Accessibility options urgently in need of update

I am personally unaffected by this, and can handle this sort of thing, but I can assure you that sometimes I would rather just lower the brightness on my TV because some of the content introduced in this patch is just a little too much for me

I agree with what kryptosona said, and I'd 100% vouch for a complete for a complete overhaul of this system because what we have is...not good.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Daralii

There needs to be more consideration for sight and readability in general. They've largely abandoned the standardized and clear mechanic telegraphs and have fallen into a common MMO trap of overly intricate and/or vague telegraphs of a color that's the same color as the lighting and/or arena, and even if you have battle effects off, the abilities that are shown regardless(LB3s being the most common) can easily obstruct things.

---

They REALLY have fallen into the modern MMO trap of hard = flashy and it's aggravating. I suffer from severe migraines, and i can only be grateful that I'm not epileptic or some of these fights would be literally impossible.

I do think some of the LB3s are silly to look at and enjoy some of them, and I admit, I verblind for shenanigans if I'm in a more gremlin mood. Only in normal content and with a majority of friends, however, never in serious content. But they can for sure be excessive and obstruct things, absolutely, and should have a toggle to have them display or not for folks. (LB effects being on even in gpose is aggravating NGL)

Honestly, I might not be colorblind but I am extremely photosensitive and as much as I adore the spectacle and the special effects I get so tired of being bedridden by a migraine just because I wanted to do my raids.

I love disco, I adore the design of the new raids, but I've had to keep battle effects almost entirely off and pray I don't miss an important battle cue since Shadowbringers just because I don't want to feel like I'm dying afterwards. The Nier and Omphalos raids were wonderful but I still have to lie down for at least an hour if I get them in roulettes!

It's the year of Our Lady Hydaelyn 2025 we shouldn't have to beg and plead for accessibility options in our games just so we don't want to die within the first twenty minutes of prog. I have to spend the entire fights watching the arena from my peripheral vision while staring directly at my hotbars so I don't end up with my headache kicking in instantly from the bright flashing, quick color swaps, and the overall eyestrain. We need better than just "something is better than nothing" at this point, it's limiting people's ability to interact with the kind of content they love.

Do the devteam know how hard it was doing the latest trial with the purple aoes on the red carpet? Having to figure out if it was the colored dancefloor tiles or an aoe about to kill us? I want someone in QA with sensitivity problems to vouch for us with visual processing problems. I can't do savage raids or mount farm like this.

its... not just an issue for colorblind individuals either. I have 3 friends in my static who get really bad health complications from the super flashy stuff (blue flashes, yellowy orange flashes, and colorful flashes in general.)

Yoshi p... please give us thhe option to both change aoe colors and turn off boss effects. That would solve so many issues

My fiance is colorblind and physically could not do Phoinix, and is now having the same problems again with Recollection. Not even EX, NORMAL MODE. Orange on Orange on Red/pink with barely and discernible difference between the red and the pink is artificial difficulty and a huge accessibility gap. I myself have been so overwhelmed with some visuals that I get migraines more frequently after I started raiding. Fulgent blade is incredibly visually bad with the flashes and strikes going into other things, and stuff like Eulogia is so so horrendously bad to see what's going on as well.

Hi, I don't normally reply to threads, but I felt the need to make a post. I am disabled, I have chronic migraines that are triggered by photosensitivity and also am autistic and prone to sensory overload. I also have friends who are either red/green or blue/purple colorblind. This is not JUST a DT problem. This is a problem that has been increasing over time since SHB, however, the last time they were receptive to feedback was in SHB-- Mt. Gulg and Paradigm's Breach were both later adjusted. ENW and DT have so far received no such fixes.

The floor pattern in Recollection, whether normal or EX, is very difficult to see. The red and the brown are both desaturated making them very similar in value. For those who forget the definition, value is the lightness or darkness of a color-- how close it is to white or black. Since the brown and red are similar values, if you were to grayscale an image of Recollection's arena floor, they would be nearly if not the same color of gray. This is a problem for people who are colorblind, and anecdotally I've seen people who are not colorblind have trouble reading the arena too.

This is not the only fight this occurs in. For Wicked Thunder Savage, during the Ion Cluster mechanic (the cannon) four debuffs go out: dark blue, dark purple, light blue, and light green. The dark blue and dark purple are also almost identical in value, as are the light blue and light green. People who cannot see a combination of those colors have a difficult time reading these debuffs. Recollection and Wicked Thunder are just two examples, a lot of people have cited Phoinix here as an issue- and that fight gave me a migraine every time I raided.

