Why do you think FFXIV is performing so badly form the content creation side?

For me, FFXIV community's content isn't mainly live streaming rather it's on twitter #FF14 and so on.
Like other has said, unless it's community event or newest savage/ultimate, FFXIV gameplay streaming isn't quite fun to watch, you know what going to happened.

Another thing to consider - though I don't know how it translates to the other fandoms - is that streaming gameplay isn't the only form of user-generated content. Users are being creative with other elements like glamour and housing, but you don't stream those.

From the glamour-creation side of things, it takes time but there's nothing much that would be worth streaming - hours spent trying on random items together, warping around to shops, maybe running old trials over and over trying to get weapons to drop, trying to get the right freeze-frame in gpose. All that work boils down into a few images that you might browse through in seconds, whereas streaming is going to be a direct time in -> content out that takes the viewer to watch as much time as the creator spent producing it.

I haven't ventured into the housing side of things but I have friends that spend hours glitching stuff into position. The final result is stunning but that doesn't mean you want to watch it get made - or that the creator is willing to show it in a half-finished state.

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Originally Posted by lolicon09

I'll never understand how something like that even matters

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Agreed. A game's success and design being palatable for streaming, YouTube, etc. aren't really linked at all. Certain games are easier to just sit down and watch other people play. I like to watch people play certain games, but have no interest in watching them play this one. Not because the game is bad, but because I'd rather just play it myself and chances are whatever they're doing doesn't interest me. There's so many different ways to play (raids, RPing, Hunts, treasure maps, crafting/gathering, etc.) that you can't just go "oh, this person is playing FFXIV, I'll watch that" because there's just too many different things it could be, and not everyone is into every possible thing in the game.

I briefly saw a stream once of someone just fishing and whining about irl religion. No thanks, lol.

However, there's a decently-sized community that like to post gpose screenshots, but not everyone is into that either, and a rather unfortunate percentage of them use mods. So after a certain point it's not even really the actual game anymore.

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Originally Posted by Doozer

However, there's a decently-sized community that like to post gpose screenshots, but not everyone is into that either, and a rather unfortunate percentage of them use mods. So after a certain point it's not even really the actual game anymore.

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I'm not keen on seeing mods either. Some of my friends keep posting them in private chats and it's just... sure, it looks great, but it doesn't look like FFXIV.

Eorzea Collection has a strict "no mods" rule which is nice. I like seeing what people do when working within the game restrictions and outfits.

I would add to this that content creators typically choose games they know will be marketable to a large audience in addition to ..how to say it.... self creating content? Stuff like Minecraft or Ark (any sandbox game really) can be played straight up with each creator/stream going in and just reacting to what the game provides without necessarily “writing” out a script. Since each play through is different, that can be exciting. Plus the fails/successes are fun to watch.

As for comparing to other MMOs, FFXIV lacks a lot of variation from play throughs. Watching a play through is quite long compared to more bit sized MMOs (GuildWars for example has fairly self contained chapters that don’t necessarily have to be played in order).

In addition, FF’s actual played content doesn’t usually tell the story (With obvious major exceptions). Most of the time, dungeons are just something that is going in between story cutscenes... not a very engaging thing to watch. Play? Awesome! But watch...

Add on top of that, there never really is any risk in this game of losing to content outside of bleeding edge trial content and obviously pvp. There might be a wipe, but I can’t remember the last time I was unable to clear something in this game. So... for a streamer to clear a dungeon or take down a NM..it’s just not really expected they would lose/fail at their goal.

It's definitely the sort of thing where people want to see something they didn't think was possible or that they thought was unlikely. I know my highest viewed videos related to FFXIV are the Twintania Samurai solo I did when Stormblood was new, and after that, it's a toss up between the Rathalos Ex SAM solo or the DRK Binding Coil 4 solo at i230.

Seems like Deep Dungeon soloers have decently dedicated audiences. But that's like maybe 3 or 4 dedicated streamers, and their audience isn't huge/once you've seen them do it once, it's a very boring watch even if you're interested.

