An End Of An Era

Hello.

I have made the decision that I will be retiring from FFXIV for at least the forseeable future, and mostly likely permanently. There are several factors that have lead to this decision. But I feel as if this is the right time to move on.

I was really looking forward to Dawntrail. I was raiding with my friends again, Both new jobs and the setting for the expansion also looked really promising. However, this excitement didn't last long, and I quickly fell into a mood where I wasn't really interested in playing any more.

To elaborate some more on why this has happened:

1: I'm getting old.

I turn 34 this year. I'm not getting any younger, and while I am by no means ashamed of where I am in my life, or how I have lived it so far. I am not quite at the point where I would like to be, and I am therefore stepping away from the game to focus on my personal life. Most notably I really want to own my own place by the time I reach the ripe old age of 40, and so I can have it paid off for when I retire. To do this, I'm going to either take on some overtime at work for the next few years, or take on a second job/side hustle. This means that not only will I not really have the time or energy to commit to FFXIV, but that I don't really want to have a scheduled commitment that raiding with my friends brings, and I wouldn't raid with any other people.

I am also not as sharp as I used to be. I can feel my reactions, and how quickly I process information fading, and this impacts my performance when raiding and playing PvP.

2:  The game is stale.

I have played this game for a long time, and it has mostly felt like I've been playing the same game since 3.0 but with a slightly different coat of paint. Every patch it's go and cap tomestones, and compete with 7 other people for savage gear each week. odd patch content was mostly one and done, and didn't contribute to the power level of your character. It's got to the point where I have dreaded having to do this for the 50th time whenever the ilvl ceiling increased. The formula is in desperate need for a shake up, but Yoshi P either doesn't have a creative bone in his body, or is afraid of change. Either way, the player numbers speak for themselves, and people are unsubbing or quitting in droves for various reasons.

3. I just don't enjoy it, or have a passion for it anymore.

Even raiding with my friends, it just got to the point where there were a lot of days where I would have rather have played or done something else. Raiding started turning into a obligation rather than something I was doing for fun. I think I am at the point where I just want to freedom to be able to do whatever I want in the evening, and because I have played XIV for over 10 years, my interest in the repetitive and unoriginal content has just killed my enjoyment of it now.

It's not all doom and gloom however. The game has been a big part of my life for the past 14.5 years (I started playing on 1.0 release). I have met some amazing people, have some great memories which I will carry with me for the rest of my life, and have had some amazing opportunities, such as being able to attend fanfest to play Feast on Stage. So thank you everyone, and to Square Enix.

Some people/groups I want to shout out in particular.

My raid group. In particular:

Memento Mori, Kool Kat, Medas Skibi, Kiiry Kamishirasawa, Inertia Coeurl.

I started raiding with these 5 at the start of Shadowbringers and they were by far the best raid group that I had the pleasure of being a part of. We accomplished so much, and in casual hours. So many savage fights clears, ultimates farmed, and overall, just a great group of people to play other stuff with. I'm sad we couldn't keep things going again, but we cleared M4s week 1 really easily, and FRU on a limited schedule and over the xmas period in a month, and I have no doubt we would have kept this going should our motivation to actually play the game again have stayed.

Hashtag Freetaru. In particular:

Jinrai Phantomedge, Naxam Naekovu, Sycko Fallalafel, Sheria Barnes

The feast, and fanfest PvP gang. Going to Paris and playing in that tournament was such an amazing experience and I had so much fun. A shame we didn't win, but we did damn well, and proved all the doubters wrong.

Disbanded FC

FC's were pretty much useless in XIV, but I had been in this one since the end of 2.0, and felt no need to ever go elsewhere except on a couple of occasions where I had to go to a different server for raiding before cross server and data centre travel were a thing. So thank you guys, and all the best.

FOE/Dojacord Discord Servers.

FOE was my go to spot in the Feast PvP days, and Dojacord somewhat replaced this when Feast was retired. Both servers filled with really cool people who were nothing but kind to me. So thank you all!

I very much anticipate that this will be the last post on this blog, or at least for a very long time. So take care everyone, and all the best for the future.

 

Goodbye Endwalker. Onward to Dawntrail!

  

Well, that's another expansion done. In a couple of hours, the game will be taken offline for a 48 hour maintenance, and Dawntrail early access will begin when this is completed. I was going to make a Twitter post but I haven't updated this blog in a while and I have far too much to say to fit in a tweet or two.

