When paying to win is worth it

I have been on a frustrating journey this past week.

SquareEnix, publishers of Final Fantasy 14, announced they will soon be ending support for Windows 10 in a few months. I refuse to move to Windows 11... Even with being able to turn off Recall, I don't trust that it will stay off each time Microsoft pushes an update. They have shown time and time again they don't respect the settings users choose, and will make changes to defaults and reenable services silently.

So I did what any reasonable person would do - I installed Linux (EndeavorOS - and Arch flavor) and decided to completely abandon Windows.

I've done this in the past. I has running Arch for well over a year before I needed to move some things back to Windows due to there not being compatibility with Linux at the time. When that happened, friction and entropy set it.. It was easier to stay in the Windows partition than it was to move back and forth for one or two tasks.

When setting up the new hard drive, things seemed like they were going smoothly. There were some initial update issues due to the AUR being constantly DDOS'ed, but I got everything up and running. Games were working, slicing software for the 3d printer was working, and even the controller I use was working.

And then randomly on Tuesday of this past week the controller stopped. It is seen by the operating system - I can run jstest and other applications and see the button presses. But whenever a game is launched - be it from Steam or independently - the game says there is no controller present. This is a problem, because I have built all my muscle memory in FFXIV around using a controller.

When I tried to play as one of the classes I was familiar with, I felt like a duck out of water. I was fumbling, my fingers felt like they were getting tied in knots, and I was missing multiple parts of my rotation because I realized I didn't learn the actual skills... I just learned where the buttons where that needed to be pressed when and in reaction to what. I had essentially built a giant game of Simon for myself.

I though... what if I start fresh, with a job I've never played before? Maybe having to learn everything from the ground up would help me start to rewire where I was expecting things to be and how I was expecting the game to play.

And it did! I swapped to the Summoner job, partially because it was already at the mid-50s due to some funky mechanics the game has and partially because it is thought of being one of the easier jobs to play. No need to try to pick up healing or tanking when I am still getting used to the basics.

Overall it was going smooth, but then I ran into the problem of time... The summoner job was only about level 55. I spent my gaming time on Friday and Saturday slowly leveling it up to get back to the main story questline - which right now I am in the final expansion and all the content is level 90+. I gained maybe 5 levels total, and realized this was going to be a long grind just to make it back to where I was so I could keep progressing in the game.

It wasn't a grind I was looking forward to... There are more than enough actual time sinks in this game. I didn't want to start imposing my own.

And then I remembered that the cash shop gives the ability to boost characters to level 90. It was $18 for the unlock per character.. I debated for a while... Was this something I really wanted to spend money on? Couldn't I just grind it out and be ok sinking the time on running dungeon after dungeon just to get back to where I already was? Could I try just jumping back into the other jobs and tough it out (I tried... it wasn't pretty).

Eventually, I decided the $18 was an investment I was willing to make, because I valued my time and my patience more than "doing it the right way".

And now I get to pick up where I left off, not having to spend tons of time and in-game money to constantly update gear.

As someone that tends to tell myself I need to do it the most difficult way possible, I am proud that I took a step back, and evaluated what would give me the most fun. Because at the end of the day, this is a game and if it isn't fun, why do it?