When did the dev's stop reading the forums?

[Jeeqbit]

This game has been getting worse and worse visually since EW that I had to stop playing certain content

I didn't honestly notice. Wasn't Shadowbringers content full of these effects as well? With the intention being to create a "fantasy" feel of magic and pixies.

I think ARR, Heavensward and Stormblood probably weren't as much in part due to supporting PS3 and just freshly upgrading to 64 bit, and in part because they were more real with just regular people sword fighting, whereas they were trying hard to get that pixies, light, dark magic feel from Shadowbringers onwards. Although they kinda started even with Stormblood sometimes, having trials like Tsukuyomi and dungeons like Ghimlyt Dark with particles.

at least I could AVOID it. Now it's everywhere. I'm scared of running dungeon roul out of fear I might have to physically look away from my screen, and I'm sure there are people who have it worse. (I experienced this in Castrum Meridianum and prior to Thunder God in alliance roul, CT became really rough on my eyes too)

I'm sorry to hear that. It would be nice if they can add in more settings for disabilities, but I think it's pretty normal that disabilities are not at the forefront of people's minds when designing things and are often addressed afterwards. I know it's frustrating but it's not really unique to SE and it's hard to account for every possible disability and their varying level of effects on people.

I feel like expressions weren't tested, funny how 10 year old expressions look more natural than the uncanny valley we got.

I didn't really notice that since the expressions in this game, while good at conveying emotion, have never exactly been what I'd imagine any character or myself doing. So in the end I just don't think of it as my story or my character, but rather SE's story and that in their story/world people express themselves... like that, in this heroic way that nods a lot.

Everywhere I look there's flickering shadows that catch my eyes on sharp edges or text (I think it's antialiasing)

Oh? I thought that was all fixed now in DT with max settings. I'm using DLSS with the FPS < 30 frame rate threshold trick on 1080p.

when the PvP rework hit with the onsal PLD cheese. Something that made me actually quit running FL and take to the forums.

If it's what I think you mean where a PLD covered someone so they could capture points, I remember that got fixed. Bugs do happen sometimes in any online game or any program at all. Even Apple releases bug fixes regularly for example.

every unique feature that I adored about her got removed

I suppose I can understand that, but is SE supposed to just not do the graphics update?

They already avoided updating characters in a significant way. What I mean by that is, you are attached to the tiny nuances of the character and those changed it a lot for you, but they could have changed it a lot more drastically if they hadn't been concerned about this exact issue (of the attachment to the nuances of the rigid and low-polygon models they've had for 10 years). So they have tried to strike a balance, improving the models, lighting and texture quality a little but still trying to retain it mostly.

For me personally, I'd see it as "a new character for a new 10 years" because characters can evolve over time.

[Rueby]

I didn't honestly notice. Wasn't Shadowbringers content full of these effects as well? With the intention being to create a "fantasy" feel of magic and pixies.

For me, it was EW EX1 and EX2 being too dark/too bright.
Example to me is
Hades had a well lit arena where you can see the effects etc, EX1's background and arena were very much of the same-ish color palette with bright neon attacks. This is bad, well to me at least because it's painful to look at for a long time (like farming extremes)
EX2 suffers from this as well, bright background on really bright aoes, I get their themes is just that I can't help but feel like visual clarity is being lost.
I never noticed any glaring issues personally in ShB and I did all EXs when they were current content (I missed Hades and Memoria) not once did I feel 'oh god my eyes make it stop'.

I saw it alot in EW in alliance raids and normal raids where raidwides are essentially a flashbang. More and more effects at the expense of visual clarity, no joke I had forgot to disable other people's chars after a friend was showing me BLU skills and I was blind as a bat. I couldn't see the boss, I couldn't see anything.

Another critique is SMN summons for EW, summoning him is 1. obstructive 2. his attack has so much white saturation into it that it counts as a little flashbang, this is...bad.
For DT, I couldn't help but notice an increase in flashing white in skills of Picto and Viper and I noticed being unable to look at certain animations. Ie. I'm fine with reaving maw, but something like steel maw hurts to look at. I either have to disable full effects or not do it.

There's also Blizzard in Cyan for Picto that I noticed have this hm...intense white? into it. I can think of Comet in Black and other picto skills, once you use it often it kinda hurts.

This is what I meant by visually getting worse. I don't have more examples off the top of my head. I can think of EW Alliance raid 3's last boss raid wide Eulogia? Or something and P12's raidwides...

I'm sorry to hear that. It would be nice if they can add in more settings for disabilities, but I think it's pretty normal that disabilities are not at the forefront of people's minds when designing things and are often addressed afterwards. I know it's frustrating but it's not really unique to SE and it's hard to account for every possible disability and their varying level of effects on people.

What's upsetting is that the game wasn't like this before. Also I never had issues with any other game, I don't know how they managed to mess it up this bad. They need to hire someone to add more accessibility options. I trusted them to preorder the expansion and renewed my sub, I never thought they'd deliver a product that will start hurting me. I never had issues with any game except this.

