Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail Patch Notes - Questing Quality Of Life Improvements

Yesterday Creative Studio III published the preliminary patch notes for Dawntrail on The Lodestone. I thought I would try to cover the patch notes similar to what I have done for the last few EVE Online expansions. I have to put in similar because I do have a real life job and CCP drops their patch notes on Fridays so I have the weekend to work on them.

Six days to Dawntrail's launch

This third post in the series will cover information about several quality of life changes made to doing quests. Except where noted, these changes are game wide, not just found in the new Dawntrail content. Also, any text or instructions in italics are copied directly from the patch notes.

Hiding the display of nearby player characters when interacting with quest-related NPCs or objects. - I believe a much requested feature very handy both at an expansion launch as well as for those occasions someone decides to sit on a quest giver with their whale mount. The ability is limited to NPCs or objects with a quest icon. Also not all quests will have the ability. Finally, the feature will not hide players targeted or force targeted.

Adjust this setting via the Character Configuration menu by selecting Control Settings followed by the General tab, then checking or unchecking the options under "Quest Progression Settings."

• Hide nearby players when close to quest NPCs Enabling this option will temporarily hide nearby players when you approach NPCs or objects with a quest icon.
• Hide nearby players when interacting with quest NPCs Enabling this option will temporarily hide nearby players when you interact with NPCs or objects with a quest icon.

An additional option is available to also hide party members.

Quest objectives that require following an NPC will now utilize visual indicators to help players avoid detection. - If a player is in danger of detection during these quests, a character will have a yellow and black circle marker display both immediately around the character and in a wider area. I'm guessing the yellow and black signifies police crime scene warning tape.

Players can now select icons in the Duty List to carry out quest objectives such as using emotes or opening the Crafting Log. - This is the only feature that applies specifically to Dawntrail.

The patch notes do indicate the developers will go back to the previous expansions and add the feature .

Players may now adjust text auto-advance settings to apply only to voiced dialogue. - All I can say is I've wanted this for a long time. The only reason I don't use text auto-advance is due to not wanting to miss non-voice acted dialog.

To help alleviate issues with misinputs when completing quest objectives that require entering phrases with the chat mode in Say, certain half-width and full-width characters will now be treated as the same character when typing. - This feature will help with the pre-Dawntrail content until selecting icons is implemented.

The categorization of certain allied society quests has been adjusted. - Some quests are seeing their description change from Tribal Quests to Allied Society Quests. Over the years the terminology for these quests has changed depending on the relationship between what originally were labeled "beast tribes" and the cities of Eorzea has changed.

And finally, because I don't think a better place for the item exists, limited jobs are ineligible for certain quest battles. The battles were not listed in the preliminary patch notes.