A lot of new content has come to players in Final Fantasy 14's 6.1 update. There is new housing, more main story quests, additional raids, updated dungeons, and fresh items. One of the most interesting additions, though, is the new Adventure Plates. These act as customizable items sort of like business cards for players that others can examine. Customizable information includes playtimes, favorite Final Fantasy 14 class, and a photo of the Warrior of Light.
This was not a long-awaited Final Fantasy 14 update like housing and story content, but the Adventure Plates have turned out to be a hit for the community. This is a way for players to really show their personality and playstyle with a quick little card. Many of them have turned to humor, taking goofy pictures of their characters and writing jokes on the bottom of their plates.
What Fans Are Doing With Them
Fan creativity is bursting from the Adventure Plates. Some are taking it seriously with cute expressions or battle-ready poses while others are being as goofy as possible. Players have done unflattering zoom-ins of their characters' faces and, of course, there is no shortage of poses trying to be as NSFW as possible with 2B leggings and crotch shots.
There are even some that have copied popular memes. One has emulated the Megamind meme zoom-in forehead photo with the words "No fantasia?" in their description. Another has perfectly positioned their Paladin next to a White Mage symbol background to emulate the meme, "Is this a Pigeon?" Then, of course, the possibilities of jokes in the bottom descriptions are unlimited. Players sometimes give useful information, but other times they consist of jokes about in-game characters and/or meme references.
Portraits On The PvP Scene
The Adventure Plate portraits are actually used in Final Fantasy 14's new PvP update. The update is huge enough to call it a complete overhaul. The largest new update is the Crystalline Conflict, which pits players against each other in small groups of five. In these little groups, the portraits from Adventure Plates are shared, and sometimes seeing them next to each other is a real piece of entertainment. In PvP, the portraits are automatically shown to the teams. This means both the goofy and the serious players often get mixed up.
Since the new PvP is quite popular, it has greatly encouraged players to customize their Adventure Plates, too. Currently, most players are sharing their Adventure Plates online on places like Twitter and Reddit. Others are just enjoying hanging out in the game and peeking at what other players have done with their plates. This may be just the beginning of a whole new facet of fan culture in Final Fantasy 14.
The Future Of Adventure Plates
With how positive the results have been with fans, it is likely that Square Enix will put more into Adventure Plates in the future. It is likely that fans will be able to at one point collect different backgrounds, stickers, and details. The possibilities are rather endless, and the development team is known to listen to what fans want. It is also possible that future content could include more things like Adventure Plates. For example, something similar to Adventure Plates could be used for Free Company profiles.
Future patches may find ways to include more reasons to glamorize an Adventure Plate as well. Perhaps they could do a much-needed overhaul on chocobo racing and use Adventure Plates for that like they started doing with PvP. If not, fans will surely still find ways to make Adventure Plates interesting, especially when it comes to role-playing and community groups.
Final Fantasy 14 is available now on PC, PS4, and PS5.