But I'd also say that it's because it's harder to break into/there's less people interested in streams/vids of FFXIV. There are so many streamers/vid makers. There's MrHappy, Xenosys Vex, Mizzteq, Zepla, Larryzaur, Meowni, Esthys Asher, and many more. The people who do want to watch FFXIV content/streamers/vids pretty much already have their time taken up by those people as it stands. Not too mention, I guess I can't call it brand loyalty, but like team or streamer loyalty I guess?

And as many have said, it always flares when content has just come out. Not everyone gets to play the new patches right away, but they can't resist taking a peek at what they're excited to get to, when they get the chance. But most people invested in XIV already play it themselves, and there's no substitute for playing it yourself, unless you know you won't be doing the content/feat.

Someone else in the thread said FFXIV is niche, and I wouldn't say that they're wrong. A large portion of the playerbase does not overlap with other gamer communities very much, and even when they do, you can see that people within those other communities look down on FFXIV. For instance, I've run dungeons with the uhh, Dark Souls Youtuber YungMaestro. He's got a character/FC on Leviathan. Tweets about FFXIV being good, but his audience is generally disinterested and even responds to said tweets with stuff like, "It's really not that good. It's just an MMO." I mean it's mixed, some of his audience do play, but he himself has never made a vid on FFXIV. I think that speaks for itself.

The main problem is a lot of the things that people love to watch being streamed they hate to actually do in game. Take BDO- the pvp streams are by far the most popular, yet pvp itself is so unpopular that the single pvp server is never 'crowded' status and pvp events like the wars have such low participation that it's basically a few guilds involved with effectively no new comers. Imagine that- a pvp centric game, where pvp is the top twitch thing- but a single pvp server is never high population.

Arena interest in WoW is near dead in game, and I highly suspect that if M+ wasn't the best way to gear up (especially for getting corruption procs) it would flop though quite frankly without gear basically ever part of that game would flop.

SE could probably get more content creation by putting out some content that's nigh impossible, and by putting some esports stuff into the pvp- but that'd be catered to a very small part of the playerbase. It ends up being good advertising sure- but take pvp out of BDO and arena out of WoW and you still have the massive bulk of the playerbase, and nothing SE does to pvp in this game is going to create a large surge in players.

That said- there's some examples of games capturing both- Diablo 3's rifts combine replayability, reward, pacing (necessary for twitch) and plenty of opportunity to showcase skill to make something that players and viewers both want. While I can't say I'm fond of M+ and the culture its created in WoW- that sort of replayable, rewarding gameplay is a gold mine for an mmo and SE is going to need to consider doing some innovative things with their pve soon. Shadowbringers brought a lot of players in, and it helped that BfA pushed a lot of players away- but you can't count on Blizz to completely mess up every xpac, they're flipping coins and sometimes they get it right.

FFXIV also has bad wiki/guide material. It's lackluster or missing many times and those websites are clunky and slow as well

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Another thing to consider - though I don't know how it translates to the other fandoms - is that streaming gameplay isn't the only form of user-generated content. Users are being creative with other elements like glamour and housing, but you don't stream those.

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There actually are people who stream making houses for this game. A lot of the big housing names on twitter round up and stream themselves building commissioned housing layouts or just visiting housing builds.

I love FFXIV - been playing for 7 years - but I don#t think I have ever watched a stream.
Only thing I watch are guides but never someone's gameplay.
I just... don't see the point of watching someone else playing...

I have BIG opinions on XIV content creators that would get me banned because I don't like any of them and have nothing but disdain for them all. But in short, they're stale. No one wants to watch a hug box besides the people already in it, and that's all XIV content creators offer.

The raid scene isn't toxic enough to be funny. You can't just jump into PVP like other games. Duty Commenced only brings in players already playing the game with a turbo heavy auto-moderated chat to the point it may as well be watch only because anything you say will get you banned for 10 minutes or more. Even if it's not something bad, like "OMG!!!" Imagine walking by an open house party where everyone is friend's with the host. And all they talk about are things related to the host. The music, and drinks are all to their taste.

