How much is too much?

I'm disabled and i don't work. I spent most of my days playing FF14 until recently when i began to consider i might be playing too much.

So i'm asking, how many hours do you play a week? Is that too much?

I won't get into personals, but honestly it comes down to the individual and his/her responsibilities. If you're taking care of your daily obligations and have enough time to engage in something you enjoy, that's for you to judge. However, if those daily things are being neglected in favor to engage in entertainment, then it may be too much and/or you may need to re-evaluate your priority (e.g. not spending time with kids and/or significant other, managing resources, etc).

Everyone has a different situation, so this isn't something that can be answered in terms of "x hours per week"

I'd say it is too much when it begins to negatively/severely affect your life.

If the amount of hours your playing is interfering with stuff you should be doing then your playing too much.

Edit: 3 answers posted at the same time, more or less saying the same thing. I think you have your answer.

I understand you are saying there are other things than gaming to life.

However i am still curious about how many hour per week other people play.

Probably about 30 hours then.

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Originally Posted by Train88

I'm disabled and i don't work. I spent most of my days playing FF14 until recently when i began to consider i might be playing too much.

So i'm asking, how many hours do you play a week? Is that too much?

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After the game got out of beta, I was on sick leave and that gave me plenty of time to play the game. During that time I played around 19 hours a day, and it was a great time especially during raid later on. Now that I am back working and got burned out a little bit, I maybe play around 14 hrs a week if even. Most of the time I find something better to do. I wouldn't feel bad if you are enjoying the game and don't have a job due to being disabled. I would also ignore people that tell you to get a life/job etc, because it don't matter what they think or trying to judge you about.

If you're just worried about putting a high number of hours into the game, I don't see where that's a problem. Everyone has a different situation and set of responsibilities so if you have that many free hours and are sitting around bored, do whatever to keep yourself entertained. If you still feel bad about it you could divide that time up with another hobby or two on top of ffxiv.

If you're worried because you find yourself skipping out on family or friends to play the game, procrastinating on chores/errands, or prioritizing the cash shop or other extras over a need, that's when it becomes a problem. If it's putting you in uncomfortable situations because you spent time playing that should have specifically been spent elsewhere.

I spend about 15 to 20 hours, sometimes more if there's something in game that I'm really excited about, less if I'm busy or can't make it online for some reason. Just went through a bad storm so haven't been online yet this week.

I play probably 15-20 hours a week. Sometimes less.

Always means there is something to do when I log in and I don't particularly want to burn out again.

Depends if I have work.

If I have work maybe 12pm until 12am.
If I have no work I play from 12pm-1pm until 6am.

Soooo I'd say I roughly play over 121 hours a week if my friend or family don't want to go out or w/e.

This is usually without any breaks in between play throughs. I'm currently 61days, 7 hours into /playtime after about 6-7months of actually playing the game.

https://media3.giphy.com/media/degvWGKRNlMoE/200_s.gif

I am close to always online to help guildies as most work I do is from home and is very flexible. But the time I play is likely about 6 hours per day on weekdays and a little bit less on weekend as I often have other things then.

Wife, kids, work...all interfere with my precious gaming time. I get about 15-20 per week in. That number could go down. If I had nothing else to do it could easily be 30-40 as long as it still felt fun.

I've often wondered what I would do if something happened to me and I was bedridden for weeks/months on end and honestly that time would be spent in FFXIV. Wouldn't worry about it at all OP. I would worry more if you were playing a game that had zero social interaction. At that point you would be a hermit.

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Originally Posted by Train88

I'm disabled and i don't work. I spent most of my days playing FF14 until recently when i began to consider i might be playing too much.

So i'm asking, how many hours do you play a week? Is that too much?

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I play at least 1-2 hours a day as of now. About 5 months ago I'd play to about 6-8 hours a day since I was unemployed (right now I'm a student and unemployed). Playing the game as long as I was would be considered too much depending on my lifestyle, since I wasn't doing anything when I had the ability to do so, but I had free time to do things, only that I chose to play FFXIV for those periods. If you feel as if your playing too much then try taking a break for about 2 days each, or one day if you want. Play for less time, perhaps an hour or so.

Anyways the only reason I can assume your playing too much is if you have an MMO addiction, it wouldn't be strange or anything, just means you like the game. If its something along the lines of doing mostly nothing in 14 being bored then it could be burn out or a natural response to grinding. Lots of reasons to feel that way honestly. Why is it bothering you now if you don't mind me asking?

Kinda lost my interest so its like 5-10hrs a week now at best. When I was super into the game, once I got off work/had a day off would be like 40+ a week

Well don't know but I've been playing since January 7 of 2015 and only gotten like 104 days in playtime soooo

I live in Eorzea and only log into real life as i need to.

I play like 12+ hours a day

I'll be honest now. I have this conspiracy theory.

I was trying very hard to gear my healer in Weeping City. Got 1 or 2 at first then i tried at least a dozen full run and not one single piece of healing even dropped. Yesterday, i logged on, tried again, same and logged off. Didn't touch it for the rest of the day. I was going to do the same today, thing is after logging maybe 1 hour yesterday, i ran weeping city today and 3 healing parts dropped. Got 2 3rd one i had.

