What makes you excited to watch streamers play ARPGs?

Originally posted by decepcao

If I'm being completely honest, nothing. For me, it's one of the least watchable genres of games out there. I love playing it though, just find it extremely boring to watch.

Originally posted by Moistwinds

I just enjoy watching quin die

Originally posted by lifemarket

Currently, nothing. Build theory will be on YouTube later in the form of a VOD I can skip through. High risk crafting is a gambling stream. I don't want to watch someone else gamble; I want to be the one who gambles!

I'd watch an ARPG stream where it's an ARPG + something else. Challenge run or competition or some other hook. Some contrived competition with arbitrary rules that introduce new/unique challenges for top tier players.

Hear me out. I don't watch streams where people play Elden Ring. I'd rather just play Elden Ring. But I watch the hell out of Bingo Brawlers, which is a Twitch event put on by captain_domo where each season he invites a roster of the best speedrunners/challenge runners in the world to play a bingo format of his own design - 5x5 bingo squares, lockout, players race to complete objectives.

Imagine. Asmongold vs Zizaran. Bina the Loot Filter Guy vs the Filterblade dev. High stakes bingo. The squares are, like, "Kill Lagon at minimum 500 corruption". "Sell that relic for gold to that guy in the desert for that one quest" "Farm x amount of favor as CoF then respec to MG for the rest of the game". "Beat a pinnacle boss hitless"

I'd watch the hell out of a contrived competition that forces top players or beloved community members to compete their butts off in the context of arbitrary challenges that nobody has practiced before, you know? I don't want to watch them play LE, I want to watch them play LE with stakes.

Love your game btw :) have an excellent evening

Originally posted by Mister_Ost

Since you wrote streamers, rather than content creators, I will assume you're referring to watching live streamed gameplay. Thus we can ignore video/clip content, such as build guides, in-depth boss mechanics showcases etc.

The TL;DR is that I'm not watching livestreamed content.

If you imagine the average gameplay session, assuming you've reached monoliths, becomes mostly just grinding monoliths. Something that, given how "stale" monoliths are right now, becomes very boring to watch. Crafting in LE is pretty quick, and once you know what kind of item you want, it will be relatively little compared to the regular mono gameplay; a similar case with bossing.

If we focus on the last question, What would make watching streamers more enjoyable? I look at the clips that are posted to the subreddit (And the PoE subreddit) and most of them end up being 'high-stakes moments'. What makes a moment high-stakes? Death/Character deletion being on the line always makes any gameplay situation more interesting, as does a competitive nature. In the list given in the OP, "Uber Content", and "Hardcore Death Mode" are the two options that would make me watch something.

A quote that gets thrown around is "Your audience is good at recognizing problems and bad at solving them" So I won't be spending too much time trying to present solutions, but I will mention that the only times I watch ARPG streams is during competitive events, such as Gauntlets in PoE.