I didn't really notice that since the expressions in this game, while good at conveying emotion, have never exactly been what I'd imagine any character or myself doing. So in the end I just don't think of it as my story or my character, but rather SE's story and that in their story/world people express themselves... like that, in this heroic way that nods a lot.

I made a video with my characters' facial expressions. I don't know if male midlander suffers from it, but things like smiles are alot worse, alot of expressions suffer from twitchy mouth/eyebrows...Why? I'm not saying about the expressions chosen in cutscenes, but I'm sure if my character smiles it'll look horrific. The corners of the lips are way too upturned, imo. That's an interesting way to look at it. I speak of how currently expressions give abit of an uncanny valley feel to me. If I were to compare old smile expression vs new smile expression, I honestly feel the new one gives a more unhinged/weird look. I noticed it on my male viera alt. It gets mentioned in the graphical update feedback thread. [1] I did a detailed bug report on it but got slapped with a dupe but even then a bug report doesn't address how strange imo expressions look. It's hard to explain without having access/comparison to the old ones (which I had in my bug report).

Oh? I thought that was all fixed now in DT with max settings. I'm using DLSS with the FPS < 30 frame rate threshold trick on 1080p.

I'll give the below 30FPS a go! Thanks

If it's what I think you mean where a PLD covered someone so they could capture points, I remember that got fixed. Bugs do happen sometimes in any online game or any program at all. Even Apple releases bug fixes regularly for example.

It is, but the fact that it took them sooooo long to actually address it was frustrating (think it was something like 6 months? Not sure). It generally feels that PVP, specifically FL is neglected by them. Hardly anyone does CC on Chaos and if they do you run into the very same people, it was fun when it first released...but yeah.

I suppose I can understand that, but is SE supposed to just not do the graphics update?

They already avoided updating characters in a significant way. What I mean by that is, you are attached to the tiny nuances of the character and those changed it a lot for you, but they could have changed it a lot more drastically if they hadn't been concerned about this exact issue (of the attachment to the nuances of the rigid and low-polygon models they've had for 10 years). So they have tried to strike a balance, improving the models, lighting and texture quality a little but still trying to retain it mostly.

For me personally, I'd see it as "a new character for a new 10 years" because characters can evolve over time.

They should've taken more time with this and perhaps even beta tested and seen player feedback. My miqo and female viera noses got drastically changed in the nose bridge area, the bump that was prominently there (not low poly I'm sure) is gone. We're talking about reshaping features and beautification of characters. Female aura Face 2's mouth lost ALL charm it had before. Everyone has prominent philtrum even if they didn't have it. This is a poorly implemented and rushed graphical update in my opinion, I notice alot of this strange hmm wet clay-like feel to dark skinned characters. They slapped lipgloss on everyone, so even male characters have weird glossy lips. It's...weird. Anyway.

I think you have a positive outlook on it, I'm merely disappointed by it, because I feel like there's alot of compromises on my end.... I would've rather had them introduce something like cross DC PF/DF over this.

[Jeeqbit]

For me, it was EW EX1 and EX2 being too dark/too bright.

To me they are alright but I can see how the clarity could be lost if vision is limited.

no joke I had forgot to disable other people's chars after a friend was showing me BLU skills and I was blind as a bat. I couldn't see the boss, I couldn't see anything.

I've had those disabled on other players since I started playing. Initially due to my computer specs, but I kept them disabled after that because sometimes even with just a light party, nothing can be seen due to the effects. One time when I was in Eureka I had them enabled and the boss was covered by the effects of 70-144 people and it was actually impossible to read its visual tells, because the boss was not even visible behind all the bio and fire IVs.

Another critique is SMN summons for EW, summoning him is 1. obstructive 2. his attack has so much white saturation into it that it counts as a little flashbang

I think SMN's effects should be there for the person playing, but reduced enough for others so they aren't in the way. I've never really liked the old primal "ultimate" attacks though. They just do a flashbang like you said, when in older FF games, they did something real like a dive, a meteor, shooting a beam from space, coming out of the ground, etc.

What's upsetting is that the game wasn't like this before. Also I never had issues with any other game

I can agree that I don't think any game I played before this had so many flashy effects, although that might have just been due to older graphical limitations. It's still unlike other things I've played though because instead of, say, shooting an arrow there's lots of flash happening alongside it.

They need to hire someone to add more accessibility options.

I've seen people ask for more for years. I hope they will try so that people can tune issues like happened in P3 where everything was a similar color and Nier which gave lots of people headaches.

It is, but the fact that it took them sooooo long to actually address it was frustrating

They are often slow with these things. I'd say that's mostly the case for the game as a whole. Whenever we get QoL I am wondering how it took so long to notice and address it (ie. 10 years). The first examples that taught me SE will always be slow were at Stormblood release:

• Bards having cast times had caused all Bards to quit the game and they became extinct. They didn't seem to care, until 2 years later at the expansion release...
• PLD couldn't block magic. SE didn't seem to care. Then 2 years later at expansion release, suddenly...
• Parry was a joke and not something we could reasonably recommend to stack (unlike Tenacity, which at least is of reliable use against a tank buster). SE didn't seem to care, until suddenly at Stormblood release...

