Echo's Estate

I have been playing mmos for a very long time, I have spent a lot of money on mmos and yet I have never really committed to any. I realized this was an issue quite some time ago but my attempts to commit have never been fruitful.

A couple of months ago I had quite the outrageous spending spree on a game which nearly crippled my financial situation. That coupled with the likelihood that I would be moving and attending a much more expensive university led to me doing my game strike. Situations with that have changed though, I saved up some money to bring my fiances back in order and now im not going to be moving

So this brings me back to the issue of too many mmos. After my situation changed and I became more lenient I went back to going back and forth on mmos again. I got Wildstar last week, for the second time, and almost immediately no longer felt like playing it.

I also was playing a decent amount of Tree of Savior, much to my surprise as I was initially turned off on the game, so I started thinking about why I was playing it, and this of course made me start thinking about why I play any mmo. What do I like to see/have in one?

One of the major pluses for ToS was being able to play with a controller. Now many of the esteemed "pc master race" may immediately dislike that but with my current setup its very clunky and often uncomfortable playing with the keyboard. With that in mind I started looking at mmos with controller support. There are precious few of them and as of this writing I have all of the ones that do have it. With the exception of Tera as I swore off that game many months ago and have no intention of returning. (Boring story, too much focus on the lolis)

Blade and Soul supposedly has controller support but It doesn't work out very well for the way their combat system is designed. And speaking of Blade and Soul, that game was going to be the game of games for me. I remember being excited for it for years during the long hiatus of its eventual transition to the west. The game has a great story, amazing design and graphics, fun combat, and probably the only mmo I have ever actually done pvp in.

What was the problem? Well I was playing the game as a assassin and got to nearly the end of the second act and then I hit a point to where I was doing very poorly. I kept dying all the time and found it difficult to progress. Yes I know some people surely think the game is super easy or whatever and that I just suck, but this was my experience so they can suck it.

I thought I should try a different character. I, of course already had one of every class (which is another bad habit of mine I will get to) I got into act 2 with my destroyer and almost done with act 1 with every other class. But you see the problem was repeating things. I was doing the same quests over and over again and it was getting incredibly dull. Going back to my assassin wouldn't solve my earlier issue and I could hardly bring myself to go on with another character when I wasn't even sure if they would have the same problem

This lead to me leaving the game for a time. I still left it installed as I could not bring myself to delete all the hopes (and all the real money) I had in the game. Earlier this month they released a new class for the game called the soul fighter and I logged in to try it. I was almost immediately dragged down by yet again doing the exact same things that I had grown far too tired of before. I don't think I even reached level 5 before giving up.

This was the next major issue to go along with the controller/keyboard issue. I have had this terrible habit of making a different character for every class in the game and then playing each of them somewhat equally. This leading to what I described about my experience with Blade and Soul. Doing exactly the same thing, the same quests, the same areas, seeing the same story, multiple times and leading to a burn out and lack of interest to continue.

Now my search for more controller mmos just the other day lead me to a game I hadn't tried in 2 whole years. Since I saw the game for sale at 50 percent off and It was the only controller supported one I did not have I ended up buying and installing Final Fantasy 14 and its expansion Heavensward. Being a subscription game I have shied away from it. Hence, me not having played since long before the expansion when the rouge class wasn't even out yet.

I got this game already thinking about some of these issues and now im trying to work through my whole story to find out if perhaps this game could be one I can commit to. So lets go over my main issues with mmos that I have discovered the hard way. 1st, spending too much money on cash shops, 2nd no controller support, 3rd creating a bunch of characters and redoing the same things over and over.

Now, obviously there are other things here that matter but those are things that I have always known about. If the game has good graphics, good story, fun gameplay, lots to do, and so on. Just looking at these three issues that have ruined my commitments in the past and now applying them to FF14 gives very promising results.

I came to this revelation last night about the subscription fee. In the past I was focused on the notion that I had to pay this much. Free to play games giving you the option of paying however much you want including 0 dollars. But when I go back now, and look at my past experiences and think with this new line of inquiry I arrive at a very different conclusion about subscription fees.

