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

[Vahlnir]

In terms of live-streaming, viewership is usually higher at the beginning of raid and savage/ultimate trial cycles, especially during the race for world first, or when the devs add new, bigger content, like PotD or Eureka (this may or may-not include copycat content like HoH or next phases, like Eureka has). Plus, PvP seeming to only be somewhat big in EU.
Right now, content creators who just live-streams don't really have that much to stream (I've seen a few branch out into other games). :/

Yeah. I think the main issue is that, while the content SE puts out is in my opinion decent overall, it doesn't have much longevity. That is where SE has struggled for years. People will either run things once and call it good, or run it till they get what they need and never touch that content again. WoW might not be perfect, but it at least keeps people invested. They know how to keep old content relevant by having plenty of incentive to return to it, even though people can steamroll through 99% of it by themselves.

[GrumbleBeard]

"Content creators" and twitch are cancer. The reason they do so badly for this game is because this game has very little "rare" or "random" things to get, so there isn't much in the way of exciting things for viewers to watch outside of maybe prog raiding and pvp, if anything.

[RocciaSolida]

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.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Final fantasy is a niche game in general, and the mmo even more so.

I've played this game for close to 10 years now, and I have yet to watch a streamer or content creators content other than the press stuff around expansions.


I simply would rather experience the game myself. I only watch people who play games I normally don't.

[Amnmaat]

Final fantasy is a niche game in general, and the mmo even more so.

I've played this game for close to 10 years now, and I have yet to watch a streamer or content creators content other than the press stuff around expansions.


I simply would rather experience the game myself. I only watch people who play games I normally don't.

This is something I read ironically enough in a XIV twitch stream. The reason XIV streams have low view count compared to World of warcraft is that most players can actually clear and enjoy the content. As opposed to games like Wow, BDO, and Blade and soul where you tune in to see these amazing clears in really hard and punishing content; because let's be real, the majority of the people in those games won't really clear those things or are excluded from running them. Why should I watch someone clearing Hades extreme or Ruby extreme when most people in XIV, including myself can clear it? I rather enjoy the game myself than enjoy it through somebody else. It's all about accessibility.

With all that said, XIV streamers suffer from a few problems. One being that a lot of XIV streamers are not dedicated enough to the game, venturing off to streams other games or downright saying they don't know what else to do while playing the game. I've seen a lot of that in some XIV streams. Why would I watch you play a game you're visually bored to play? The other problem is that since the game is very accessible it's hard to cultivate "super stars." Lastly, a lot of XIV streamers don't know how to categorize themselves, they're all just "Monday XIV stream!" there's nothing special about that. It doesn't help that twitch's categorizing/sorting is complete trash, they could learn a lot from other websites and how they use tags and categories a lot better.

[ForteNightshade]

Bluntly stated, FFXIV isn't all that thrilling a game to watch unless you're already invested. Even then, only Savage and Ultimate are going to offer a spectacle of sorts, which is what streaming platforms typically rely on. WoW, for example, simply has way more boss fights per raid tier, and has far more interesting dungeons due to Mystic+. That alone drives more people to watch since battle content tends to bring in a lot more views.

[Kamome-chan]

MMO don't have a lot of views on twitch and right now none of the most popular ff14 streamers are on.
WoW is the most watched mmo by far but mostly because Asmongold and some other well known WoW players

On top of that FF14 isn't the most streaming friendly it's either someone doing MSQ or dungeon farming for the most part.
Personally I'd rather play the game.

[linayar]

Personally I'd rather play the game.

I think this is mostly it.

Content in this game is mostly either something that you can do yourself (and mainly by yourself) or something that you don't care about.

If it's the former, then you'd rather play the game than watch others. If it's the latter, then you don't care to watch others either.

Guides don't matter as much for people who don't care to do the content or who'd rather do it later with overpowered gear, maybe even unsynced. Unlike in WoW, for example, drop rates in FFXIV usually increases rather than decreases.

Also, in a casual game, being a top player doesn't matter as much. Who even knows the world first raiders, especially if they're Japanese and/or don't stream?

Even Savage gears are just dyeable normal raid gears, which again, you can just get easier when unsynced later. Ultimate rewards may hold some prestige unless people can buy carries, but either way, it's not really something people in general should care about. And that's a good thing, in my opinion. Just like people knowing the lore is not really something important either. People are simply drawn to different aspects (sometimes multiple aspects) of the game and that's ok, but shouldn't have any impact on the general playerbase.

[Cetek14]

5.3 is about 3 days of content - MSQ, NieR, ex trial. Week in most optimistic scenario. Back in SB or HW at this point we had 1 more dungeon (with unique gear), deep dungeon, and Hildibrand quests.
Job design is also flawed but its not this topic.
I hope that one day we will see golden days return. But it seems that devs abandoned veterans and only cares about new players - there is plenty of content for them.

[Auryan]

5.3 is about 3 days of content - MSQ, NieR, ex trial. Week in most optimistic scenario. Back in SB or HW at this point we had 1 more dungeon (with unique gear), deep dungeon, and Hildibrand quests.
Job design is also flawed but its not this topic.
I hope that one day we will see golden days return. But it seems that devs abandoned veterans and only cares about new players - there is plenty of content for them.

The extra dungeon, usually a hard mode of an older one, didn't add much in the grand scheme of things. Maybe another non-dyeable set, minion and TT card. Did liven up the expert roulette though.

Same thing with Deep dungeons. They are and have always been a boring snore that people did because it was an efficient way to level. Besides a small number of people doing the higher floors and the solo achievements, it wasn't at all something that garnered a lot of attention. SE's data probably backs that up and is probably why they haven't wanted to add a new one. Doesn't help that Bozja can easily more than make up for the leveling aspect from not adding a new one.

The Hildibrand quests didn't get interesting until way later into an expansion. The first few quests were short cutscenes that were largely set-up. In HW's iteration: all cutscenes with an emotional pay-off. At least SB had a fun trial near the end.

Using your estimates, we "lost" 2 to 4 hours of content (depending how deep you go into PotD/HoH) as a result of focusing on other content.

On the flip side, Eureka and future exploratory/battlefield content has added dozens of hours of things to do. Bozja looks to clock even more than that. We also had the Ishgard Restoration, which if you enjoy crafting/gathering, adds hours of grinding for rewards. We also had more side activities like BLU and Ocean Fishing with more refinement on the way.

I'll take new things over a reliance on old ones any day.