TinyGamerAlec: What Josh misses here is that FFXIV fans get a truly unholy amount of enjoyment watching streamers watch the cutscenes.

Niemandzockt: Personally, I'd quit a stream if the streamer doesn't pay attention to the story, because that's kind of what I'm there for.

chrisanderson7820: I feel Josh has flip-flopped between being a critic versus an entertainer and as a compromise has settled on being someone terminally determined to enjoy nothing.

crow_buddy: Apollo Borks:

1:13: Bork

4:45: Bork

4:47: Bork

: Bork

: Bork

: Bork

: Bork

Anzei_Kazumi: I'd like to thank Josh and his big live stream experiment for showing me another side of him and streaming. I've only seen him in a controlled environment in YouTube videos, so seeing these stream clips of him slowly turning, or maybe just showing, his bitter side is interesting. It just shows that he's not just that funny British man who plays MMOs. He's also a really charismatic man with some bad takes. I've got some newfound respect for streamers, you really need to be a total nutjob to do this full time.

I have no horse in this race though; I've broken free of the MMO chains long ago. But it's good to look back to the genre from time to time, like if you're 10 years clean and you look at the addict next to the convenience store sometimes.

DanTopTier: When I pitch FF14 to my friends, I pitch it as a 300 hour long visual novel that also happens to be an MMO. They don't pick up the game after I describe it that way.

When you talk about what is better for the audience, I think yours is a special case. You know your audience better than any of us. While FF14 fans want to see you react to the story, your audience is there for your gameplay commentary. Unfortunately, the parts of FF14 that are distinctly "not gameplay" are arguably the most important part of the game, with all of the good and bad that comes with that.

amberthescribe: FFXIV is a story-first MMO. A ton of people watch FFXIV streams specifically to watch others react to the story. I think that is worth considering if entertaining the audience is the main concern.

warhammerguy: It worked extremely well for Preach, Asmongold, Grinding gears, and several other streamers who's existing audience was completely unfamiliar with FFXIV's story to make the cutscenes entertaining.

In other words, sounds like a streamer skill issue.

lambdafish291: Josh has a lot of good takes, but I fundamentally disagree with this one. The audience is there to experience the game as much as the streamer is. Reacting to a Cutscene is entertaining, talking about what is going on is entertaining. This take is entirely denying that reaction content doesn't exist and isn't popular, and that the most popular FFXIV streams are those where people are experiencing the story for the first time.

If the Cutscenes are boring to your audience, you might be playing the wrong game for your audience.

AcronicDynasty: Matey, time to take a break from all of this, realign your perspective. Current trajectory of debating strangers on the internet on almost nothing important, full time, can't be sustainable. Take a break, before you brake.

vaercova: This really just boils down to Josh being one guyed by all the terminally online and being unable to cope with that. Maybe it’s just the community he’s cultivated. Growth comes with growing pains, and it’s clear he hasn’t figured out how to deal with that. FFXIV cutscenes and rpg choices aren’t the issue, hundreds of people have figured out how to stream through those and enjoy them while also entertaining their audience. I hope he can figure it out for his own sanity.

miwi2143: I had no faith in the story at first, but never skipped a cutscene or dialogue. What kept me going was seeing how different plots were building in the background, and things just got bigger and bigger as I went. Then I reached Shadowbringers, and even the lowest points of past story bits just improved, because I really had no idea back then what it would mean later on. The experience was so good I binged ShB in a few days, and am proud to say it beat many rpgs out the water for me, even the likes of Dragon Age. And I mean it when i say I was often extremely frustrated in the past about the story.

Exaltable: So don't stop talking? Literally just read the text aloud, act it out, make commentary? Dozens of streamers already proved that it was able to retain a massive audience and attract their viewers to the game? Of all the Josh takes this video reads as one of his silliest to me.

sphions: one thing people might not know just seeing this video is that josh has already played through ARR and heavensward. the story is not novel to him. at least not the part he was streaming which was ARR

bananagher7555: skipping FF14 cutscenes is a cardinal sin. People who care more than me will be very vocal about it.

Tomesaus: I enjoy Josh's content a lot, and if this is how he feels, then that's totally valid. However, it doesn't make any sense to stream a game like XIV to begin with if that's his outlook.

The entire reason people tune into a newer player's stream is to see their reaction to the cutscenes and story beats. Those people aren't going to leave just because you read the dialogue and watch the cutscenes, and I don't think any returning viewers would stick around to begin with if they don't want to see XIV gameplay. They would leave or not click to begin with.

