What Do You Want To See In FFXI?

Again, you're confusing money with quality. A streamer can hop around like a monkey while naive people blindly throw money at them. Their personal profits have thus increased by (for example) 10000%. That does not mean what they are doing is useful, productive or making anything better. This too reinforced my comments, so I thank you for that as well.


Did you notice my avatar? That's the symbol for Analogue. A company out of Seattle who offer extremely high quality products to an extremely niche market yet constantly sell out and did so without streamers, huge flashy marketing or shady propaganda. People have made streams about their products but they reeled people in simply with advertisements on gaming sites and Twitter. Can't get much more cost effective than that.


Not dealing in hypotheticals with this. The fact that they're still here and doing very well.


I'm sure it can, nobody will deny that. But I think invest too much into it and also forget that negative forms of advertisement also tip the scales for other aspects (such as quality) in the opposite direction.


It's your product, use whatever form you wish. If all you're looking at is potential ROI and no other aspect or potential negative outcomes, go ahead.


We're talking about their influence. You say it's positive but I'm showing you how it can also very negatively impact an entity.


Someone in business would also know that there are negative side effects and risks associated with every method of investment.

Don't get so caught up on the whole "money" aspect of this. Money can be good but don't lose sight of the negative impacts this has proven to make in not all, but many situations.

Microtransactions draw in easy money but the ultimately piss off customers and decrease popularity, which later means less money.

Streamer overhype... Cyberpunk. Need I say more?

The list goes on.


With all due respect, you can trust whatever you wish but you're trying to sell something as good because somebody else who isn't here told you so. That is, by definition, hearsay. It was not meant as a slam, if that's how you took it.

A hardware company. Completely different product from Game software.

That isn't a useful example.


Yeah, their personal profit increased, game gains exposure. Win win in my book.


You made a claim that WoW population decreased because of streamers, this is unsupported by data. Gamers don't disappear because of advertisement, they simply move to different genre.

Gaming industry has never decrease as a whole. Players only move from MMO genre to different genres. This has nothing to do with streamers, because streamers exist for every genre.

For example "rogue-like" is a genre with way more player these days than pre-stream era. It's also one of the most popular streaming genre. Using the same logic, I can say rogue like genre gained more player because of streamers?

It's also a fact that streaming friendly genre like rogue like, metroidvania, souls like has more sales than not streaming friendly genre like VN. Using the same logic I can say streaming is causing sales increase for those genre too?

That argument don't stand because it's based on your guess, not science driven data.


I personally think influencer marketing is an effective too to sell niche games. I'm not saying it's effective for every kind of products and I'm not saying it's impossible to find a better PR methods in the future. I'm only saying it worked in the past with data to prove it.

If THAT make me a "fan", I'd rather think I'm more of a money fan than streamer fan LOL.


Not from what I've seen, no. People talk ***about microtransactions for years and AAA games continue to sell more and more copies with even worse microtransactions practices. *Tales of Arise I am looking at you*.

That's what we call "moving the goalposts". Whatever your product may be... physical or digital doesn't matter.


Still doesn't dismiss the fact that naive sheeple blindly tossed their money out. A fool and their money are soon parted. Yes, somebody in that case won but really at what cost?


I proved to you that they're not always effective. You don't want to acknowledge it. MMO is a genre. They did not move from MMO to Platformer because of streamers, they jumped ship on that particular game entirely to avoid them.

Before the shift to FFXIV, one of the biggest boons that FFXIV gamers enjoyed was that they weren't flooded with the hive mind in their game, creating all the issues they bring along with them.


You want to believe it's a guess because that's how streamer fans work. If it goes positive, it's because of streamers because streamers said so. If it goes negative, you grasp at straws.


Again, if you're caught up in the money game and only concerned about dollars/cents and absolutely nothing else. But from a business standpoint, that is not the only factor at play.


Wait until the new/shiny wears off and they all go the same way... as data shows. That was also just 1 example. I could go on for hours if you want me to.

Bottom line being (and I think scope creep here has occurred too much) is that streamers are not these magical people who make everything great. They're not deities either, contrary to popular belief. The fact that the era of free thinkers dwindles because of this entity and people continue to try hide it behind sugarcoating. I'm sorry, but you're not going to convince me otherwise. You are more than welcome to believe it if you want. Just like I tell every other streamer fan that they're welcome to believe any other fallacy or conjecture they want.