I really feel like that SE is utilizing these difficult color combos to make the fights arbitrarily harder. They should not be doing this, not when there is hardly anything for colorblind/photosensitive people outside of third party tools, which are disallowed. One proof of these lights being utilized to make a mechanic more difficult is P12S, in the first phase-- I remember reading on Twitter that it was found when disabling the flashing white and purple galaxy lights to spare photosensitive people caused you to be able to read the mechanic (Superchain Theory I) a whole five seconds earlier. Why hide a mechanic behind flashing lights? Do mechanics really take that long to load in? Could NOTHING ELSE be put there as filler?

I had to skip out on DT EX3 entirely because of the amount of eyestrain. It gave me a three day migraine when I cleared it for DT and then again when I tried to clear its extreme version. SE, in the off chance you'll ever read this: PLEASE FIX THIS! People who WANT to be here can't! I like the story and raid series, and I am so excited for Shades' Triangle. But if something is not done about the VFX, debuff color values, and the arenas, I don't know how much longer I can keep raiding.

'Cause my migraine meds are EXPENSIVE.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by contresixtes

I had to skip out on DT EX3 entirely because of the amount of eyestrain. It gave me a three day migraine when I cleared it for DT and then again when I tried to clear its extreme version. SE, in the off chance you'll ever read this: PLEASE FIX THIS! People who WANT to be here can't! I like the story and raid series, and I am so excited for Shades' Triangle. But if something is not done about the VFX, debuff color values, and the arenas, I don't know how much longer I can keep raiding.

'Cause my migraine meds are EXPENSIVE.

---

I ALMOST had to skip on EX3 myself after how badly nauseous the normal made me going through story! It subsided, somehow, and I won't question that; but that fight gave me such a nasty headache that i was nauseous and had an especially bad migraine the next day. Chronic migraine havers rise up, carefully cuz we might get sick....

The only saving grace for me in EX3 was that Aethertithe only happened ONCE unlike in normal mode and the ice phase eased my nausea enough to do the final phase to clear it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Soren1234

its... not just an issue for colorblind individuals either. I have 3 friends in my static who get really bad health complications from the super flashy stuff (blue flashes, yellowy orange flashes, and colorful flashes in general.)

---

This. There were always some flashy whiteouts in the fights, but to me if feels like it's getting more and more. To the point where I have to repeatedly close my eyes for 5 seconds during trials and raids - guess how good that works out...

The visual clarity (or lack there of) in a lot of recent fights is just completely unacceptable. The sheer frequency in which I have been met with mechanics I cannot read for one reason or another is starting to become frankly miserable. M3S became impossible because the colours were all the same barely different shades of orange; made the visual tells impossible to glance read. M7N's visual tells are either rendered nearly impossible to read because of the boss' design and size, or downright insufficient to respond to (nice proximity you didn't give an indicator to, Square-- remember when you put a proximity indicator in the Copied Factory for that same mech? That was cool, I liked it, you should do it again).

I died repeatedly in Recollection because I had no ability to perceive the presence of the bleed puddle during roseblood bloom due to the fact the brown and red were nearly identical. The puddle may as well have been invisible to me; and I have rather good colour vision actually! It doesn't help that the puddle was additionally obfuscated by overwrought VFX for moves that take up the same amount of visual real estate as a common raidwide. I know I can disable party VFX, I just don't think the player vfx should be so excessive I am forced to disable it in order to play the game!

I cannot fathom how truly unplayable it must be for people who already need accessibility options this game only pretends to have. I desperately hope the team both reconsiders its current visual design habits for combat content, and gives us a way to override and modify visual indicators with our own choices in colour and mayhaps patterning!

Last expansion my static had to adapt how we were handling/calling certain mechanics in savage because one of our members was colourblind and the existing options did little to help, the issue was already bad. This expansion a significant portion of people I know who are colourblind or have visual sensitivities/processing issues are struggling more than they have ever done before and it's getting to the point where bosses are relying too heavy on visual obfuscation and clutter/noise to amplify their difficulty. Even I, with no medical issues affecting my vision or visual processing, struggled heavily with EX4 and its readability to the point I outright gave up on clearing it and I think only two people in my static actually did in the end. Square need to be more mindful of what they're doing and dial back all of the clutter and flashing in addition to making their visual tells more uniform across encounters, having more extensive colourblind support with more thorough encounter testing, giving players the options to reduce all combat related visual effects down to just the essential ones and letting us change the default AoE colours.

