Last time, I wrote about my impressions of the general plot of the first major chunk of Final Fantasy XIV and my thoughts about buying the game. Now that I’ve own the game for a full week, gotten in a solid weekend of play, and had a few more days besides, I’ve gotten a much better impression of the gameplay loop that I’ll be experiencing for a significant portion of the future. At this point, now that I’ve joined up with the Free Company my friends are in, gotten a few more jobs up to the post-level-50 zone, and started to dig into the more modern day-to-day stuff, I feel like I’m on firm enough ground to say that I’ll probably be playing this game for years to come. I’m sure I’ll take months off, cancel my subscription from time to time, and eventually play other stuff when I get tired of FFXIV or run out of interesting things to do (or just get tired of sitting in my office all the time), but I can see myself playing this game for quite a while yet. The whole “daily events, do some gathering, meet up with friends, and idly pursue quests or rare drops” loop is really working for me here, likely because so much of it is social or something I can (and probably should!) be doing with other players. I’m still new to the FC, but everyone has been so warm and welcoming that I’m sure I’ll get over my initial shyness really soon and start reaching out to them for help or to do some of my daily/weekly events. I’m just really feeling new right now and that’s a difficult place for me to ask for help from, especially when I know I could probably figure it out by myself.

Which, you know, says a lot of good things about the game. It’s really not too difficult to figure out whatever it is you’re supposed to be doing, once you’ve gotten the basics of your class and role down, anyway. Even dungeons generally do a pretty decent job of teaching you what to do and how to play the game in the future, if you pay enough attention, which just really reinforces how hesitant I feel to ask for help from people I don’t already know. This is one hundred percent a me-problem, given how readily everyone in this free company offers their help or goes out of their way to make me feel welcome, but it’s a difficult one for me to overcome. I’m not quite terminally shy, but I really don’t like putting people out or taking up space, so I struggle to admit when I need assistance or to even ask for help when I have other methods for getting help that I haven’t tried yet. If asking for help was the only way I’d be able to do anything, it’d be a lot easier. Right now, because google still gives passable search results for this game and the game itself has tons of explanations for whatever I might be looking into, I struggle to ask for help. Which is my loss, really. I could be bonding with all these lovely people and I’m instead being quiet and occasionally responding in the group chat if my name shows up.

Aside from that, though, I’ve gotten really into gathering resources and crafting. I spent an entire weekend getting the main two gathering skills I’ve got up to level fifty and the third one, fishing (which I normally enjoy but really don’t in FFXIV since it just doesn’t feel satisfying to do), up to level twenty before it got too late and I got too bored. Now, when I’ve got a bunch of time and not much else going on (or when I need a break from the Main Scenario Quests), I’ll take all that stuff I collected while leveling up my gathering skills and try to make things out of it with my various crafting jobs. We’ll see how it goes, since there’s so much crap and my two retainers (NPCs you can “hire” in the game to hold onto stuff for you, to sell things in the market, and to go on little adventures to collect resources for you (if they’re strong enough)) have already run out of space in their pockets. Inventory management is going to be the death of me since I’m unwilling to throw anything out right now. I don’t want to need to get that same stuff all over again, you know? That would suck.

Now all I need to do is manage to keep making forward progress on the MSQ (Main Scenario Quests), balance that out with doing fun things like photoshoots with my friends and the occasional bit of other types of play. I really should be doing my dailies, but I’m trying to avoid getting any of my classes to a high level before the MSQ is ready for me to be thereabouts. I really don’t want to run into another situation like the one I’ve been in for a while where I can’t advance a character’s abilities because I don’t have the appropriate story missions required to keep doing my job quests. That’s a terrible place to be and I’ve been there for a solid month now… I’m slowly fixing it, but I miss playing my White Mage and being able to focus on just healing in dungeons. My friends, and the rest of my Free Company, would probably say that it is good to learn the other roles and how to play through a dungeon as any type of character, but I really miss healing. I feel like I’m falling out of practice with it… Some day, I’ll get things balanced out again and will be able to just play White Mage because I enjoy it rather than needing to balance XP gains and the hoops I have to run through to get new abilities. Some day.