The following is me doing my Dragoon Opener.
As you can see, my way of playing is probably
vastly different to yours. My UI likely also looks entirely different. But ultimately, the
important part is that I can see what I am doing and I am able use it to its maximum effect. I have
been playing this game since the tail end of A Realm Reborn like this. Even playing like this in
single digit FPS situations I was on a laptop.
I have largely kept my Dragoon hotbars unchanged
through the years, doing minor tweaks at best with the changes. Since my layout has seemingly
withstood the test of time for my playstyle, I figured it would be best if I gave out tips
on how you might set up your UI, controls, or other settings. Essentially, a sequel to the
video on screen, with a link in the description and a card in the corner linking to it.
That video was all about me and my setup for the most part. It also remains essentially completely
applicable, with very little changes since then. This video will focus on helping you improve your
settings. We're gonna go through basically every single possible setting in this video. So that
explains the length of it I hope. If it doesn't, well, maybe you need to watch. Because anyone who
knows what settings there are, knows the length matches. Also note that this is being done on the
PC Client version of the game. I do not know what specific options the PS4 and 5 have, but I am on
PC. And over time they will add more options as the game continues. If there's something in the
options I've not gone over, it's probably new!
Before we get into it though,
please rate, comment, subscribe, all that stuff. Support is appreciated. This is
a big one, and I hope it's equally helpful.
Alright, rule 1 for making your setup better: As
the youtube video maker, I am the only correct person. You must copy my setup exactly and if
you don't you are playing the game WRONG!
....wait that's just what
weird Youtube Comments say.
Rule 1: There is no* "wrong" way to play.
With an important asterisk. There's always intentionally not using your whole toolkit or
such, ways that are just blatantly wrong. But when it comes to layout and control scheme,
there is no outright wrong way to play if it works for you. There will be ways that just
don't work for your playstyle and wrong for you, but it isn't inherenrly a bad playstyle.
I'm going to recommend what you should or should not do with certain settings. I'm going
to also joking judge you for some choices here or there. But it is important to remember that
if you are making it work for you without issue, it's not a bad way to do things.
There's also always trying to make your layout ergonomic and better for your hands. Like
using keys around WASD. Or maybe one of those MMO mice. There's a lot of different options there
for you. Experiment with different things and see what works for you. Just make sure you
give it a chance and not just five minutes. Given I hated Gyro Controls in Splatoon 2 but
can play with them in Splatoon 3 says a lot about how exposure is half the battle.
So you could copy me with 1 to =, Shift 1 to =, and Function keys, or do anything else
that fits you. We'll do that in the Keybinds menu. You can assign every individual hotbar slot
a different key if you'd like. Or modifier combos with shift and control and such. You can even
combine modifier combos, though that goes for all keybinds. Make sure while you're here you check
the "Duty Actions" at the bottom. Have those for Stormblood and later if you're still progressing.
You'll need those in main story duties.
Controller players usually have one button
layout they can deal with though you can swap button functions - which comes down
to putting your skills in better spaces on your crossbars. Keyboard players have near
infinite button layouts they can try with how many more possible keys they can press.
But strangely, you can entirely recreate a PS4 controller on the keyboard. The Gamepad Tab allows
for this. I myself have a PS4 controller plugged in at all times. But as someone who may not have
one, you can access the PS4 controller and the Crossbar system. Here you can see me messing
with my Crossbars. This is actually me hitting H for R1 and G and F for Left and Right D-pad.
While we're here, let's continue to look over all of the Keybinds menu. Working backwards we
have the System menu. This holds basically everything that doesn't fall into a specific
catergory, and then some. Confirm, Cancel...
Weirdly, Hotbar cycling is in this menu. Cycling
applies to Hotbar 1, swapping that hotbar to have the same keybinds and abilities of one of your
other hotbars. That's also what those arrows do, and I'll be showing you how to turn those
off like I did. Because oh boy do we want those off. But if you have a use for Hotbar
Cycling, this is where you might apply those keys. You can even specifically key in swaps
to every individual hotbar at the bottom.
Other notable things are mostly weird
namings of things. Target Main Menu means the menu buttons I have in the top right
corner. This is the "Main Menu." Even though you might consider that the title screen.
Toggle UI Display Mode is more easilly named "Toggle UI." Hitting this button will entirely
turn off the UI for cleaner screenshots. Cycle through HUD Components is stuff that is
currently visible on your HUD. But not like... all the buttons? Not sure of the purpose myself.
