Difficulty in latest story dungeons/trials due to hand disability.

So I am a huge FF fan. I love the story and the world created by it, and as such, even though I have some limitations that prevent me from being a truly great player, I want to experience the story int his game.

But lately, this is proving incredibly difficult for me as my hands get cramped up from trying to dodge all of the AOEs in the latest trials. It started with Shinryu, and has continued in a worse way with Castrum Fluminis. I did end up clearing Castrum, but I fully believe that I was carried and it was incredibly close anyway, and frustrating (and abusive, if I am honest) even though I was trying my best.


I am not under any delusion, I know that I can not do savage content. I know I can't do any of the difficult for difficult sake content. But why are the story trials continually getting harder? They are not meant to farmed or run repeatedly, the experience gained is completely useless(and these are 70s anyway...)
Why, for example, is a STORY trial more difficult than the new 24 man alliance raid? Castrum Savage, go ahead, make it eye bleedingly difficult for the people who love it, but you are just skill and able gating people out of the story at this point.

I just feel like they are making things difficult to cut out people with disability, or even people who just can't get there due to skill or enough time to train in their job.

I mostly stick to myself in this game, I do hunts, fates, crafting/gathering, etc. I don't even do duty roulettes because it is often too difficult for my hands. But I love the story and I want to experience it before I get spoiled. But this is proving more and more impossible for me to do, and I don't see a particular reason for it to be that way.

While I'm sorry to hear about your troubles with the game, I cant share your sentiment about story content needing to be - excuse my language - "faceroll-easy". I know you're not asking for that out of laziness and you're self-aware enough of your own limits to decide what content you can actually do and what isnt in your range, but... a lot of people arent.
They go into all sorty of content without being aware of the need to improve - and they dont even want to. You're constantly encountering people who are getting away with subpar play (due to laziness/the lack of will to improve) because the content doesnt really require you to pay any attention. And thats not good - it sucks for people like you, but I'd actually say we need more difficult story-content so that people are actually "forced" to pay attention instead of watching netflix on the second screen and pressing 3 buttons because they can easly get away with it.

For the average player non of the content actually requires that much skill - again, I know that is for no fault of your own not the case with you, but at the end of the day they cant really balance the game around people with various disabilities :/ at least not without making it boring for the majority...

Storytrials shouldnt just be role-over content - they're supposed to be somewhat epic, mildly challenging fights. Whats the point of a building up a boss only to have it turn out to be a training-dummy in the end? That would be quite disappointing. Its not only Savage that needs intresting mechanics - even a NM should be able to make the player go "Wow, that was an intresting mechanic!" or give them some puzzle to solve.

Sorry, storycontent doesnt need to be easier. Not even considering people with disablity :/

But the community is actually nice for the most part! Honestly, I'd say your best bet is to stop sticking to yourself, find nice people, a good FC and make some friends - tell them about your issue and ask them for help. I know my FC and friends wouldnt mind helping someone in a situation like that!
We would however mind faceroll-easy, boring storycontent...

I think doing those with friends/FC will at least make it more tolerable, if you're not already doing that.
You're listed as being on Faerie. If you ever want a chill run, no people being jerks, look me up: Squintina Nightgard. The FC I'm in is full of kind people of all skill levels.

The next thing I'm wondering is: mouse & keyboard or controller?

While I don't have a disability, I do have really bad circulation in my tiny hands (I wear kids gloves -.-, it's like my hands are still 12 years old. Good thing I'm short or it would look weird).
Because of those 2 things, playing on mouse & keyboard for games with a lot of skills is difficult.
Tiny hands = using Ctrl/Alt for using skills is difficult, which means more clicking for skills.
Too much clicking = fingers cramp up and go numb, and it's awkward to have to dodge when doing clicking at the same time.
The solution I first came up with was getting an MMO mouse. This was great for resolving the small hands part and the dodging-while-clicking part, but I would often still go numb.
As a person who likes difficult content (I do savage and the equivalent of those in other mmos I played in the past), this was just something to get through :/

