Raid/Full Party Issue

Okay so I just got to the story part where you begin using full parties more frequently. Off the bat my entire screen became white and sparkly and the boss could not be seen for the entire fight (due to 8 people smashing the hell out of it at once).

How the hell are you supposed to follow any mechanics or even see where the boss is facing when you are inside of a freakin fireworks display? I cleaned up my hud and made everything quite a bit smaller (lovely how now I have to squint to read things) but I am worried for raids when there's even more people involved.

I really don't want to turn off animations because that's gonna make these fights pretty dull. What do you guys do? Am I the only one having this issue because I haven't seen this covered here yet...

Oh sounds like you're going to have a field day when you get to full 24man content with animations going off everywhere; token WHM spamming holy on mobs and there is always that RDM that has to blind everyone with LB3...

To be honest I think it's mostly something you will get used to over time. You can keep customising your hud till you find something that works, but there is a lot of full party content so it's better to find a suitable setup as soon as you can.

For the raids, you can limit the effects of non-party players to help with the fireworks display.
In the same menu(which I can't remember where it is off the top of my head, and I'm at work so unable to check), you can also make it so your party effects are minimalistic/non-existent.

It's under character configuration and then the control settings go to character. You have battle effects settings for yourself, party and others. I have party and others set to show limited. You still see the important effects and I've learned to recognize abilities by sound. It's how I know people on some jobs aren't aoeing packs down because I don't hear the sounds that go with them. Also get used to using focus target so you know when big stuff is coming out since it's normally has a long cast bar.

https://i.imgur.com/W4hLvJ7.png

I know you said you don't want to turn off animations, but it's really the only thing you can do to handle this.
Depending on the fight, party composition, and party level, Show Limited might still be too flashy, but trying Show Limited is a good start.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by RaynerH

I really don't want to turn off animations because that's gonna make these fights pretty dull.

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So, how interesting is that fireworks display instead?

show limited did the trick. thanks guys

And just remember this for when you do start to run 24man content. If limited is still too much, you can turn the other groups off and only see your 7 teammates.