Target Filters swaps your filtering mode in a very useful way provided you didn't mess
with the settings we'll talk about later. It basically makes all non-NPCs ignored by
mouse clicks. So say you're doing a new story quest and the NPC is crowded by 20 players?
Hold X and click the NPC with no issues! Or change it off of X, your call.
Log Window Zoom means the chatbox. This keybind will basically full screen
the chat box. Overkill unless you're trying to catch up on chats you missed.
Mouse Sonar may be extremely useful for people who constantly lose track of their mouse... if a
bit flashy overkill. As you can see, it flashes a giant circle where your mouse cursor is that then
closes in on it. I'm not a fan of how bright the flash is, but it might be good for you.
Toggle Color Filtering Settings is Color Blind Mode which we'll go over later
too. It toggles it on and off.
General Duty Key should be called "the level
sync button." FATEs all in the overworld make you level sync when you out level them.
This is your way to simply... keybind it.
Scenario Guide keys are for the Scenario
Guide in the top left if unmoved. This will show you on the map right where to
find your next Main Scenario Quest is, or the special sidequest usually Job Quests when
available. You could also just click them... Similarly to Display Subcommands back at the
top. That just means the right click function.
The rest of the System buttons are essentially
all self explanitory I would say. Yeah, I am actually trying to give you some benefit of
the doubt and not make this video 3 hours long. But if there's something I do skip that you
want answered, ask in the comments or check for a pinned comment. Other stuff will be
more gone over later when appropriate.
Chat tab has all the chat based commands and
actions. "Readying" the log means to begin typing in it. As long as you have Direct Chat
off which keep Direct Chat off unless you're a controller player if you want to keep sane
these are your main ways of typing in chat.
Reply Temporarily is for quickly replying to
people who send /tells or whispers to you. It will automatically change your chat channel
to a reply to that person for the duration of that text input. You can even hit it up to
15 times to reply to any of the last fifteen people who messaged you. Why fifteen? Who knows.
It will cycle back to the first person after the fifteenth in line. Sorry I can't show this, but
I try to make it a point to avoid "naming and shaming" even if I am not shaming any of the
people in my /tells. Try it for yourself in the meantime, maybe get a friend to be a demo.
All the other Temporarily Switch options are the exact same, just with every other chat option.
Starting from Reply - Forward and Back and then Forward and Back the options are changing to a
semi-permanent default swap to that chat channel. You can keep swapping channels as much as you
want - including with the slash commands. But your chat will default to this channel until
you log off or change the default again.
The shortcuts tab is where just about every
single menu shortcut is. If there is a menu, there is probably a shortcut to it in here.
Why isn't the shortcut to HUD Layout in here? Because it's technically not a menu, it's a
mode. The only one I'll mention though is that there is an "Alarm" menu. Check it out.
Targeting is all about... well... targeting things. These are all obvious in their use just
about, aside from maybe Focus Target. Focus Target puts a special arrow over said target and will
dedciate an entire UI element to them. This is for keeping track of any extra target. Maybe you
want to better watch a specific tank in a duty, or there's two boss targets and you want
to be able to see both HP bars at once.
If you don't want to just right click the player
or target, these keys will let you select our focus target and swap to them as needed.
Targeting modes is a deeper topic that involves Character Configuration. We'll go through it
all there, and I'll call back to keybinds for these existing. Otherwise the rest of this
is self-explanitory as you play the game.
Movement is probably the most important of all
these menus aside from Hotbar and is where other settings will be very, very important.
Steer means you will walk forward and your camera controls your turning and
what "forward" is. This is true regardless of what your other settings are.
Move forward and back and then forward and back and then go forward and back are obvious...
almost. Moving back can be walking backwards. Moving left and right can be turning left and
right... Strafing is luckily consistent. These will depend on your movement mode, and so we'll
come back to these with that discussion.
The next notable keybind is Locking
Camera.... this is just awful. The Lock-on is genuinely a punishment and has
no benefits. You can't even walk into the target... and some attacks hit everywhere
EXCEPT the target circle. You literally are at a disadvantage to use it. Turn it off now.
Flip Camera will flip the camera to look behind you for as long as you hold the button. This
does not change which direction is forward through. It is purely for quick checking behind
you while you run. Which Auto Run can also do.
