Accessibility Matters - Content Needs To Be Playable For Disabled Players

[Valence]

Umm correct. Oh and i'm also 45 seeing as age has come up too lol

I'll leave you with this...Btw he raided with his fricking feet...
https://www.pcgamer.com/how-a-disabl...al-fantasy-14/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xd3T8ZcaOGQ

Well then, i'll leave you shitting on other disabled people or hold them to your own standards, whatever works for you, that's indeed not my turf and I obviously misread what you wrote, for which I apologize.

I'm curious: What's a good example of the boss's own flashbangs hiding their tells?

I understand that party effects can hide the boss, and thus their tells, but that's been a problem for multiple expansions, now.

It's everywhere, one doesn't have to look far. The crescent AoEs on the last boss of Jeuno stand way too high relative to max camera zoom for literally zero reason. Even in older content like ARR shiva the circles are duplicated at a higher altitude so it gets in the way of the camera as a way to obfuscate the ones on the floor. In Hades, second phase, the boss model constantly gets in the way of the camera and blocks everything from view, notably when he extends his "arms" (this isn't the only big omnidirectional boss that has similar issues in the game).

For the rest more generally, it's as people have noted, vfx saturation whether or not it truly hides the tells, is still saturated enough to mess with people's perception and eye strain / flashbang tolerance.

[Monolithic]

DT is when I started to keep visual effects off. I used to only do it during large-scale content like Bozja, but now I can't even turn them on during 4-player content.

Every time they add a new ability or replace an old one, it has to be more visually impressive than previous ones and it has now reached a point where you can hardly see anything. Turn all that off and it becomes much easier to see what the boss is about to do.

Yeah I did exactly this as a test - I ran the 91 dungeon with all effects but my own turned off (and my own on limited), and then I quickly ran the 93 dungeon with everything COMPLETELY off, including my own effects. It definitely helps, but that's only in my own case - my issues aren't visual impairments or photosensitivity or colorblindness (to name the most common issues that crop up from the VFX), but just over-stimulation from ADHD. I still persistently lose my 'mental stack' from the low-effort VFX distraction tactics throughout, but definitely less than before. For anyone whose issues mirror mine (which is more just 'brain smooth shiny lights pretty' and then I'm dead from distraction rofl) - definitely worth setting up multiple macros for varying levels of player VFX for easy one-click toggles for any moment the VFX are 'too much'.

Obviously, not a solution to things like multiple arena backdrops/floors causing horrific motion sickness for some folks, nor the multitude of colorblindness issues, so on so forth - something absolutely has to be done about the VFX as a whole, but this is something worth trying to see if it mitigates the issues even a little for the time being.

Edit: RIGHT ALSO, the macros for anyone who'd like to try them:

FULL player effects but LIMITED effects for anyone else (will only show things like summoner and ninja puddles, healer bubbles, etc):
/battleeffect self all
/battleeffect party simple
/battleeffect other simple
/battleeffect enemypc simple

LIMITED player effects and NO effects from anyone else:
/battleeffect self simple
/battleeffect party off
/battleeffect other off
/battleeffect enemypc off

NO effects for anyone at all:
/battleeffect self off
/battleeffect party off
/battleeffect other off
/battleeffect enemypc off

And if you want a toggle to turn all of them back on with a single click:
/battleeffect self all
/battleeffect party all
/battleeffect other all
/battleeffect enemypc all

[AmiableApkallu]

The crescent AoEs on the last boss of Jeuno stand way too high relative to max camera zoom for literally zero reason. Even in older content like ARR shiva the circles are duplicated at a higher altitude so it gets in the way of the camera as a way to obfuscate the ones on the floor.

Those are just badly designed visuals, period. I claim no disabilities and would still benefit from them being tweaked.

For the rest more generally, it's as people have noted, vfx saturation whether or not it truly hides the tells, is still saturated enough to mess with people's perception and eye strain / flashbang tolerance.

It's exactly this sort of comment why I asked for a example. Just one. I get it. People have problems with the visuals; I'm not questioning that. But if, say, I want to make a concrete suggestion (to SE), then I need a concrete example. And speaking as a developer, concrete examples and suggestions, even if they don't get at the actual, core issue, are still immensely helpful.

My current working theory is that SE, in moving away from orange puddles towards more "cinematic" encounters, has tried to make sure that animations make it blindingly obvious where the bad spots are... and, well, nailed the "blinding" more than the "obvious."

[Monolithic]

It's exactly this sort of comment why I asked for a example. Just one. I get it. People have problems with the visuals; I'm not questioning that. But if, say, I want to make a concrete suggestion (to SE), then I need a concrete example. And speaking as a developer, concrete examples and suggestions, even if they don't get at the actual, core issue, are still immensely helpful.

