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

[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.

[Xeronia]

I am going to go with most content in this game is story driven and people don't want to spoil themselves on it. I would guess that is why the viewership numbers skyrocket during an ultimate as most people do not intend to actually fight it so they do not mind spoiling themselves to it via streams.

[AbelArchaniEA]

Lmao this is the most ignorant post. COVID happened and they have be transparent on why the content has lacked. Put the keyboard down ..

[Mimilu]

Lmao this is the most ignorant post. COVID happened and they have be transparent on why the content has lacked. Put the keyboard down ..

They are talking about content creators (like streamers), not the contents' creators. :B

[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.

[StriderShinryu]

It's an interesting question. I definitely tend to watch content creators for the creators themselves rather than the exact games being played, so even though some FF14 creators are among my most watched on Twitch/YT I'll never specifically search for just FF14 on Twitch. And even on YT I'll generally stick to certain creators I like unless I have a very specific search that the people I follow haven't covered. In short, even though I do watch FF14 content and I do play a lot of the game, I don't really watch a lot of it.

As for why? I think others have kind of covered it. FF14's content release schedule is very front loaded. Unless you're looking right around patch time or if there's some sort of significant prog going on there isn't much generic, random entertaining content to watch. Even the most known FF14 content creators tend to shift away from FF14 into other game content in the interim periods. Also because a lot of the combat content is very formulaic and repetitive by nature you're not going to get a lot out of watching someone do their daily roulettes or weekly re-clears (unless you really like the creator themself and, in that case, you'd probably watch them regardless of whatever they were playing).

[Ultimatecalibur]

In the last months of smartworking I started lurking around Twitch and YouTube, and I noticed that FFXIV is very low on numbers compared to other MMOs.

Currently Twitch lists FFXIV at 4.7k viewers. WoW is way ahead with 99.8k, Path of Exile at 10.4k, Old School Runescape at 11.4k, Elder Scrolls Online at 7.8k, Black Desert Online 4.6k, and Tibia at 10.8k. Most other MMOs are way below those viewership numbers.

FFXIV is actually one of the top MMOs to watch on Twitch.

And lastly I see a lot of people who stream mount farming, items to add to collections and so on. From that side FFXIV offers a lot of content, so I can't really understand why it's not fun to watch. Maybe we are just lacking a shiny collections tab, since we all know that the real endgame is glamour.

I'd say it is less lack of things to collect and more lack of randomness in collection.

Or maybe we lack world bosses and opportunities to get mounts and items outside of duty and rep.

We do not lack for World Bosses. We have a fair number, but the rewards they give out are reliable and fixed. To get all of the rewards for the various FATE World Bosses you need to complete them with a Gold at most 5 times. Each expansion's S-rank hunts give out the same rewards and after a certain point you have all the hunt currency you need to get everything you want in the patch.

Mind that this thread is meant as a question, I'm not claiming that my points are the truth or anything, I just can't understand why FFXIV is not performing as it should from that particular perspective, since we have a LOT of players.

The major factor is that FFXIV is far less random than most of its competitors. The "Surprise Factor," which is one of the main reasons people watch others play, is lower in FFXIV than most MMOs. No random PvP encounters, no super random rare loot drops, and most Extreme mounts are token based with RNG only reducing the number of completions needed. FFXI is more engaging to play than it is to watch.

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.

Yoshi-P actually said that they wanted to do another one but decided to hold off on it so that they could release it near the beginning of 6.0 so that it could serve better as leveling content. HoH seems to have suffered heavily by only covering 10 job levels. I would not be surprised if the next Deep dungeon covers level 70 to 90.

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.

ARR's Hildibrand questline had 3 fun normal mode trials: Big Bridge, Dragon's Nest and Big Keep.

[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.

[Reap00]

All the "cool" kids on twitch play and watch WoW. They will live and die with that game no matter how terrible it is. THAT is why it has higher numbers. WoW is miserably boring to watch and is incredibly ugly by current standards.

[Brightamethyst]

The popularity of streaming isn't just about the content itself. It's also about the accessibility of the content.

For a game like WoW I can watch other people do things I know I'll never do myself. I'll probably never do a mythic +20, I'll never be a mythic raider, I'll never be a 2400 PvPer, etc, and watching people with that level of skill doing content I never will can be interesting. In XIV on the other hand, most of the game is wide open to everyone. Outside of things like Ultimates and early savage there are few things the average player can't do. There's little incentive to watch other people do things you could just do yourself.