Dealing with In-Game Burnout

[Sho]

This scenario sounds very similar to one/a few on my server... lol. Try and consider your LS first off plays to enjoy themselves, and not play as if it's a second/third job. Once you figure that out, plan for 4-5 weekly events and poll your linkshell on every single event possible -- weed out the events you don't need to be doing, or are the least popular.

This is FFXI of 2010, not 2004~2007. Not many want to devote all of their time in game to Dynamis/Limbus/HNMCamp at all anymore, especially when there is Abyssea/Walk of Echoes/Einherjar/ZNM/VNM/SCNM that's still yet to be completed fully. At least if you are going to do the older events still, target the deserving people that pull weight in your LS, but still want to be rewarded from those specific events, then leave those events alone as they are for the most part huge timesinks.

As for delegation of sacks and duties, force the duties on them, instead of asking. "You will lead this, you will lead that, you will handle the LS site", type of thing. As a sack, they don't have the luxury of being one, and not doing anything to compliment your leadership. If they refuse, kill their sack status and call for a normal LS member that wants to step up. If no one wants to step up, go outside of your LS for a friend/relative/acquaintance that has exceptional leadership qualities and make an offer to said person. (Treat it like Human Resources of a job, they go outside of the company to find exceptional leaders if none exists within the company to their standards.)


At any rate, if you feel you don't want to lead anymore, drop that shit like a bad habit and do what makes you happy in game.

[Banas]

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[Francisco]

What kind of events are you doing?

Salvage and Limbus can be managed by individual groups within the LS, and do NOT need to be LS events.

Dynamis can, in all likelihood, be cut completely or scaled back if your LS has been doing it long enough. If people want to farm armor, have them organize a run. If someone wants a relic, that's not your responsibility.

Sky and Sea, if anyone needs the drops can be a change of pace... but I wouldn't make it a regular thing. People getting lost and dying in Ru'Hmet kills a run. Farming pop items is also incredibly slow paced and really boring. But that too, can also be done with a small group. If someone wants a Byakko's Haidate or something - they should be taking the initiative to farm Diorites and such.

If you camp Fafnir, stop.

Personally, I'd set one day aside for Abyssea NMs (required event), one day aside for a second event (likely Einherjar if demand is still there, otherwise just alternate Einherjar, random pop NMs people may want, Dynamis, sky, sea, extra Abyssea day, WoE, whatever)... and maybe a third day for Abyssea XP w/ key item farming... beyond that - free time for people to set up their own shit, work on magians, level jobs, afk in mog house, w/e...

[Dantrag]

If you camp Fafnir, stop.

Best piece of advice EVER. This goes along with the other kings as well.

[Panthera]

I'd be a bit careful on this. Giving people control over events that want the items from that event the most have potential for some serious drama.

Neo makes a very good point here. Pure greed is horrible qualification for pearlsacks or shell holders, for that matter. Leaders need to be selected on 1) their understanding of the game in a general sense and the event in particular, and the game overall, and 2) their ability to communicate clearly, their decisiveness, and other dozen other leadership qualities. They really must have both; one can be an FFXI academic, but lack the management skills to coordinate a dozen or more people, and one can posses inspiring leadership skills, but end up leading members to their doom if they don't understand where they are going! [/QUOTE]

Dont run events every day for 5 hours lol. Have an off day or 2. Even a couple days where someone else leads and you just kinda oversee takes LOADS off your back.

Further, give your MEMBERS a day off. They need days off just as much as you do.

[Sho]

Best piece of advice EVER. This goes along with the other kings as well.

^ So much. Had to do it.

[Furionstormrage]

Its all been said but ill echo delegation.

I started my LS with a RL friend. We worked together for a few months, then he stopped playing, so I had to do 100% of the work everynight. That sucked, and it wasn't long before I was in your place, if not worse of.

What solved this is what everyone said, delegate sacks to handle events. We have 1 or sometimes 2 sacks, event depending, that take attendance, handle drops and pop items, objectives, etc.

If your sacks aren't up to it, get rid of them. Every LS has some dead weight to some extent, cut out as much as you can. When not only your sacks but regular members are willing and able to setup alliances and lead runs (especially when splitting up into different zones or whatever), you'll find yourself with more time to handle larger tasks, and also to just relax and play.