Endwalker was an expansion of many downs and some ups for me. So much went wrong, and it's easily the expansion where I feel like I accomplished the least. There were also many things wrong with the expansion that made it feel boring to play. Job rotations were simplified even further and nearly every cooldown was changed to two minutes, making you being able to express your skill even harder. There was also a severe content shortage and it felt like there was nothing to do.

The expansion started on a high for me.The story was pretty good, I got my first week 1 savage clear in Asphedelos, and I did so by playing on a new job for a change (Reaper). Things were looking good, and I was excited for 6.1 for DSR.

However this was short lived. As I have mentioned in a previous post, my group disbanded a couple of months after this. There were disagreements on what we wanted to do to fill the time between savage and ultimate, and opinions were very split to the point where a couple of people wanted to leave, and this ultimately resulted in the raid leader deciding he wanted to take a break from the game as we had been struggling to recruit, and keep a solid 8th member after kicking someone and this made my raid leader tired of having to recruit. Plus he had real life commitments upcoming.

At this point I comtemplated just quitting. But I was invited to do DSR with some people my friend knew. We did eventually clear the fight, but it took 1500 pulls, a fair bit of drama, and a lot of mental sanity to do so. I also only got 2 weapons from the fight, which was somewhat disappointing, as I'm used to getting all of them from my previous group. But overall they were a good group of people and I hope they're doing well.

6.1 was also the release of the new PvP mode Crystalline Conflict. And while it is fun to play and very competitive, the lack of T100 rewards and something to aim and work towards ultimately put me off of playing it consistently. I did eventually decide to return and give it another try, but at this point people who had been playing it actively since it's release had gotten so good, that I felt vastly outskilled and not really being in the mood to put in the effort to try and get back to my prime.

I then transferred to NA as a friends group needed a melee, but again this eventually fell apart due to scheduling issues. At this point, I conceded that things were just not going my way and I needed to take a break. I had been playing the game for 10 years without taking any long breaks, so it was long overdue.I therefore skipped TOP ultimate, the last tier of savage, and most PvE related content.

And what a difference this has made. It's been over a year now, and I feel eager to play regularly again and tackle the hardest content the game has to offer.

And the best part is, my group is back!

I'm still very good friends with my original group, one of them was my flatmate for 5 years, I've met 2 of them IRL, and the others I have gamed with for years now. We've continued to play other games together or hang out. There's no hard feelings about what happened in 6.0, and 7 of us agreed we want to go back in Dawntrail and pick things up again where we left off (the 8th continued to play after we disbanded so we couldn't get him back sadly.). We also quickly got an 8th member who most of us know quite well, and who we know is capable. We have agreed to limited savage to reclears after we clear the tier, and focus on catching up on DSR and TOP, Plus we also have 2 new ultimates to look forward to.

So I'm fucking hyped to say the least. I have 2 weeks booked off. Energy drinks have been ordered, and I'm determined to make this expansion the best one yet in terms of accomplishments.

Looking back on Endwalker, it was not all doom and gloom. I actually did accomplish a fair bit despite not actively playing for over half of the expansion. As already mentioned, I got my first week 1 savage clear, I cleared DSR on patch, which again was a first for an ultimate for me,and the hardest ultimate released to date at the time. I've made many new friends in the PvP community who have really got into CC, and I'm now part of multiple community discords for Frontlines which I have really enjoyed playing. I also competed in the fanfest tournament for CC and although we did not qualify, we certainly were no pushovers for a bunch of old veterans who had barely touched CC since season one.The PvP community has been nothing but kind to me despite me falling behind and I'm determined to make an effort to compete at a high level again in ranked.

My plan is to level DRG > VPR > NIN > RPR > MNK with the intention of raiding on either DRG or VPR, I would like a break from NIN as I end up playing it for most progs and I would like to try and be able to play multiple melee efficiently.

So while Endwalker was my worst expansion yet, and I'm happy to see the back of it. I'm positive about what's to come, and I'm very much looking forward to it.

I hope everyone has a good expansion launch. Let's fucking do this.

-Aud/Dom.

(P.S, apologies for any spelling/grammar mistakes, It's 2AM for me and I'm tired AF).