I’ve come to realize that I have a (minor) addiction to decorating my own characters’ rooms and our FC houses. I absolutely love the creativity that people have with the housing items and personalized spaces in XIV, and to me it’s fun as all hell to try to make the things I have access to in-game work without having to resort to glitching items. Don’t get me wrong, people who can do that have my utmost respect and I’ve personally seen some fucking fantastic rooms made that way, but being on console and not having a good way to use a mouse/keyboard means I’m mostly limited to using items in their non-glitched “intended” way. It makes for a great challenge, and I’m really proud of the decorating that I have been able to do so far, especially the outside of our company houses!
As far as RP goes, I’ve wanted to gain the confidence to start some lite RP with a few of my characters. But of the few times I have tried to force myself to go to one of the many awesome venues that host for even just lite RP, I’ve managed to do a few minutes in character at most before I get overwhelmed and have to book it out of there to recharge. Yeah, I could go and AFK and people watch at some of the venues, and in the past when I was more involved with art parties I did that a few times without too much of a problem. YMMV, but my issue is that I feel like there aren’t enough hosted spots in-game for people like me who just want to vibe and be near other players’ characters without feeling the pressure to RP or even talk if you’re not in the mood.
WHICH of course brings me to the question of what am I going to do about it? I’ve found myself rethinking how I think about my XIV housing decorating. Obviously I love having little spots that are good to AFK or gpose scattered around, pretty much everyone agrees spots like that are always fun. But aside from that, when I’m decorating apartments or rooms now, my goal is to create spaces that I feel
a) fit my characters’ personality and style (and that of my free company as a whole, though that’s really just mine and my husband’s characters so easy enough there lol)
b) would be a good place for myself to unwind, and
c) any other players can feel safe and comfortable just going to vibe and recharge or AFK anytime they want to without having to RP.