Then I moved to controller. It was really difficult at first, but that's because I had never played an mmorpg of this type on a controller. Getting past years of playing on mouse & keyboard took a lot of practice. But once I got past it, I realized that controller is vastly superior - being more comfortable, easier to reach for dodging, and easier to access skills overall. Sure, targeting sucks (which is why for large scale pvp I go back to mmo mouse play), but overall it just feels so much better (especially since I started using a Switch Pro controller and not an x360 controller, as the x360 controller is not comfortable for small hands due to the amount of pressure needed on the triggers, whereas the switch pro has smaller triggers and a more curved shape for less cramping). I never go numb anymore, can last for hours longer, and my response time is so much better that I can even rank competitively in fflogs.

So I guess my point is: try using a different input method to see if it'll help.

Apologies in advance as this isn't going to be sugar coated or such.....

So yeah, I'm sorry but content that is effectively the gate of entry into the current endgame shouldn't be tuned to the lowest common denominator to cater for a very specific minorities needs when it's not even really any kind of an obstacle once you apply a little bit of initiative. Completely neutering regular trials even more than they already are (Even Shinryu was a piece of cake compared to TitanHM in early 2.0 IMHO) is just needlessly ruining the experience for the overwhelming masses for the sake of the few.

Don't get me wrong, I completely feel your plight, but at the end of the day, should tens of thousands of mainstream players be shovel fed a completely pointless and anticlimatic boss fight for the sake of your hands? This isn't about savage so don't even play that card here. This is about giving the player base as a whole a conclusion to the story that's more than 'press f to roll the credits '.

At the end of the day this is an MMO, it's easy enough to gather up some friends or even make a trap PF and simply get carried through the content if needs must. None of the regular mode primals have ever been a hard wall no matter how incapable a player is providing you've got the initiative to simply ask around. So for the rest of us out there, I can only suggest that you suck up some of that pride and carry on as you are. The advice above from Squintina is also solid and well worth considering.

Should I turn up to my local moorland cycling event and demand that they take the flat route because I'm old and my knees can't hack the climbs anymore? Absolutely not in my book. Some things are just not meant to be.

Rather than decrying the existence of boss content that offers some vague semblance of a challenge, consider being glad that you can simply enlist the help of other people to get the job done for you. You simply wouldn't have this option in a single player RPG.

As a person who also has a physical disability that prevents me from playing many games, I can't say I agree in the MSQ content nor Story Trial content being difficult. I even found Tsukuyomi EX to be a pleasant, but not difficult, challenge. With the new patch the only thing I found difficult was the story for unlocking Ridorana.... and let's be honest, a good majority of players had a rough time there.

As a "disabled", and I use the term lightly, player... I for one enjoy the constant challenges presented to me by FFXIV. If they made it easy simply because the minority found it hard, this game would have died far too quickly. Do I wish that they'd make instanced quests party-wide? Yes. Because I love doing quests with friends, but hate having to go "herpderp sorry gotta leave for 5 min". Would be nice if they could treat party members the same way as chocobo's for instanced quests, but I digress.

Is the game too difficult for disabled players? No. Is End-game content too difficult for disabled players? No.

Like others have said, if one method of control doesn't work for you due to pain, perhaps try switching to the other as it might feel better for your hands.

I feel bad that your hands get cramped and causes pain, but I will not sit by and let people use disabilities as an excuse for getting easier content. I'm tired of my disability affecting how people treat me in real life, and so I come play these online games because people don't know I'm disabled and actually treat me like a person and not someone who constantly needs help. We don't need that following us into video games as well.

TL;DR - Don't use your disability as a crutch. You're giving other disabled gamers a bad name.

I have arthritis in my knuckles so I can understand that hands hurting and all that. I wanna double down on what someone already stated and say plug in a controller, once you get the hang of it you'll have 0 issues doing any sort of content.

Hello OP, I don't know many details about your disability but hopefully my own experience can help.

