Quote Originally Posted by MaikoRaines View Post
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.

Quote Originally Posted by Taranok View Post
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".