XIV offers little to work with and the personalities putting out content are held up by their pre-established fanboys and little else. I'm not saying people need to do Fortnite level screaming and Minecraft reaction compilations, but there is quite frankly nothing to draw people in.

It's a weird state of being too good to be harped on for being bad, and not mind blowing enough outside the story and music to warrant reception off spectacle. You could stream Black Desert character customization for an hour every day. It's not a bad create a character, but it's notgreat.So until XIV gets something people can hop into and shake things up, it's going to just be 5th place.

while i agree there isnt a lot of streaming going on (tho that could be because the patch drought was a lot longer than anticipated) i think i see a lot more ffxiv art, for example. it might just be that this game draws players who prefer other mediums of content creation.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

I'm not keen on seeing mods either. Some of my friends keep posting them in private chats and it's just... sure, it looks great, but it doesn't look like FFXIV.

Eorzea Collection has a strict "no mods" rule which is nice. I like seeing what people do when working within the game restrictions and outfits.

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I just checked out their Instagram, it's pretty cool. I also like being restricted to only what the game gives us, so I don't use reshades either. I feel like they make some screenshots too easily 'good' when they would be plain otherwise without huge DoF or bokeh. Art is all about creativity, y'know? And having so little at your disposal really makes you get creative.

I don't think anyone can give a 100% correct answer honestly.
Maybe it's because watching a group farming mounts in unsync trials is absolutely boring.
Maybe because watching raids in this game is only interesting during world prog or if the host is an actually entertaining person.
Maybe it's because PvP is bad and basically dead.
Maybe it's because people in general care less about battle content in this game than they do in other ones and the non-battle content in XIV (housing, glamouring, MSQ and side quests, even maps) is just not enjoyable to watch.
Realistically what could XIV streamers stream other than current Savage and Ultimates? And arguably, playing such content is 100 times better than watching it on stream + every raid becomes stale after a while.

I also like to watch specific people who play FFXIV, mostly because they have a similar way of looking at the game as i do or that they are running content with viewers. Other then that, the only thing i'd be interested in, is watching Word First Savage and Ultimate progression streams. Once those are done, the streams die down. Therefor, Gula makes some interesting points in his/her post.

I'm not a content creator myself, but i usually stream my own Raid sessions so that friends could watch our progression / clears. But, since it's on Twitch, others would join the stream and watch it as well. I even see the same people return for more then 1 raiding session. So, there is interest in watching these types of streams, even though we're not well know / great group of raiders.

Since we're done with Savage for this tier and my group is waiting for the next tier (Patch 5.4), i was thinking about streaming on the same days. Since i'm currently in the progress of getting an Alt through the MSQ as fast as i can, i'd be skipping through all the cutscenes. I figured that wouldn't be interesting to watch and neither would be running the same dungeon several times in a row (to collect gear).

This made me think (and to be clear, i'm not here to promote myself). What would viewers like to see when it comes to FFXIV? For instance, would people be interested in watching things like Learning parties for content like Extreme Trials or Savage content (even though it would be with random people and nobody would really talk)? Or are viewers more interested in the interaction between the players during said content?

I'm less inclined to watch a FFXIV streamer as an active (sprout) player, in fear of spoilers. I'm sure there are others that feel the same.

Youtube scene seems very healthy to me, Desperius made a video compiling a bunch of yt channels and even there he missed a couple I knew of.

I don't know about Twitch, but maybe XIV has something that makes you want to play the game rather than watch other people play. In any case I wouldn't like to see changes made to the game just to buff twitch numbers, specially not a mythic+ sort of thing.

People are too busy playing to do content creation. I rarely watch 14 streams and when I do it's when someone new is playing.

Probably a lot of factors as to why it's unpopular viewership-wise.
One thing I think contributes is that there is very little prestige in any achievement in this game due to lack of gatekeeping.

I personally find most player made livestreams to barely count as content. There are a good number of informative YouTubers though.

Bozja Southern Front actually has the potential to be enjoyable streamed content.

It will have:

• The surprise reward factor of common and rare lockboxes.
• Lost action drops.
• Critical Engagements that may or may not succeed.
• Possibility of streamers getting the coveted 1v1 match which they make or may not win.