[Byrthnoth]

Dynamis can, in all likelihood, be cut completely or scaled back if your LS has been doing it long enough. If people want to farm armor, have them organize a run. If someone wants a relic, that's not your responsibility.

I'd advise against cutting Dynamis out of the picture entirely. There's still a lot of money to be made there. However, splitting up and farming for/distributing that money with a healthy rotation of cities (maybe the occasional outland) is the only workable option in my opinion. Heavy endgame players don't need much AF2 anymore, so that isn't an incentive. Give gil as the incentive. Entering with 12 good players is probably ideal. If you have 24, do two zones.
Main party: 3 DDs, 2 Buffers, Dancer
Second party: RDM, BRD, 3x BLM, BLU

Limbus is a dead event. AF+1 can be lowmanned by 1-3 good players. Nashira Gages is the only unreplaceable piece from the bosses now imop. Let your players handle this by themselves.

Einherjar is kind of worth doing (V.body/hat, E.body), but it likely won't be after the next update. Enjoy being level 80s in Einherjar, because you probably won't be doing it as 90s.

Abyssea is hot for so many reasons.

Sea/Sky/Pop NMs/VNM/KS99s should be occasional things you do when your LS members bring you pops for them, not something you focus on as a group.

2 nights of Abyssea (Farm -> pop), 2 nights of optional payout Dynamis, 2 nights of Einherjar, 1 night of wildcard. <-- this is the event list I'd go with at the moment.
If I was you, I'd choose to lead Dynamis myself. It's easy, profitable, and everyone knows what to do.

[Zubuis]

It can be pretty easy to burn out on this game when it comes to leading events.

Delegating leadership sounds easy in theory but from my experience not that many people have good personalities to be leaders. Combined with a good personalities, theres a multitude of other factors that come into play that determine whether you can lead something or not. I think if your going to delegate, you have to be very careful on who you pick. Saying that you also need to keep in mind that, you need to actually find people who want to lead things. From my experience theres alot of people who could lead things, but they dont actually want to do it, and for good reason (its alot of stress and it becomes a second job).

If theres people that you think for certain could lead certain events and do a good job, I would say delegating might work. If theres people that you are uncertain would make a good leader, I really think it might be better to just lighten you event load. You dont want to put people in a leadership position that will have an adverse effect on the linkshell.

Another factor really here to consider is, will your members of the linkshell accept the person you delegate to put in charge? From my experiences, people will just not listen to anyone. Its alot of work and takes a good amount of time, before people will recognize someone as a leader. Just because you give someone a title, doesnt mean people will listen to them. So it depends too if you have people in your linkshell that you already think people look up to as a leader, its not really something I think you can just force upon people.


Ultimately I think it depends what the members of your linkshell are like as well. From playing this game a long time, and being a officer a really long time, I really think the biggest factor that keeps a linkshell going is finding people who are as happy to see others get items as themselves and want to see others achieve their goals which helps progress the linkshell. Obviously I dont know anything about your linkshell, but perhaps you need to trim the fat so to speak if you think there are current members who are wearing you out.

[FailureMidgard]

What kind of events are you doing?

Salvage and Limbus can be managed by individual groups within the LS, and do NOT need to be LS events.

Dynamis can, in all likelihood, be cut completely or scaled back if your LS has been doing it long enough. If people want to farm armor, have them organize a run. If someone wants a relic, that's not your responsibility.

Sky and Sea, if anyone needs the drops can be a change of pace... but I wouldn't make it a regular thing. People getting lost and dying in Ru'Hmet kills a run. Farming pop items is also incredibly slow paced and really boring. But that too, can also be done with a small group. If someone wants a Byakko's Haidate or something - they should be taking the initiative to farm Diorites and such.

If you camp Fafnir, stop.

Personally, I'd set one day aside for Abyssea NMs (required event), one day aside for a second event (likely Einherjar if demand is still there, otherwise just alternate Einherjar, random pop NMs people may want, Dynamis, sky, sea, extra Abyssea day, WoE, whatever)... and maybe a third day for Abyssea XP w/ key item farming... beyond that - free time for people to set up their own shit, work on magians, level jobs, afk in mog house, w/e...

