As an MMORPG, Final Fantasy XIV is generally intended to be enjoyed by people together. The massively-multiplayer aspect means that, wherever you go in the game, there's a good chance you'll be running into other players to progress in your journey with. It's a great way to make friends, and you'll always have a built-in shared interest.
For various reasons, however, some players are bound to want to enjoy the game on their own. Whether it be due to a background in single-player gaming, a case of social anxiety, or a simple desire to relax in one's own company, there are many reasons someone might want to avoid playing with others. If that's the case for you, that's no problem. Here are some ways to keep your player-to-player interaction to a minimum in FFXIV.
How to get through the Main Scenario solo in FFXIV
Luckily, there's an entire system designed for folks who want to progress through the story alone. As you advance through the Main Scenario Quests, you'll run into various duties, like Dungeons, Trials, and multiple types of raids. Apart from solo Duties from the Main Scenario or Job Quests, these are all meant to be approached by parties of players. The Duty Finder and Party Finder are how people form parties together to tackle content, but there's another tool you can use to get through them yourself.
Duty Support allows you to enter any Main Scenario dungeon or four-person trial with an NPC party. They'll either be random NPCs or characters relevant to that point in the story. Duty Support won't cover every bit of content you have to go through during MSQ, but it'll cover the bulk of it. To enter a Dungeon or Trial with Duty Support, you can either select it from the list of options at the Duty's entrance or from the Duty Support menu of Duty section of the menu bar. Keep in mind that this method is almost always going to make content take longer. NPC party members are less efficient than actual players, meaning every fight will take more time than usual.
Once you get to Shadowbringers, you'll also have another option open up to you — the Trust System. It's very similar to Duty Support in that NPCs will fill your party, thus keeping you from playing with other players. The main difference is in the mechanic it adds for leveling up said NPCs. In your first run of any duty with the Trust System, you won't need to worry about having your NPCs leveled up, but later Dungeons, however, will require you to have your NPC party members at a high enough level by going through content with them. By earning experience with them, you'll unlock glamour options for them to wear in battle and "The Seventh Dawn" title when they reach the max level.
How to play without a Free Company
Something else you might run into while trying to play solo is Free Companies and people trying to get you to join them. If you don't already belong to a Free Company, tells and invites will probably be coming your way more often than you'd like. Unfortunately, avoiding these sorts of interactions can be difficult if you remain without an FC tag above your character's head.
You have two options to make it stop. The first is to give in and join an FC that won't expect you to interact at all, then remove the Free Company chat from your log window and pretend they don't exist. The second option is to keep your character on "Busy," and you won't be able to receive tells or invites from anyone. Remember to set yourself to Busy every time you log in since the status is temporary. You can turn on the status by either using the "/busy" command or by selecting your character, choosing "Edit Search Info," and switching your status accordingly.
Is there a way to do everything solo in FFXIV?
Ultimately, the answer is no. Even if you're only playing through the Main Scenario Quests, there will be some content you have to complete with others to progress, like Trials and Alliance Raids. They'll be few and far between, but they'll be unavoidable when they come up. With the addition of Duty Support and the Trust System, the game has come a long way in making play accessible to people who'd rather not engage in the game's social aspects. However, as an MMORPG, FFXIV's roots are in fostering community and cooperative play.
Who knows? Square Enix may expand the existing systems to make all content solo-able in the future. For now, though, you can approach only most of the main story alone.