Why is that? Streamers stream games, so games are the product that is gaining exposure.

If selling chairs is my business I'm not sure if I can contact streamers to stream my chairs and sell it for me.


Oh, I DO acknowledge that influencer marketing can be negative, for example if they attack a product by saying it suck on stream then it can be negative.

But ultimately, it's a tool and it's up to the business to utilize it. I said it's a marketing tool, it doesn't print money for anyone that uses it, that is all it is.




No, MMO as a genre has decreased playerbase in past 15 years. Many PC MMO dev in Asia changed their development focus from MMO to mobile/single player/slot machine/web games because there are WAY less MMO players these days.

I'm not saying the decline is caused by streamers (it's impossible to tell), but saying WoW has decreased audience because of streamers is kinda biased. Every MMO that isn't FFXIV suffered from decline, not just WoW. FFXIV is an outlier, not the norm.


I said it's a guess because you didn't present any data in this entire exchange. I've been posting on FFXIAH.com for a decade.
I follow the same rule all the time: post data then you can convince me. Without data I'm not buying for anything.

I've been following the same rule on this site before streamers exist. It has nothing to do with streamer fan pov.


Sure, if you've ever run a successful multi billion dollar business, I'm pretty sure whenever you said about the "business stand point" will become the holy bible of many people.

Feel free to preach to these people about your personal view on business standpoint, lol.



Look, if there is one person that needs to be convinced, then it's probably the person who feel "sad" about how this industry works. You feel "sad" for capitalism being the way it is. On the same time there is absolutely nothing you can do about it to change how it works. So you feel sad for no gain...what is the point?

I see influencer marketing as a tool to advertise and make money. I use it when I need it or vice versa. I simply take advantage of capitalism and live with the advantage that it provides. It worked in the past, I am happy with the result. I don't need to change my stance on this matter nor convince you because I'm the one that is already benefiting from the system. I am not the one losing emotional positivity over capitalism whether you are convinced or not :p.


Never said that.

I would love to see more posts where people were even more nit picky about breaking down other peoples posts. Maybe first break it down word by word, then build up to breaking it down sentence by sentence, then also paragraph by paragraph.

When gaming went mainstream it changed from an audience of enthusiasts, to a mass of consumers that all just want the equivalent of a popcorn flick. These people don't know what they want, they don't know much about gaming at all, they aren't good at them, have really low attention spans and only really play them till they get bored. This is why micro-transactions are booming now, because they don't care and the moment they get bored they skip the points of mild resistance or just want a quick endorphin fix without getting it from achieving something.

If you check Steam achievements you can see huge numbers of people quit the games they buy in a matter of hours, and most never finish them or even get half way before bailing.

This is why influencers can impact so many people to play a game, cause so many people in this hobby now are just bandwagoners who are only into the hobby cause it's popular. Low information consumers seek guidance from "experts" and "experts" can be paid to sell them stuff.

Gaming today is like body building or fitness on youtube, mass armies of people all try to get into these things becasue they want to look good for summer of whatever. However, they can't be bothered to actually learn what they are doing because they don't really care, they just "I wan look gud" and so they buy any overpriced nonsense workout programs they can find with a good picture on them from fitness influencers. When they fail (cause most of the people they look upto are using drugs) they just buy into the next one. They have no idea wtf they are doing at all.

Elden Ring has been a massive success, I guarantee you most people who bought it had no idea wtf they were buying and hate it cause it's too hard or confusing. If they bring out Elden Ring 2, it won't even sell 25% of what the first one did, cause they will know what they are buying next time.

The problem XIV has, is that they have a lot of very casual players they have managed to attract now cause of influencers and marketing at hyper casuals. Most of them don't really care about gameplay at all, they just like buying outfits and character animations or poses and showing them off. A very popular endgame on XIV is "g-posing", if you don't know what that is: it's basically taking selfies of your character on the game to post them on twitter for likesy. This is why the outfits and paid poses are so popular.

On one hand, they bloat player numbers. On the other hand, the developers now have an army of people who don't care about making good content and just want more outfits and kpop dance poses for twitter likes.

Streamers also stream about hardware as well. Digital Foundry is a good example.


It's not an outlier because it contradicts your statements. It's a perfect example of how looking at dollars and cents is not the only thing you should eyeball.