I disagree with the vast majority of this post. I do agree with delegation being the most important thing, however. No idea what your LS does, but if you do shit 7 days a week, cutting back to 3 days a week is just going to make you lose members, IMO. Cutting back to 5-6 is probably healthy, however. If you currently do 3 events a week already, then /shrug.

Figure out what your members want from the shell though, and be realistic. If you camp Faf, don't stop because people on BG say it, stop only if the members of the shell want to stop. Same thing goes for Dyna, etc, etc. There is a balance to be found between free time and events though. Too many events can be bad. Too much freetime can definitely be bad (and is probably the #1 reason for shells falling apart and losing members). You need to figure out with your members how busy of a shell they want it to be.

[Colenzo]

Yeah, coming from a guy thats taking attendance and directing events and telling people what to do constantly; delegating is whats going to help you yourself be happier with the game in the long run. I am in the process of doing this, and want to get this squared away before next week.

[Dooom]

Another factor really here to consider is, will your members of the linkshell accept the person you delegate to put in charge? From my experiences, people will just not listen to anyone. Its alot of work and takes a good amount of time, before people will recognize someone as a leader. Just because you give someone a title, doesnt mean people will listen to them. So it depends too if you have people in your linkshell that you already think people look up to as a leader, its not really something I think you can just force upon people.

Lots of good stuff in this thread, but I wanna give special mention to this. I've been in shells before where someone has taken the respect of the LS for granted just because they had a pearlsack, but in truth most members thought they were a bloody idiot and would not listen to their (admittedly, often terrible) orders. If there is someone in your LS who members seem to look to when they have questions, or is often willing to lend a hand, or something along those lines, then they may make a better leader than someone who isn't so well respected even if they may initially seem a more suitable choice.

Perhaps a change of focus might help, too? I know efficiency is king to most here on BG, but sometimes people just want fun even if it means getting less drops or being a bit slower or whatever. Swap jobs around or something, let people (and yourself) use their hobby jobs for a small change if it won't sabotage the event, and just generally try and find some fun in old events, even if it just means being stupid on Vent.

[CoronA1979]

It should be noted that the general activity of the game itself is dropping off, IMO.

Look around these forums and it's very easy to see. Take for example the Cross Server section here on BG. The Background check forum used to have new topics/posts (in masses) daily. Instead you now see the "LS looking for Members" thread having posts near daily. I speak from experience when I tell you it's pretty hard to recruit new members these days no matter how successful your group is. Add to that the fact you may have members/leaders who are getting burnt out and it equals out to a frustrating situation.

As for myself... I found myself in your (the OP) shoes somewhat and quitting was just the way to go. I've since come back many months later and remade the LS I once ran and for the most part is quite successful. However, attendance as I mentioned previously still is an issue.

I just think it boils down to the game coming to an end. Well, perhaps not an end but it is most certainly winding down and people are moving on to greener pastures so to say. I can see only a handful of servers left w/ XI in the coming months, especially after XIV's release. Lord knows the players/economy are both suffering horrendously right now all across the board.

[Nitecon]

I've recently had to re-jig our schedule to accomodate the new events from the update.

I can totally understand how the OP and many others feel, and agree to a lot of what has already been said.

Currently our event schedule is as follows:

Monday: Einherjar + Limbus
Tuesday: Abyssea
Wednesday: Free (Most ppl go dynamis with a sister shell)
Thursday: Einherjar + Walk of Echoes
Friday: Abyssea
Saturday: Free (dynamis)
Sunday: Random event - KS99 / Sea / SCNM / ZNM / etc

This type of schedule has worked for us for a long time now, we recently dropped 1 run of limbus to accomodate Walk of Echoes, and moved Sea to the Sunday random event slot to accomodate Abyssea.

In terms of running the LS, well, I've probably been leading for about 3+years now. Not sure how, but I am still motivated to a certain extent. I'm slowly trying to get more assistance and delegate more work.

