Infuriating issue playing Heavensward fullscreen in Windows 8

In Heavensward, whenever I alt-tab or press the windows key to switch between programs, FF14 will exit fullscreen mode and become windowed. When I then click the minimize button in the upper right corner, instead of minimizing, the game goes fullscreen again. I have to repeat this multiple times before the game minimizes correctly so I can work on other tasks. I'd rather not use the Show Desktop function in Windows as it has its own slew of issues.

This was never a problem before the expansion. Anyone else have the same issues? Any chance of this ever being addressed or do I face years of frustration every time I want to tab out of the game, which is all the time?

There are so many related issues too, it makes multitasking a near unbearable chore. For example:

-When tabbed to a different program WITHOUT minimizing FF14, moving and clicking with the cursor on the foreground program will affect the FF14 client in the background window

-Half the time when I do manage to minimize FF14, including when using the Show Desktop function, the FF14 icon in the taskbar will keep blinking yellow, preventing the taskbar from auto-hiding and generally being a nuisance

I use the old CTRL-ESC...works the same as it used to--minimizes all to task bar and opens Start Menu (Classic Shell), then tap ESC again to close the Start Menu unless what I wanted is on the menu. Also don't have issues with the alt-tab either...may be something to do with Classic Shell versus vanilla Windows though.

As for weird issues with the mouse/window focusing...may want to try toggling the game option for frame rate reduction when not in foreground.

I use classic shell, and I have the frame rate reduction on. Yes I can minimize all to task bar, but when I am working with many programs I don't want to have to manually open them all again every time I tab in and out of the game to check if someone found a hunt. And regardless like I said the taskbar refuses to hide even when I do that because the game flags itself as active.

We shouldn't have to use workarounds regardless. There is absolutely no reason the game shouldn't minimize when you click the minimize button, or preferably just minimize automatically when you alt-tab. And it was never a problem in ARR.

Dual Monitors, problem solved

You suggest I buy an entire separate monitor to solve a problem that shouldn't have been a problem in the first place?

Workarounds aren't enough, I'm sure this issue is simple to fix for Square Enix and they should do it.

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Originally Posted by Sartori

Dual Monitors, problem solved

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How would dual monitors solve this? The game's behavior wouldn't change...

This also happens in Windows 7

I have Windows 8 and play in Fullscreen Windowed Mode with the taskbar on auto-hide. That should give you what you want. If you are in FF14, it displays on 100% of the screen (no borders). If you alt-tab to other windows they display with FF14 still maximized in background (unless you have no other windows and select the desktop when alt-tabbing).