I love Final Fantasy XIV. For a good few years, it devoured a significant part of my gaming time. In fact, the reason I stopped playing was primarily because it was taking up too much of my gaming time, and I wanted to be able to devote some time to other titles.
You could say that one of the chief motivators behind this Gaming on a Schedule experiment is the fact that for quite some time now, I’ve wanted to go back to playing Final Fantasy XIV, but in a way where it doesn’t dominate my entire gaming time, and where I can still enjoy other titles.
Other folks don’t seem to struggle with this too much, but I’ve had some difficulty.
So I wonder if setting aside one night a week to devote to it might be an optimal approach. That way Final Fantasy XIV becomes a “weekly activity” I engage in, like other folks might go out and play football, or board games, or whatever. My only hesitation is, as with everything else in this experiment, whether spreading myself across multiple things over the course of the week will make progress in all of them painfully slow, or if that is an acceptable way to approach things.
When it came to time to boot up Final Fantasy XIV last night, I was in two minds as to what I wanted to do. Did I want to jump back in with Amarysse, my character I’ve had since beta? She’s just on the cusp of Endwalker, and my progression stalled because I was fed up waiting for raids.
Or did I want to start over completely? For a while, I’d been meaning to start a new character on a different data centre in order to reconnect with some past friends in the game, and to be able to share the experience with a friend who is currently playing.
I eventually opted for the latter, figuring that it had been a while since I’d played at all and would likely be rusty. Plus this would be an opportunity to try something completely new, revisit the early stages of the game and just generally have a fresh start. Amarysse is still there if I want to pick up playing as her again, but for now I think there’s some value to starting over.
Part of my thinking behind this is that Amarysse used to be on the server I created new character Laramee on, but I transferred off when my wife and Free Company moved to a European server. Honestly, I kind of regret that a little bit, because after doing so, my feeling of socialisation in the game dropped off considerably. I hasten to add it’s not because of the folks in my Free Company, who are lovely people and, at this point, mostly real-life friends.
But the Giant Bomb Free Company that I was once part of back on the Ultros server was large, meaning that there was someone to talk to at pretty much any hour of the day. With my new Free Company (who were longstanding pals of the Giant Bomb FC) being considerably smaller, that often wasn’t the case, meaning that what was once a fun social experience went to feeling a bit lonely at times.
At the same time, I don’t want to transfer Amarysse back to Ultros, because I don’t want to ditch the Free Company or my wife; I like having the option to do stuff with them, even if Amarysse is a bit “behind” on where she should be. She can still catch up, after all, and depending on Laramee’s progress I may well find myself playing her again. But for now, fresh start.
I thought it would feel a bit weird switching to a brand new character, but I’ve settled into the role of Laramee nicely. For a complete break from Amarysse, I started in Gridania instead of Ul’Dah, and kicked off as an Archer, a job that I previously levelled to 60 on Amarysse, but never really spent a lot of time with otherwise. It’s a job that’s had considerable changes over the years, so I thought it would be interesting to play with.
In terms of progress, an evening’s devoted play session got me from brand spanking new up to level 17 in terms of experience progression, and a relatively short distance into the main scenario. I didn’t quite reach the point where you’re sent off to the other nations as an envoy, which is a significant early-game milestone that marks the point where the “big plot” gets rolling properly, but I think I was reasonably close.
I know in MMOs people focus a lot on the endgame, but I’ve always rather enjoyed the beginning of a new character. In Final Fantasy XIV, you have a lot of things you can do to progress in the early game, so it’s rare you have to sit around waiting for an instance queue to pop or anything. Between quests, FATEs and your hunting log, there are a decent amount of things to do in the open world, which is nice; in the late game, after finishing a particular expansion’s storyline, the “world” can feel a bit irrelevant in favour of the instances, so it’s nice to have incentive to go out and about and explore.
I still feel an odd sense of “guilt” at leaving Amarysse behind, but I have to keep telling myself that I’m not leaving her behind, she’s just having a rest. Plus if Laramee provides me the opportunity to reconnect with folks I haven’t spoke to for a while — but with whom I used to have a great time — then I call that a win. I haven’t actually focused on that side of things yet because I wanted to get Laramee into a position where she’d achieved something at least before bugging people, but that will likely come next time I play.
For now, it was nice to be back in Eorzea. Now I just need to figure out if this is a model I can sustain in the long term or not. The remainder of the week awaits!
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