Just want to add my voice (as someone who's not colorblind) to STOP making mechs of the exact same colors but lighter/darker, it's a lazy, artificial way to try and make things harder. Also stop with the super bright lights, seriously.

Hi, bumping this.
I personally do not have colorblindness issues, but even I am having difficulty distinguishing the colors/shades of red in the indicators of recollection extreme. It can be difficult to notice at a quick glance, especially when other mechanics with bright flashing effects are going off. Many members of my FC are colorblind in some way, and have attempted the fight and said that due to thier colorblindness, the fight is impossible to do in PF as they will need verbal callouts because they physically cannot see the mechanics at all (compared to me who just needs longer than .5 seconds to see and proscess it.)

The game severely needs better accessability options, as the colorblindness issue was also an issue in pandaemonium, and I personally have photosensitivity issues that can cause migraines or seizures, and even with turning all toggleable vfx off, there are still MANY things in fights that are too bright or flashy, and risk giving me a migraine or worse. Furthermore even emotes like the new camera one have a bright flash that cannot be disabled, which means that even non combat settings can be problematic.

Other AAA titles, including those from square enix (like ff16) have better accessability options for those with differing vision issues like colorblindness or sensitivity to flashing, and it is sorely needed in ff14.
Furthermore, I will request that while these accessability features are worked on (as they will take a while to be done right) a hotfix is pushed that either changes the color of the indicators in recollection (extreme), or changes the color of the floor during the rose part. (The part where the arena turns red and splits into pie slices, has a darker red-maroon bleed in the center, and puts dark red glyphs on certin slices to indicate safe and unsafe slices).

Thank you.

I'm not colorblind but I do experience pretty severe light sensitivity that hurts my eyes and gives me headaches and recent fights have been kind of bad about this. Flashing lights in particular or even just repetitive lights can cause pretty severe discomfort for me and it'd be nice if I didn't have to worry about that in my big comfort game.

I am not colorblind myself but even so, I struggle with recent visual cues that blend in together. I rely very heavily on auditory cues whenever possible because I can get overwhelmed by visuals, so it extra sucks when those visuals are blending together.

I am also not colorblind, but I too would prefer mechanics to be visually clear instead of ambiguous.
Easy to understand, hard to execute. Not the other way around.
If mechanics are only difficult because of missing telegraphs, removing telegraphs to increase difficulty is arguably a bad idea in the first place.

Mechanics can very well be clearly indicated and still difficult to do.

Too much of a fight's difficulty relies on removing telegraphs or using alternative, harder to read patterns.
Also instead of complex puzzle mechanics that play the same every time and require guides to even understand, having intuitive mechanics would greatly reduce the amount of visual clutter required to represent every single detail for a solution.

I am also not colorblind myself, but I also have had difficulties parsing together visual information due to visual clutter, such as bright lights, too similar color palettes (Pandemonium 3, anyone?) and just a lot of things going on at the same time.
Recollection especially was difficult to parse visually, for example to the middle bleed puddle blending in with the rest of the arena's flooring and the flashy petal effects distracting me from the mechanics going on.

Please address this issue by giving players more comprehensive colorblind options and by designing/redesigning fights with clearer visual language in mind.

The latest fights have become near impossible to play due to all the visual clutter and blinding effects. I wish there were options to at least change the color of the most egregious effects.

I am not colourblind, but with the number of players having issues I agree it needs to be looked into as soon as possible.

I completely agree with all of this. Even without being color blind, I still struggle to read the mechanics of the many fights in this game that tend to layer the same color AOEs on top of the same color or value floors. Another example that comes to mind, other than some of the ones listed here, is Menphina's fight at the end of Euphrosyne, which layers light blue AOEs on top of light blue floors. While that fight isn't particularly difficult, it's another example of the growing pile of fights that I distinctly remember being extremely hard for my color blind friends. Additionally, as someone who is extremely photosensitive and migraine-prone, I STILL have a very hard time running Paradigm's breach even after its nerfs, so you can imagine what some of the effects in the recent dungeons and trials have put me through. Better accessibility options are a MUST.