Being a subscription game FF14 doesn't have a cash shop, as one would expect. You know except for WoW having both cuz Blizzard are a bunch of money grubbers. Anyway, what this means is that you would spend 15 dollars (or however much the sub fee is) and then thats it. Even if you wanted to spend more you can't because there is nothing to buy lol.

I can tell you this, on just about every supposedly "free to play" mmo I spent waaaaaaay more then 15 dollars on it and that number would just increase the more I played. So it would end up with me spending far more each month then 15 dollars. This means that playing a subscription game is actually cheaper, fancy that.

So the second issue was about controller use. After getting the game I played for a number of hours yesterday and was quite pleased with the controller use during the game. So that issue is taken care of, we now move on to the third issue.

This game has a few ways of combating this issue, if you take advantage of them. First and foremost is the ability to play every class on just a single character. This is also a thing in Skyforge but that game is lacking on the next part here. So you can play every class on one character great, but what about when you start that new character at level 1? Thats the issue with Skyforge, you still have to play the same levels over again with your new character.

It seems like in FF14 this is greatly alleviated by a couple of things. First off, every class has its own class quest line that are only available for that class so that is unique content right there. Other then that there are 3 separate starting areas to further mix up the available stuff to do when starting a new class.

That all three of my main issues with mmos seem to be alleviated certainly speaks to it being a much more worthwhile endeavor that could finally prove to be a lasting commitment.

as for other parts of the game I have had no complaints. I am able to run it on at least 30 fps (which is fine for me cuz im not a 60 fps elitest nerd) and still maintain a good level of graphical quality. And the visuals are rather impressive.

I have been playing too many action mmos and so was a bit saddened by the slower paced combat at first, but it does perfectly well for what it is.

I can't say much for the story as of yet but if they are staying as true to the final fantasy series as I hope they are, then the story should prove quite good.

Final fantasy music is some of my all time favorites and so far I believe this game is going to continue the trend, I was already humming along to the songs played in Ul'dah.

The only thing I really remember from my trial period all that time ago was that I actually really liked doing the crafting and gathering. For the first time ever really, since I have never cared about that stuff in other games.

I am a rather upset that I can't change my armor design and it just stays with what the armor looks like. the first new set I got in the game looks absolutely atrocious. Not sure how much of an issue this could prove to be, but it is possible to become something really bothersome.

Well no game is perfect and objectively all the signs do point at this game being the best potential candidate for long term commitment, perhaps I will get lucky and see some zones that aren't full of tiny lolis lol. Honestly though, I don't think they are as much of an issue as the Elin in Tera who were the worst. So this will probably prove to be fine.

I guess what this might really boil down to is if I can fight and win against my terrible habit of game hopping. I would certainly need a game capable of facilitating such a thing and as I said this one seems objectively like the best option.

I think im going to try, I got to if I ever hope to reach end game on any mmo lol.

right now I have blade and soul, guild wars 2, skyforge, tree of savior, marvel heroes, dungeon fighter online, smite, the old republic and warframe, oh and FF14 of course.

Im thinking if I delete most of these games then considering my absolutely horrid internet it could likely prove a deterrent.

I will admit, I am rather hesitant to do so with a few of them. Smite of course is immune to the threat of deletion as that is a totally different type of game and one that I have been able to commit more long term to (but like i said thats a moba not a rpg so it doesn't count)

Im also considering leaving Warframe installed. Its also not a typical mmorpg. It has good controller controls and I still find myself running a few survival missions every now and then even though I have mostly stopped playing it in bulk.

Blade and Soul as well as Guild Wars 2 are proving to be the ones im most hesitant to delete. Seeing I have put the most time, effort and money into them. It sort of reminds me of when I stopped playing Tera.It was a difficult choice seeing that I had been subscribed to the game for many months and played for that whole time.

Drastic measures may need to be taken though in order to finally find stability. There is cause to simply cut your loses despite previous investments.

Final Fantasy 14, Smite and Warframe..... three games left on my computer huh? (I also play League of Angels 2 but thats a browser game and so I couldn't delete it if I wanted to lol)

very well, I am determined. Let this decree be done. With this I shall hopefully at long last place myself on the road to stable gaming.

Bless my endeavors oh chaos gods and wish me luck anyone who actually read all of this.