Dawntrail Graphics Update - Eye Strain

[Turnintino]

They posted the same thing (in English) in the character feedback thread.

We would like to thank everyone for their feedback regarding the graphical update.
The Development team has been carefully reviewing this thread and many others, including bug reports and concerns raised outside of the official forums.

We are currently working on an update based on the feedback provided, as well as preparing to share details about our planned course of action.
As these are undergoing thorough final inspections, we expect to make an announcement in late August.

Thank you all for your patience as we continue fine-tuning the graphical update.

The comment itself is obviously more generalized, but I think it's worth noting that they chose to respond to that thread, as opposed to this one. Though that may be solely because they believed more people would see it there, since it gets more activity.

Fingers crossed, regardless.

[Wind-Krysvein]

The comment itself is obviously more generalized, but I think it's worth noting that they chose to respond to that thread, as opposed to this one. Though that may be solely because they believed more people would see it there, since it gets more activity.

Fingers crossed, regardless.

The fact that they decided to respond there but not here is something that really gets my blood boiling... especially when the one they did respond to is just an issue of preference, while ours is about literally not being able to play the freaking game.

However! The "more generalized avenue + more people will see it" argument does make some sense. Fingers crossed, indeed.

[esoterica]

Posting here to put my support behind this issue being addressed. Please cut back on the excessive VFX or add proper accessibility options to mitigate the eyestrain. The 97 dungeon's second boss was almost impossible for me to parse.

The FFXIV team has done a great job of listening to feedback when it comes to cultural considerations, as the new expansion has wonderfully shown. I would love nothing more for them to also listen to the community of disabled players and those who struggle with visual processing issues.

[torvusbog]

Hi all, I wanted to bump this thread because I am still having eyestrain issues in regards to the new graphics update--and interestingly, the 7.05 update that added the savage raids last week made my computer performance worse. I think I saw someone else mention constant frame stuttering as well, but in addition to the intense amount of glare and over-sharpening I also have frame drops upwards of 20%. Last week it happened almost every 30 seconds and was pretty annoying to play and worsens my headache and eyestrain. My brain feels kind of like it's being shaken in a jar. I'm glad I can turn my laptop brightness all the way down and turn up the lights in my room, but I wish we had more abilities to tweak in-game settings that would fix the problem than putting a bandaid on it, so to speak (because having the lights on in my room that bright also causes eyestrain). I'm glad it seems that we have some confirmation that Square Enix is possibly working on the problem, and I'm looking forward to hearing more about their plans.

[gllt]

If we're gonna have radioactive graphics can I at least get some stimpaks

[kokuou_ji]

adding my support to this thread as well-- so far the final areas and dungeons/trials of Dawntrail have been the only ones that have made me stop being able to play the game to rest my eyes and head. the final trial, zone (before finishing each leynode), and dungeon especially gave me excessive nausea and migraine-like headaches. i imagine a lot of it has to do with the flashing lights and highly saturated contrasting color palettes. the raids are some of the first i've just not been wanting to play more than once, and it isn't from a mechanics standpoint, but a visual one.

having an option to mitigate more than just party vfx, change saturation, and/or adjust brightness ingame would likely help a lot of people. i understand that the team worked very hard on the visual effects in this expansion and having them changed might feel insulting to the work put in, but i believe that this thread and the widespread health and accessibility concerns the end of this expansion has brought are worth consideration

[gllt]

To the front page we go

[Wind-Krysvein]

Add back the option for lower draw quality/sharpness for all textures, get rid of the constant on/off motion blur and generally just try to find ways to reduce eye strain wherever possible. Especially for consoles, because there are practically no graphics options for those.

If you want to, just put these all in a dedicated eye strain mode and let us pick and choose which options we want to use. I know you guys can do this.

[Rinnu500]

I didn't have much eyestrain in previous expansions, but I remember E8 and phoinix were awful fights to do because of the flashes (e8) and the color choices (phoinix red/orange on red/orange & e8 being so bright). Now in DT, I noticed it got really bad during the 97 dungeon and onwards (like I've seen many others mention).

I've found m3 and m4 rough on the eyes too,

M3 has a slight case of phoinix as well, with so many red on red orange on orange effects. It's not as bad since the inner arena is better colored, but I find Brutal Impact and the Lariat dash rough to look at personally.
M4 has a couple very flashy effects, the stacks at the end and the wing dash being the biggest culprits, that I find hard to look at. I haven't spent enough time in Ramuh fights to see if those fights have gotten more straining, but I don't remember finding them too difficult to look at before unless I spent a significant time in them like during prog. I think being able to tone these kinds of effects down a bit might be nice if possible..?

I also feel like some of the lights in some areas... kinda flicker? I can't tell if this is a me problem or if they actually do.

Personally, I would love to see an option to turn off lb3 animations like the party effects etc and maybe something to tone down the flashy effects on bosses? I understand some tells are based on animations and not aoes or other indicators, but being able to turn off or tone down the brighter effects that accompanies some other boss animations and transitions (ex2 is bad with this, very dark background and then white bright light & any fight in general with a darker arena and brighter flashes is rough) would be really nice.

I'd just like to end a raid/exfarm night without a massive headache

[fuitgummy]

Posting to add my support to this thread as well. Dawntrail has been really rough for me, especially from the 97 dungeon onward. I've never had as many consistent issues with eye strain, migraine triggers and motion sickness with FFXIV as I have with this expansion. The VFX feels so much more painful than it used to be, and I can't even really do the 100 trial due to this issue. I know it was previously mentioned here, but I really would like an option to minimize boss VFX to only what's essential for gameplay. There are bosses in quite literally every part of content including and past the 97 dungeon who have at minimum one or two attacks that quite literally hurt to look at. The idea of an eye strain mode is really appealing, and I hope that Square does consider it.

I have also noticed lights flickering in a lot of areas, especially in interiors? I don't really know what setting is causing that, I've tried changing everything in the graphics that I could and nothing really fixes it.