I have low vision and have a lens implant so sometimes I get easily tired just looking at the game sometimes. More accessibility options will always be welcome in my book.

I want to add my support for this thread, as a disabled (but not colorblind) gamer who has struggled with reading mechanics-indicators when the colors and/or values are too similar to each other and/or the environment, and after reading the full thread I also want to call some folks in on a particular piece: If you aren't colorblind and you still have issues with the effects and markers in this fight, that does not mean that it's not a colorblindness issue. Because it is.

This, like many accessibility issues, is a "yes, and" situation. It means it's a colorblindness issue and it's a photosensitivity/migraine/epilepsy issue and it's a visual-processing/overstimulation issue and it's a (insert your personally impacted disability/impairment/etc. here) and it's unreasonably difficult to see/process without any kind of disability or impairment.

Accessibility is an important, difficult, and necessary thing to tackle and it's not always so simple as slapping a filter on. (Though sometimes it can be.) Sometimes the accessibility option added to a game that makes things better for a player also makes things worse for another player, possibly even another player with the same disability/impairment/condition/etc. This is why a variety of options and the ability to choose whether you utilize that tool/setting is so key for accessibility.

It is my hope that SE will read through this thread, listen to the varying (but all negative) impacts these design choices are having across a variety of life situations, revisit the fights cited here in a variety of ways to provide us with viable solution options, and will carry this with them into their design discussions for future. And hire some/more accessibility consultants, if they haven't already.

The visuals in Dawntrail as a whole have been incredibly difficult to my light sensitivity and make me not want to even go back into Vanguard or spend time in Heritage Found at all. Implement more accessibility options, from actual color blindness settings that work for colorblind people to options to reduce eye strain when everything is flashing, options to reduce saturation that actually help, and please DESIGN the game with players who have these issues in mind! I shouldn't have to avoid a complete dungeon or zone because of poor game design. People should be able to see mechanics in duties no matter their level of ability to see color!

I too want to add my support for this thread. There's far too many too bright flashes that make the game painful for me, and I'm not epileptic. And they use bright flashes a lot in intermissions these days, for example in Chaotic.

This is falling into the EW trap of mechanics where hard to read = difficult. Difficulty should come from execution and complexity and variations. Not from being super flashy or hard to read.

Some facts about epilepsy:

- Epilepsy onset can occur at any time in one's life. So a middle-aged player can experience their first seizure while playing this game.

- The first seizure is the most deadly, since it is unknown and untreated. The risk of injury to self and others from the first seizure is higher.

- Someone cannot know they were vulnerable to seizures prior to playing the game.

Please reduce the high contrast light flashes in this game, beyond just player effects. Boss effects and arena effects need to be controlled as well. If that makes things easier then maybe they shouldn't rely on such things for difficulty.

Definite support here. I have poor eyesight(I do keep it checked regularly at the doc), that has gotten worse over the years; and as the game has gone on, I have had more and more trouble in some of the fights. I was okay for most of EW, though I'd say about halfway through the patches things started to get a little weird, and now I've started to dread end dungeon/trial fights because of the messes on the ground. (Actually I'll say the first bad fight I had was Red Girl, but that actually made me motion sick. I just drop Tower these days if I get it and eat the debuff. Even after the fixes I dislike what it does to my vision.)

Of course, I have seen people bring stuff like this up and get pushback because people get very hot under the collar because 'challenge.' I liked doing hard content before, so that's not the issue, my issue is with the consistent 'Just bomb the field with a whole lot of blurry stuff to make it harder.' That post earlier about it being akin to making things harder via server lag rings true here. I know the devs want more 'friction' but there are ways to do this that don't involve just carpet bombing the field in colors and patterns, which some people can't see at all, and others can't see very well. I'd like to be able to find a happy medium somewhere. if they could find a way to make the explosions very clear and concise for folks with poor vision as well it'd be great.

Otherwise, I'd rather them err in the side of being easier on normal content. Either one. Lighten the load, or(preferably), figure a way to get the mechanics much more sharp/visible. I notice we've gotten more and more people having issues with them over the years, so it does seem to be something with their design choices.

