Final Fantasy XIV now lets you solo more with an NPC party

rockpapershotgun.com:

A fresh Final Fantasy XIV patch today has made the game friendlier to solo players, with the new Duty Support System letting you go through a load of main scenario duties solo with NPC party members. Oh, but that's a tiny piece of patch 6.1, which also whams in new quests and and new items and a new housing district and new haircuts and... goodness me I'm still a little surprised when I remember how FF14 was initially so awful that Square Enix shut it down for almost a year.

Duty Support lets you play through main scenario instanced duties (that's dungeons, trials, and such) from A Realm Reborn, Shadowbringers, and Endwalker on your lonesome with the help of NPCs filling out your party. It's building on Scenario Mode from ye olde Trust system. Some duties let you pick your party, though Realm Reborn duties have fixed parties according to your role. Future updates will expand Duty Support to include duties "for 2.x to Heavensward and beyond".

Also new: 10 main scenario quests; a new dungeon; a new trial; 4 Chronicles Of A New Era quests; 4 Role Quests; extra chapters in New Game+; new housing plots in Empyreum; new furnishings; new aquarium fish; new character customisation bits for Hrothgar and Viera; balance tweaks; STUFF.

See the FF14 patch 1.6 notes for more on everything.

We'll tell you FF14 is not only one of the best MMOs, it's the best. It's so popular that Square Enix had to temporarily stop selling it after the latest expansion, this time for a more positive reason: because the global hardware shortage didn't let them expand servers to meet demand in time.