Zepla: Endwalker is the Worst FFXIV Expansion I have played

[Lauront]

I kind of understand what anonemoose is saying. It's pretty well known that obsessive FF fans will get extremely defensive over any kind of criticism of FFXIV, and creating a controversial youtube video about it will typically generate a lot of views and discussion which will push a streamer's popularity to greater heights. Just look at this thread. It was created a week ago and already has 1330 replies and 103,740 views.

I'm sure Zepla knows that, and she has an ulterior motive for creating a video like this which is streamers gotta do what they can to stay relevant and in the spotlight. Farming controversy for views is a business strategy for many streamers. I personally think it's fine for streamers to use such a tactic as long as the content is good, but there will always be people who throw shade at others for doing something for attention/views.

And creating a video with the partial motive of boosting her viewer count doesn't make her criticism of FFXIV wrong. It's a great video and great content. The video has many points that a lot of people and I agree with, it farms views, and it draws reactions from angry defensive FF fans all at the same time.

I think though we need to understand why a lot of people are happy that she's voicing these concerns. It is because these are genuinely held complaints they have which, through her reach, will hopefully now have a higher chance of making it through to the developers. It does not alter the fact that streamers face skewed incentives not to bite the hand that feeds them (although in her case maybe that influence has waned, certainly as a proportion of where her average viewership is originating) and that the nasty reactions from the community can act as a strong deterrent against it. This is allied to the fact that, for better or for worse, streamers have become a primary means of delivering feedback to the devs (which is less than ideal) and thus the frustration when those incentives get in the way of that. Those criticisms remain and are entirely valid. The response from many people is more along the lines of "finally, she's acknowledging these issues..." rather than a belief that she 100% must genuinely believe all this. Is she doing this for the controversy or because she likes the game and wants it to improve or both? Who can say but her. There were posts claiming she must be in a bad mental state etc. which did elicit responses saying she has the right to voice her opinion regardless.

So people can keep repeating this may be a cynical business move from her. Yes, it may be. All it's going to elicit is a "maybe yes, maybe no". It's a non-starter for the purposes of this thread. But that's hardly why people are glad she's making the video and it's really not that material to people here whether she herself "truly" believes it or not so much that they want complaints they feel have validity to have a chance to get through to the devs and they believe this is in the game's best interests. Thus, that poster has said it multiple times now and the response continues to be "so what?" Granted, Zepla's viewership numbers have been linked multiple times. She has a more established, long-standing audience with XIV but it's hardly what's drawing the most views on average to her videos...

The preference for me would be for streamers to be demoted a bit to just be one (rather than a primary) relay of feedback, and for them to lean more on surveys for that, although I think the recent one showed where their current focus lies... fortunately it's got free-form text boxes.