If alienating the core viewerbase is such a high concern that you feel the need to ignore the main draw of streaming XIV, it seems like a terrible choice of game to stream.

People are going to backseat any game that's popular, MMO or not, unfortunately.

DeeeFourCeee: The story is key to what FFXIV is. Skipping the cutscenes goes against what people watching you play FFXIV want. You’re denying the audience the experience they desire.

You can act out the cutscenes or react to them live. It’s not a continuous unpausable experience as you can choose to manually advance the dialogue.

By skipping cutscenes because you think they won’t be good content is just more that you don’t think you can make good content out of it. Literally 10s of thousands of people turn up to watch streams do the story and live vicariously through them.

I can understand the you feel that this is better for your stream but you’re not really engaging with the game at that point. Other than high end content, most of the content in the game is combat light. The story is the main experience for the game.

It’s like playing call of duty but you only play bot matches because you think dying will put off some of your audience (it will) but you’re going to be losing other audience because why would I watch someone play bot matches in CoD. Why even play the game at that point? is what they think and then change stream.

If you were just playing FFXIV for yourself then who cares skip away. But if you’re playing FFXIV with the purpose to make content from it, don’t be surprised when people who are interested in watching you play it are annoyed that you’re not engaging in the main content pipeline of the game.

SprDrumio64: Oh Josh is never getting through ARR, that was always a given

4SkippyRoo: This is crazy Josh is reverting back to trope commentary. Most of what is in this video clip is insulting because of the broad sweep of negative stereotyping. He has a right to be wrong, but he isn't entitled to my views. I think I'm done this man

ttgl_bobross: Nah this is just untrue.

The FF14 community lives off of watching people react to story beats for the first time. Skipping all the story bits you've already seen, fine. Not getting much reaction from that.

But I can't imagine skipping story beat. That's madness.

UltimaKeyMaster: >Plays FF14

>Skips story

>Refuses to get Job Stone out of spite for one player just trying to help

>Wildly claims that people watching someone streaming FF14 would leave mid cutscene

I swear I think Josh at this point just wanted to sandbag playing 14 as much as humanly possible. Like how did he turn into Asmongold lite for just this game. That last part is such an insane claim, does he completely forget during the time of the WoW exodus where EVERYONE was watching story reactions? EVERYONE. They WILL stick around during downtime to get to the good stuff. Or they'll support the clips channel when a story clip gets uploaded, Josh could have had an audience market all to himself because the MSQ reactions have largely subsided since everyone already played the story, but he just refuses to because he's too in his own head about what he thinks is good retainment.

Not to mention, if your idea of streaming your gameplay to people is you sitting in silence for 8 minutes of cutscenes, that you should probably not bother streaming it if you wanted to silently enjoy the story like you're already not streaming.

rotntv: You used a lot of words here to try and say that the comment was incorrect while proving he was spot on with assuming why you don't watch the cutscenes.

Viewer: You don't watch the cutscenes because viewers didn't give you permission or because you get nervous being silent as a streamer.

Josh: No, that's not right. It's that I'm a streamer and people come here to watch me, and not watch me being quiet watching a cutscene.

smh. Could have just said "yeah, that's not my thing. You're right."

dogmilk9651: Lmao. Run dude! The community is going to eat you.

alex_ho: bizzare how even Asmongold (for all his faults) treated ffxiv better and actually engaged with the story (a core part of the game) when he streamed it

I was wondering why all the ffxiv shorts of you have no story related content and now I know, a strange fault to have but everyone needs one I suppose, just wasn't expecting this to be one of yours

LEWIS1992: 8:33 "Every choice I make becomes interrogated by EVERY viewer"

Really? EVERY viewer? Come on...

First-Name_Last-Name: If Square Enix puts a DVD logo bouncing around during the cutscene, I will 100% watch it.

bendonatier: FFXIV is a funny game to stream, because for a lot of the people who watch xiv streams, they're there for the same reasons people tune into reaction content. You skipping the story to them is you denying them what they tuned in for. Of course the guy who loves OSRS and classic WoW isn't going to enjoy streaming XIV, because there is a whole different kind of audience, and the game play loops of "Hey let's hang out and do a casual thing" don't really come in until you've done at least a little bit of msq. I'm sure Josh would have a good time with an XIV fishing stream, or eureka, or one of the crafting hubs, but you have to be at least a little invested to get to any of those pieces of content.

Jun 16 2026

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