Face Camera is a bit of a misnomer. What it means
is your character will turn their head to face the camera, so long as it isn't right behind
them and would require them to be an owl.
Idling camera is a less boring way of going
afk away from keyboard. The idle camera will remove all UI and randomly follow any and all
targetable objects, and sometimes just randomly point to the sky. It's a more dynamic afk, kind
of like a screen saver. You could also just use the Auto-Translation to use /idlingcamera.
No point in having a keybind for it.
Same for the /gpose function. Just type
it, no real point in a keybind for it. It's a picture mode. Unless you're trying
to capture very specific action shots, a keybind isn't going to help. These
two also weren't movement... but ok.
But that covers the main majority of Keybinds that
are extra notable or confusing to understand. But a couple of these relate to other settings,
so we should get right into covering those. I'm going to start with System settings since
a lot of this gets technical and probably not worth going deep into beyond saying "it
improves graphics versus performance."
Display Settings are the settings that are
most important. Main Display is what screen your game will hook onto when you boot it up.
I have two monitors, so both are options.
Screen mode is self explanitory mostly. Windowed
mode you probably won't use without doing some massive multitasking. Trying to do Island
Sanctuary Spreadsheets without needing to alt-tab or such. Typically Borderless Windowed is
the best call, as this will full screen the game without actually full screening it. Alt Tabbing
in Borderless won't cause that weird hitching that happens with fullscreen games.
It comes without the benefits of Full Screen though. That is, being able to adjust your
resolution. Borderless Windowed will always match the resolution and refresh rate of the monitor.
Full Screen actually lets you adjust those. Resolution is basically the "size" of the game
in a way. How many pixels will be put on screen, both in terms of height and width. The bigger
your resolution, the more you can see.
The 60Hz, 85Hz, et cetera, is the refresh rate
you are running at. Or, what the max framerate you're running at is. 60Hz is 60 Frames Per
Second, or how many times the game is drawn on screen per second. The higher your FPS, the
more smooth the game will run. Prioritize a smooth Frame Rate over pure numbers though. The
ideal minimum is a smooth 60 FPS. But you'll be constantly seeing my Framertate hovering
at 144, since this monitor is 144 Hertz.
High Resolution UI settings and Default UI
Size are things you want to touch only BEFORE you start messing with your UI. All UI can be
scaled to as small as 60% of their base size, to 200% of their base size. High Resolution
UI settings is for making your UI bigger as a default. 100% size base size will be increased
by whichever modifier you use. So the WQHD option would double the size of all UI elements
before the 60% to 200% scaling is applied.
If you start playing and everything
is too small, start here.
Default Size is that 60% to 200% scaling
I mentioned. Changing Default Size will change what all new UI elements will start
at. Instead of starting at a normal size, you might want all defaults to be super huge
to get in your way so you know "this is new, figure out how you want it." And Apply All...
applies that value to all UI elements. Again, do not touch this unless you are ready to
go on a massive UI adjustment binge.
Gamma correction is something basically
every game makes you do these days. Adjust how bright the game is versus your screen
brightness. If the game is too dark for you, up the gamma to see a little better. Unique to
here though is Character Lightning. Just want to be able to see your character or any character
- better? Up the Character Brightness.
And finally we have a second Frame Rate setting.
This is your FPS cap. There's varying opinions on why you should or shouldn't cap your FPS. I
cap mine to 144 for stability and saving my PC the effort. Others will argue you should leave
your FPS uncapped unless you see screen tearing which if you don't even know what that means
just says you might not even notice it.
Personally, I would say cap it at whatever your
refresh rate is. So for me that is the 144 I'll always have. There isn't really any reason to cap
it lower than that unless your system is really struggling. Back in the day my laptop would drop
to as low as single digits as I mentioned. So I capped my framerate to 30 FPS at a 1/2 refresh
rate on 60hz. In ideal situations I could actually get that high... but rarely. 1/4 and a
15 FPS lock would have been more consistent.
Limiting FPS when afk or when the game
is not in focus is for saving your PC the energy of rendering the game fully when
you aren't actively playing. Again, something for helping your PC run better even a little.
Alt tabbing to change music? There you go.
Next button! Sound settings doesn't have
a lot to go over. Play music when mounted will turn on or off mount music. If
you're getting into a new expansion, its recommended to turn this off so
you can hear the new zone themes! Similarly for keeping on Normal
Battle Music. New expansions have new battle tracks. If you have it off,
you won't be getting battle music.
