New Final Fantasy XIV Update Brings Massive Quality of Life Changes

The latest patch for the online Final Fantasy XIV game brings with it many highly anticipated changes, as well as key adjustments to overall improve the quality of the MMO. With more missions to take part in, additional PvP updates, and the return of the notorious villain Kefka on the horizon - If you haven't already gotten into the MMORPG, now might be the time to consider it.

The Community Team Manager took to the Final Fantasy Blog to give a little insight into what's coming soon. Though patch 4.2 isn't live yet, the notes are already extensive with even more planned when it actually drops. A ton of UI tweaks have been highlighted as well, which - that cursor issue, not sad to see that fixed!

According to the blog post:

In the two most recent Letter from the Producer LIVE streams, Yoshida announced some great quality of life adjustments coming such as the addition of Chocobo Saddlebags, the increase in maximum stack from 99 to 999, the new Duty Recorder feature that will allow replay of battle content and more!

Beyond the new content and inventory adjustments, we'll also see some excellent additions and adjustments made to the User Interface. Let's take a look at what's new for Patch 4.2.

Assigning Functions to Mouse Wheel Up / Down
You will be able to assign functions to the mouse wheel other than zooming in and out with the camera. You will also be able to assign functions to Shift + Up / Down, Ctrl + Up / Down, etc.

There are 10 types of actions that can be assigned. By default, the mouse wheel will still zoom in and out with the camera, but give these other settings a try to see how you like it!

Resizing the Speech Window
Up until Patch 3.5, we purposefully made it so that you couldn't do this, as we were considering how it looks with cutscenes. However, due to some… mishaps… this became possible in 4.0! We removed the bug… errr, feature in Patch 4.1, but it will make its glorious return in Patch 4.2!

This feature is separate from the standard UI size setting configurations. In order to adjust the talk window size individually, you'll need to use your mouse to select and scale the window.

Gamepad users can do this by entering mouse mode on your gamepad by holding down L2 + R3. However, unlike 4.0, the setting will be retained even if you log in and out.

Map Cursor Adherence
When you move the map cursor with your gamepad, it will stick to whatever aetheryte it's closest to! It'll be easier to target the aetheryte for teleports–nice!

Unfortunately it's a bit hard to show how this feature will work with an image… but I'm told this should be very convenient for gamepad users!

Triple Triad NPC Overhead Icon Change
Adjustments will be made to the Triple Triad icons that are displayed above NPCs that you can challenge based on the player's standing with that NPC. Players will be able to differentiate between NPCs who have been beaten, those that have not yet been challenged, and those who have been beaten but the player has not yet won their respective cards.

Finally, no more missed cards!

Item Level Display for Food
In order to make the effects of food easier to understand, the item level of the food will now be displayed. The order displayed on the Market Boards will be by item level, and you'll able to sort by item level to find the foods you're looking for.

This will be the first major patch of 2018, so I hope you're all looking forward to it as much as we are!