Hello, I'm pretty colorblind and have had numerous issues since Ol Rasta Pasta back in Eden's Verse: Furor onwards up to the Phoenix in P3 I'm also a someone who has heavily raided in statics and can attest that while I had issues back with Animal farm/brambles the wild use of same saturation/colors has only gotten worse since EW making a lot of the static and ex fights a bit embarrassing for me to try and PF since I either muck it up or have to find a group willing to take pity on the fact that I just do not see the aoes properly in the newer fights.

Even in M6 which I expected there to be a lot of contrasting colors due to the nature of this fight being a painting situation. I didn't realize there was actually aoe markers under the cactuses due to the red on reddish brown before they exploded but just knew from previous mechs that they would explode so i'm often clipped since I can't tell the size of the AOE itself. I just guess.

I've wanted to go into the new EX4 fight because I love Beatrix but everyone I know grips my shoulder and shakes their head at me and has warned me repeatedly that I can't just luck my way out of it. And that i'll need to wait for more 'experienced' friends to hand hold me due to the aoe colors and honestly, that kinda ticks me off. I want to do the content without being hand held, I like the challenge. I do savage/ex for the challenge (and the glams) but all the recent updates has made me have to sit and wait until I can get a group of people willing to assist me and it makes things feel so unfun. Like i'm the family dog sitting outside watching my family eat a nice meal without me.

I've always felt that Accessibility is an important item to tackle in all forms of the game. It's never going to be a one shoe fits every user, sometimes a filter will work sometimes a lil more in depth tuning needs to happen. Having accessibility options is a needed feature for a lot of people. I've worked with children with spinal injuries in the past setting up controllers and usb items specifically so they can play games and teaching nursing staff which options would work for x issue if the patient is bed bound or can only use their feet etc

While i'm colorblind, I used to listen to audio ques to help me but i'm now slowly going fully deaf in one ear and so i'm not able to use some of my old hacks. And the options available to me in the game are not at all the same options I get from newer and older titles and it's a bit laughable that FF16 has better accessibility options than 14. I wonder if the director of 16 can share this with the director of 14.

Honestly the amount of people I know who play this game with other forms of bodily needs and visual/photosensitive needs only rise. What used to not be that big of a problem is becoming more and more of an issue with how the team is adding these VFX/Color choices and it's a really terrible trend.

adding my support to this thread. i don't have colorblindness, i'm not usually photosensitive, and as far as i know i don't have any specific disorders pertaining to this-- but the gradual reliance on flashy, bright effects and visual clutter has given me migraines since endwalker. i first noticed with athena, and then later, sphene. parts of m4s would trip migraines, too. it had never happened prior to this, and if it did, it was so rare that i don't remember.

i can't imagine what a nightmare some of these fights must be with any form of colorblindness. i'm so sorry. y'all deserve to play the game you pay for without issue. accessibility shouldn't be a debate.

Like many others who have posted in this thread, I struggled a fair amount in the new trial because of the devs insistence on making an orange marker overlay on a red floor. I didn't struggle as much in M5 seeing as the ground is a much more muted color of red so seeing the markers for where the attacks were gonna hit wasn't too much of an issue, but there were times where I exploded from otherwise avoidable damage, especially during the later parts of the fight.
I regularly use colorblind accessibility settings in other games for the comfort of my own eyesight seeing as I am nearsighted and rely on glasses in order to see, but as the patches go on and the fights get more visually intense, I start to worry.
I shouldn't have to sacrifice my own eyesight just to play a game that I enjoy.

I am not colorblind but my husband is, and since Endwalker the design of spell effects and indicators have grown more and more lazy to compensate for people with colorblind issues. The colorblind accessibility settings for this game are lacking/need improvement in terms of color adjustment and, outside of that fact, the current design of many fights is what I'd call muddy. I understand the aesthetic of designing a pink-on-red-on-red-roses fight but in practice, it leads to a confusing experience even for those without colorblind issues.

Adding my support to this, though my issues are pretty different - im not colorblind, but I have severe keratoconus, which makes me extremely light sensitive. Things like Mt Gulg and the last Nier raid in ShB that got tweaked are issues for me, and the last Nier raid still sucks (I still have to close my eyes when Red Girl does her glitchy raidwide). The bright white screen cuts are hell. The second boss of the newest Arcadion raids are a pain until they start changing the area.

A lot of things that are hard for me to handle are also very common migraine triggers, so it's not just about visual diabilities either !