My current working theory is that SE, in moving away from orange puddles towards more "cinematic" encounters, has tried to make sure that animations make it blindingly obvious where the bad spots are... and, well, nailed the "blinding" more than the "obvious."

This exactly - having anything you can use as an UNDENIABLE example would be a huge boon on the side of people trying to get this hot mess fixed. I only managed to try out two dungeons yesterday and there was nothing outright 100% blatant thus far - I'm going to be running oregenics later hopefully, and I'll be keeping all effects including my own off to see. I'm happy to record and send it along if/when I find an example.

In the meantime, I do have a suggestion: screen resolution plays an absolutely HUGE part in being able to see things or not, VFX or no. I'm at 2560×1440, so my field of view is considerably better than the average joe's - I believe the most common one would be 1920×1440 at this point in time. That was what I was playing with about a year and a half ago - there were definitely times things were 'obstructed' due to the limited screen real estate when I still used that resolution. It's not the best look for a game to ask folks to be breaking out their wallets for a new monitor just so mechanics they can't see don't kill them, so may be a thing to consider in your endeavors for examples to arm yourself with!

[Valence]

Those are just badly designed visuals, period. I claim no disabilities and would still benefit from them being tweaked.



It's exactly this sort of comment why I asked for a example. Just one. I get it. People have problems with the visuals; I'm not questioning that. But if, say, I want to make a concrete suggestion (to SE), then I need a concrete example. And speaking as a developer, concrete examples and suggestions, even if they don't get at the actual, core issue, are still immensely helpful.

My current working theory is that SE, in moving away from orange puddles towards more "cinematic" encounters, has tried to make sure that animations make it blindingly obvious where the bad spots are... and, well, nailed the "blinding" more than the "obvious."

I don't have disabilities or crippling issues coming from VFX oversaturation so I wouldn't be able to tell you, but there are definitely mechanics that make me want to just disconnect my brain, notably the first boss of Meso Terminal. I can see the cues and focus on them because I don't have ADHD or anything, but it's one such cases where it truly gets on my nerves.

Superchain Theories in P12S, as well as the collapsing platforms, were very annoying to me, what with the colour scheme they had over the glowy blue environmental background. I'd also quote Phoinix but I think this has been memed to death enough and SE already acknowledged it was a problem, but then again, they said they'd watch out for this but seem to have forgotten so perhaps reminding them of it would also be warranted.

In M4S, I can't for the life of me figure out fast enough which type of statue is being phased into existence notably in the Sabbath sections. Skill issue or true problem? I don't know.

[MaikoRaines]

The game needs to be playable for EVERYONE, not just the hardcore raiders who feel the content isn't challenging enough for them.

No, it doesn't.

I get that accessibility matters, and I do sympathize with players who face real barriers — but what you’re asking for here just isn’t realistic for FFXIV.

Cost & Scope – If you’re asking for an alternate “accessible” version of every fight, you can’t just stop at one type of disability. You’d have to account for mobility issues, hearing impairments, visual differences, reaction time challenges — the list goes on. That’s not a small patch; that’s rebuilding the game in parallel. It’s expensive, time-consuming, and would pull resources away from all content development.

Impact on the Majority – Most players aren’t hardcore raiders, but they do want a challenge. If every fight was balanced to the lowest accessibility threshold, the game would lose that challenge — and yes, a lot of players (including me, and I’m no “world first” raider) would see that as a deal-breaker. Whether you call it “nerfing” or not, the result is the same: people leave.

Not Every Game is for Everyone – Harsh truth: no game can be all things to all people. Developers design with a target audience and playstyle in mind. Push too far outside that, and you end up with a game that pleases nobody.

I’ve hit the content ceiling as a casual player, and I’ve cleared the latest Ultimate (FRU). I’m not saying this from a place of “get good” — I’m saying it because I’ve seen what happens when you try to flatten every difficulty curve. The end result is a game that loses its identity and its audience.

Accessibility should keep improving — but expecting every piece of content to be fully playable for every possible need is not just a tall order. It’s impossible without fundamentally breaking the game and indirectly alienating a vast majority of players.


Also, if anyone gripes that I'm being mean to disabled people with my opinions, ff holding the game to what’s actually possible is “alienating” a disabled audience, then by that logic, every single piece of content in every game that can’t be fully adapted is “alienating” someone — and that’s just not how game design works.

