Never Seeing It All

I've read a number of posts on the CoH forums remarking that the Mission Architect system is giving their obsessive completionist selves fits of existential crisis.

Apparently, the infinite potential for content has sledgehammered them with the realization that they are never going to be able to experience it all the content, get all the badges, and what not, on one uber-perfect character.

On the one hand, I welcome this and am quite comfortable at the thought.

In City of Heroes, I have never missed the insanely tedious-to-obtain badges that require camping overnight in a farm mission or bathing in lava with some kind of macro on. I'm quite comfortable with a sandbox choice of content, since I had pretty much exhausted existing content and was feeling quite bored with the same-old.

(If I'd really want to be honest about it, I don't think I've seen every last bit of old content. The problem is that many of them are hard to get to/experience/full of tedium, so I refuse to try it / do it again.)

In ATITD, contrary to a number of the hardcore folk and some ill-informed but perhaps obsessive personality newbies, I do not find it necessary to do everything nor do I wish to race to pass Tests with immense levels of grind. I have a goal to, in time, try out all the various subsystems of the game, as well as putter around quietly in a nostalgic social environment. I'm content to patiently wait for good opportunities, because it all ends up in the same place at the end.

In Guild Wars, the demarcation seems quite clear. I'd like to finish the story missions at some point - though I have infinite patience because there's no subscription, I can go back to it any point I like. The dungeons and other things are there to amuse me. There's no way I'm doing some of the more hardcore titles and grindy achievements, period. No existential crisis there either.

Yet I find I face a similar issue with LOTRO.

It's silly of me, but there's this underlying desire to try and do and see all the story solo, with backup crafter alts. Which is, to be honest, patently impossible. Turbine caters to both group and solo players, so there are places where I'll never see the content except in a group, which I'm not willing to cultivate as LOTRO is my secondary backup MMO.

I suppose part of it is the arbitrary small limitations on inventory/storage space and quest log. My bags are filled to the brim, I'm reluctant to throw away a lot of the stuff in there, in the event I might need it later (yet ironically, there is no later, because I don't want to play with my bags filled up.)

I have a horrible packrat tendency. At least in CoX, I can make the inventions and chuck them into bins to be kept. In Guild Wars, I can rationalize that many of the items are worthless if they aren't max level, and will probably drop again (I do still have an inventory problem there.) In ATITD, it's just a matter of how many bricks I want to make to have endless series of chests. (Ah, except I have a plague of beetles problem still.)

I'm tempted to do a massive spring cleaning of my LOTRO main character and sell everything, delete everything on the quest log and start anew.

Logically speaking, it should all re-accumulate.

Emotionally, it is difficult and sparks off a mild existential crisis.

How strange the vagaries of our personalities.