 4 hours per week of content, one of two things happen: 1. I keep up and get burned out on it. 2. I don't keep up, and get overwhelmed by how much I need to watch to get caught up. Eventually I just went to less committal content.

It was in no way implied that Alfred was working for the British in Burma. Weird reading. Burma got it's independence in 1948 dude, way too early for Alfred to have been old enough to have been operating there under British rule. Michael Caine himself was actually in his mid 70s at the time of filming The Dark Knight (born 1933) and even he was too young for that. Furthermore, Alfred specifically says that him and his "friends" were working for the local government, likely one of the regional military leaders in the Burmese (wasn't called Myanmar until 1989) junta. Viewers can then logically assume he was part of a hired mercenary outfit post-service during the 60s, 70s, or 80s and the bandit wasn't rebelling against the British because the British weren't in power. The bandit was just an asshat who wanted to watch the world burn.

It's hard to get excited by Candela Obscura considering it just is not exciting to watch. If I want to be purposefully depressed, I'll go to the DMV to hang out.

I can't wait for videos called "The 'Great News Everybody!' Crisis gets WORSE!!!!"

This is the first time I've seen someone say what I've been assuming is going on, but it's said so quickly in the end. The plot of C3 is setting up moving Exandria to Daggerheart. The main IP issue they had publishing an Exandria setting book, were the gods that are owned by Hasbro. They're pulling out all the D&D elements from their IP to go all in. The thing is, that kind of IP first creativity second approach is what brought us Morbius and Madam Web so . . .

Definitely correct on the post pandemic slump. It seems that it is something that a lot of companies forget about as things start slowing down now everything is almost completely like pre-pandemic. I'd be interested to see the view counts on Critical Role videos in the time before and see how they compare to now. I'm hopeful for future Critical Role games as, strange as it sounds, the third campaign feels like it has lost the magic they had in the first two. As if there has been a greater move towards production quality and promotions, but there is less heart in the game. For example, in a recent 4-sided dive laura discussed how she spent time deciding on what accent Imogen should have, it wasn't a natural development like Vex'ahlia was from the home game, or Jester from previous one shots which, from what I've read, was more likely a spure of the moment creation. There's also no feeling of an evolving world, there is a deadline approaching which was presented fairly early on in the campaign that casts a shadow over the whole game. It's coming to an end, just in what way, and what comes next?

Can we recover from the clickbait which is flowing all over this episode>

I know I dropped CR when the OGL shitstorm rolled in.

I dropped C3 pretty early on, for no particular reason other than time management. When I do have time to watch critical role, I pick up where I left off, I've recently been powering through some of the C3 episodes where the team has been split into two separate parties and man did it kill the momentum. So I can understand the pacing issues people bring up. Just as things were ramping up, everything came to an abrupt halt. Then we get introduced to more characters with the one party, and they do their thing for a few weeks. Then we gear shift to the other group, and it just really kills my interest with the start/stop nature of it all.

I hate to say this, but I blame a lot of it on the runtime of the videos. I listen to several actual play podcasts (Dungeons & Daddies, League of Ultimate Questing, etc.) and most of their content sits at around an hour because it has been effectively edited. I understand that there is stuff they do and say outside of the game that is/can be really funny, but I think they can cut extraneous stuff and trim the videos down to about an hour and a half. I, too, love Candela Obscura. In fact, I purchased the book. I'm looking forward to running a couple of one-shots for the game.

Discourse has been charmed, quick cast dispel magic before she obliterates us all.

If I was a player in C3, I would feel constantly railroaded but without direction, overshadowed by favourite NPCs, depressed by the overwhelming gloom and desperate to actually do character work. Not saying this is how the players feel, but if they did, it would explain them grabbing any plothook, derailing to talk dresses for hours and the trying to lighting the mood with schemes like pretending to be filming an entertainment product.

For me the Issue with CR campaign 3 is a lack of tension. There’s a Distinct lack of combat or Situations that have Delivered real stakes. Up until fairly Recently the characters ran from Most Dangerous situations. That and lackluster bbegs/end of Distinctive memorable arch’s within the campaign.

It's been funny watching them shoot themselves in the foot by diversifying. Quality of the shows aside, having 3 different main feature level shows is going to really confuse the algorithm. It's probably also contributing to brain drain too. How creativly invested is Liam going to be if he's also DMing in the same week? They should have started new channels for the other two shows.

I quit watching when they impromptu spent 1 hour RPing shopping for clothes for a royal ball. it was tedious AF but it was clear the CR cast was enjoying it. another thing that turned me off from CR was the combat encounters were usually a dumpster fire. I mean, shouldn't most players be at least somewhat adequate at combat tactics when their character is 10th lvl?