Maybe FF XIV players are smarter and they understand that streaming is just a crappy version of a let's play so there is no reason to watch any.

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Originally Posted by Refth

I'm less inclined to watch a FFXIV streamer as an active (sprout) player, in fear of spoilers. I'm sure there are others that feel the same.

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This I personally believe is a huge if not the largest reason people dont like to watch others play this game. There is far too much potential to have their first time story and dungeon/trial/raid encounter experience ruined especially as many bosses names can be extremely relevant to sections of the plot.

It's just not an interesting game to watch.

There isn't much long-term content; Content is super accessible and replaying much of it outside of weeklies isn't really rewarding or interesting to watch. There's also a lack of interesting, hard to obtain goals aside from maybe the PoTD solo titles.

More popular mmo style games boast scaling difficulty, Randomizer systems or functional PvP. These kinds of features simply offer more interesting content opportunities for creators.

Getting weirdly defensive about it and trying to put other people down for watching other games is just kind of petty and sad.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

You neglected to include the content creators on the Japanese video game streaming services. This isn't a NA/EU based game, after all. With so much of the player base in Japan, a lot of the content creators are going to be using streaming services NA/EU viewers don't watch.

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This could actually be it. But I’m not familiar with the Twitch equivalent in East Asia.

The first thing I thought when I saw this thread was, “we aren’t an NA/EU game.”

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

You neglected to include the content creators on the Japanese video game streaming services. This isn't a NA/EU based game, after all. With so much of the player base in Japan, a lot of the content creators are going to be using streaming services NA/EU viewers don't watch.

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The majority of this games player-base from its primary distribution are western.

Here's the most recent lucky bancho statistic:

https://livedoor.blogimg.jp/luckyban...3/133a5ed2.png

554787 Active characters in NA/EU vs 307245 in JP.
NA alone has more players than JP.

There's not a lot of ways to iterate on the game from a content creation side as far as the gameplay goes.

I'll tell you what does make for some amazing content creation however:

Those creative types that do things with the game's music. Covers of songs, remixes of the songs, and those that do the songs with the in-game perform function. Those are what allow some genuinely amazing and creative work and there are countless videos related to that particular part of the game's content.

Unpopular opinion but I don't want to play e-sport esque game with an Asmongold personality attached to it. I'm really tired of having Mythic+ shoved down my throat.

Personally I think the definition of content creation isn't something that is solely locked to streaming and youtube. We have plenty of artists doing character commissions and constant memes being made.

But lets be real, you don't like the theme park. You want a WoW clone that brings in the drama because people watch drama.

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Originally Posted by Cyreil

Unpopular opinion but I don't want to play e-sport esque game with an Asmongold personality attached to it..

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But don't you want some... person sitting in his dirty room, AFKing in (endgame hub de jour) watching reaction videos for 18 hours a day before being carried thorugh content because he is "famous".

Seriously, I never saw the appeal xD

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Originally Posted by LittleImp

The majority of this games player-base from its primary distribution are western.

Here's the most recent lucky bancho statistic:

https://livedoor.blogimg.jp/luckyban...3/133a5ed2.png

554787 Active characters in NA/EU vs 307245 in JP.
NA alone has more players than JP.

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Might be a dumb question but are active characters the same as players?

Probably showing my age, but I just don't get watching other people streaming games they are playing. I would rather be playing the game.

But as to why this one doesn't have as much streaming, it's probably a combination of things other people have said - almost all of the content is accessible to everyone, it's heavy story based, it's not pvp based and it's not an esport type of game.

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Originally Posted by CapricaLangley

Wait, I have nothing to say about the way the dev team delivers content, and I like everything we have in the game. My question is "what are we lacking to put the game where it deserves to be in the eyes of the whole videogame community"? If it makes sense.

As we speak FFXIV has 2.800 concurrent viewers on Twitch.tv, which is very very low for the platform. It's under WoW, Black Desert, The Elder Scrolls Online, Old School Runescapce, all other MMORPG that i consider pretty much worse than FFXIV.

