Accessibility options urgently in need of update

[domiwoof]

I've only returned to XIV recently, after a long hiatus - and mind you, I spend a LOT of time around screens. But I noticed, maybe since back in Endwalker during Pandaemonium's first tier (or second, my memory's a bit screwed due to trauma), that I'd gotten some increasingly bad eye strain. This is not unusual - my doctor's told me for a number of years I had dry eye and like, it had always been under control, but I remember some days during pasta boy back during prog that my eyes would get bizarrely dry. Like dryer than I was used to them being. In addition to that, I had a number of focusing issues with some of the mechanics during the fight as a tank because I couldn't really zoom out far enough on the field. It was weird - prior to Endwalker, I don't really remember having an issue tanking raids. But during that tier in particular, there's a lot of visual stuff going on that would easily overload and overstimulate me. I remember feeling annoyed regularly at both myself and the fight because I just couldn't seem to focus enough to properly understand what was happening.

This peaked hard in Phoenix. It got to the point where I felt so overstimulated in that fight that I had to do it on my own in PF. I was angry about that because I felt like a burden to everyone around me - like I was THE ONLY tank on Crystal that couldn't seem to focus hard enough to do this fight the right way. I would come away from raid sessions in P3S with headaches and feeling just... exhausted. And that was weird to me - until Endwalker, I'd never gotten headaches before. I think the first time I ever got one was after a raid, actually, and they've come back on occasion since.

I'm concerned that the fights I had the most trouble with in terms of accessibility - pasta boy, Phoenix, Eulogia, and now Zalenia, have all been mentioned prolifically here. To the point where it's starting to feel like I'm not the only one with these issues anymore, and I used to feel that way - I was surrounded by people that seemed seemingly unaffected by all the overstimulating visual information, or just treated it as "part of the game's difficulty". In particular, this tier of Arcadion, I noticed that the 3rd and 4th fights are drastically harder for me to deal with than the 1st and 2nd because the 3rd one has a LOT of movement that it feels like you need to be able to zoom out more to see, and there's a lot of white in the 4th that prevents some of the AOE markers from being seen properly.

So I want to voice my support here, and also thank everyone for sharing your stories. I feel really seen in this regard for the first time ever in my history of playing this game, and that actually feels really... relieving.

[Varia-Androise]

Seconding, I actually have really good color perception. I cannot see what's going on in Zelenia, or at least I can't do it at any speed. it's just a bad color combo if readability is anywhere on your priority list. Also it might just be because I'm new to savage but I feel visually overwhelmed by M5S (don't ask me about anything else, not there yet). I have issues with sensory overload and I feel like I'm partially shutting down by the 45 minute mark even when I'm acquainted with mechanics.

Something about feeling like you need to zoom out more to see mechanics

Seconding this as well. I was thinking of this in the dragon boss in Jeuno, I can't see anything past hit ginormous body/hitbox. I was practically begging for everything to become smaller even though that would make uptime harder because I wanted to see what was going on. I play with my camera fully zoomed out at all times.

[sabotendred]

Adding my voice to this thread. Visual clutter is not the way to make a fight "harder". Please take the feedback given upthread into consideration and keep this game enjoyable for everyone!

[discotune]

I was thinking of this in the dragon boss in Jeuno, I can't see anything past hit ginormous body/hitbox. I was practically begging for everything to become smaller even though that would make uptime harder because I wanted to see what was going on. I play with my camera fully zoomed out at all times.

1000% this. Any boss that has visual tells but you can't see them fully zoomed out unless you wobble your camera a bunch is my biggest pet peeve of this game right now (especially since I'm on controller, where moving while changing view takes up both my thumbs). I'm always fully panned out, top-down view--that view is the best view (for me, at least) to try and see around all the noted visual clutter and not get headaches/nausea. E10s shadow puppy is another good example; you can't see his right/left tells from top-down view. I don't know how "normal" people watch both the floor and the top of those bosses at the same time. Just watching how other people spin their cameras around while playing can make me sick--but I'm not sure this is as common a problem for other people as the colors obviously are.

Also, as someone that mained SMN for a minute last tier, summoning ifrit when you're trying to see orange (over a red/orange screen) is terrible. The summon tinges the whole screen with color and a blinding flash, even if you have a small egi and personal effects at minimum. I also don't want to turn effects off just for this one class.

The colorful backgrounds/sets of m5 and m6 when you also have 8 colored waymarkers in savage is also a giant clusterF for me. I wish we could lower the color saturation of the environment selectively so the otherwise-helpful waymarkers weren't just making it worse. It's all too much.