[Accessibility] Unable to continue MSQ due to visual issue

Hello.

I'm visually impaired and despite my disability I've been enjoying FFXIV ever since A Realm Reborn.

However, I just hit a wall involving an accessibility issue.

I'm easily blinded by light and can't make out details especially when there's a very low contrast between elements.

I'm currently stuck at the patch 6.3 quest "An Unforeseen Bargain", more precisely at the solo battle where you play as Zero against a horde of monsters.

This battle is unwinnable for me because it happens by daylight, in snow, which is all white, and I cannot see any area of effect. and avoid them correctly.

I'm blocked in the main story quest because of this and cannot make any progress. Even retrying in "Very easy" makes it impossible for me to win once the main enemy appears in the battle area.

I usually survive these battles in multiplayer instances because I can rely on others helping me and following them to avoid area of effect attacks, but I cannot rely on anyone since this is a solo instance.

This is very frustrating.

I tried fiddling with my monitor's settings as well as the accessibility options regarding colorblindness but that didn't help me at all.

I contacted support who told me to post a topic here instead.

I'm not sure if you can help me or not but I at least wanted to open a ticket about this. I cut the irrelevant information from the template topic but if you need anything else I will reply to this topic.

Date & Time: 2024-05-27
Frequency: Always
World name: Odin
Character name: Teri Sylpheel
Class/Level: Machinist 90
Party or solo: Solo
Area and coordinates: Garlemald

In a video I can see, it appears to be night, but this isn't relevant because the snow looks bright white regardless.

From what I can see in a video, I would suggest just moving around the arena in a circle constantly and that way if an AoE appears you'll move out of it anyway.

That will be less helpful almost 3 minutes into the fight where there are less safe spots so you could try using Bloodbath there to heal yourself with your attacks.

The part you do need to be able to see is purple towers but it seems the second time you see them, you're actually meant to fail this because it's around this part that the story shows Zero can't manage it.

For the second part, since you can play as yourself. You could play a Paladin and use heavy mitigation and also mark an NPC with a "1" marker and follow them around since they know the safe spots.

Thanks for your advice, I will try that out tomorrow and see how it goes.

I don't have paladin high enough to play as one though. I have tried tanking before but it's difficult for me due to many things I have to watch out for in the game and my eyes can't be verywhere since I need to look real close to the screen. Same issue with healing. It's doable at lower levels, but once you hit certian mechanics, it becomes hard not to die and thus condemning my teammates.

Oh, well you don't need to play Paladin with others necessarily (there are ways to solo level it such as beast tribe quests, daily hunt bills from the hunt board, FATEs) and nobody would know then if you were just press 1 button to keep it simple.

Then in the solo duty the main benefit of Paladin is it can survive better than DPS or healer, and also heal almost indefinitely with Clemency. It may not be necessary to bother with this because you said the problem was in the first part with Zero, rather than the second part with your character. But if you struggle in the second part, a tank or healer could be useful and nobody's going to notice limiting what you press/look at on it since it's a solo duty.

It didn't work out :/ If I turn around the initial mobs I eventually get h it a lot. Same with the main enemy.

A friend is coming over this weekend to sit at my computer and do the instance for me but this isn't solving the initial problem.

I wish there was an easier way to give feedback to the devs about accessibility in the game because there's a lot to be desired still even though the game has already a lot of good idea for accessibility in other areas, but this is very frustrating for a disabled player like me to be stopped by something like that even though I survived lots of other battles before.

I don't think there is much the devs can do without impacting the scene they are trying to set for everyone else. You are asking for accessibility in a hobby that relies heavily on sight in order to play, it's just one of those things.

Did you try adjusting the gamma in /systemconfig then Display Settings? It may seem similar to adjusting your monitor, but it's technically a computer setting instead. There are similar settings by right-clciking your Desktop and opening "Display settings". All these affect the color of white.

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Originally Posted by Anya_Synia

I don't think there is much the devs can do without impacting the scene they are trying to set for everyone else. You are asking for accessibility in a hobby that relies heavily on sight in order to play, it's just one of those things.

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Well there could be more specific settings (such as changing the color and deepness of AoEs specifically without affecting other things), or applying color blind settings without affecting UI elements, but I agree it's difficult since it's meant to be in snow.