Enabling city-state BGM in residential areas
will change the music of each housing area to the city they are associated with
instead of the normal housing music. There's a basic housing track,
but if you prefer the city theme, just leave and come back and the music will
switch over. Or enter a house and exit.
Play system sounds while waiting
for Duty Finder is for when your duty pops. There's a ticking that occurs
every second but only if you have this on. That way if you miss the chime, there
is still a sound popping at you.
Listening position is where your sound
is "coming from" so to say. The lower the number, the closer it will be to your
camera's position than your character. Sounds further away from your camera's
position will be quieter, while those closer to your camera will be louder. Or
vice versa depending on how you set it. Do you want to hear what your character would hear
most, or a more surrounding area soundscape?
The volume sliders are basically all
self explanitory, but I will say that Ambient sounds just covers stuff like
crickets chirping or the wind blowing. And Performance is the special Bard action of
playing instruments. If some guy is failing to play Darude Sandstorm in the Aetheryte
plaza, you can mute them quickly here, or with the keybind for it.
Performance also has its own settings for keybinds and octaves and
such. Pretty self explanitory stuff in there... Well. If you know music. I don't!
Further down we also have the Dualshock settings. These controllers come with built in speakers that
you can have sounds come out of. This could be a second way to make sure you're hearing your
Duty Finder sounds. I keep it off though.
Equalizer is basically... Do you know those
memes that like, explode your ear because their volumes go super loud and distorted?
Usually those are "base boosted." To an extreme degree. These will be more a reasonable
EQ setting. Unless you're an audiophile, you probably have no use for this. Or
maybe there's some tone deafness you're working with. And if you are... well...
you probably already know what EQ is.
And Spatial Audio!... Uh.. It's
360 degree audio. I'll leave it at Square's explanation for it. Just
click the link if you want more info.
Graphics settings are next and for the
most part are no different to your normal game settings. However, we have UI Resolution
settings. This will make the UI look crisper and more detailed. Some icons and such have a
significant different when you turn this on. Others... I can't see a difference at all. Your
mileage may vary but this is a definite thing to turn on if your system isn't struggling. This
does not change the size, only the quality.
Dynamic resolution does as it says and will
adjust resolution as needed for performance. But I've never touched it and it says its
in Beta at the moment so uh... yeah.
Some of the next stuff gets pretty
technical and weird sounding. Wet surface effects is obvious but also seems
to have a big effect on lighting too.
Occlusion Culling might still be obvious. For
some reason, it works in reverse. When off, all objects you cannot see will all be rendered
made visible and active by the game - regardless of your camera and placement in a map. Disabling
it will make the game render less stuff at once, only doing so when visible. Disabling
will improve performance by a lot.
From here I'm going to give you very minor
descriptions of these settings. But just keep the following in mind: turning something on, or
turning it up or down will affect performance.
LOD is as it sounds at least. If an object is
far away, it will have a less detailed model for performance. The high detail version
will replace it when you get close.
Real-time reflections is a bit jargony sounding,
but just assume all reflections from mirrors and anything shiny fall under this.
Anti-aliasing is probably something you are very familiar with if you ever
tinkered with game options. But as it says, it just smoothes jagged edges on objects, though
it can be VERY hard to see. Most things I checked I saw no difference. Wooden objects though
seem to all have a noticeable difference.
Transparent Lightning is about water. It
will shimmer and ripple differently and more smoothly. If you see performance
issues around water, turn this off.
Grass Quality is not about Snoop Dog.
Parallax Occlusion is basically texture depth to put it as simple as possible.
An object will look less flat. Like, imagine the surface of a rock. It probably doesn't
feel perfectly smooth even if it is flat.
Tesselation is similar, but is for
the model itself. The higher it is, the more quality a model tends to be.
Glare is like when you are staring into the sun... ok no? Um.... Oh. It means... this
water reflection. And nothing else you would expect to be glare. That all applies to an
effect further down... also called Glare.
Shadow LOD is the same as normal LOD, but for any
shadows in the distance. Can be a lot harder to tell depending on what you are looking at.
Shadow resolution is shadow quality. How much detail you will be able to see in any shadow.
Shadow Cascading basically will make shadows only appear close by. Far away shadows will just
not exist, and only fade in as you move in.
Shadow softening is where a shadow
will seem "blurrier" at the edges. Just because shadows tend not to be hard
edged, they soften until they disappear.