Now i do fortune telling and i have a unique perspective on coincidences. Also, i just so happen to have a college degree in computer programming and i know just how random computers really are.

Now i'm trying to determine what cap there could be in hours so i don't go over it.

I know it's crazy. Crazy is what gets me through the day sometimes.

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Originally Posted by Train88

I'm disabled and i don't work. I spent most of my days playing FF14 until recently when i began to consider i might be playing too much.

So i'm asking, how many hours do you play a week? Is that too much?

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It's hard for me to say to be honest. I leave the game running 24/7 usually for reasons I need not go into. I'm in the same situation, disabled & can't work but due to fatigue problems I do have "limits" that are out of my control.

That said, I probably play 3-4hrs a day (usually at night) & a bit longer on the weekend. However, it can vary considerably & if I get into the zone when hunting or something I have done 12hrs+ in one go (meds help). xD Other times I've gone months with maybe less than 30min a day. I think one week I did less than 30 min!

I work 5 days a week, play 5 or so hours a day during the week, weekends usually I am either messing around on other games, doing yard/house work, or cleaning up after animals. So my playtime is something like 20-25 hours a week, if that is any kind of gauge.

As long as your "normal" life isn't affected, all is good.

since you are interested in knowing how many hours other players spend on the game. My weekly average is 30 hours.

Too much is when you're neglecting other areas of your life to play the game. That amount of time varies with the person and their situation.

However, heavy MMO play got me through the most soul-, time-, and money-sucking career move of my life until I got up the guts to walk out. I still play enough to raid, cap tomes, etc, but I did scale back and start art and gardening again.

I work 36-42hrs a week, and still play.. 6 to 12 hrs a day....So at the end of the day it up to what you Injoy doing in your free time. Me, playing FFXIV.

6 to 7 hours a week, lately. The queue time for Summoner (The job I really want to play) is often half an hour, the dungeons take anywhere from 30-45 minutes, and after that, I have no interest in queue'ing again, the benefit of the dungeon being twice as long because of queue times is uninteresting to me. That 6-7 hours a week is dwindling to getting on, and getting back off out of dread.

Out of curiosity how can you play but not work? If you can sit and concentrate like that there's nothing stopping you getting a desk based job. You might find your confidence gets a boost from working and meeting people.

I think honestly if you've asked the question you already know the answer.

I think I play ~50 hours a week in online time, but I'm also online when I have work to do and just run ffxiv in the backgroud. Since some weeks i got nothing to do at all and some I have tons of things to do, I can't really say how much I actually play, but probably 30 hours at least.

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Originally Posted by Aivi_lo

Out of curiosity how can you play but not work? If you can sit and concentrate like that there's nothing stopping you getting a desk based job. You might find your confidence gets a boost from working and meeting people.

I think honestly if you've asked the question you already know the answer.

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I have chronical dissagrements with authority.

just around 5-10 hours a week, depending on how motivated I am on weekend mornings (when my gf is still asleep), during work days I only log for a trial and retainers and airships.

I play games a shameful amount. Years of my life are spent in front of a computer but now I also work in the industry.

I get work done, pay my bills, socialize to what little extent I can since moving into the middle of a desert and I game.

As a wise man once said "Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted"

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Originally Posted by Jandor

I play probably 15-20 hours a week. Sometimes less.

Always means there is something to do when I log in and I don't particularly want to burn out again.

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Good advice. I tend to skip a day or two during the week, and play another game on other occasions to break things up. Definitely prevents burnout. But then there are times when I will 'binge' and play maybe 8-12 hours a day if I am off work sick or something.

According to the game, I've played 155 days, 12 hours, 29 minutes since starting sometime near the very end of August last year. Granted, I idle a lot.

When is time spent gaming too much? When it begins to interfere with your real life responsibilities and obligations. This is true for any hobby or interest that people spend their free time on. This will also be vastly different for each person. Me personally it varies tremendously....Some weeks I will game a lot (not always ffxiv - i play lots of games) and some weeks I may not game much at all. I have other hobbies and interests outside of gaming that I like to invest time in. The key is making sure responsibilities in life come first. If your marriage is suffering because you sit on games all day, that is an example of where you are gaming too much. If you are failing to be the father or mother you should be in your children's lives because you're investing your time in gaming then you are gaming too much. If you are skimping on your work or job, cutting corners, or being sloppy so you can invest more time into gaming, this is another example of where youre gaming too much. Moderation in all things is a great rule to live by. Work before Play.


Given everyones lives are so vastly different, you can never take what anyone answers here and apply it to your own life. We all live VERY different live and have vastly different responsibilities.

If your having dreams about FF14 or jerking it to NPCs.... you might want to take a small break.

I would estimate that I play between 3-5 hours a day, so roughly 35 hours a week. Sometimes I'll skip a day or log on and just rush through my dailies if I have plans to spend time with my friends/boyfriend (which is usually once a week or so). I used to play much more, spending the better part of my time on FFXIV, but after burning out and quitting my static I play much more casually.

The answer here is clearly 5.

I thought the answer was 42.

I would estimate that I have averaged around 40 hours per week. I have around 550-600 days of playtime since 1.0.

I have a full time job, a house and a boyfriend before someone tells me to get a life.