Can't see buff timers. Can I put boxes behind HUD elements?

[Latif]

Sometimes in bright areas I can't see status effect timers. Any way to add a background or any tips on solving this?

[EveK]

I made mine bigger. Can size the element up to 140% and the overall UI up to 200%, so you can effectively get it 280% of default size.

[Niwashi]

It's not just buff timers, either. I've learned to always find a dark place to craft because otherwise I won't be able to watch my CP numbers. I've had times when I couldn't see my quest objectives without bringing up the Journal window because there wasn't a dark area around that would let me see the Duty List. Even just having to pan the camera around for the sake of lining up a HUD element with the darkest part of the background in order to read it can be annoying.

Trying to read light text or numbers on a light background, or worse a variegated, highly textured (but mostly light) background ranges from difficult enough to be annoying to in some places downright impossible. It would help enormously to be able to have a solid dark background behind anything we're supposed to be able to read.

So yes, let us add a dark highlight around any numbers or text we need to be able to see.

[Teiren]

To Niwashi: That sounds like a severe gamma issue. Go to the System window in-game and adjust it there. Gamma is basically like screen brightness.

To OP: Maybe it's also a gamma issue, now that I think about it.

[Niwashi]

To Niwashi: That sounds like a severe gamma issue. Go to the System window in-game and adjust it there. Gamma is basically like screen brightness.

That can brighten or darken everything, but cannot fix this issue without causing a worse one. Lowering the gamma setting helps the HUD somewhat, but makes dark areas of the game world impossible to see. Raising the gamma settings brighter makes the world visible in both bright and dark areas, but then the bright areas don't work as background for HUD text. If we could add a dark highlight behind all the light colored text and numbers, then the brighter gamma settings could work for everything.

[EveK]

It sounds tacky, and I don't want to even try it myself ... but you can put such things on top of a chat window. And you can already adjust chat window opacity as much as you want, including making them solid black.