Make no mistake about it. I love Final Fantasy XIV. It’s by far the best MMO that’s been created - and I played EverQuest for over a decade. Shadowbringers had such an amazing story that I was left chomping at the bit to find out what happens next, but yet, I can’t bring myself to play. As much as I’d love to dive into 5.1, after the NieR raid, I got busy with a lot of things in real life and it pretty much eliminated my time to spend in Eorzea. After being gone for about a month and a half, I dove back in the other day, only to find that I was struggling to just keep going.
Why, would I be burnt out on a game that I love, especially if I hadn’t played it for a good 45 days or so? Perhaps it’s because I’m on a server that doesn’t seem to have a super active progression scene outside of random statics or party finder full of elitists. Perhaps it’s because I’m in a Free Company that has a clique of people who raid together, and while they’re huge - it’s quiet 85% of the time, as they’re all grouped up doing other stuff without saying a word in the FC chat. I want to play more, but playing alone makes the feeling of wasting my time so much more obvious and overwhelming. Personally, while I wish I had more friends to play with, I don’t think it’s any of that. I think my issue is that I feel like I’m wasting time when I’m forced to play an already capped character.
Which leads me to this point: Why aren’t there ways to divert gained experience to other jobs? If I’m doing progression, why not let me pass the experience earned to a different job? If I can’t do that, why not allow that experience to saved as bonus experience, kind of like the rested experience? Leveling jobs is the worst part of playing FFXIV, because the paths are so absolute. You could do fates, but finding people to do fates with is often a chore unless you’re doing current content from 70-80. Grinding the same few dungeons gets old incredibly fast, doing the scaled quests in SHB is a nice touch, but the experience gained barely makes it worth the effort, and grinding POTD/HOH is about as much fun as watching paint dry.
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Even if passing experience gave a degraded amount, say like 60% earned exp is funneled to a job you aren’t playing, that would still be 100% better than getting no experience reward for advancing the MSQ. I realize that most of the MSQ doesn’t actually even have experience associated with it, since it requires playing an already max level character, but surely this could be easily remedied. Why not let me funnel my earned experience from my DNC into my previously main WAR, so that my WAR isn’t left behind in the shuffle, and I’ve gotta grind roulettes and trust dungeons to level up so I can keep that job current? Would that really hurt anything as it is? People aren’t learning how to play the classes when they blow through POTD/HOH anyway, so why not do something to improve the alternate job leveling experience?
How do you guys deal with these issues? Does anyone else feel stunted or feel like they’re wasting their time on a class that doesn’t really benefit from what you’re doing? There’s a big difference when you’re raiding for gear upgrades or looking for glamour/items than simply playing the story. How do you think Square Enix could improve the process?