Tossing around data does not always make a conversation any more productive. The amount of people who look at data but interpret it their own way or only present the data they want you to see rather than everything make these discussions nothing more than a fallacy fest.


And that's fine however in this case, the onus has always been on you. I have nothing to try to prove to you.


Preach to what people? It's not a personal standpoint, that's how business works. Money is the bottom line but when you ignore it as you have and refuse to focus on other important aspects, it will end up crippling your bottom line.


That's interesting conjecture.


Knock yourself out, I've already told you that. Use whatever tools you feel necessary. I don't run your life. That was never the intent of this and I think you know that. I was just explaining why they create a hive mind of sheeple. You're the one who wanted to drag it down the rabbit hole.


I never said you did. You left out the rest of that sentence. It's a popular belief amongst the sheeple that is clearly untrue. Don't try twisting this into some antagonistic fuel.


Correct but some people don't understand how that's negative. Creating a flock of hive mind "bandwagoners" is not a good thing, no matter how you try and twist it or sweeten it up. It makes money! I get that but holy hell... Now the people who are playing the game because they... themselves decided to play it and are enjoying it have to deal with all these hive mind sheeple who are not even putting forth the effort and having to be carried and are only there because they're waiting for some random camera guy's table scraps is not an optimal experience.


This actually made me lol

AND BOOM GOES THE DYNAMITE

I've been saying the same thing for a quite a while now. There are just people out there who see all this and think "this is very good for the gaming community because it brings in money!"

Just wait until Square-Enix figures out how to work the blockchain into this whole mess. They've already said they're trying.

I don't know, there's positives and negatives to everything in life. Focusing too much on one side or the other has never done any good.

The only example in recent memory I can think of in recent memory of a streamer influencing a game in a huge way is when Asmongold (and other WoW streamers as well) tried out FFXIV after refusing to for so many years. Of course, there were the goods and the bads in this case as well.

The goods:
- FFXIV's player count exploded, during a content drought no less
- A lot of people hated the game without even trying it. A lot of those haters ended up getting hooked on the game. Funny how that works.
- The exploded player count basically guarantees the continued development for years to come.
- Lots of new players to play with, with different perspectives and play styles.
- A lot more content creators for the game, which is fun to watch.

The bads:
- Exploded player count led to server problems (more a covid issue than anything).
- Long login queues
- Sales related issues, like having to stop selling digital copies of the game to new players, and temporarily removing the free trial.

The point is, streamers can be huge for a game's player count. There's always good and bads with something like that, but I'd think the goods outweigh the bads.

QFT

@Bosworth, FFXIV booming when it did was coincidence. WoW was already falling apart because of 2 back to back horrible expansions plus Blizzard was under a lot of fire because of that lawsuit and everyone boycotting them. Go read the Twitter replies. So many saying "I'm going to FFXIV now".

But you are not wrong. They bring their hive minds along with them and make sub numbers go up... so more money! However, now all the veteran players are upset because now when they do their daily roulette, they have all these ice mages, healers who can't keep anyone alive, tanks who cannot keep hate or melee who ignore positionals far worse than ever before. They have to deal with Limsa flooded with all the cosplay fans blocking the AH with their dance crews. But hot damn... it made money!

Not me, though. I didn't say anything about the gaming community. I only said influencer marketing is useful for small game dev trying to advertising their games to a niche audience, as plenty of successful titles(like Slay and Spire) made money because of it.

Whether something is good or bad to the entire community can't be measured with data. I don't see a point to discuss it if drawing a data driven conclusion is impossible. But when it comes money and capitalism, no matter how you feel, you can't deny data shows that it is indeed an effective tool if used correctly.

That has nothing to do with influencers lol. It's mostly because there are way too many cheap games in the market and spending dozens of hours to finish one mediocre game doesn't seem to worth the time, when same amount of time can be spent on more titles for wider variety of experience.

I play games then bail after a few hours from time to time. Mostly because after 2-5hr I already experienced the primary game loop for most games. I don't see the point to re-experience the same game loop for the next 30 hr of my time unless the story offers something truly exceptional. Which is rare in games unfortunately.

For this reason I actually prefer paying for game pass over steam now. For a cheap monthly fee I can play a game for a few hours, experience the core loop, bail then play the next game with no additional cost. I find this way being more fun than slog through long and repetitive games only to finish them.

Not all conversations have to be about data and numbers, at least to me.