I am UK based, running an NA LS, events start at midnight for me, but don't tend to run beyond 2am except dynamis. I do work 9-5 weekdays but my work time is flexible and I can turn up at 10am, as long as I do my contracted hours each week. So I am incredibly lucky in that sense.

However, burn out is a real issue, and some days I just feel uninspired and unmotivated. A lot of it is to do with members needing constant direction and orders, which really irks me.

Not really sure how I've lasted this long, but we are a solid LS, and there is still a core group of around 10-15 players that have been in the same LS for about 5 years. I think never having camped kings or any HNMs has greatly benefited this LS in it's cohesion and there is minimal drama associated with us.

[Celebrindor]

I'm not a sack/shellholder. I'm just a member. Expect more out of your members. Let those whom you trust know that their opinion is welcome, but of course don't let them step over the line of the official leaders. If you're still leading people thru zones to events THEY want, have your members take some ownership of things and see who is really there to earn their keep and who is there to mooch.

Of course there are limitations to this, and all the busywork is still there for the leadership, but not having to corral people or talk strategy every single time saves a lot of headache. Post what you want to do in regards to these things on your shell's site, and expect members to be up to date on it.

Going to do Abyssea NMs? Post the map of the mobs/NMs on your site, and tell members you're not holding hands to the mob.

New members doing Odin? Have a strat posted and expect members to review it prior to the event.

Have a member you trust pull a limbus zone they are familiar with. Reward members who farm up T3 VNMs outside of events time. Do the same with T3 ZNMs, SCNM sets.

Of course your sacks need to take the major role in major events, alliance forming, loot, attendance....the sort of things that you have leadership for. But putting some onus on your membership also means they are more involved/paying attention and not just sheep. And I speak from experience on this...I have my sheep moments without a doubt. But I do believe that if the members feel they have a role more than just a job in your shell it will be less work at the events because everyone's head is out of their asses.

[Chen]

it's more about members i think

too many stupid sheep members who just sit in silence at Ls gatherings, rather than gear their regular job, suggest a job etc. pullers who need to be told to pull. making an alliance for dynamis and people need to be told how to make a standard whm/brd/ddx3(4/dnc) PT

nothing about running a LS is hard, i done it for 2 years very effectively. the one thing that is frustrating is when members don't show initiative

it's then that frustration which leads to the "burn out"

in our LS atm (which is suffering abit from lv.80letsnotattend) all our dynamis leader does in take attendance/comments/points
all the ein leader does is post alliance(usually copy/paste from last week) and bids for odin etc, that's how it should be

[Ayn]

Best piece of advice EVER. This goes along with the other kings as well.

Dant, if you keep spreading blasphemy like this, I swear to god I'm not going to send you back to the Aery: I'm going to send you into the mines with the Galka.

Moving along, I'll echo the sentiments of what a lot of people said: Take a day or two (I'm gonna strongly suggest two or more) off per week. You WILL have those people that will resist this or whine. You'll also have people that complain "There's nothing to do in game" (which is bullshit, there's a lot to do, and a lot of people in shell that need help).

On the delegate thing... you don't necessarily have to delegate to more people, but as a few already said, make sure it's delegated to reliable people (Neosutra made a good point about being careful about who you give power to / giving power to way too many). Often, people will say they want leadership but suck at it, as well as have no idea how draining it is.

nothing about running a LS is hard, i done it for 2 years very effectively. the one thing that is frustrating is when members don't show initiative

Regardless of "It's a game lol" running an LS is about managing people. Hell, I did middle management for short stint/done other supervisory things and the skills are damn near parallel. It's a challenge if you don't have good people or the aforementioned sheep ones.

[Chen]

well, i mean, doing a leaders job is easy, being successful is down to how good your sheep err.. members are.

skills, initiative, drama levels etc

[Meat]

Best piece of advice EVER. This goes along with the other kings as well.

That's stupid, there's 0 burnout with kings. assuming you're not an idiot and bot kings allots time for people to watch tv, do homework, clean their house no, go afk for 3-6hrs, go to the grocery store and whatever needs to be done.

Why would u get burned out not playing?

[Koyangi]

No wonder you werent on yesterday when I did an EXP-a-thon in Abyssea for 7 hours