Texture Filtering is essentially texture
smoothing. The higher you put it, the smoother it will be, for a very little performance
hit. Anisotropic is the highest, and can be made to be 4x, 8x, or 16x filterting. Not all
textures will have a noticeable difference.
Movement physics are very subtle and hard
to notice. This is basically how clothing moves on a player when running or in the
wind. Here's a side by side of my shirt.
Limb Darkening is very subtle as well unless
you start to mess with it. It gives a bit more of a... cinematic look? I go back
and forth on if I like it or not. Just watch the edges of the screen though. Being
off apparently will help performance.
Radial Blur you can probably safely keep on unless you have big problems with things
ever being blurry for any way.
Screen Space Ambient Occlusion is the type of
Ambient Occlusion you're using. That being, say, determining how exposed each part of
an object is exposed to light. You can see how it affects the decorations around
me, and even the grass a little bit.
Glare here actually means the
glare you probably think of.
Water Refraction is how light is deflected by
water rather than passing through in the same direction. It makes underwater environments
look a lot wavier and distorted when on.
And finally, Depth of Field.
In cutscenes. Basically, depth of field blurs anything in the background
when that is not part of a scene's focus.
Mouse settings is our next button
and is a very small section.
Allowing for resolution changes with mouse drag
is only applicable to the windowed mode. You can click and drag the window edges to change the size
of it, and the resolution. And limiting the mouse to always be stuck in-game is always useful.
Mouse Camera Sensitivity is how fast the camera will spin from mouse usage. As you can see,
0 makes it near impossible to turn.
Expanded Mouse Functionality is weird to
say. But its useful. You can increase your mouse cursor size under the Hardware Cursor:
FFXIV Custom or Software Cursor. OS Standard is your normal desktop cursor and is... probably
super tiny. Take some time to feel out Hardware Versus Software Cursor, but Hardware feels
way smoother to me and is the one that can become huge for anyone who has a 4k Monitor.
Next we have Gamepad settings! If you don't have a controller, skip ahead. They let you
pick your specific controller and even your button map. You can have Xbox buttons
and an Xbox button map... despite this not being on Xbox yet. They just realize that a lot
of players have Xbox controllers for PC play.
Most of this is normal controller stuff.
Window Zoom via R3 click actually means UI scaling like we covered before. Cycling
through 60% to 200% in increasing size. Text pasting I believe is only possible on PC...
but still requires text copying first.
Virtual Mouse when on will be L1 +
R3 click. It will give you... well, a virtual mouse to click around on the screen.
Instead of everything acting like a menu list.
Calibration is for if your controller seems to
not be working, like sticks drifting. And button config? This is your keybind menu essentually.
Theme settings is purely visual and based on preference. As you can tell, I've swapped over to
a Clear Blue. But we have Dark the default Light, Classic Final Fantasy, and Clear Blue.
They may add more in future too.
Other settings is... well. Everything else.
Screen shot settings, afk timer... Notable is the character and object limits. If you have
issues with crowded areas, turn this down. The Language Settings is also specific. You can change
what language your game runs in with cutscene audio. If you wanna hear characters speaking in
Japanese or German or French, here you go.
Finally, remember that Color Filtering keybind?
That is to turn on Colorblind mode, found in the Accessibility tab. There are three options and
a slider to adjust how strong the filter is. If you have colorblindness and this isn't enough
for you, be sure to tell the devs on the forums. They can't fix it without more feedback.
Also here is a deafness mode. Visual alerts will be placed on the sides of the screen. Doing
actions and hearing enemy actions, you will see the sound waves bounce around. Any mechanics
that rely on sound, you can play with this.
And that's the System Config. Its a lot of stuff
to play with and just normal settings. But that means it's time for the big one. The spot with
the most options; Character Configuration. This is where you will probably continually go back
to most often while tinkering with stuff.
In the top left we have a mode swap
between Mouse Mode and Gamepad Mode. Both are accessible regardless of the mode, but
Gamepad Mode is much more controller friendly with added tooltips for which buttons
do what. I will stay in Mouse Mode.
In our first menu, the Control Settings Menu,
we start off with the most important setting I could look at. Legacy versus Standard controls.
Standard is character based what "Forward and back and then forward and back" are. If you
turn the camera by itself then walk forward, your character will continue to go in
whatever direction they are facing.
