I'm disabled, can we please stop with the solo duties.

[Yascaret]

I have a really strong opinion about people with disability playing this game, but I'd rather not speak about it here. The solo duty content only have 4 buttons, with only 1 button you need to press for most of the fight, another button for gap closer and another button for heal (which I don't know whether it's even needed if you're forced to play very easy)... I don't think it matters if you play Bard or whatever other main jobs you have.

If you're actually dying so much though, I guess I hope SE will give life tokens/auto-revive system for a couple of times in very easy.. just to make sure people can take more mistake. Having another people to help you if you're stuck might be a good idea too, but I'm not sure SE will allow it since I think the main reason they increase the difficulty in duties in this expansion is too raise the skill floor of the people playing it for future expansion..

[HappyHubris]

Games can't be built around edge cases, because then they wouldn't be fun. What if someone had really, really slow reaction times? We can't have the player take damage! What if someone has PTSD? No loud noises! What if someone has extreme ADHD? Can't give the player directions! Etc etc.

Disability is unfortunate, but it's not a trump card to remake every activity into a personalized version. Especially when dealing with companies abroad.

[lennit]

would be nice if they added a option (3rd death = give skip option) since you cant get it done with easy mode would be better to skip so you can continue with the msq or allow, a party member to help you out . i know this problem very well, my friend quit the game for 2 years. he came back, when he could get a story skip. he ended up having the same problem later on in the game again. it got to the point he told me to get on his account just to do it for him. so he would have a reason to play again since he was stuck. easy is not easy for everyone. because of these solo duty my friend, didnt have fun, didnt understand the msq because of the story skip he had to buy to get past this point of the game.

[Kuroka]

Games can't be built around edge cases, because then they wouldn't be fun. What if someone had really, really slow reaction times? We can't have the player take damage! What if someone has PTSD? No loud noises! What if someone has extreme ADHD? Can't give the player directions! Etc etc.

Disability is unfortunate, but it's not a trump card to remake every activity into a personalized version. Especially when dealing with companies abroad.

This, ik its harsh but it cant be helped, the bar is already too low and we'd actually need more "walls" that do an "be this good/understanding or you cant pass" check.

The amount of players that are lv 100 and die to lv 10 aoe or lv 50 mechanics is... scary...

[Sida]

While I get the idea that group duties, such as dungeons and trials are better because the other players are there to make up for it, I wonder if you play with pre-made parties who know that from the start.

[Minali]

Games can't be built around edge cases, because then they wouldn't be fun. What if someone had really, really slow reaction times? We can't have the player take damage! What if someone has PTSD? No loud noises! What if someone has extreme ADHD? Can't give the player directions! Etc etc.

Disability is unfortunate, but it's not a trump card to remake every activity into a personalized version. Especially when dealing with companies abroad.

Thanks for being such a good example for how horrible able-bodied people's understanding is from disabilities, neurodiversities and the myriad of ways how you can make a game accessible without making it a visual novel for everyone. There are multiple threads about solo duties where people gave examples on how to make the game more accessible without having to affect you *in any possible way*. The keyword for that is "options", giving people options to adjust the game to their liking, no matter in what way. The game actually already has quite a few and you probably even have noticed them directly without checking:

The (fairly limited but existing) general modes for colour blindness.
Indicators at the side of your screen for noises you might not be able to here.
Distinct individual audio cues for attacks of your group and your enemies to allow blind people to play it.
The HUD making you resize and move basically everything to accomodate bad eye sight or a narrow field of view.
Easy and Very Easy modes in solo duties.
More or less unlimited control about your hotkeys.

All of these are options for making the game accessible. (They have room for improvement, but it's already more than what many other games offer.) All of these are options you don't have to care about. Aside from audio cues and hotkey management you probably never noticed them or thought about them. All of these options are helping people with disabilities to play the game alongside you and they don't impact you at all. And neither would to many of the options people suggested in threads about dungeons and solo duties, like getting some extra lives with duty support, a skip option after many failed attempts for solo duties, or simply the devs taking a bit more care when creating their "very easy" mode instead of just adjusting a bunch of numbers and calling it a day.

There are also things in battles themselves you probably never noticed: In the final fight in Aglaia, you have these orange - blue tells for mechanics. During these phases, there are lamps floating in the air. Their shape varies, depending on if the arena is orange or blue, for people who can't tell orange from blue. It has zero impact on how you play this raid. It still makes it more accessible for others.
There are so, so many ways to make a game accessible without impacting anyone in a negative way, if the devs just take a second to care about them.

But sure, it's easier to shout ableist bullshit about scenarios that are very much detached from reality and blame disabled people for every game design decision ever made. Why bother educating yourself or even just reading more posts than the ones you personally wrote?

[HappyHubris]

But there is always a limit as to what can be accommodated, and Square Enix doesn't seem inclined to let players skip content entirely during the expansion. You'll also note that the desired asks in this thread are to nuke solo duties entirely or recode and redesign everything to allow multiple players. So yeah, it's different than colorblind UI tweaks.

I know plenty of disabled and neurodivergent people who play FFXIV. But at some point, these action games require some minimum of input to participate that will exclude people. If the in-game instructions for solo duties are too much, you can watch full YouTube breakdowns explaining the mechanics and strategy.

[Sida]

In single player games it's understandable they can have much freedom on how much ease they give, after all its up to the player alone. However in MMO like this the assumption has to be that most of the player base will be playing with other players at some point, some who might not be in their immediate friend group. Even if that's not the case for everyone. And to that end, they need to prepare the players to be able to at least keep up with their own part in group content. It could be cultural difference. It could be assumption that players who would just be a burden to group actually want to know it ahead and get a chance to practice to be better on their own first. To that end solo duties work well. They are the "has to be able to do at least that much." But then again there's gaming culture where it's OK to say "my inability to play is not that bad in group stuff because the others pick up the flack." And that toois entirely OK as long as the others are informed about it ahead and can make a choice to accept it. But in MMO that can't be assumed to be the base case. Too many people. Too much running things in pick up groups.

[Minali]

In single player games it's understandable they can have much freedom on how much ease they give, after all its up to the player alone. However in MMO like this the assumption has to be that most of the player base will be playing with other players at some point, some who might not be in their immediate friend group. Even if that's not the case for everyone. And to that end, they need to prepare the players to be able to at least keep up with their own part in group content. It could be cultural difference. It could be assumption that players who would just be a burden to group actually want to know it ahead and get a chance to practice to be better on their own first. To that end solo duties work well. They are the "has to be able to do at least that much." But then again there's gaming culture where it's OK to say "my inability to play is not that bad in group stuff because the others pick up the flack." And that toois entirely OK as long as the others are informed about it ahead and can make a choice to accept it. But in MMO that can't be assumed to be the base case. Too many people. Too much running things in pick up groups.

We are quite literally talking about solo content in this game, which is by definition to be done alone.

[Sida]

We are quite literally talking about solo content in this game, which is by definition to be done alone.

I'm sure you read the part of my post where I suggested the solo duties are there to prepare the people to be ready for group content, and incidentally to filter out those who are not. That was was my entire point, the purpose of the solo duties. Also the opening post specifically mentioned they find the group content easier because they can rely on the others to fill in in their mistakes. And I have yet to get an answer if they meant it with willing carries or just queuing to be a burden. Which makes this just as much about why it's important the solo content acts that way.