A substantial patch for Final Fantasy 14 just went live, changing up the MMORPG’s party system in a big way. Players had complained that it was a little sterile, with minimal options for customisation. Now, players can recruit each other for cross-server parties, form password-protected private parties and keep their Chocobo companions summoned when they have registered for duties.
Patch 3.5 added a cross-server party finder to the game. So not only can cross-server parties register for the duty-finder and raid-finder, but the pool for potential parties (and friends!) is now much, much larger. But FF14 players may be disappointed by the new feature’s limitations: They can’t form alliances or do FATEs, quest battles, treasure hunts or deep dungeons with cross-world parties. A more obvious limitation is that players can’t recruit each other from across data centres — just servers.
To start a cross-world party, hit the “Recruit Members Across Data Center” option under the “Recruitment Criteria” menu. It’s now a default option.
FF14 also added an option to form a private party. These are password-protected, so you can hit the Binding Coil of Bahamut with your exclusive A-team.
With Patch 3.5, players can also use several filters and a new search feature to find the exact type of party they’re looking for, filtering by the level of privacy, objective type, recruiter name and so on. And, if you’re like me and you’re too shy to ask a good player you’ve partied with to be friends, you can now look them up with the “Contact List” feature, which names the last 50 people you’ve partied with via the duty or raid finders. The reverse is also true — if you’ve been griefed or harassed by a random player from a party, you can hold them accountable even if you forget their name.
Some other fun updates: Players with the Summoner job can change the appearance of their Egi (although the quest to unlock that is for level 50 players) and a few new mounts, hairstyles and emotes have been added.
The hefty patch anticipates FF14‘s second major expansion, Stormblood, coming June 20. You can view the full 3.5 patch notes here.
Comments
8 responses to “Final Fantasy 14’s 3.5 Patch Adds A Ton Of New Party Options”
Does this mean I might be able to continue the story quests on my new guy? I can’t get a group for the level 15 dungeons and I’m level 22 from fucking around while I wait for group :/
You shouldn’t be having too much trouble on the duty finder for those Dungeons, the duty roulette makes it so that you should always inevitably find a group of people, you may just have to wait a bit. Don’t get disheartened if it stills says you are the only member of the group and no one else has been found, if you wait you will get Duty Roulette players coming in eventually.
Also, are you on a Japanese Data centre? you may want to search for Japanese speaking players as well, not just english, you’ll get way better queue times, for the lower level dungeons you don’t need too much communication (just watch a guide beforehand so you know what you are doing) and any communication you need you can just use the auto-translate phrases (accessed by pressing tab while chatting, if you type a bit beforehand and press tab it acts as a search function).
Yeah I’ve done that, I’m playing on Tonberry. I managed to get through one dungeon last night, but I waited over an hour for the second (waiting an hour for the first too) and gave up. I don’t have any other quests to do and have been running around doing fates, but I’m a lot higher level than the main quest chain now and I understand it’s the best way to get a new character going.
I’m guessing you’re playing a DPS class? I recently took a conjurer / white mage from 0 to 51 since the start of January, never waited more than 5mins for a dungeon until I came to the 2x 8 man dungeons at the end of the man story quest (ARR not Heavensward).. but by then I had joined a free company and some of the guys kindly ran it with me as a 4 man unsynced group and smashed through it.
Yeah I made a lancer because they’re always my favourite class in other FF games. I’ll just queue and eventually get through!
I play on Tonberry. The Novice Network for that server is pretty epic, and if you’re in queue for way too long, ask the mentors there for some help. Most mentors, and many other higher level players, will help fill in spots so you can get that dungeon done quick, as long as they aren’t already busy.
I’ve jumped on the novice network (some friendly dude I ran by just added me to it). It’s awesome to be able to just go green text channel “how do I get a mount fam” or whatever and instantly have someone let you know. Also there is a fair bit of funny back and forth in there since not many of us would have a free company and need a chat zone.
Be sure to include other languages in your duty finder search. By default it only selects English, I usually include Japanese as well at the very least. Widens the net, and for those low level dungeons, you don’t exactly need communication. I just use the translated ‘Hello!’ and ‘Thanks!’ when starting finishing the group. Easy.