I quit watching consistently at episode 88 or so, and after missing one episode found it very hard to catch up since I lost a bit interest after they reached Ruidus proper. It just felt like they lost a bit of momentum, and I feel like Matt took a load of time to prep this place without much being there to really explore. We had a few weeks breaks with Candela, as well as the Daggerheart oneshot, and a “sick day” episode, which I’m fairly certain was issued simply because Matt wasn’t prepared to show Ruidus and why they went on the fey realm arc in the first place (as it definitely did NOT feel natural nor were everyone’s reactions to Ashton attempting to take the shard, and Ashton taking the shard in the first place) Frankly, there isn’t much interesting about Ruidus and the people there. They’re just like us/exandrians, but from the moon and they don’t know what our food tastes like. Oh, and there are polymorphic aspects to their species’ castes. This isn’t that deep of a world building concept to me, personally, and I don’t think it would have been a bad thing to make them more, you know, alien. This isn’t a cut and dry problem either, I just feel like this became more of strung out arc rather than the penultimate climax of the entire game. Like are we near the end of act 2 or closer to the end of the game entirely? And SPOILERS, episode 91 didn’t really hit that hard for me at all. Yes, seeing these people react to someone they care about struck me as something very special and interesting-but as characters? There was literally zero breathing room for anyone to reflect or react. Not to mention the fact that it felt very rushed. A conversation with an NPC can take over an hour of in-game time, but the death of a beloved PC is less than 20 min? I don’t get it. The fact these are pre-recorded means that they are clearly following a filming schedule, and never deviate from their preferred direction of ~4hr sessions, which includes the ad and break runtimes, as well as the 15min pre-show time, totaling to about 45-60 min of filler/ads. I love this show and the people who work on it, I’m just sad to say that I am struggling to find interest in the plot, which is by-far the weakest and most contrived of the three campaigns we’ve had. It feels entirely impersonal to each character, all of them feel obligated in some way to participate in such a large endeavor, and many have discussed this openly as characters. And to further the plot, the characters/players make choices that inspire chaotic or interesting events to take place rather than having those events inspire them to take action. That’s not a bad thing, but it feels like they are dragged along with whatever Matt places before them rather than collaboratively telling an engaging story. This isn’t a problem since it’s clearly what the table wants to do for each other as friends, it’s just not a great format for growing viewership.

they said "and my characters pronouns are" and I rolled out - all great voice actors; wish em the best

Honestly, I think people are too hard on them. After all, it's a GAME, nobody HAS to watch it. It's a game for THEM and for their CHARACTERS, at least that's how I've experienced d and d 5e to be centered around the characters and not centered around a group of people watching other people play the game. They do their best to make it entertaining for YOU ALL, AS WELL as the players, but the players are obviously the most important part as you don't have a campaign without them. Are they perfectly entertaining every single time they're on screen the entire time they're on screen? No that's literally impossible. They're doing their best, yet all they get is S*** on. I feel for them trying to please people that can LITERALLY never be pleased

There should be a ttrpg where your pipped d6s are 3×3 rubiks cubes and your character sheets are hexatetraflexagons too.

Personally I stopped watching when they announced candela obscure and daggerheart.. I started watching because I love dnd nit really interested in other games live play.. its unfortunate because I thought Matt loved dnd also and it even got to the point where they were becoming actual cannon in the dnd multiverse they could have been our generations forgotten realms or dragonlance

Just a heads up, pretty much all the picture you put up on screen had a grey line in them, noticeably so

For me as a DM I quit running games when most of my players started playing silly non serious characters.

Critical Role might be able to get their numbers back up if they are willing to run a Pathfinder 2E campaign one of the main problems with Dungeons & Dragons 5E is that there is only so much you can do with it where as Pathfinder 2E you have so many options that it does not become boring

I can only speak for myself, but I stopped watching because it’s pre-recorded the new campaign been sort of boring and that Cr stayed “neutral” during the ogl scandal because they have ties with Wotc (I understand why it just felt like a betrayal to me)

It's because for a lot of people d&d fatigue is huge. And BG3 lets the people who couldn't get a d&d group who liked to pretend they were part of online games actually have a real gaming experience.

When you're no longer forced to be locked inside, you stop watching s**t.

Just wanted to commend that fantastic bit of alliteration. I'd have subscribed just for that if I hadn't already done so ages ago.

CR started long before 2020 and averaged 40-60k views long before 2020. In fact, the covid bump was quite small for CR.

As for campaign 3 downtrend... I found the start of the campaign the biggest problem. Unlike first 2 campaigns, it took around 45 episodes to actually get to metaplot going and finally give characters other than Imogen development.