Dawntrail Graphics Update - Eye Strain

[skelmet]

Like many in here, the increased flashiness of Dawntrail duties has also given me eyestrain and migraines. I've been hoping the design approach would become less focused on visual noise over the patches, but the 7.3 trial was particularly awful for me to get through with how bright and constantly flashy it was. I've been reluctant to try any high-end content this expansion, as it seems to be even more of a problem in those fights; I can't presently imagine doing something like the 7.3 trial over and over again.

Ideally I think the approach to encounter design shouldn't rely so much on visual noise for difficulty, but if these visuals are a must, there needs to be accessibility settings to allow people to tone it down.

[Everbox]

have y'all tried Ray-Ban Meta Glasses?

[CaptainSway]

bumping because i'm dreading doing the second jeuno raid again after the first time gave me a huge migraine.

[Vesplume]

Given that big statement about mods, I think it's worth noting that some PC players have gone the route of using mods to mitigate the issues they're having with the visual effects in this game. One way to reduce mod usage and increase income (by allowing players to come back and actually complete new content) would be to take feedback from this thread into consideration.

[Commander_Justitia]

please add a toggle for the wind animation of flying mounts. It reduces clarity and makes it harder to focus, depth perception is worse.

Damn, almost a year ago since I posted. I bet it looked cool in 2015, today it makes me use ground mounts.
Nevermind, people already complained ten years ago lol

[DevonEllwood]

My one contribution bump. The graphics issues were the final straw for me.

I have had two major issues visually with the game: massive visual clutter and overly bright mob/boss abilities
The game has been consistency ramping up visual clutter to the point I can't even tell what's going on anymore combined with the Dawntrail Filter of overly bright abilities, it has been awful. The level 90 story dungeon made me sick with flashing lights, wavy floor and constant visual clutter. I had to lay down while "Smile" blasted with the end credits. It was not a fun time, and the expert dungeons after did not help. I don't even think I finished patch .1. I did the 24 man raid maybe twice and the second set of 8 man raids once. I can't handle this anymore so all I did was pvp and fishing.
The revampt capture the flag added, yes, flashing lights. Thanks!

I have unsubscribed and the reasons if anyone from square Enix finds this thread are
Dumbing down the classes badly since Shadowbringers. I have been completely given up about learning to get good at the classes because I just don't care about them anymore.
Story from 5.3 onward being questionable. Endwalker had some of my favorite moments in the game but the lows were so unbearably low, badly paced, and with hokey character dialogue. Dawntrail came off as AI vomit. They are trying really hard to capture the success of Shadowbringer's story, it's painfully obvious.
Cherry on top was the constant visual clutter and the bright abilities that I CAN'T TURN OFF.

I am letting go of my Balmung house (ward 2 goblet, small, try to grab it if you want) that has had so much history attached to it being my original FC house. I am not in the right mindset to even care anymore. I might come back for events like Halloween, or Beast master, but I'm done for now. I can't say I'm quitting for good, but I'm finally making that decision I should have months ago. I've been playing this game since 2013, took a break in Heavensward and have been back ever since. With the state of the game right now I can't keep trying to come up with reasons to stay subscribed and keep my house.

This game has been my sole autistic game fixation for over 10 years. After Endwalker, I did as YoshiP commanded and played another game, which was BG3. I have since picked up and completed Stray, Journey, and Disco Elysium. I played Peak with friends, random free steam games, and weird discord stuff. I tried out Guild Wars 2. It's free. It has no subscription. I tried out Adventure Quest. It's also free with no subscription. Ffxiv subscriptions are archaic and the housing is just a ball and chain.

[Xeronia]

I recently did all the Dawntrail patches and I have to say the 7.2 trial was far too bright for me. I had to rest my eyes after that trial as it was just a mess of brightness and similar colors on top of each other, if I get it in a roulette I think i would just take my penalty and leave saving myself the eyestrain.

[Anarnee]

I have gone back and forth on if I wanted to share this or not cause honestly what I've done is not safe or healthy and I don't want to give someone else false hope or end up hurting themselves doing this in case their issues with the graphics are not the same as mine.

Games are not worth anyone's health or safety, but I've got a lot of free time, and have things that I've wanted to get done in XIV, so I gave it a shot.

I've managed to fix some of my issues by turning the contrast on my tv to the lowest possible setting. Which meant I had to find the remote that I've not used in over a decade, and repair it because it had been messed up from an old corroded battery.

This of course also means that anytime I want to play something that is not FFXIV I have to change the settings. It's specifically this game that is the issue.

I cannot see anything in the other games if I leave the settings the same, because other games don't try to make their players sick.

I've been testing on myself for over month now, and I'm 100% certain that as I'd said in my posts before, the contrast in game is too high.

I cannot watch FFXIV on streams still, on multiple devices. My partner hasn't raided in a while, but when I looked at the game on his rig I also felt ill, and if I forget to switch the contrast on the TV for this one game I immediately get a terrible headache, or start to feel faint and dizzy.

Bloom is still an issue, especially at night, but I'm not getting flashbanged when I want to get my weekly loot from San D'oria anymore, and the Nier raids don't make me feel like I'm going to pass out.

I imagine that if I want to screw up my laptop monitor settings, something similar might help if I really want to watch a XIV stream, but it's really not worth it to have to mess up the settings for all of my other stuff just to want to see someone play this game.

In then end, with all that said, SE really needs to do better. There are no setting in game that allow this to be fixed on their end, this or any of the other issues like bloom that people have been asking for changes for since DT launch, and they're the ones that screwed it up to begin with.

It is inane that I have to to jump through hoops to play your game, that I have played with no issues since 2013, because you decided to add the feature of EPILEPSY to your game.

The only reason I've continued to stay this vocal about it is because I really truly love XIV, I believed in this dev team, I made many friends in XIV over the years and even met my partner in XIV.

Games are the only consistent hobby that I have left because of other unrelated health issues, so when the game that I have spent innumerable hours in started to make me sick, and MANY other people sick, it was really and truly distressing for me. It is STILL distressing to me.

And to be ignored for this long has really stripped away a lot of good faith from me.

Between this and the Frankenstein's monster of a job done on the character models, my faith in Square Enix has been irreparably damaged.

[Halivel]

I imagine that if I want to screw up my laptop monitor settings, something similar might help if I really want to watch a XIV stream, but it's really not worth it to have to mess up the settings for all of my other stuff just to want to see someone play this game.

This actually got me thinking... it's not a perfect solution because it's not available for people playing on consoles, and won't help with watching streams, but it will work with the game itself at least.

You can check out ReShade or Gshade (ReShade's fork created by FF14 community). The software is open-source, free of charge, and isn't against ToS (confirmed by SE's staff member very early on here on forum: link). People usually use it to take screenshots, but you can definitelly create simple gameplay-friendly shader presets there that won't affect game's overal performance at all. It also will work only within FF14 itself when you enable the preset, meaning you won't have to tinker with your laptop's general settings. I remember people used to make presets for P3S when it was released, because the bright white-red arena combined with a red boss was torture on the eyes.

Alternatively, you could check out Nvidia/AMD's post-processing features, they have their own built-in reshade-like tools these days. The only thing I don't remember about those is if they allow to save those settings and enable them at any time while playing.

Ideally, though, DevTeam should really expand on in-game own settings, since people are different and this is very much an accessibility issue. They do have color filters for some forms of color blindness, so adding contrast as a separate setting should be well within their ability. Gamma slider alone isn't quite enough anymore, plus console players should be able to adjust settings like these as well, not just those who can accsess ReShade.

[Anarnee]

You can check out ReShade or Gshade.

This does not work for console players.