Heather’s play style is not the norm, and as she admits, the game takes pains to discourage it. You only ever need 1 job at max level to see the whole story and you certainly don’t need to roll a new character to play a new job class. For role playing purposes, she is intentionally grinding through the story multiple times on different characters. The burnout only sets in due to procrastination in her case; running leveling dungeons casually over the past two years since the last expansion launch should have taken these characters to max many times over.
(I get it. She’s busy and people can play how they like. But she is also choosing to facesmash to max level prior to the expansion on a dozen characters when there is no particular reason this NEEDS to happen before launch, and is most likely going to be faster after launch due to exp buffs. It seems unfair to attribute this burnout to the game, and not the player in this case.)
All told, the game actually handles and heads off burnout very well, Heather’s idiosyncrasies notwithstanding.
Welp, looks like I’m at Arcanist 29 / Archer 15 / Paladin 11 / Thaumaturge 10 going into Shadowbringers. I finally decided to quit goofing around with other classes and get back to MSQ so I got to run the first few dungeons, which were fun if hectic because everyone else was clearly just mainlining them. Long way to go, obviously, but I’m excited to keep pushing forward.
I definitely was not pointing to the game itself as a source of burnout. The only reason I’ve been playing FFXIV as long as I have is because it respects my time and I specifically don’t have to grind to progress meaningfully through content.
I was more interested in hearing about the self-imposed goals people set prior to the expansion and why. I’ve heard such a diversity of answers from friends. I found Heather’s goal unusual because, as you said, the game takes pains to discourage it. In my case, setting a goal like that would definitely burn me out but the anthropologist in me in fascinated by how folks “make meaning” in game environments.
I don’t have a ton of time to play in the evenings so I’ve just been focused on finishing up the last bits of The Legend Returns MSQ. Alas, I didn’t finish in time for Day 1 Shadowbringers but I’ll be able to tie things up on Saturday.
I sympathise with Heather’s method because I’m the dude who’ll roleplay his character to the point where I didn’t switch to Red Mage before levelling Arcanist a bit because it didn’t feel justified that my Bard would just become a Mage without any formal magic training lol
That could probably work out since the story already operates on an episodic format. We’ll have to see how The Witcher series turns out to get an idea of that production company’s strengths.
Also, Square-Enix is running a couple of short anime TV ads for the game. I couldn’t find out who the production company is on these, but they’re both very cute.
I love how over the last day I’ve gone from past the half way mark to behind it again.
I wish I didn’t have to task master so hard to lvl and mainline the MSQ but I would like to participate in new/better content with my friend who has been an absolute trooper watching me die this last week. That being said taking a break from leveling PLD to go play Triple Triad or learn the zen like crafting system has definitely saved me from burnout.
I’m going to hard level for a few more so the MSQ doesn’t lock me out again when the servers opens. But this has been a genuinely interesting time that has coloured how much F2P MMO’s lacked and why I never attached to a single one.
I’m not at the moment specifically excited for Shadowbringers content, as I still have checks notes A Realm Reborn, Heavensward, and Stormblood to finish, but I am excited for all the changes to things and to just generally be back in the world, which I am finding such a genuinely lovely and happy place to be that I just want to spend time in it.
I’m Amelia Kirk on Brynhildr, which I think makes me probably the only person here on Bryn, but hopefully I can hook up via linkshell with the other WP folks and say hi and such.
Looks like we’re in roughly the same boat! I was even wearing similar gear up until recently, ha. Not on Brynhildr, but I am in Crystal, so hopefully we’ll cross paths at some point.
I logged on briefly this morning to check out what they’d done to Arcanist (I’m right on the verge on being a full-fledged Summoner), and so far I’m very impressed. They simplified Aetherflow and added a really neat spell that detonates my two main DoTs once they’re applied. They also seem to have simplified pet management quite a bit for Carbuncles - I now have one button that commands it to use its most significant ability - which will be neat for dungeons. They also got rid of some of the goofy role abilities that I never ended up using anyway. I’m even more excited about the class now, and I’m also looking forward to checking out the others!
I’ve been holding off on progressing all the way to my White Mage job because I wanted to dive in with the 5.0 changes from the beginning, and I’m likewise excited to see how they’ve streamlined things for us Conjurers/WHMs. At least this way, I’ll have a minimum of mental baggage to carry over from the old versions of WHM.
I have an idea for a Viera Lancer that I think would be fun to make in the character creator but the prospect of playing alts in an MMO has always been so daunting to me lol
The dev team weren’t kidding when they mentioned that the majority of head items won’t work on the new races at the current time, a friend was testing it out this morning and almost none of them work on Hrothgar. They’ll update it eventually, but it’s a good thing to keep in mind.
Some of the expansion’s music is already being ripped to YouTube, and I keep being impressed by Masayoshi Soken’s work on this game. He still demonstrates excellent use of motifs, even across the eclectic styles of this and the previous expac. I don’t wanna contribute to the WoW hate train, but that game’s music comparatively feels like background fodder.
