Serial Starting Characters

One thing I’ve noticed about my gaming behaviors over the past year has been what I am terming ‘serial starting characters’. The idea is basically that I tend to restart games repeatedly, and when I restart, I am always running a new character.

I looked back over the games I’ve been playing…in LOTRO, I have 3 characters I’ve started in the past year, and none has progressed beyond level 15; in Secret World Legends, I’ve got 2 new characters I’ve made in the past year; in Rift, I started a cleric and a mage; in SWTOR, I started a Jedi Guardian and a Sith Sorcerer…so many new characters and none of them ever get very far. And these are just the MMOs.

What is it that drives this behavior?

I suppose part of the idea is that I am usually indecisive on what character class I want to play, tending towards trying out a healer-type class until I get into the game and realize healers take so much more time to level unless they’re in a group. Then I jump into a ranged magic user type class and have fun until I realize how much of a glass cannon they are. So then I go for a hybrid class, but they end up being a jack-of-all-trades and master of none. So is it my indecisiveness on character classes, or are the classes offered just not to my liking?

In any case, maybe that’s the basis for my ‘serial starting characters’. But I think it’s more than that since after I try out a character for a while, I find I want to jump to another game…in which I go through the same process. So I move from game to game, jumping from character to character, and never advance any of my avatars much beyond the starting areas.

Has this been something I’ve been experiencing only this past year, or is this something I’ve been doing for a while? I mean, looking at the many games I’ve been playing over the years, I recognize that I’ve hardly finished any of them…particularly MMOs. Sure, I enjoy the games and have a good time playing them, but I never finish or even get more than halfway. What’s up with that?

So I guess on this second day of Blaugust, I’m just kinda rambling about and frustrated with my lack of progress in any of the games I’ve been playing over the past year. Do I have solutions – no, but recognition is the first step toward coming up with a solution.

Ramble 7 Aardvark 7| Serial Starting Characters