I have a lot to say, and write about how fantastic FFXIV is, still. I’m currently drafting one of my signature rambling explorations, on the topic of MMOs. But, today, I’m here to drop information and little more.
I own a MacBook Air and wanted to go back to playing FFXIV. I expected this to be hard, however, it was not. In fact, it was shockingly straightforward. Thanks to a website/project that takes care of it for you.
Getting the game installed
Assuming you have an account, a currently live subscription, and a desire to play, then head over to Xivonmac.com where you scroll down a little and hit download. At the time of writing, it’s at beta 5.2.1 for Apple Silicon. I can’t attest to how well it works on intel, sorry.
The resulting download is a 65 MB tar.xz file called “XIV on Mac5.2.1.tar.xz”
My Mac is set up to extract the file on double click. But if you do have issues using the file, I suggest the free extraction program ‘Keka’ which you can get, as I said, for free, from the website, or pay £5.99 for a copy on the App Store. It’s actually well worth the six quid, if you are interested in using it for the long term. ☺️
Once extracted, you will see the clearly named file “XIV on Mac.app”
Double-clicking will result in a scary looking warning message which says:
_ “XIV on Mac.app” is an app downloaded from the internet. Are you sure you want to open it?” _
The options you have are Cancel, or Open. I believe this application to be safe, but I am not a veterinarian.
After clicking open, if you so choose to do so, and depending on your version of macOS, you will now have new questions.
Would you like it to access your folders (you probably do want to allow this so it can download the game for you.) Next, do you want to move this to your applications folder (you most likely do.)
Now provide your FFXIV login information (and OTP if you use one, and you should)
Hit login. It will now begin downloading the game, which takes ages. It’s an MMO and as such massive.
You can stop and resume the download. It does resume fine, but from the last completed file. No resuming on those big partially downloaded files, sadly.
Once the game is installed, there is a possibility it will tell you that your login failed, just reloading the application fixes it. It happens after the initial download or applying updates, sporadically.
The game should log in, but remain in a windowed state. I recommend setting graphics and resolution in the main menu, then hitting the green traffic light to fullscreen the game. I believe it uses the MetalFX upscaling system, so it looks impressive but is actually running at a far lower resolution than it reports. If you change the resolutions after full-screening, it seems to do as it report’s which can tank performance. _I realise now I am explaining this badly, but I hope you are macOS savvy enough that it makes sense. _
How does it run?
My M2 MacBook Air has 1TB of storage, 16GB of unified memory. I have the lower spec GPU (8 cores, rather than 10) and with all settings dialled in to a reasonable upper/middling setting and physics applied only to the player character, I get around 45-55 FPS.
Now, my computer, as you probably know, has no internal cooling fan, which means that as it gets heat saturated, performance tanks down to a bout 30 FPS. I have found that putting my laptop on one of those cooling tray things helps massively. The one I use is a big slab of metal with two fans in the middle (it’s by Cooler Master, and it’s hefty!) The active cooling doesn’t do loads, but it is enough to keep my Mac cool enough to maintain my higher frame rate indefinitely (I have played for over six hours straight without issue.)
It’s also worth noting that my it absolutely saps the battery dry, faster than you will likely think is reasonable, and, it generates a lot of heat. My Mac gets hot, like, really hot, which is not helped by the fact that I need to have it on charge while I’m playing because of the aforementioned battery savaging.
I have checked the XIVonMac guide, comments and issues, as well as some reddit research and some I spent some time looking at the technical specifications of the Air. I think, while it’s hotter than I have ever had it get before, it’s perfectly safe. The M series of chips and Macs, generally speaking, are designed to be used and not screwed with, as such, it’s quite capable of throttling its self as required to avoid damage. I have seen people on the internet artificially inflate temperatures far beyond what this game does, and, eventually, the Mac will shut itself down before allowing damage to be caused.
Basically, Macs are spectacular, and bombproof. Don’t worry about it. Unless you are one of those people who treat your Apple hardware like it’s a precious child, in which case, grow up or go away. Computers don’t last forever, stop being a freak about it, it’s fine.
Launcher settings
There are some options in the launcher which you can tinker with which may or may not improve performance and also allow you to turn on a performance overlay (which I used a lot during my testing.) There are also options to have the launcher save your OTP, which is both very insecure, and very useful for one button login.
The only options you may want to tinker with is the licence profile. If you own XIV in Steam, you have to tell the launcher so it can emulate that login profile. Or, if you for some nutty reason own the Mac licence only, you can set that too.
There are also some global key-mapping things which you may find useful for in game key-mapping.
Oh, and I should say, you probably want to make sure MetalFX spacial upscaling is turned on. I found my game run lots better with that toggled on, but I couldn’t really any documentation that made sense to me. If I had to guess, it’s similar to the AMD FSR thing. Basically as I said earlier, you set it in windowed mode, then when you fullscreen it is just upscales rather than renders at a higher resolution. But, regardless of if I have misunderstood something, it runs better when the box is ticked.
Mods! It has mods!
Yeah, one of the side effects of using a third-party launcher is that it has baked in access to a modding system called Dalamud. It’s a one click toggle that then adds a new item in the ‘escape’ menu in game, it allows you to install, toggle, manage and configure mods.
Technically, it’s against the TOS for the game. I doubt Square Enix know whether you are using them or not, as they all happen locally. I can’t find a reference to anyone getting banned for just using mods.
All that said, I also didn’t find any useful mods. I turned it off as it didn’t seem worth the hypothetical risk. Your milage may vary, but I found them generally quite annoying as they all want screen space. Screen space is precious on my 13-inch panel.
I should mention, if you do use mods, do not talk about mods in game. That will get you banned.
What is this magic?
I have a lot of experience gaming on Linux, and a lot of the magical terms that are used on the GitHub page for the project were very familiar.
Basically, it’s using a translation layer (DXVK) and some not-emulation-emulation tooling called Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator… but without explaining countless technical underpinnings that no one should care about, it’s functionally emulating Windows… in the most simple terms.)
It’s the technology that lets the Steam Deck (a Linux computer) play your Steam games (Windows games.) It is very efficient, borderline magical, and insanely complex, on a technical level. But it’s well documented, well-used and very common. It won’t get you banned (I am not a veterinarian.)
So it’s good?
I have played a lot of the game on my MBA, without issues. It is good, and I intend to play a lot more. Honestly, if I had a MacBook Pro, I expect it would run far better than it does now. Simply because of the active cooling. Also, I think if you have an M4 based Air, it’s likely going to run way better too. Given that my laptop is less than a centimetre thick and has no fan, I had very low expectations. I didn’t buy a Mac to play games, I brought a Mac to write, so it’s a bonus that it works for me so well.
What are my other options?
You won’t get your Mac to play this game better than this pre-built launcher, I promise. The developer has done a superb job!
Personally, an option I am exploring right now is running the game on my ROG Ally and streaming it to my Mac (served by an app called Sunshine.) I think that’s a better way for me to go, just because my Ally is always close, and I don’t have to faff with pulling out a laptop cooling tray whenever I want to play for a long session. But, it’s probably not actually a better solution… I’ll keep exploring and let you know.
If you down FFXIV on Steam you also have the option of using Geforce Now (GFN) to play it, which, if I had the Steam version, is most likely the way I would do it.
It’s infuriating that Square Enix, don’t let us just merge those accounts. I would even pay a small fee to enable it.
You know now everything I know.
Thanks for reading.