Accessibility Request: Reduce/Turn off Boss Mechanic Effects

NOTE: Please keep this on topic and don't derail please. I don't mind disagreeing but name calling, ragebaiting, insulting behavior can get a thread locked. I don't want that, so please try remain civil even with disagreements. This is a suggestion / request thread to help other players out there like myself.

Hey there! As a player that gets migraines from over saturated effects, I see there is no way to reduce how flashy and flashbangs on my screen. I can do that with job skill effects and that has helped me a lot with being able to focus on duties I que for. However, I noticed in Dawntrail there has been an increase of boss mechanic effects were they are overly bright and hurt my eyes. I have looked into ingame options to see if there was a way to reduce the brightness, but there is not.

Things I've tried on my end:
- Messed with monitor settings, but there's little improvement
- Graphics card settings I'm able to tweak. (Doesn't exactly help tbh)
- System settings ingame to tweak graphics there, but again, not much difference.

I'm surprised SE/CBU3 hasn't improved on their accessibility options in game to help players that struggle with stuff like this. I was doing great for most expansions until late EW and now DT. Too many overdone boss attacks have way too much brightness/flashbanging. I'm certain other players like me may struggle with how certain duties are.

I'm just worried with seeing how overly bright the attack patterns are for Jeuno's 2nd raid I've seen in the 7.3 trailer. I already have a very hard time completing the 1st one with how bad the brightness was for certain mechanics going off. Ex: Shadow Lord I died so much to with how flashbanging the attacks were. I want to enjoy the game, but having the increase of overly bright visual effects hinders my gameplay. There is barely any ways to adjust such settings myself.

Is there anyway possible for a reduction in vfx or boss attack effects to be in the options eventually? If I can do it with my job skill effects, there has to be some leeway they can do here.

I agree, as someone who's been struggling with migraine triggers specifically since DT's graphical update and the effects of its battle content. I play on console, so the settings are limited, and I don't have this with any other game I play nor did it occur before DT. If they don't tune it down overall, I'd really like an option like that because it affects what I can play and how often in a practical way. Migraines aren't a mechanic to learn and overcome, they just make me avoid the content because I have to exercise a modicum of common sense to avoid hurting myself.

I've had to turn battle effects on party members way down, and now I'm likely going to need to turn even name plates off. I really don't know why FFXIV doesn't let us change the colors of battle markers. I would really like to darken the generic AOE one.

Adding my support to this request.

Whilst I am 99.99% sure you'd just get a response like "being able to identify which one of the 17 swords is glowing in the middle of a superrave is part of 'ThE cHaLlEnGe', I will happily lend my support to this as well. If we can tone down player effects for visibility, we should be able to do the same for bosses.

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Originally Posted by Atma

If we can tone down player effects for visibility, we should be able to do the same for bosses.

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Except we can't actually tone down player effects. We can turn them on, and we can turn them off.

Taking Jeuno's last boss as an example, for the mechanic where he holds two glowing orbs in his hands, one of which changes to indicate which side he's going to cleave, you can't just turn the orbs off and still understand the mechanic. You have to redesign the visuals.

Honestly, I find most normal raids and alliance raids these days extremely unpleasant to play due to all the effects. I usually have zero idea what is happening because so much is going on visually.

the visual vomit is part of their intended encounter design in an attempt to obfuscate that the only thing they can come up with is just left/right cleaves, stack/spreads, etc.

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

Except we can't actually tone down player effects. We can turn them on, and we can turn them off

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You can show all, some or none in battle settings.

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

Except we can't actually tone down player effects. We can turn them on, and we can turn them off.

Taking Jeuno's last boss as an example, for the mechanic where he holds two glowing orbs in his hands, one of which changes to indicate which side he's going to cleave, you can't just turn the orbs off and still understand the mechanic. You have to redesign the visuals.

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Right. I was actually confusing the ability to turn down "physics" on characters and enemies without turning them completely off.

It's curious that Endwalker really pushed making uniform battle mechanic indicators only for DT's battle design team to mostly ignore them for single-battle only flash. Would rather that graphical budget go into fixing eyelid bugs.

An accessibility option to mute effects without completely turning them off would be a good QoL.

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

Except we can't actually tone down player effects. We can turn them on, and we can turn them off.

