That endgame awkward phase

So I was reading through Belghast Blaugust challenge post and usually I shy away from such things because I like my free blogging style but one line that caught my attention was the part where Bel says how blogging everyday breaks down walls and made him more brutally honest with his readers. To be honest, I’ve had a lot on my mind lately when it comes to my MMO playing but both Bel post and Tamrielo recent posts about levels and gear separating people  push me to talk today.  It could also be the lack of sleep but I’m willing to live with the consequences. So let’s be brutally honest today.

I’m in an awkward spot right now in FF14. Or rather I should say I feel like I’m in an awkward spot but it could all be in my mind. I’m writing this because I want people to understand that what I’m writing here is my perception of things and I could be entirely wrong.

I love FF14, I love the expansion a lot and I’ve been playing it almost exclusively since it came out. I got to 60 amongst the firsts Greysky and I’ve been plugging away at the raid content in Pugs. I’m doing all this not out of a desire to be the first or the best but simply because I enjoy the time I’m spending in game and this leads to me spending even more time playing. It’s a cycle.

But as Tamrielo points out it leads to me being farther ahead than most of the guild. I do my best to help out catch up people when I can but the rest of the time I’m most likely found in a pug doing Ravana Ex or Alexander because in terms of progression it’s where I’m at. Reading Tamrielo post, I can’t help but feel responsible for that awkward phase he describes since I’m likely creating pressure on some people to catch up. It’s the last thing I want to do but I can see how my talking about Ravana Ex might make someone who’s still leveling feels like he or she is behind.

To add to the issue most of the people I raid with on Wednesday are in a similar spot progression wise so we’re heading into the new content and yet again, it’s likely contributing to some people feeling like being left behind. Again, not the intended effect but I can see how it can be seen as such.

I’m pretty much in agreement with Tam here when he says he wish those level and gear discrepancies wouldn’t exist. I want to do cool stuff with the people in my guild, not create pressure on them.  Like I said, I do my best to be helpful to people by answering questions and healing runs whenever I can, often despite what I would have wanted to actually do. I’ve set aside my Mondays for months just so I could help out the Monday group clear T9. I do all these things because I want to give back to a pretty awesome guild and I want include people, not exclude them.

But here comes the big But, I don’t believe I should feel bad for playing the game the way I want to. I genuinely want to help out my guild but at the same time I also want to go pug Ravana Ex and be excited about it. I hate that it seems to be creating this sentiment of me being hardcore when I consider myself to be anything but. For me being hardcore means putting progress over people and I’ve always put helping people before anything else.

This is all likely a temporary situation that will partly solve itself as time goes on and people catch up. On my end I’ll keep helping out whenever I can and I’ll keep pugging things and doing the new stuff on Wednesday. I just hope that people will understand that I’m not doing that out of a desire to leave anyone behind.