And yes, I can deny. As reinforced multiple times above, just because it draws in money does not mean it was overall effective. Again, streamer X brought a bunch of people into a game which made a bunch of money but now the overall quality of the community is so bad that those who were playing the game because THEY decided on their own that they wanted to... are quitting.

You're generalizing a little too much here.

My assumption is you didn't play FFXIV during the big WoW exodus, and that's fine. I did, and my experience was nothing like what you mentioned. I never had any issues with doing my roulettes, there is no ice mage, losing hate on tanks is next to impossible if you're in tank stance. Some people forget, but it's one button they have to press, and a simple reminder working 99% of the time. No where was really flooded because A) there's a setting you can change to limit the number of players on your screen at one time, and B) the servers still have a maximum amount of players they can hold at a time. This isn't the first time the servers were maxes out and it won't be the last.

The only downside I can think of was the very long login queues (we're talking several hours just to get in). Once you got in, the experience was very good, and I loved seeing all the new players and got a lot of enjoyment helping out the sprouts in dungeons and otherwise.

I get the point you're trying to make, and I'm sure some people fit into the category you're describing. But I think you're wildly overstating the negative implications of a streamer's influence.

Your mileage may vary. The responses I read on MMO-C, the official forums and subreddit greatly follow the pattern I described.

I appreciate your stance but I do not believe I'm overstating at all.

That applies to MMO community but not single player games. Why does it matter to if mindless gamers are mass buying single player games because of influencers? In single player games no matter how bad some people are they don't affect anyone else.

I was talking about smaller dev this entire time, which means I was NOT talking about MMO. (Smaller dev can't afford MMO)
So why are you using MMO as counter argument, then when I wasn't convinced you made a claim that I only said so because I am a "Streamer fan"? I'm not seeing discussion like this has any value on its own since you completely shut down people's opinions only because of your assumption.

Jesus christ, this whole section is terrifying. I knew that once we stopped being the target audience we lost pretty much all agency within the umbrella that is video games. Not saying that every game company is like this but if it means more money, why would you not want to appeal to a broader audience.

Our time for enjoyment is over lads, either we accept that we're a dying breed or we have a violent revolution and suffer the consequences to ensure we have games we still love in the future >:D

I would just be careful taking the words of the few and casting them onto the entire community. I've played FFXIV for many years, and the community morale, in my opinion, is as high as its ever been.

We can agree to disagree here. That's cool. Its nice to have a nice chat without the normal aggression that is prevalent here.

Imagine reading reviews from... Metacritic, for example that were written by the hive mind who played a game they wouldn't have played if it were not for their deity telling them they have to. Now the game is going to get a bunch of negative reviews it didn't deserve.

Radial was right in that regard.


You were the one who brought up small devs as a security blanket, not me. I was speaking about their effect on the gaming community overall. MMOs are just an example. I could sit here all day.

It is and I do appreciate your time as well as Afania's. It's fine to agree to disagree. I've agreed with Afania on other topics, just not this one. Doesn't mean I think (s)he is a bad person at all. My wife eats green bean casserole but I think it's disgusting. We both sleep sound at night.


One way of looking at it is the overall culture shift. Maybe hive mind is the future. Maybe society is better off with a few people doing the thinking and everyone else just following suit. We already have to accept that we live in a society where you can have a dinger and be called a woman. If you would have said that a decade ago, people would be hysterical but today, that's just how it is. We learn to accept it. Same goes for decades ago when we became a melting pot. It was met with "wtf?..." but now, most of us don't even look at it as anything but the norm.

Give me an example of "hive minds" mass producing negative reviews.
I've seen a few "clueless" negative reviews from time to time, and I've seen Chinese gamers mass producing negative for political reasons.

But I've never seen "hive minds" negative reviews take over positives. If there is one example, I'd like to see it.

Metacritic separates press reviews from reader reviews. So even if what you said is true, it doesn't change press review score.



I didn't "brought up" small game dev as "security blanket". I was the first one who made the point. Go read my first post:


I said nothing about MMO, community, I only discussed it as a marketing tool v.s other tools. Then you brought up every other irrelevant points only because of your personal feels towards streamers

Go read Elden Ring reviews from mass review sites like Metacritic. That's why I said Radial was right.


When you see a game on Metacritic with high critic scores and low user scores, those are very good indicators. May not be 100% but if you keep reading, you'll see that most of them are.


Nobody said you mentioned MMO. I was using them as an example as I've told you 3 times already.