Due to similar reasons I have experienced difficulty playing the game in combat. I love the game and I didn't want to quit so I researched ergonomic pc accessories. Maybe you play on console, I don't know but as far as I'm aware keyboard and mouse also works with the ps4.

No doubt you have already spotted the very weird mouse in the image below. Despite its odd appearance, the design changed my gaming life. I went from being unable to do any combat to being able to do a few roulettes a day. There is a wired and wireless version, and it is very cheap (cost me about £10). If you search for "Anker ergonomic mouse" you'll find it pretty easily. I got mine on Amazon.

It has all the basic functions you would expect from a generic mouse as well as two extra buttons your thumb can easily reach, and a dpi toggle which is handy if you happen to play any games where that might matter.

I know you mentioned character movement is one of your issues, and I know that with keyboard and mouse you generally use the keyboard to move. However you can also press left and right click together to move your character and steer with the mouse. Most mmorpgs have this function. So if the hand on the keyboard cramps up, you can switch to using the other hand. Another tip is if you increase the sensitivity of your mouse you can greatly reduce the movement you need to do while using it.

Using the ergonomic mouse at first feels very strange. I recommend playing a simple game with heavy mouse movement like Solitaire or Bejeweled to get used to it before diving in to a more advanced game like FFXIV.

Good luck and I hope you will find a way to increase the quality of your gaming life.

https://i.imgur.com/BEhD3Uk.jpg

https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2018/05/...ve-controller/ - this might also be of interest to you. Sure you'll be paying a fair wedge of cash overall for it, but here's the start of an adaptive controller world. If you have Windows 10 it'll work on that too. This will hopefully allow you to get certain controllers going and find a control scheme that works for you. The reason Microsoft are doing this are to try and help enable disabled gamers to achieve their gaming potential.

You can stop playing until SE introduces a stormblood skip potion for when 5.0 comes out.

I can sympathise with the disability impeding your enjoyment of the game, but this is just silly.

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Originally Posted by Endeleon

I just feel like they are making things difficult to cut out people with disability, or even people who just can't get there due to skill or enough time to train in their job.

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MSQ content is very, very easy. Shinryu and Castrum Fluminis are the only two that stand out as slightly tricky as far as MSQ content goes, but it's still not hard by any means. If your party can't carry you through, they're genuinely bad, it's not your fault alone. As for SE "making things difficult to cut out people with disability", this is a hilariously narcissistic way to think. Nobody at SE goes to work each day and dreams up new ways to screw over the >1% of players with disabilities that render them unable to complete casual content. To put it plainly, you as an individual just aren't that important to them.

As for "players without enough time to train in their job", you really should know how to play your job by the time you get to Shinryu and Yomi, by that point you're at the current endgame. There's really no excuse there.

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Originally Posted by Endeleon

I mostly stick to myself in this game, I do hunts, fates, crafting/gathering, etc. I don't even do duty roulettes because it is often too difficult for my hands.

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I don't know how you got to level 70 without doing any roulettes. Honestly, if dailies are too difficult for you, you might want to reconsider what you actually want from this game. The content delivered through roulettes is the easiest combat content the game has to offer. There's really no way to make it easier without making it so easy it becomes unenjoyable for the majority of people.

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Originally Posted by Endeleon

you are just skill and able gating people out of the story at this point.

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No, they aren't. "Able gating" isn't a thing, and MSQ content doesn't require a lot of skill, just knowing your rotation and moving out of the orange circles. This is like claiming professional sports discriminates against amputees by requiring the use of hands and feet. You can't demand that the majority of people have their enjoyment of the game impeded to cater for less than 1% of the population. I really do sympathise with your situation, but you're acting incredibly entitled.

End-game story content is likely going to get more challenging going forward, since there has to be a difficulty curve as your level increases, even for MSQ stuff.

You had my sympathy right up until you started to accuse SE of being ableist.

Eh, yeah, I think SE has to be careful with how fast and in how close succession mechanics are. The last phase of flummins is faster than a lot of harder fights, honestly. I can see it being rough for some people. The difficulty seems to be really inconsistent these days between types of casual content, with them see-sawing from harder to easier in a weird fashion.

