PSA: Macro Sound Effects Harm People with Sensory Issues

[Fhaerron]

So I just want to get this straight...Say you enter a fight like Os7...and you have a party of 8 folks with you. The battle starts, and all the DPS are going crazy. The mage is casting fire and ice spells, the ninja is using skills, the Drk is spinning with the giant sword, Guardian is blasting its Giant beam. Noise, and combat everywhere! Then you hear a macro noise to notify that a healer is rezzing joe who ate an Aura Bolt...and that triggers you guys? Its the instant message sound that does it...but not the chaos of the fight? Asking seriously here because this intrigue's me

Yes.

Sounds from skills, fire, ice, etc do not have the high pitch some of the macro sounds have. Aditionally many skills have sounds that last longer with milder soundwaves.

The other annoying thing is that many people spam their macro sounds and it's constantly that high pitch sound multiple times per sec over and over. Every time I hear it it causes pain in my ears.

It's not my faulth that I was born with bad ears. I'm not deaf, I hear everything fine I just have hypersensitive ears and the eardrums in both my ears are ruptured and that causes quite some pain with those high pitched macro sounds.

[Lycia]

I went ahead and removed all my <se> from my macros. I may have missed one, and if that's the case I do apologize. I'm sorry if I came across as insensitive because that was honestly not my intention. I would give a bit of a warning though. I ran a O7 with someone from this group and they went on a tirade about this being a problem and linked this forum. I'm not sure what player it was, but I would advise being less douchy about approaching people who subconsciously have no idea this is an issue. To demand mid pull that we all change our macro's is not kosher.

If I may offer advice, make a Macro telling folks you have sensory problems and play it at the start of the encounter. A vast majority of players you come across will oblige. Yes, you get your idiots, but if that's the case, mute all sounds for that one specific run.

I genuinely hope this does get addressed, and like I said if I happen to forget that one of mine has a sound, it was not my intention.

[Ametrine]

Oh no, I can understand why some people wouldn't get the issue at all, and I certainly appreciate the fact that you and a few others are taking the time to adjust for our comfort. I means a great deal.

But, yes, your advice is the best we can do for now.

[Mirateski]

Someone in a LotA alliance once spammed "Pads! [sound effect]" five times. My brain got a bit wiggy, I said maybe could they only do it once?

So they spammed it twenty times, and I had a full blown panic attack. I was the MT. I did not keep aggro.

I can handle one, maybe two in a row, but not many. If I could turn them off I absolutely would.

I also had this issue trigger with someone spam-casting sustain, oddly enough. It's never happened on any other spell noise or effect, not even the cure spells. Maybe it's because the sound is so high-pitched, and can potentially go off faster?

(They were spamcasting pre-pull, because they were bored. I managed to ask them to stop and they did.)

[Theodric]

Can we also please extend it to mount sound effects as well?

I've come to avoid using certain mounts due to the repetitive sounds that they make. Having the option to toggle mount sounds on and off would be pretty great.

[NovaBismarck]

Cooperation is the whole point of Final Fantasy, that is what it is and has always been. Different types of people cooperating for an end goal, because of this I would think SE would be amenable to considering it. No, we can't always fit everyone's handicap, but sound sliders don't sound sliders or toggles might not be that hard of a fix. Most people don't need to understand and have empathy to fix a problem if it's not too difficult to fix. The question is how easy a fix is it? Do enough people need the fix that it is warranted? I never thought of sound effects being an issue before, because I'd never dealt with the issue. Now, that I know I can bench my awesomely annoying lb macro for something less obnoxious. The same way most of my bipedal friends don't understand what it's like to wheel around from a 4 foot vantage point. They don't need to be at a 4 foot height to know that I might not be able to grab a plate from a 6 foot shelf and grab it for me. I am not Daredevil or Professor X; I do not have special disabled super powers unless accidentally trolling a raid counts (sorry to the people I once wiped on Rofocale because markers are hard).