How do you deal with motivation?

[Darien Cadell]

One example was yesterday, watching the Heavensward dungeon trailer and seeing the winged Ixal in holding tubes. The implications for that are absolutely **HUGE**. The reason for the Ixal summoning Garuda, why they hate Gridanians and those living in the Black Shroud, the core of their age-old bitterness, hatred and cruelty ... and I just couldn't get any enthusiasm / understanding out of my friends.

 

I saw that and was like wat wat waaaat?! Shared it to a couple ooh, aah, that'll be interestings. Better than nothing.

 

Me, I've been playing alts lately. That's how I know I'm not really on board anymore. When I'm actually into things, I'm very dismissive of my own alts. Right now, I'm just hanging on until the new stuff.

 

I don't really have any advice for how to stay motivated. When I did have some leader-ish responsibilities, they were fine while I was fine, but when they crashed and burned, they crashed and burned hard, nothing left but a pile of ashes, so I try not to volunteer for much of that stuff anymore.

 

There's probably something to moderation in all things. Go hard while you've got the go, but don't be afraid to step back in as many places as you can, delegate more things than you usually would so you can give yourself a breather when the go starts to dry up.

[Chris Ganale]

Feh, motivation. For this game, right now, I got basically none. I log on, I do my crafting to restock the FC chest, I get a soil if it's the right time, I do my daily roulettes on Tahz and Chao (now expert/high/trial instead of just expert thanks to the cap increase). Then, if it's not Wednesday or Thursday, I sit around in the Mist and do literally nothing for approximately five to six hours before bed. I typically try to get RP but it's like pissing into a hurricane, so sometimes I just don't even bother.

 

I'm literally going through the motions at this point. The new stuff showed off yesterday was pretty exciting, even if the prospect of all of my hard-learned rotations falling apart in the expansion makes me cry on the inside. Alexander and the new Allagan dungeon are exciting for what potential they represent for Chao, but even that's ringing a bit hollow as I'm starting to come to terms with the fact that she's not cutting out as a roleplay character as much as she is a narrative/novel character.

[Caspar]

I'm just the type of person who sets personal goals when I enjoy something. I can't seem to do that IRL, lol, but when it comes to this game, the reason why I never drop it even when my friends filter in and out is probably because I just immediately find a new objective when I achieved my previous one. Beat FCoB? Try Savage, nobody in my static wanted to do it before. Get fully geared? Begin gearing my other classes? Other classes fully geared? Start making money for a personal house, etc.

 

I feel if I apply that same mindset to my RP, it might be exhausting to play with me, but at least I'd never stop going forward.

[Orlog]

With FFXIV honestly? If I'm feeling unmotivated to play, I just go to something else. Like literally anything else. I'm not quite sure where this obligation to stick around a game that you're having a hard time wanting to play is coming from anymore. I've quit and rejoined it several times, and I probably will continue this pattern down the line.

 

But, that goes with anything for me, really. Being unmotivated just means I need a change of scenery and pace of things. I usually try and go do something else that's quite a bit different from what I had been doing. Listen to some different music, watch different movies, RP different settings. But, I mean, I'm all about keeping my options pretty broad and sweeping. Locking myself down to a single thing doesn't work too well for me.

[ArmachiA]

I honestly don't consider wanting to ooc play the game a lack of motivation. Sometimes, I want to go progress in the OOC world of the game, and sometimes that is something that takes 2-3 weeks with some sparse roleplaying. And sometimes, all I want to do is rp, and only want to do that for a couple weeks and not do dungeons or anything.

 

Right now we're in that Pre-Expansion dip. Where those of us who play all the time normally have nothing to do for a month, and people are starting to come back/new people are showing up and are mostly just trying to catch up oocly content and gear wise. FFXIV is probably the only MMO I've played that requires you to be at a certain spot in the story in order to access the Expansion (OH, SE and your gates) so it makes sense RP is tapering off, and will continue to do so for a long while after Heavensward is released. Me personally? I spend a lot of my time offline now, working on the big storyline we need to in our Storyteller forum, chilling out a bit till Heavensward. I got to get my alt caught up in the story, I get on for scheduled RP events (Or if someone asks me to rp), I get on for raiding and things, but I'm kind of taking it easy. And that's okay.

 

It's fine people have decided to take a step back, enjoy the break while you can, Heavensward is going to be a completely different ballgame.