We need a way to add a tint overlay over specific colors, or change the color of aoe markers in game. I would also love a way to change the skin on dialog boxes. The default light with dark text is extremely hard for me to read. On a bad eye day I can't read them al all. They've shown they can easily change how those look for immersion/effect (the omicron / machine one that's the more standard FF dark blue background, the black 'whisper' one that atarted in ShB I think ?) so being able to pick one of those as a default for all textboxes would be amazing.

I want to add support to this thread. I have light sensitivity issues that cause migraines and wear coloured lenses to reduce this happening even with the coloured lenses the flashing can be a lot so I play with battle effects turned off completely.

However a big issue with this is that if I have battle effects turned off I can’t see things such as healing bubbles from other players as there is no visual indicator for them when battle effects are turned off, this could be remedied by something as simple as having a circle on the ground to indicate where a bubble is placed but with how the game is at the moment this sadly leads to many occasions where I unknowingly don’t stand in the bubble which is problematic when you play tank like myself.

Another persistent issue as others have mentioned in the thread is that flashing effects from bosses are not always disabled by these settings either. This also occurs with NPCs in dungeons that aren’t part of the main party, a prime example of this is the opening of tower of zot where I am able to see the effects of the abilities of the NPCs at the start of the dungeon and it can be quite dazzling, there is a few other dungeons where this happens too.

I also struggle with making out AOE markers in certain duties as others have mentioned in this thread. I feel like a solution to this at least for me would be to let players fully customise the colour of AOE markers and maybe even have the option to set different colours for different duties.

It frustrates me that this game lacks basic accessibility options that allow disabled players to enjoy the game. Hopefully this thread reaches the dev team.

one thing to point out,. the effects that we can turn down in game are only player effects and we have no options for boss effects, (which idk why we cant limit boss effects at least x.x) but your post is SPOT ON

I have light sensitivity, I'd really like it if we could have a way or get the dev team to dial back the brightness and the same colourness of a bunch of aoes. I'd like to do harder content one day again, but when I know the lighting is going to mess me up, what's the point of trying? Can't see half of what I'm doing sometimes so if I don't get lucky I just feel like trash. Disheartening!!! :')

Making things hard to see isn't challenging, it's just really annoying.

Adding my support as a photosensitive person who's had issues with flashing effects in specific duties. M4 in particular has been the worst for me in recent times; I walked out of my first clear feeling extremely ill after having to do multiple pulls to clear, and even recently I was thrown in via raid roulette and my options were to either drop out and take a penalty or perform poorly due to being flashbanged and risk feeling ill again. Even then neither option is fair to the players I was matched with, as they would either have to wait for a replacement or put up with my dead weight.

Other notable duties that I recall having photosensitivity issues with include E5, Tower at Paradigm (which also gives me motion sickness), Tower of Zot third boss, and Hydaelyn. I'll also note that, surprisingly, M5 Normal didn't impact me much but seeing bits of M5S prog on streams kind of guaranteed that I'll probably not be able to prog that in earnest.

As an aside, although I'm not colorblind, I admittedly have issues reading the Puppet Bunker-esque expanding spread mechanic during the third boss of The Underkeep because the floor is so low contrast that I struggle with discerning a safe spot until the last moment.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mukuburd

I'll also note that, surprisingly, M5 Normal didn't impact me much but seeing bits of M5S prog on streams kind of guaranteed that I'll probably not be able to prog that in earnest.

---

If you, like me, suffer migraines? I highly advise against it if you don't want to be laid out. M4S was atrocious, but M4N wasn't a bad reaction for me. I can read M5S but I still get headaches, so I definitely recommend sitting this tier out if you think M5S is going to murder you with photosensitivity issues. Thise flashes are a bit excessive.

SADLY, things shouldn't be that way in advising against a fight, it hurts me to even say this T_T

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rainfallen

If you, like me, suffer migraines? I highly advise against it if you don't want to be laid out. M4S was atrocious, but M4N wasn't a bad reaction for me. I can read M5S but I still get headaches, so I definitely recommend sitting this tier out if you think M5S is going to murder you with photosensitivity issues. Thise flashes are a bit excessive.

