Silly question possibly, but is there truly no way to appear offline on FFXIV? I have no wish to be anti-social, but sometimes I want to decompress on FFXIV and people hunt me down and want me to go do other things. Often that's nice and fun, but occasionally I would quite like to appear offline for short periods (parts of the MSQ for example).
It is important to remember that these will be account wide. Every current character you have, every new character you create will share the same system settings. Open the menu with either ctrl+K on the keyboard or start > settings > System Settings on game pad and you get this:
[Image ID: cropped screenshot of the FFXIV system menu with the red buttons on the left labeled with arrows. From top to bottom they read: Display settings, Sound, Graphics, Gamepad/controller, Theme, Other, and Accessibility /end ID]
This is your system menu. Unless you Know what you’re doing I wouldn’t suggest messing with Display or Graphics* settings, though they do make it fairly easy to not fuck it all up. If you change anything on any tab, in order to save the changes you must remember to hit apply. I recommend pressing it frequently if you’re changing multiple things bc if you get one thing right and another bad but don’t remember the original or new setting of either you’ll have to fiddle with the first over again if you didn’t save it before moving on. I’ve had to do this many times when messing with volume.
(* Graphios settings, however, does let you turn off glare and Water Refraction. If either of these cause you issue, the settings to turn them off are towards the bottom of the tab and clearly labeled. Please keep this in mind bc the water refraction used to trigger my motion sickness.)
Mouse: lets you change cursor size, sensitivity and drag
Sound: breaks down all the different sounds in the game and lets you control the volume of each of them.
Gamepad: lets you decide to keep it enabled when tabbed out, turn vibration on/off, stick sensitivity, and some button shortcut options. If you play with a controller I recommend looking at it
Themes: Dark, Light, and Classic. Classic is the retro FF menu with the rich blue with white text, dark is my screenshots and light is the same coloration as speech bubbles
Other: where screenshots download, time before AFK, & cutscene audio language
Accessibility (PC Only): Visual Alerts for volume/sound and three color filters (Protanopia, Deuteranopia, and Trianopia)
[Image ID: four of the same screenshot of an aethernet shard. the top left is normal, top right is Protanopis, bottom left Deuteranopia, and bottom right Trianopia /end ID]
Sound Settings
[Image ID: two screenshots of the sound settings. the first is cropped to only show the top half of the tag with an * by the ambient sounds toggle and + by listening position. The second shows the whole menu scrolled to the bottom with an * next to the ambient sounds slider and ** next to the Performance slider /end ID]
Feel free to tailor these to your heart’s content! Turn the volume all the way up, all the way down, or anywhere in between! These are, obviously, my settings. As i play on PC, and have a tendency to watch Netflix or such while playing via window-in-window, I have my volume set so I can hear everything well enough to differentiate what is what- however those settings are, of course, different for everyone!
Do note: that speaker button next to all of them is a mute button! So if you only want it off temporarily you don’t have to turn it to 0 and then remember where you had it later. Just hit mute!
*Ambient sounds, when turned on, adds general wordless chatter when you’re in heavily populated areas among other things (Limsa Aetheryte anyone?) and learning I could turn this off was one other the best things I could do for my mental health bc lord that wordless chatter can really be a psychosis or hallucination trigger in some people.
** Performance is specifically referring to people you see like at Aetherytes and Adventurer’s Guilds and such playing music. These can be fun to encounter but they can also be obnoxious or annoying (I’m all for you learning how to play but I don’t wanna hear it, type things.) Turning it down means it’s less likely to cut into anything else you’re watching/listening to and turning it off means you hear none of it regardless of anything. Performance can be fun bc people will just stand around and play songs or put on concerts, and some people even take requests if you’re polite! It can be fun to hang around and listen while in queue or otherwise AFK but if it’s not your cup of tea no one will be offended at you turning it off
+ Listening Position is where the in universe sounds are coming from. I personally put it at my camera bc it can be confusing to me to be hearing sound as my character hears it if my camera is like. Zoomed all the way out or such, as it often is in dungeons or raids. But putting it next to your character can ensure you hear things you might not otherwise if you’re more in tune with auditory cues than visual or, potentially, if you're hard of hearing. I’d suggest playing around with this one to find the position you’re most comfortable with. Or you can leave it be if it doesn't bother you.
Customized my user interface for battle and travel! Goals: transparent side map, emote and settings bars, gil and settings top right, character and xp top left, separation of chatrooms, and a sidebar to quickly alter my outfits.