What you’re suggesting isn’t avoiding alienation — it’s creating a false promise. You’re telling people that every fight can and should be redesigned for every disability, when in reality that would gut the core gameplay and push away the majority of players who keep the game funded. That’s not inclusion — that’s trading one group’s enjoyment for another’s.

If we want meaningful accessibility changes, they have to be practical, targeted, and sustainable — not built on the idea that a game can be everything to everyone without consequences.

[Taranok]

I don't have disabilities or crippling issues coming from VFX oversaturation so I wouldn't be able to tell you, but there are definitely mechanics that make me want to just disconnect my brain, notably the first boss of Meso Terminal. I can see the cues and focus on them because I don't have ADHD or anything, but it's one such cases where it truly gets on my nerves.

Superchain Theories in P12S, as well as the collapsing platforms, were very annoying to me, what with the colour scheme they had over the glowy blue environmental background. I'd also quote Phoinix but I think this has been memed to death enough and SE already acknowledged it was a problem, but then again, they said they'd watch out for this but seem to have forgotten so perhaps reminding them of it would also be warranted.

In M4S, I can't for the life of me figure out fast enough which type of statue is being phased into existence notably in the Sabbath sections. Skill issue or true problem? I don't know.

My big disability is that I suck at true multitasking. That is if I have to move and maintain a rotation and also catch a hard to spot aoe, I suffer. Things like shinryu EX's wing casts are the perfect example of the worst telegraph the game can muster. It's in the air outside the camera, on an obscure UI element only tanks generally care about, and the attack also comes from behind the camera. I basically am blind to this mechanic and things like it (such as bozja duels)

On top of this, I have a geographic disability. I'm in florida, which gives me a ping of anywhere from 70-110 depending on how my internet feels on the day, and I am personally extremely observant of network latency-related issues. Likewise, I randomly get some packet loss. So fights like TEA are just not a problem, but Arcady from m5s is one of the worst designed mechanics because I have so much less time to deal with it than if I had 5ms ping. I've also had the good fortune to play the game at 14ms ping and it's just a completely different experience, but it wasn't a problem until endwalker ratcheted up fight pacing.

And moreso, I am a caster main primarily. Specifically black mage. I've mained it since Heavensward. All the nonsense people described as why they played BLM (nonstandard rotation and flexibility) are all things that I saw as design flaws. But I chose BLM because it had a pseudo-combo rotation. You could alter the fire 4 pacing a little, but it otherwise was a largely set in stone rotation. So it's a low-multitask job. If I don't need to move, it's a lower multitasking job. And if I need to minimize movement, I have to worry about memorizing the bosses rotation and knowing what to do, which I am good at. I am good at reacting to and fixing other people's mistakes, but not at reacting to reactive fight design.

It's ultimately why I fell in love with ffxiv. So as fight design grew with tighter timing, more reactive bosses, more difficulty in bosses instead of classes, and less emphasis on class and role differentiation, especially in the undermining of a core pillar of casters as a role (that is, sitting still and casting,) the game got worse and worse.

Which ultimately led to EX5. It's not particularly hard on a mechanic-per-mechanic basis on paper. But throw in lag, highly reactive fight design, tight timing, and emphasis on extreme movement, and you have a fight literally harder than UWU, UCOB, TEA, and arguably as hard as many sections of DSR, especially factoring in body checks (but not DPS checks.) Yet how keenly the difficulty is felt depends on job. Casters notice it 100:1 over non-casters, and melee especially with uptime solutions just don't notice anything because they only have 2 actual downtime mechanics (circle of life.) Otherwise they're laughing their way to the bank.

So in addition to completely ruining casters, they're not even making fair fights that will have an even difficulty due to role choice and geographic location. It's beyond badly designed.

The consequence of this style of fight design is also that, because there's an emphasis on movement, multitasking, and the like, people with disabilities are, flat, being zoned out of the game. And people like me who liked the old style slowly, but surely, are quitting the game because we got hooked on FFXIV for completely different gameplay. And the devs wonder why the population is outright collapsing in relative terms.

[Taranok]

No, it doesn't.

Also, if anyone gripes that I'm being mean to disabled people with my opinions, ff holding the game to what’s actually possible is “alienating” a disabled audience, then by that logic, every single piece of content in every game that can’t be fully adapted is “alienating” someone — and that’s just not how game design works.

I'd rather you and a handful of the population got bored and quit the game for being too easy, than the game getting so hard that most people quit out of frustration, or their favorite role being homogenized such that it removes their favorite playstyle.