Taking Jeuno's last boss as an example, for the mechanic where he holds two glowing orbs in his hands, one of which changes to indicate which side he's going to cleave, you can't just turn the orbs off and still understand the mechanic. You have to redesign the visuals.

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Very good point there are mechanics that the visual effect is the only indicator as they have no telegraph. Not against this idea, but this is basically asking for all mechanics with only visuals as a indicator to be redesigned or telegraph added.

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

Except we can't actually tone down player effects. We can turn them on, and we can turn them off.

Taking Jeuno's last boss as an example, for the mechanic where he holds two glowing orbs in his hands, one of which changes to indicate which side he's going to cleave, you can't just turn the orbs off and still understand the mechanic. You have to redesign the visuals.

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You bring up a decent point! Certain mechanics to avoid or prepare for are visual cues, so I can see where you're coming from. If they can't outright REMOVE these visual cues, we can go on the road of just reducing the brightness of the attack? That way it doesn't have to completely rebuild or redesigning the visuals from scratch. They just have the dim the brightness or swap out a few colors to make it less intense. I'm more inclined to have a reduction of overly bright boss visual effects than removing them, but I did list that as a possible QoL request. If that makes sense?

I have very low hope they'd ever consider this, especially given things like O11N still having one of the worst visual flashbangs in the game (the last boss of 7.0 MSQ likewise is hell.)

The dev team's idea of accessibility standards is pretty awful for a game that's still going in 2025. Even a simple toggle to reduce overall screen brightness when certain visual attacks are happening would go a long way - especially where the attack relies on a visual cue, but the fact that the ability to remove bloom (ONLY if you were on PC, mind you) was completely removed as of 7.0...

Not trying to be a Negative Nancy, but given there has been an eye-strain accessibility post going for over a year now with nothing being done to remedy things from CS3 even with some JP players bringing up the issue in the graphics feedback overall, it feels very frustratingly like the devs do not care if their game can cause literal harm to players who've done everything in their power from TV/monitor settings, to stuff on their graphics cards, so they can enjoy a game that they have likely sunk hundreds of dollars into if they've been playing well before EW.

Two things you could try:


There is a "gamma" setting in-game to reduce the brightness, it can be found here: https://preview.redd.it/7q55v6ntend7...=webp&9278b64chttps://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2F7q55v6ntend71.png%3Fwidth%3D1411%26format%3Dpng%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D0e357af6ac0248afd9091327495ff7f49278b64c
https://preview.redd.it/7q55v6ntend7...=webp&9278b64c
https://preview.redd.it/7q55v6ntend7...=webp&9278b64c
It doesn't help much, but it's something.


The other thing that may help more but is not in-game, is ReShade. It's a popular photo filter program used in many games, in which you can use a variety of effects to make your own "filters". It is mostly used to enhance screenshots without having to take them to a photo editing program, and it is more than powerful enough to do what you need. You can tweak the lights and shadows, bright colors, etc. to your tastes. It doesn't touch anything in the game, it's similar to looking through a colored glass of your preference. Many people in the community have made filters to mitigate the effects the game can have on epileptic and generally photosensitive users.


Now comes the conversation, is this 3rd party? Yes, in the same way your keyboard and mouse are 3rd party, or wearing glasses, or having a sticky note with a reminder on your monitor, or using a calculator... SE can be a little ridiculous when it comes to it sometimes, but I've never ever heard of someone getting punished for ReShade, specially since it is literally undetectable unless you admit to using it yourself. It doesn't touch the game or doesn't give you any advantage, besides, you know, being able to see. It is up to you at the end of the day, but I see no harm in trying it out.

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Originally Posted by Breezelyn

NOTE: Please keep this on topic and don't derail please. I don't mind disagreeing but name calling, ragebaiting, insulting behavior can get a thread locked. I don't want that, so please try remain civil even with disagreements. This is a suggestion / request thread to help other players out there like myself.

Hey there! As a player that gets migraines from over saturated effects, I see there is no way to reduce how flashy and flashbangs on my screen. I can do that with job skill effects and that has helped me a lot with being able to focus on duties I que for. However, I noticed in Dawntrail there has been an increase of boss mechanic effects were they are overly bright and hurt my eyes. I have looked into ingame options to see if there was a way to reduce the brightness, but there is not.