Same thing happens on YouTube. Maybe I didn't express myself very clearly: it's not that is performing bad, it's performing much worse than other MMOs

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People are too busy playing it to watch it on YouTube/Twitch?

I mean, if you're going by streaming activity, that seems like that's not really an accurate measure of the games's popularity. Especially when there's a warning about Twitch right on the log screen. Most of the time, streaming is done when new content is out--then peters off. WoW and Black Desert have a more robust PvP system which might account for the additional activity but FF14 doesn't really have anything worth streaming when content has already been out for a while.

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Originally Posted by Lium

Might be a dumb question but are active characters the same as players?

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No. Active characters can alts you play that happen to meet the requirements for these census. FFXIVCensus has typically been inaccurate in the past. I recommend Lucky Bancho

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EQhoP80X...png&name=large

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...y_2020_active/

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Originally Posted by Razard

But don't you want some... person sitting in his dirty room, AFKing in (endgame hub de jour) watching reaction videos for 18 hours a day before being carried thorugh content because he is "famous".

Seriously, I never saw the appeal xD

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Reaction content isn't even the majority of his streams. He does plenty of other stuff nowadays, like contests, mount farming, helping random viewers. Then there's stuff like Allcraft, where he interviews notable content creators along with another streamer, or unplanned stuff like his interview with Steven Sharif (Ashes of Creation dev). His streams are just another type of entertainment. Like any type of entertainment, not everyone will find it enjoyable.

While I don't think content creators/streamers are an indication on a game's success, since some games aren't as fun to watch as others, I do think an active content creator scene has the ability to pull more interest towards a specific game.

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Originally Posted by Nezerius

snip

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... You know I was being hyperbolic for comedic effect, right?

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Originally Posted by Razard

... You know I was being hyperbolic for comedic effect, right?

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I didn't, since there's plenty of people who would unironically believe that's all he/other streamers do.

Well to be fair.
The game doesn't have much going on right now so not much to stream.
Usually when a new ultimate hits, the viewership shoots up like crazy.
Streamer like xeno and mr.happy get like...I don't remember actually but they get lots of people watching them. Mostly Mr.happy as he's the most popular as he does more stuff than just FF14 but FFXIV still being his main.

ForteNightshade, that's good to know. Thanks for the solid info.
Do you know when they're coming out with another census?
It'll be really interesting to compare pre, mid, and post pandemic numbers.

Honestly, for an online game. The best way to get viewers is to have a certain aspects that makes people want to watch.

1. The potential to completely ruin someone else's day
2. The ability to be disappointed and your day ruined.

Griefing is against the ToS, trolling is counted towards harassment and against the ToS, you can't long term screw someone over in PVP, there is no open world PVP, you cannot lose your data over a minor setback, and... the camera/viewership is for the player and not the observer. It's a very specific thing to XIV, but XIV is not fun to watch. As a player I want to set the camera to what I'd like it to be, and it's not a set position with weight.

So for the sake of things people actually look for when they seek videos of online games, XIV does not have it. Heck, people will even watch two people get into a screaming match without gameplay but if you so much as raise your voice to someone through text a player will flinch down like you smacked them with a lead glove. So, I'm fine with XIV not having a ton of player content and things to view on the side. But I do share the sentiment of liking there to be something worthwhile that isn't happy happy joy joy dance videos or random discord calls while footage is on screen.

Yes but you can't really do that in FFXIV. Just jump in (unless you mean jump potions and... well those might actually be some amusing streams). I mean... who's streaming low level content right now? Most streamers are either streaming high-end content (or tutorials) or they're doing sneak peaks or item promos (or in my case, bloopers). You can't compare a game like FFXIV to PvP/PubG stuff. FFXIV is pretty much just Que, Rinse, Repeat where the end is always the same (either you finish the duty or you don't). Games like Apex and even GTA5 have a million different ways to do the same thing. A match will be different, be more exciting because it has so many factors. I'm not saying that we couldn't benefit from more a more active streaming community I just don't really think there's as much of an audience for it simply because of how the game is. I mean... someone make Eorzean Food Network. Crafting tutorials are notoriously old and bad. I'd watch that.