I was going to sympathize until you started accusing SE. Now you're just being entitled.

I'm going to just leave this video here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogCRNvghbiw

That's one of reasons won't ever try out any of the savage raids or ultimate stuff.

Hey, OP!

I have photosensitive epilepsy, amongst other things, so I understand what an arse it can be to enjoy playing video games with a condition. It also skews what I consider difficult - so I can imagine your hand condition could well do the same for you. For example, Castrum Fluminis also messed around with dark/light stuff, which typically burns my brain, but by the luck of the gods, I got through by sticking to my hubby's char's arse and trying not to look too much whilst trying to keep a tune going. It's probably the hardest thing I've done in this game thus far, and it's up against being dropped into Rabanastre from a roulette completely unprepared (and actually getting through) and World of Darkness with it's equally cheesy dark/light shenanigans.

I appreciate the frustration, but I really don't think it's fair to say the devs have it in for you. At worst, they just haven't likely considered the full impact of playing with a disability, or perhaps there truly is little that can be done (there's lots of us, and our requirements are often rather disparate). Given time, perhaps hand health may be something they can do something about. Until then, we have to do a little thinking outside of the box on occasion. For me, flatscreens have been a boon, a life saver. Before that, it was filter screens. I always wear sunglasses on sunny days (sometimes even inside), always play in a lit room at night time. Fiddle with gamma settings, turn effects off, and so on. For your case, consider the controllers/mice brought up in the thread, and an empathetic FC or linkshell. Also, I don't know if this is any good to you whatsoever, but as someone whose other hobby is crochet, I can advise of arthritis gloves that knitters/crocheters use to make it easier to craft. Have a look: here.

Content typically does increase in difficulty as time goes on. This game is a few years old now and naturally, enough of the player base are sufficiently skilled to make anything less than, say, MSQ Castrum Fluminis seem like something my 90 year old osteoporotic gran could do in her sleep using only mind bullets. Still, perhaps it will be nerfed in the future, which could make it less stressful on the hands -for example, when a new expansion rolls out. If finding sympathetic others to play with/a new controller doesn't float your boat, perhaps a waiting game is your best option.

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Originally Posted by Ceridwenae

Still, perhaps it will be nerfed in the future, which could make it less stressful on the hands -for example, when a new expansion rolls out. If finding sympathetic others to play with/a new controller doesn't float your boat, perhaps a waiting game is your best option.

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If nothing else, future players are going to be all running it in much higher-leveled gear. As a new player just coming in a few months ago, I was fully equipped in Shire gear before even reaching Heavensward’s endgame content. Future players will have that same easy access to the equivalent best-in-Stormblood gear or beyond.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

If nothing else, future players are going to be all running it in much higher-leveled gear. As a new player just coming in a few months ago, I was fully equipped in Shire gear before even reaching Heavensward’s endgame content. Future players will have that same easy access to the equivalent best-in-Stormblood gear or beyond.

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Yes, this too. :)

Have to say, I've only played "seriously" since February this year, and have seen this being the case. Trials like, offhand, MSQ Levi are done in all of a minute. Perhaps it was difficult once, but not now. Quicker content from higher level gear means less stress on hands, that's for sure.

What about controller? Will using controller help you better?

I'm sorry to hear that but...

The game is already so easy most folks can play it blindfolded, especially non-savage stuff.

For your specific disability have you tried using a controller? It might take some time getting used to but you don't really have a real disadvantage vs KB/M players ... maybe less freedom of a cursor and targets.
But a long time ago one of our healers was a console player using controller and she had no trouble quickly targeting people and heal them in savage content.

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Originally Posted by Fhaerron

I'm sorry to hear that but...

The game is already so easy most folks can play it blindfolded, especially non-savage stuff.

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Tell that to the pug I was in earlier tonight.
MSQ should not be pug breakers.

