ESO_CenturionPlayer wrote: »

The only streamers I enjoyed have vacated for greener pastures and no new quality streamers took their place.

You kind of answered your own question here. Most streamers will jump around to whatever is the current hot/new thing in order to stay relevant and keep viewer numbers. Streaming is almost like a game unto itself. It's not necessarily a bad thing, just how it's played. That and pretty much what everyone else here has said.

Doesn't help much though that the twitch crate drops are lack luster.
When many games do a 3-4 day weekend Twitch event, it's a different reward each day.

Or they do
15 min. gets X reward,
30 min. gets Y reward,
1 hour gets Z reward.

ESO tends to do a 3-4 day weekend event with a SINGLE reward for the WHOLE weekend for a 1 hour watch.

From a watch time VS. reward perspective, as a viewer, it's almost not worth it. Especially for the 4-6 gems that the junk in the crates breaks down to. Now if it were something like a "crate an hour" for the duration of the event, then maybe. Or if the crate were from the current season, instead of a generic Twitch Crate. Different story.

Lastly, lack of viewership on Twitch is not an accurate measure of popularity of a game. Especially for a game that is in it's 10th year.

NettleCarrier wrote: »

ESO is a story driven game, it's meant to be experienced not watched...

True. I never understood why some watch streams of people playing a game unless they cannot play for some reason. As someone else noted, ESO streams are boring and I can say it is the same with streamers from other games.

I choose to not live my gaming life vicariously through the gaming other players do.

I don't really watch gameplay streams in general, only exception is if it's a game I've already completed and I just want to see the streamer's reaction
As for ESO, all I've really seen streamers play are either PvP or Trials, none of which I have any interest in.

No offense to any streamer, most I watch do a good job. But I don’t think it is a matter of eso popularity, age of the player base, or pvp. It is just simply personality and entertainment value of the streamer. Informative videos aside like builds is not my meaning. I have subbed to streamers and give “tips”. Half the time on games I would not play. The only reason to watch is the streamer. Take sawmanuk, and kevduit. No matter if you agreed with them or not , they were funny so the entertainment value was high. Made me watch just to see what wild things they said. ESO , just needs less dry toast and more wet noodles..lol

Amottica wrote: »

True. I never understood why some watch streams of people playing a game unless they cannot play for some reason. As someone else noted, ESO streams are boring and I can say it is the same with streamers from other games.

I choose to not live my gaming life vicariously through the gaming other players do.

Exactly, I do watch people play video games, but those are usually games beyond my computer’s spec. Or some games that appear to have a good story, but look boring as games.

Redguards_Revenge wrote: »

Would you watch football if the other team had a ball that could fly and be controlled after thrown? If a guy could jump on a motorcycle during kick off and drive down the field? Deflating a football so that the catch grip on it is better than the other teams ball?

That sounds better.

SugaComa wrote: »

I think it's because the eso community would rather play themselves than watch others run round endless maps doing very little , while other games are just more viewable as a watcher due to the narrative of the quests being so linear

Not so sure about that, WoW is if anything less narratively engaging and mostly revolves around grinding mobs to travel from 1 mute NPC to another, yet FAR more people watch casual WoW.

Now if you compare it is a narrative singleplayer game like Alan Wake, then sure that might apply.

But even Diablo 4, which arguably has no narrative and literally only revolves around mindlessly grinding still has more viewers than ESO.

would rather play themselves than watch others

I don't agree with this sentiment, they are entirely different activities and in no way mutually exclusive.
But I see people in the ESO community say this often enough that I think it may very well be one of the reasons why the ESO community doesn't watch ESO streams as much.

Why is ESO Unpopular?

Bobargus wrote: »

The game wants its players to use and even rely on gear set pieces, in order for them to be able to do the veteran/endgame contents.

the game with gear sets requires use of gear sets to approach endgame, how very non-casual of it!

Darcwolf wrote: »

Trinotops wrote: »

NettleCarrier wrote: »

ESO is a story driven game, it's meant to be experienced not watched...

Yes, but it's also an MMO. FF14 is also a story-driven game and yet it consistently gets 3x or more average viewers than ESO on twitch. Aside from the obvious answer of there simply being fewer people playing ESO, it's probably a demographic thing. ESO having an older playerbase, FF14 being more popular in Asia, etc.

Story driven if you like to read endless dialogue. Just came back to ESO after 1 year off playing FFXIV. I don't understand why people like it for story. If I want to read a book I will, I don't want to read the story in a game, give me voice acting. I legit HATED the story in FFXIV.

I love the story in FF14, and the bigger the community the more people will stream and watch. FF14 is known for it´s story and 14 player´s like to watch new player´s progress through the MSQ, and sort of relive everything again.

Eso and FF14 have two different communities, because of how the two games are setup. That doesn´t mean you can´t play both.

Some mention that player´s are older in Eso. I have met people in their 60´s and 70´s in 14. The average player age in 14 is between 35 and 40 - I will say the same apply to Eso.

FF14 is simply a bigger Mmo.

I only watch Amouranth on twitch

Because this game is kept as a zombie because of necromancy called 'the Elder Scrolls'.

Lack of support for competitive gameplay is generally the biggest blocker. At this point it's kind of too late already.

Back in 2014-2018 we were crying out for competition realms, support for custom campaigns and battlegrounds etc. If you look at many of the streamers from those times they have gone on to be huge on other games so it wasn't the quality of the streamer more so the lack of features and excitement generated by the game.

On Launch there were hundreds of huge community groups trying to see if this could turn into some competitive environment but the gradual lack of support, fixes and features has driven 98% of them away.

Then there was the influx of the 'ESO Fam' stuff which whilst great for fostering a different type of community also ended up pushing more away too because it was supported to the exclusion of all others not involved (giveaways/stream team etc were all not really open to 'non participators'). It brought a lot of toxic positivity with it where helpful criticism was frowned upon.


Trials also are not really an enjoyable competitive format for PVE. They are spam content which is more boring than the super hard nightmare mode type content that you see from the Race to World first stuff in WoW or FFXIV etc which is more 'one and done' progression pushing. (in combination with the PTS cycle this also doesn't help) Most of the content has already been farmed so much on PTS that by release it's cleared within the first couple of hours.

The only time there was actual interest in World first was when Sanctum Ophidia trial came out and it took guilds a really long time to get past Mantikora. Also a smaller amount around MoL HM.

Too many commercials in streams and videos these days.