Dawntrail Battle Effects: Readability and Visual Clutter

Many of the new abilities introduced in Dawntrail look incredible. The visual effects this expansion go above and beyond to be quite immersive and fitting of a lot of job identities.

However, in certain areas of content, some new visual effects tied to abilities have become quite good at obscuring important parts of mechanics or battle content in general. As a personal example, 60 second burst phases as a warrior during the Arcadion's second fight (in both normal and savage) make some mechanics, such as the patterns of moving hearts on the floor, very difficult to maneuver, with the visual effects of Primal Wrath and Primal Ruination obscuring view of the floor and the character for a period of time. While the rest of the rotation is less flashy with the visual effects, having to guess whether I'll be able to see the mechanic going on for a few seconds every minute is a little frustrating.

This leads into the question of: Should the duration or intensity of certain ability effects be changed to address mechanic and fight readability?

On one hand, it is certainly possible for players to instantly solve this by setting their personal battle effects to "show limited." On the other hand, though, it is a little disappointing to have to turn off every other effect from a job's kit in order to suppress the few that do impair readability.

Would a change in the duration and intensity of effects be warranted? Or, should there be the possibility of customizing ability effects to be more in depth than the "Show All" and "Show Limited" settings currently are?

Tbh same, but in reverse. I just think heartsd should be more vidible or have different pattern, because there are at least 2 instances when in enshroud I completely covered those heartsd with my own effects, bcus reddish colors blend with pink really well

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Originally Posted by SkellyBones

Would a change in the duration and intensity of effects be warranted? Or, should there be the possibility of customizing ability effects to be more in depth than the "Show All" and "Show Limited" settings currently are?

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Yes, please.

Job action animations look absolutely fantastic in the individual job action trailers shown off at Fan Fest. Those same animations become visually oppressive as soon as there's a second player also pushing their buttons.

I sometimes feel like the animations were designed for the trailers and not the bread-and-butter gameplay of dungeons and trials and raids.

Visual clarity has been taking a hit ever since EW, I keep hearing that it's worse in DT (I haven't tried it myself because the game keeps giving me headaches, thanks)

They really need to reduce it or give us the option to. I think it's bad that something that wasn't causing physical pain to people now is....
Please consider accessibility, this effects bloat is too much. I have to play with my own effects only otherwise I can't even tell what the boss is doing.

I try to not turn down battle effects because of pure pride, but some mechanics this tier are just impossible to read at times.
Multiple mechanics in M3S require you to see if the boss's arms are glowing, but it can be downright impossible to differentiate between the boss's particle effects, or your team mates'

Cries in SMN.

At this point I consider getting blinded by Bahamut and Titan an extra mechanic (and I LOVE it). I only reduced a bit the size of Titan. Nothing gives me more dopamine in this game than summoning a big.effin.dragon of doom and using Ahk Morn after.

I hate to limit the battle effects but it has gotten hard to see the some mechanics. I had to limit party effects so I could see the mechanics for Ex2.

I think the solution might just be to layer the effects so that mechanics are always on top of battle effects? Like if make the boss explode, isn't the explosion coming from inside him? His arm should still be over the explosion.