Your stance comes across as "streamers are good because they bring in money and data proves this". I don't care about anything else really, only that even if true, they cause a domino effect of bad things that happen. You may not think so or you may think those bad things are good things and that's ok. You're welcome to your opinion. I have no desire to try and change it but when someone (not you, someone else did) brings up streamers and says "they are good", I will certainly tell them why they're not.

Elden ring ps5 currently has 3722 positive and 987 negatives. Although it does have somewhat highish negative review, The negatives aren't taking over positives.

Most of the negative reviews simply said the game is overratted because the graphic and the gameplay is bad. Many mentioned framerate issues. Most negative reviews didn't said they purchased a game knowing nothing about it.


Press is not the same as streamers.

If critics are overratting a game and users are disagreeing with the critic score, it's problems with the press. Streamers does not affect critic score.

In the case of Elden ring, it's like Cyberpunk 2077 and Last of Us 2 from what Ive seen: it's problems with critic score. It's not really streamer's problem.

Doesn't have to be over it. The game got 10/10 on a lot of very credible sights. You saw that 20% of user reviews were negative which only reinforces what Radial said about it.


You're not understanding. Yes, the critics are not the streamers. The critics are giving it a good score. Streamers drew in a bunch of people as Radial well described:


So now because of "streamer influence" those people went off and said "omg this sucks" and gave it negative reviews not because it's a bad game but because they were trying to fit a round peg into a square hole.

Fixed for the accuracy. If there is something pushing everyone buying elden ring like mad, it's the press and facebook friends. Why is this entirely streamer's fault? Most of my facebook friends who wrote daily Elden ring posts don't even follow any streamer lol.

I think you are very biased towards streamers, to the point that every "problem" that you see are entirely streamer's fault.

Some of the "problems" that you observed aren't even entirely streamer problem. And yet you blame streamers for it.

I think you guys over exaggerated streamer's impact in the industry. Wow population decline? Streamer's fault. Elden ring is overratted? Streamer's fault. FFXIV vet rage quitting over casuals? Streamers fault. People unable to think? Streamer's fault. People bail before completing a game? Streamer's fault.

You guys are missing a LOT of other factors causing all these phenomenons, and jumping into conclusions based on personal feels.

And even if some of the changes are really caused by streamers, you guys are reading it in more of a negative way. Those are just your subjective pov.

I'm sorry you feel that way.

I'm stating what I do from an unbiased position as I do not watch them. I only look at the facts. Have I ever watched one? Yes, I have seen some to where it's not just blind perspective however you don't have to bite the apple to know it's sweet.

A streamer fan saying streamers are good would be biased.

But honestly, who cares about that on a message forum?


It goes both ways, friend. I think you overestimate them but to be fair to you, most streamer fans do the same thing, so it's not exclusive to you... but we've already covered this and I hate circular conversations. But as I said, I'm not here to sway your opinion as it's clear where you stand.

Then we must have different definition on what "unbiased" means. Because to me, unbiased means objective. And objective opiniom often comes from data and research. Without actually knowing anything how do you even know your opinion is unbiased?


Not watching stream doesn't put you in an unbiased position. Because when you made it sound like streamers can magically mass generate sheeps by manipulating people's mind, it seems that you don't really understand how streamer works. If you don't watch something nor understand it, how can you claim that your observation is correct?

Watching people stream doesn't suddenly make me a "fan" either. Sometimes I watch stream for business reasons. Sometimes because I want to watch the content for certain games without having to play/pay for it. Sometimes it's for re-experiencing certain in game moments. Sometimes I watch my LSmate stream to analyze different FFXI strategy from a 3rd person pov.

I never watch stream because I see someone as god. But because I have specific purposes. Ive never follow anyone nor donate money.

I highly doubt I'm a "streamer fan" in my case but it seems that you are dead set that if someone has different opinion from you then they are biased.



If you have never bite the apple, then you must learn it's sweet by words of mouth. Wouldn't that make you a sheep without your own opinion?

Here is a little secret: apples aren't always sweet and there are different degrees of sweet. But you wouldnt know if you have never eat one.

Anyways, I wouldnt want to discuss the taste of an apple with someone who has never eat an apple, nor discussing influencer marketing with someone who obviously don't do PR nor watch streams. Because whatever opinion that I got are likely just....opinions, not information. And not even an unbiased opinion in this case.