High Resolution UI question (returning player)

Hey there everyone! I am returned to FFXIV after being gone since the expansion release. Well I noticed the new High Resolution UI settings and I had a couple questions.

I currently have a 1440p monitor and I am a bit confused on how this works. the Full-HD and 4k setting seem to actually be the same exact resolution setting. Which confuses me at first. Is that normal?

Also do those 2 settings do anything else other than scale the UI an extra 10 and 50 percent? I was switching between Normal HD @110% and then 4k @80% and the text might be clearer? But I cant quiet tell. Is it a placebo effect on my eyes or does the High Res UI settings actually adjust the quality of the text?

And as a side note, is it possible to scale the name plates small because while using the Full-HD or 4k High Res UI, the name plates are GIGANTIC!

Well thank you guys for any help! :)

Welcome back! =)

The settings are a bit confusing, aye, but fear not - we can help.

So they are only UI scaling. The actual video resolution is a completely separate setting. You can resize most UI elements, but there are two problems with using only that setting when you use higher resolutions:

1. Elements can only be scaled up to a max of 140%. This is still too small at high resolutions for many elements.

2. Some elements (such as those nameplaces) cannot be resized in this fashion.

So to fix these issues, there's the UI settings you're looking at. It sounds like you want to actually use the "full HD" one rather than the 4K one if you feel the "GIGANTIC" nameplates are not to your liking. After that, you'll want to go through individual elements in HUD layout and do the scaling per preference between 60-140% of their original size.

Oh ok...hmm so what I do is have "Standard HD" UI and have it set to 110%. Which looks ok, but when I set it to "Full-HD" and 80% the overall UI is slightly bigger but the text looks slightly more clear? Maybe its a placebo affect! If I set it to Full-HD, is it possible to scale down nameplates seperatly? I feel like I looked all over and could not find that setting.

Also as a side question, does Full-HD UI only let you go beyond 140%? or does it actually make the text clearer? I may be going crazy but it feels clearer to me!

The clarity makes sense. I don't know exactly how the scaling works internally, but I suspect the higher you go above 100%, the less clear the element actually is. So a "Full HD" element at 100% will be 10% larger and 40% more clear than a Standard element at 140%.

Things like nameplates and the chat bubbles for NPC chatter are only scalable like this, so if you want to scale DOWN nameplates, you probably should go to a lower "High Resolution UI Setting."

It would have been nice if it just let you scale things up to 280% and dynamically switched whatever version of the element was used to maintain clarity. Instead, though, it still has a max of 140% but effectively multiplies this with the High Resolution UI Settings. So you'd get that 280% size max by having it set to 4K and then also scaling it to 140%.