Things I've tried on my end:
- Messed with monitor settings, but there's little improvement
- Graphics card settings I'm able to tweak. (Doesn't exactly help tbh)
- System settings ingame to tweak graphics there, but again, not much difference.

I'm surprised SE/CBU3 hasn't improved on their accessibility options in game to help players that struggle with stuff like this. I was doing great for most expansions until late EW and now DT. Too many overdone boss attacks have way too much brightness/flashbanging. I'm certain other players like me may struggle with how certain duties are.

I'm just worried with seeing how overly bright the attack patterns are for Jeuno's 2nd raid I've seen in the 7.3 trailer. I already have a very hard time completing the 1st one with how bad the brightness was for certain mechanics going off. Ex: Shadow Lord I died so much to with how flashbanging the attacks were. I want to enjoy the game, but having the increase of overly bright visual effects hinders my gameplay. There is barely any ways to adjust such settings myself.

Is there anyway possible for a reduction in vfx or boss attack effects to be in the options eventually? If I can do it with my job skill effects, there has to be some leeway they can do here.

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Agree and upvote.

Adding my support for this request.

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Originally Posted by Shistar

The other thing that may help more but is not in-game, is ReShade. It's a popular photo filter program used in many games, in which you can use a variety of effects to make your own "filters". It is mostly used to enhance screenshots without having to take them to a photo editing program, and it is more than powerful enough to do what you need. You can tweak the lights and shadows, bright colors, etc. to your tastes. It doesn't touch anything in the game, it's similar to looking through a colored glass of your preference. Many people in the community have made filters to mitigate the effects the game can have on epileptic and generally photosensitive users.

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Unfortunately that solution is not available to console users at all, which is why it is imperative the development team actually consider proper accessibility despite how much they seem to be trying to avoid doing so.

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Originally Posted by faiarrow

Unfortunately that solution is not available to console users at all, which is why it is imperative the development team actually consider proper accessibility despite how much they seem to be trying to avoid doing so.

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Yes, I absolutely agree with you. But I also wanted to leave it out there for any users who can try it out and make their experience less painful. It's not a perfect solution and sadly it cannot help everyone, but it is better than no solution at all while we keep asking SE to make changes.

I think the new alliance raid is full of examples of superfluous visual effects. Did they really need to add all the golden effects? Like make a shiny sword or something but drop the golden twirls around it.
It's just too much and makes me not want to look.

As someone else who gets migraines and has been struggling with a lot of newer content for similar reasons, I'm adding my support to this.

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Originally Posted by Breezelyn

I'm surprised SE/CBU3 hasn't improved on their accessibility options in game to help players that struggle with stuff like this. I was doing great for most expansions until late EW and now DT. Too many overdone boss attacks have way too much brightness/flashbanging. I'm certain other players like me may struggle with how certain duties are.

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Unfortunately this was brought up all the way back in DT's early access leading to the 100 page long eye strain thread - with no dev response as of yet. 7.2 also sparked a few new threads on the subject, but only the trial was adjusted. Per the eye strain thread, some graphic adjustment settings were removed in 7.0 and have yet to come back in any meaningful form. I tried playing with the gamma and that didn't help at all. There are third party alternatives beyond reshade, but that's not a solution for all players.

Accessibility is a huge problem with the game at present, with the current visual design philosophy being at the forefront of that. There need to be settings to adjust the clutter and severity of these effects.

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

Except we can't actually tone down player effects. We can turn them on, and we can turn them off.

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False. At least on PC. There are 3 options. Show all, Show limited, Show None.

https://i.imgur.com/9KWRbpn.png

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Taking Jeuno's last boss as an example, for the mechanic where he holds two glowing orbs in his hands, one of which changes to indicate which side he's going to cleave, you can't just turn the orbs off and still understand the mechanic. You have to redesign the visuals.

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Not every single mechanic needs to be reduced. Two glowing orbs in a hand is not an example of the constant rave that people are talking about. The comically stupid light shows for an unavoidable AOE are a great example of it. There's nothing you can do, no place you can stand. You are going to get hit by it, there's no need to flashbang everyone's eyeballs if it's causing people hardship.