You getting bored is a problem that happens in every single game. I will get bored, joe will get bored, valence will get bored. We will, all of us, get bored with every game, it is an inevitability. But chasing some fake retention at the expense of the very gameplay that made FFXIV skyrocket in popularity by mid ShB is the very reason Dawntrail is such a failure.

Because for everyone raider who loves hard content, there's another raider who quit it for the same reason. Most of my friend group has already quit dawntrail because of catering to the hardcore to such a degree that they themselves got zoned out, or they lost the very thing that they fell in love with.

There's a reason the playerbase started dropping pretty hard in EW, and why it's better to describe it as collapsing in DT. The devs catered too much to the wrong player's opinions and have made a game completely alien to what people fell in love with to begin with.

[MaikoRaines]

I'd rather you and a handful of the population got bored and quit the game for being too easy, than the game getting so hard that most people quit out of frustration, or their favorite role being homogenized such that it removes their favorite playstyle.

That’s a lot of words to basically say, ‘Your fun isn’t as important as my fun.’ Don’t worry, though — I’m sure the devs will keep Eorzea perfectly balanced around whatever makes your personal friend group happy. After all, the health of a multi-million-player game clearly hinges on whether Greg from Limsa logs in. You’ve also managed to frame my request for more variety as some kind of apocalyptic threat to the casual population.

Appreciate the passionate speech, but you might want to save it for the person who actually suggested making the game ‘harder at all costs’ — spoiler: that wasn’t me. I’m not here to kill your favorite playstyle, just pointing out reality. If that somehow gets filed under ‘hardcore raider agenda,’ I guess I need to work on my evil overlord laugh.

Don’t worry, I’ll try to rein it in before my sinister plot to ‘enjoy the game differently’ topples Dawntrail completely. Wouldn’t want to deprive you of the one playstyle that matters, right?"


Oh, also.

You getting bored is a problem that happens in every single game. I will get bored, joe will get bored, valence will get bored. We will, all of us, get bored with every game, it is an inevitability. But chasing some fake retention at the expense of the very gameplay that made FFXIV skyrocket in popularity by mid ShB is the very reason Dawntrail is such a failure.

That’s a compelling rebuttal to… some other person’s post, I guess. I never said I was bored, never asked for the game to get harder — just pointed out that redesigning every fight for every disability isn’t feasible. If we’re going to debate, can we at least argue about what I actually wrote, and not the imaginary ‘bored raider’ living rent-free in your head?

Classic Strawman.

[Monolithic]

No, it doesn't.

I get that accessibility matters, and I do sympathize with players who face real barriers — but what you’re asking for here just isn’t realistic for FFXIV.

So you're not technically wrong - it's not humanly possible to account for everyone.

The issue that's going on, however, is that XIV has a swathe of people who previously had little to no issue playing that have suddenly and unceremoniously been told 'actually no this game ISN'T for you anymore' (and no, it's not just the people who started in the ShB-EW era either). I really can't blame people for being just a little bit PO'd at a game attempting to make them feel unwelcome after having paid for it for so long - especially anyone who's been subscribing since ARR's launch.

On top of this, I have a geographic disability. I'm in florida, which gives me a ping of anywhere from 70-110 depending on how my internet feels on the day, and I am personally extremely observant of network latency-related issues. Likewise, I randomly get some packet loss. So fights like TEA are just not a problem, but Arcady from m5s is one of the worst designed mechanics because I have so much less time to deal with it than if I had 5ms ping.

You also have things like this, which is a prime example of why accessibility helps more than just folks with disabilities. I have a better ISP now, but from the second half of Endwalker patches onwards (got the new ISP several months after DT's release) was functionally unplayable for me unless I had friends doing callouts for ANY instanced content I did, even basic 'easy' roulettes. I lived in a different timeline that was anywhere from 1-3 seconds behind everyone else at the BEST of times.

Not only have they added "difficulty" in the wrong places because it's a god-awful fit for a game like this, a large chunk of the "difficulty" really is just minimum-effort attempts to hide mechanics with a distracting lightshow - which if you haven't noticed, disproportionately effects certain people far more than others. While I'm mostly okay in DT's "difficulty" bump (I'm not fussed by a few extra 'ooh shiny' deaths whatsoever), I have a friend with vision impairment and another who is colorblind and they are straight-up not having a good time right now, and I don't know what to do to help them beyond advocating for them.

Which to be fair, I'm also just deeply offended by this absolute bottom-of-the-barrel 'difficulty modifier' anyway so I'd probably still be complaining - seriously the only thing more low-effort than destroying visual clarity is just making all your enemies bullet sponges. But my friends struggling, and their perpetual debate if they want to quit every patch, certainly cemented my issues with this new encounter "design".