One of the interesting parts of looking back on a year of playing Final Fantasy 14 is seeing just how disparate everyone’s experience with the game is despite how similar some of our activities and motivations can be. I mean, of course the person who plays every possible scrap of game available in the free version of it before they buy the game proper is going to have a different experience from the person who, a month in, gets frustrated with the cap on their wallet, inability to buy things from other players, and inability to do much social engagement at all such that they use the excuse of being fully bought-in on the story to buy the base game and every expansion as well. A difference of that magnitude describes not just a method of play or preference for a style of play, but an entirely different approach to what play even is or how one engages in play at all. Neither one is better than the other, of course, but there’s no denying that those two people will have incredibly different experiences with the game. It is, however, also very interesting that two people who appreciate the same styles of play, who like engaging in the same activities, and who are similarly motivated can still have such wildly different experiences. This was highlighted for me incredibly recently, as I’ve offered to help a player who has just returned to the game after a long absence. He was playing during my initial months, but he dropped off before long and returned to find a dramatic shift in what our Free Company was doing, not to mention how he’d been left behind by the advancements in gear that occurred over this period. By all accounts, he and I should have similar game experiences to hear our FC leader tell it, but in talking to this other player to discuss getting him geared up, it is clear that we are in incredibly different worlds.

Some of these differences probably don’t mean as much as they might seem. For instance, while I was so motivated to make all my gear myself that I politely declined offers of help, this other player is entirely willing to accept help from me when offered. It is clear, as the week has worn on, that this isn’t out of a lack of drive to do things himself or because he doesn’t care to do it himself, but because he has a list of priorities on his mind and the act of crafting things himself is low on it. He’s more than happy to let me do that while he focuses on sinking back into the game’s systems, his storage systems, and adapting his old methods of play to the changed resources available to him. While he is patient enough to wait while I work through all this labor (and it’s quite extensive, really), he also did a bunch of the work I offered to do, by gathering all of the supplies, not just the stuff I told him he’d need to source because it was expensive or laborious for me to acquire, but all of the supplies I hadn’t gathered. Sure, it would have taken fewer trips to each node for me to do the gathering, but he had more time to spend over all that I did and was able to get it in just a couple days, allowing me to focus my time on crafting rather than needing to go get his things. This is exactly the sort of thing I’d have done if I were in his shoes, out of a mixture of not wanting to burden the person helping me more than necessary and out of a desire for everything to be done as quickly as possible. Our behaviors and attitudes and choices around this sort of thing are so similar, that it really boggles the mind how different our situations are going into it.

As I’ve mentioned before, I am a relatively wealthy player. Not the richest by any means, but I’m on the low end of the “high wealth” spectrum (which is a step below the “ridiculously wealthy” spectrum that includes people with enough money that it would be difficult to spend it all: the billionaires of this game) and I work to stay there. I don’t spend a lot of money because I’d rather earn, make, or find things myself most of the time and only really dip into my funds when I want something that isn’t worth the effort (usually because the thing I’m buying is pretty cheap, actually) or that I can’t really get any other way, which means I tend to steadily increase my personal wealth outside of moments where, when I was crafting my gear, I went out and bought things rather than spend the time making them. On the other hand, this other player doesn’t have a lot of money–enough to buy the stuff he needed, but not much more–because he spends it more freely when he has it, even if he doesn’t mind doing the boring, repetitive work required to earn things himself. This is mostly a “two sides of the same coin” thing here, since this mostly reflects our standing wealth rather than our approaches to the game, but despite being a crafter and gatherer like myself, he doesn’t actually earn as much in-game money as I do. Maybe it’s because I spend time learning the markets and positioning myself to take advantage of them when there’s the kind of work I don’t mind doing or maybe it’s because I don’t spend much and was present during a time when the income from our work for the FC ballooned thanks to the scale of the deals we were supplying, but it feels so strange to see someone so similar to myself in so many ways struggling financially.

Of course, there are many possible explanations for it. Perhaps he has a fondness for mounts and minions, spending the money he makes on those things as quickly as he makes it, or perhaps he spends a lot more time playing the market than gathering by himself, which can make more money at scale but has much smaller profit margins than doing it all yourself. I don’t know. It’s just strange to look in on what feels like an alternate universe version of myself and find us so radically different. I mean, I already struggle with the idea that so many people just don’t do their job quests and sometimes have important abilities they never unlock for that reason, where I do them pretty much the second I unlock them because having a “next quest unlocked!” notification on my screen will drive me up the wall if I don’t do something about it and am genuinely interested in the stories being told within them, even if they’re kind of boring. It’s just so weird to find so many people who play the game similar to how I do it and with similar ideas about what they want out of the game and yet get such different results. I’m sure some of this is that I’m relatively new and don’t feel like I’m being suckered in to doing make-work by the game yet, since it’s still pretty novel and interesting, nor do I feel like I’m getting so much stuff retroactively dumped on me like some of the more experienced players probably feel because of how much stuff gets added after the fact. Regardless, it’s just interesting to see just how much stuff I take for granted as being a part of the “normal” experience is really just me and my fixation on stuff.