SADLY, things shouldn't be that way in advising against a fight, it hurts me to even say this T_T

---

FWIW I haven't even attempted nor do I intend to try Savage at all this entire xpac after M4N flattened me from the get go, but I love watching prog streamers and can only barely watch M5S on streams which is a new feat for me :'D

Putting my voice in here, I'm not colorblind to EX4's palette specifically, but fights like O10s a handful of years ago gave me huge issues due to the color-coded debuffs that tanks needed to pay attention to. There haven't been too many fights like that since, but EX4 is close. The red and gray hues are very difficult to spot the difference between in the moment, especially because of the way mechanics overlap like crazy and the floor is unreadable at some points (Bloom 2 comes to mind) where being able to see the floor patterns is CRUCIAL to getting through the mechanic unscathed.

Other fights are also just getting overloaded with difficult to parse telegraphs that only make progression annoying moreso than meaningful. Having telegraphs that are readable is far more important that trying to be flashy and show things off. It's fine in tiny doses here and there, but there's no need to create artificial difficulty when the piecing together of the mechanics should be difficult enough. Making the tells hard to read is just obnoxious on top of it.

For those of you who play PvP, particularly Frontline, I encourage you to add your suggestions regarding accessibility and VFX in this thread:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-PvP-Frontline

Adding support here. Even as someone without colorblindness or photosensitivity (but getting older), it's getting very hard to read with low contrasts, similar colors, and lots of flashing. I already have other player effects limited or off and it barely helps. My friends who do have visual impairments or other disabilities are definitely having issues. When a person I know can't even try a new job because the common advice of "if this color, go flank, if that color, go rear" does nothing for them!

SE is far behind the curve in accessibility options as it is, and continuing to make fights like this (after numerous issues concerning difficult visuals, often for the exact same reasons in previous expansions!) shows a disturbing lack of concern on the part of the encounter and UI developers until it's once again pointed out and they're forced to change it. Though some instances, unfortunately, are never updated (P3's orange on orange on orange, for example).

+1 for support. I don't have colorblind nor photosensitivity (maybe just a tiny bit), but I am easy to get migraine and overwhelmed by visuals. Sorry to say, but since EW a lot of fights have been increasingly full of visual vomit with overly flashy and saturated color. I thought it was annoying in EW, then DT crank it up even higher. Even doing dungeons are tiring for my eyes.

I've only returned to XIV recently, after a long hiatus - and mind you, I spend a LOT of time around screens. But I noticed, maybe since back in Endwalker during Pandaemonium's first tier (or second, my memory's a bit screwed due to trauma), that I'd gotten some increasingly bad eye strain. This is not unusual - my doctor's told me for a number of years I had dry eye and like, it had always been under control, but I remember some days during pasta boy back during prog that my eyes would get bizarrely dry. Like dryer than I was used to them being. In addition to that, I had a number of focusing issues with some of the mechanics during the fight as a tank because I couldn't really zoom out far enough on the field. It was weird - prior to Endwalker, I don't really remember having an issue tanking raids. But during that tier in particular, there's a lot of visual stuff going on that would easily overload and overstimulate me. I remember feeling annoyed regularly at both myself and the fight because I just couldn't seem to focus enough to properly understand what was happening.

This peaked hard in Phoenix. It got to the point where I felt so overstimulated in that fight that I had to do it on my own in PF. I was angry about that because I felt like a burden to everyone around me - like I was THE ONLY tank on Crystal that couldn't seem to focus hard enough to do this fight the right way. I would come away from raid sessions in P3S with headaches and feeling just... exhausted. And that was weird to me - until Endwalker, I'd never gotten headaches before. I think the first time I ever got one was after a raid, actually, and they've come back on occasion since.

I'm concerned that the fights I had the most trouble with in terms of accessibility - pasta boy, Phoenix, Eulogia, and now Zalenia, have all been mentioned prolifically here. To the point where it's starting to feel like I'm not the only one with these issues anymore, and I used to feel that way - I was surrounded by people that seemed seemingly unaffected by all the overstimulating visual information, or just treated it as "part of the game's difficulty". In particular, this tier of Arcadion, I noticed that the 3rd and 4th fights are drastically harder for me to deal with than the 1st and 2nd because the 3rd one has a LOT of movement that it feels like you need to be able to zoom out more to see, and there's a lot of white in the 4th that prevents some of the AOE markers from being seen properly.

So I want to voice my support here, and also thank everyone for sharing your stories. I feel really seen in this regard for the first time ever in my history of playing this game, and that actually feels really... relieving.