Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Stranger in a strange land, part 2.

I don't think I really covered everything that I wanted to say yesterday, and while I did finally have something I wanted to discuss on my blog, I think I will continue this today to complete my thoughts.

Anyway, I am bound by what I do. That is not to say that I do not have friends and that I don't always do things with them, in fact, quite the opposite is true. I would kill for many of my friends and while I feel free to be critical of them and them of me in our own circle, I would never let anyone from outside of my circle criticize them and I would defend them to the hilt. But in the end, my goals are derived from in-game content. I do understand that some people do not feel that this is important, but in the end this is a game that I play with friends. For me it is not a form of instant messenger or phone call. I play this game for the objectives that it provides. The problem is that I am running out of objectives. Does this mean I want to stop playing or that I am getting bored? Not at all, in fact the opposite is true, I want more objectives and I want more things to do. I want to be entertained. Salvage was perfect for this because it was long term and repetitive but it did feel like it was possible to complete at some point in time. It was not like doing some pick up XP party or on the opposite end of things like getting a relic. I like that kind of consistency and form in function. In regards to this I think that recent SE has really been letting me down and letting down the most hard core and critical players. I understand the want to develop content for new players and for the more easy going of players, but in the end these players are transient from the start and trying to satisfy them is a nice goal but ultimate futile. FoV isn't going to fix the ADD generation, they will come and go as they please. Balancing this lighter content with hardcore content should not be hard and it should not be so difficult that you have to pick one or the other as SE is doing right now.

I don't like having to look for things to do in a game that I want to play. I should not be coming up with a game within a game just to entertain myself. This is what I am paying SE to do. I can not occupy myself for some reason. When I get bored, I tend to get cranky and angry and then after a while depressed because I feel alone. I hate being alone. I am probably a tragic co-dependent but I have never been a loner and never will be. That is one thing I have always loved about FFXI and I don't know if I ever would have gotten into MMO's if it wasn't for the need to party for absolutely everything in FFXI. It just fed my co-dependency really, which may or may not have been a good thing but what is done is done. I am hard to please I suppose. I want content that I can do with my friends and that I can drag Omoi kicking and screaming with me to do. :) I have no need for a very large chunk of the content that has been presented in the last few updates. I want the high-level areas they have promised. I want new challenges, and I want to do those challenges with my friends, not just because my friends are great but because they are great players.

Does that make me a dick? I don't know really. I had initially thought that I play with people I like to be around, but I know that I will do things with people I dislike even detest to fulfill my goals or the goals of my friends. But I don't really do that all that often. I think it may be because I can put off those that I don't enjoy being around. I am rather consistent in my friendships, and very, very rarely do I choose to stop being around someone even if I dislike them. I don't know if I am passive-aggressive, but I think I am good enough at giving a cold-shoulder when necessary and I also don't back down in the face of arrogance or stupidity. That is actually probably a good thing, I guess.

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