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Originally Posted by Taebok

Tell that to the pug I was in earlier tonight.
MSQ should not be pug breakers.

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No?

Because you run with 7 other people that can't push more then 1 button doesn't mean that it's hard.

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Originally Posted by Annoynymoose

I was going to sympathize until you started accusing SE. Now you're just being entitled.

I'm going to just leave this video here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogCRNvghbiw

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I was wondering if that video was going to be brought up.

That guy does pretty well for himself there.
That's also from back in Heavensward when the rotations were 'more difficult'.

The OP have some disabilities, cleared content anyway, but complaining still ? Because he "feels" carried?

8-man duties are 8 man, not single player. A group of 8 can clear any non-savage content just because they were able to get in. The fact one player can be at disadvantage because his own problems (any, not only disabilities but any) is already balanced by a difficulty level that makes the duty clearable even when the effort of one or two members is low. I think there is nothing to fix.

If OP wants no troubles on clearing content, just go overgeared and that's all. i345 now raining to everyone and you can do everything (excluding latest savage ofc) with it.

If you want feel better, Castrum Fluminis was hell to me too, my first second time (edit: my first was a party disband after half hour of wipes…) there was a number of wipes and then we cleared with only a mere 6s from the autokick. Yes we were there the full hour before the clear. This is the latest content of the game and it is natural you have (somewhat) hard time on doing it.

I think a complain because you cannot cheese it out at first try was an overreaction.

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Originally Posted by TaranTatsuuchi

I was wondering if that video was going to be brought up.

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It's stupid. No one makes videos of barely struggling to play the game because of their disability, nor do you see the tons of people who can't devote every waking hour to a game in order to overcome a handicap through sheer repetition. There's this weird bias to the photogenic overcomers when talking about disabilities, as if every person in a wheelchair can learn to play basketball if they just put their mind to it.

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Originally Posted by Endeleon

I just feel like they are making things difficult to cut out people with disability, or even people who just can't get there due to skill or enough time to train in their job.

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Or they want the concluding boss to a large story arc to not be an absolute joke like Thordan normal mode where you could literally fail half his mechanics and clear without a hitch? It couldn't possibly that.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

It's stupid. No one makes videos of barely struggling to play the game because of their disability, nor do you see the tons of people who can't devote every waking hour to a game in order to overcome a handicap through sheer repetition. There's this weird bias to the photogenic overcomers when talking about disabilities, as if every person in a wheelchair can learn to play basketball if they just put their mind to it.

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You're misinterpreting the intent. People aren't necessarily saying "because this person overcame x, you should be able to in the same way." They're saying, "this person didn't complain or blame the game because they had a disability. They found a solution that worked for themselves."

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

You're misinterpreting the intent. People aren't necessarily saying "because this person overcame x, you should be able to in the same way." They're saying, "this person didn't complain or blame the game because they had a disability. They found a solution that worked for themselves."

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which probably involved spending an insane amount of time and effort, and that many people can or will not be able to do. The real "solution" ends up being not doing it or being carried through it, which is not much of a solution at all. But the video always makes the "git gud" people feel good.

That particular fight though is pretty unique in the speed of the mechanics in the last phase, and there should be a bit of discussion on how fast mechanics should be in casual content. I mean, susano ex fires off slower, and requires you to keep track of less elements for each mechanic.

Don't all final fantasy games get harder as the game progresses through? Why should this one be different.

Also, we really need to decide what casual means. Does it mean time put into the game or player skill?

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Don't all final fantasy games get harder as the game progresses through? Why should this one be different.

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Don't all games get harder as you go further in? I see the difficulty as simply that as well.

The game is not too hard. This is a silly train of thought. If someone has to try harder at something because of an irl circumstance beyond the development team's control that is between that person and the game, it shouldn't involve anyone else.

The idea that they need to scale back the already 100% carryable story mode trials because of the needs of an exceedingly small number of players (thus hamstringing the enjoyment of a much larger number of players) just doesn't make any sense... particularly from a business standpoint.