So SE is like this, for whatever reasons. Occasionally we get actual emergency patches but I've just come to expect they will eventually address things like that, but not necessarily this expansion or decade.

They should've taken more time with this and perhaps even beta tested and seen player feedback.

Well perhaps they could have done that in a special benchmark-like client for a longer period of time. In any case, they are planning a patch related to a lot of the issues people have so maybe some things will be addressed. I wouldn't expect everything you don't like to be addressed but we don't know yet.

[Rueby]

To me they are alright but I can see how the clarity could be lost if vision is limited.

A few of my friends complained about this too. It has nothing to do with my vision and from a pure design choice- it is bad. Background and arena are very similarly colored with little to distinguish them + bright neon on dark enviornment, it seems pretty bad.

I've seen people ask for more for years. I hope they will try so that people can tune issues like happened in P3 where everything was a similar color and Nier which gave lots of people headaches.

As you mentioned P3, was also an example of this, it's a bad design, red backdrop on redish arena, on red boss with red attacks.... I never had issues with the nier raids but I heard that it was causing people seizures...which is honestly scary.

The only issue I had with NieR is during the Red girl the screen flashes briefly and to me that was 'annoying'. Another example is if you're in the gold saucer and I think an announcement happens the entire screen flashes white...it's awful.

Blinding the player or designing the encounter in a way that makes the player struggle to see is...bad. Visual clarity shouldn't be thrown into 'difficulty', imo. Prior to DT, I never had any 'real' problem, just annoyances and ??? at bad design.

I think SMN's effects should be there for the person playing, but reduced enough for others so they aren't in the way. I've never really liked the old primal "ultimate" attacks though. They just do a flashbang like you said, when in older FF games, they did something real like a dive, a meteor, shooting a beam from space, coming out of the ground, etc.

I meant titan but I thin I forgot to type it. It's really bad, and obstructive since you lose sight of the boss....I hated the 'upgraded' primals in EW and to me that was another thing in the pile of visual clarity being lost. I don't know about other FF games because I never played them. So I'll take your word for it.

I can agree that I don't think any game I played before this had so many flashy effects, although that might have just been due to older graphical limitations. It's still unlike other things I've played though because instead of, say, shooting an arrow there's lots of flash happening alongside it.

I played GW2 before this and to me that was the peak of 'can't see shit', but this is actually getting worse. I think my main issue as I mentioned is intense/extra white added to skills, that make it feel on par with holy, since you use it often and it's so bright. For example take SMN when you go for titan and he does his big circle thing, it's golden/yellow but the majority of its inside is white...which is blinding. You see it in the skills I mentioned before too...

....They are often slow with these things. I'd say that's mostly the case for the game as a whole. Whenever we get QoL I am wondering how it took so long to notice and address it (ie. 10 years). The first examples that taught me SE will always be slow were at Stormblood release....

That's really disheartening to know and doesn't exactly make me trust them. The PLD cheese essentially ruined Onsal for me and many, and before they patched it I tried it out myself just to see how busted it is. No skill required, just go in coordination and take the point from under 24 people's noses. I feel like we needed an immediate response to that....but yeah..I guess keeping expectations low is one way to go about it.

Well perhaps they could have done that in a special benchmark-like client for a longer period of time. In any case, they are planning a patch related to a lot of the issues people have so maybe some things will be addressed. I wouldn't expect everything you don't like to be addressed but we don't know yet.

Well, if I were to do it, I'd allow players an extended/expanded version of the benchmark. Perhaps let them load into a pre-rendered area in the game etc, let players give feedback, instead the benchmark didn't have proper lighting in CC with the oopsie we forgot announcement. This is the thing we've been teasing for awhile, it's supposed to be a hype thing, and a big change to a 10 year old game, instead of easing everyone into it and involving the community or showing they cared at all. Feedback from people who were plastered to their WoLs would've been invaluable. I don't think much care went into our characters, otherwise you wouldn't see a unanimous outcry from both EN/JP side of the forums.

It's disappointing. This benchmark thing was so stressful (more so on EN forums because we were so split up, it felt chaotic and it felt like we'd never be heard) and prior to it the credit card thing that made plenty of people upset prior to expansion launch. Alot of decisions were made to sour this expansion for me. Perhaps they'd fix things down the line, but I highly doubt it, it won't erase the fact that I felt ripped off, for putting faith into a product and devs that essentially made me feel like I didn't matter at all.

Everytime I want to be hopeful, I don't really see a sign...I want to be proven wrong because I love this game alot, I have alot of fond memories here and I don't wish to leave it behind, I feel like I'm being pushed away. I just want to be able to play the game without having a headache, is that too much to ask...I think if there's a way to permanently remove the blur that happens when I move...I'd be happy.