FFXIV – UI Wish List for Heavensward

With the Final Fantasy XIV expansion Heavensward coming soon (June 23), I thought I would put together a list of all the nagging UI issues that I hope are addressed in 3.0. It’s a testament to how good the game already is that I have trouble coming up with any significant gameplay issues to complain about-only these nitpicky UI faults.

(Knowing how good Square Enix is at patch notes, I could probably go somewhere and find a detailed list of exactly what’s going to be in Heavensward, but let’s just assume there’s still some doubt about the feature set. And also that I haven’t seen much of anything about Heavensward except what I’ve seen in FC chat and that benchmark.)

Naturally I have the same wish that everyone who plays FFXIV has: I wish I didn’t have to put away my Chocobo to queue in the Duty Finder. But I’m guessing that if they haven’t fixed this by now, they never will.

I so desperately want to be able to turn off the Okay/Cancel dialogs that pop up all the time. Only the ones that prevent you from destroying important gear should remain. I’m thinking in particular of the ones that come up when you teleport.

I wish there was a key I could press to begin Synthesis. Right now I always have to grab the mouse to click the button.

Of course I want more inventory space, or at least more armoury space. I have purchased (ie. rented) 2 extra retainers and I still find myself juggling all of the stuff I keep, and I only have 9 of the 20 classes at 50. Barring that, I would love to be able to mail gear to an alt. (I realize that would undermine Square’s retainer revenue stream, but I can dream.)

On a related note, which would help alleviate the above issue, I would love to be able to access retainer inventories with fewer mouse clicks. It’s bad enough opening one, but switching between one and another is a chore, and there is a lot of waiting. Showing all of the retainer inventories at once would be a Godsend.

Being able to craft with materials stored with your retainers would be a really, really nice improvement for crafters. That way you wouldn’t have to keep moving things from your retainer to your inventory and vice versa all the time. It would also solve the issue of having to switch between retainers a lot.

Showing the number of items in your retainers’ inventory in crafting dialogs would be very helpful, too.

I also wish the game didn’t close the crafting window when you start talking to a retainer.

Speaking of retainers, it would be really nice if they could come to you instead of me always having to go to them. I mean, one of mine is a 50 Archer so there’s no reason she can’t meet me out in the field or in a dungeon somewhere. :)

Somewhat related to retainers and inventories, I wish there were better searching tools to find gear. Or maybe a way to save different sorting presets.

I would love to have a key to toggle nameplates on and off. Sometimes I want to temporarily disable player nameplates in raids (when stacking) or in Mor Dhona (for obvious reasons). As far as I can tell, there is no way to macro this yet.

And speaking of nameplates, it always surprises me that there is no way to change the nameplate color of members of your Free Company.

I would also love to have a key to toggle between mouse/keyboard controls and the controller. I always have to open the UI panel and click the toggle. (I often use the controller for gathering or fishing.)

I wish there was a way to set the opacity of UI panels, such as the party list or the threat list.

In need/greed dialogs, it would be nice if it took into account your retainer inventories, too. Usually it won’t let you roll on a unique item if you already have it, but if you’ve moved that item to your retainer, it doesn’t know you already have it. I can’t remember all the gear I’ve gotten so I rely on the game to tell me whether I should roll on something or not. (I don’t want to hinder anyone else’s chances of getting something I already have.) (And I sure can’t keep everything I get in my inventory.)

Especially during cut scenes with voiceovers, I wish I didn’t have to keep clicking to continue after every paragraph of dialog. Sometimes I just want to sit back and watch. (A great example would be the finale cut scenes at the end of the 2.5 Main Scenario.) If there’s an option for this, I haven’t seen it.

Camera controls, camera controls, and more camera controls. I know some people don’t like it, but I love moving the camera to the left or right, a la ESO, so that your avatar’s head isn’t in the exact center of the screen. Moving up and down would also be nice so that you could have your avatar fill the screen from top to bottom. Mainly this would be for screenshots but I would probably use it in combat, too.

And finally, this is a wish I have for every MMO: I’d love to be able to chart the history of how all of my stats have changed over time. I’ve taken to documenting my class levels in a spreadsheet so I can look back and see how long it’s taken me to reach milestones and so forth. It would be nice if the game did that for me, or at least allowed me to export data that I could then import into my own spreadsheet. It would be cool to look at how my Accuracy stat has grown over time (by class), for example. It’s totally worthless to the game, but statistics are cool.