MSQ Difficulty and Exclusion

[Eraden]

Do you mind if I ask what the specific limitation/struggle is? (If you've detailed it elsewhere in the thread, I may have missed it; this thread is 35 pages long and I suspect will hit 40 within the next day, so finding stuff on earlier pages is a bit of a mess.)

Obviously, this is none of my business and you should feel free to tell me such. (Or note that you'd prefer to talk offline/outside of a public thread.)

THANK YOU for taking the time to ask what is causing me difficulties. It is so refreshing to see someone actually take the time to ask about something rather than throw out an uninformed opinion. I have no problem telling you about my condition. I have Parkinson's Disease. That coupled with me being elderly, makes it extremely difficult at times to complete content. My limbs, hands and even at times my whole body tend to shake if I get emotionally excited or engage in even minor physical activities (holding a full cup of water for example). Content that is even mildly complex or requires a somewhat significant amount of hand/eye coordination can be a daunting task for me at times. At the moment, the MSQs are tuned so that I am able to get through most of them without going to easy modes. For some I have to go to the easiest mode in order to complete them. For those who think I can get better at doing this I can guarantee that no amount of pushing or prodding me is going to make my condition magically disappear.

I still fail to understand why people keep clamoring for making the MSQs harder for everyone. If the developers simply made a hard mode for those who want a real challenge, wouldn't that be good enough? Why are they so hell bent on forcing everyone else to have to conform to their standards?

[redheadturk]

THANK YOU for taking the time to ask what is causing me difficulties. It is so refreshing to see someone actually take the time to ask about something rather than throw out an uninformed opinion. I have no problem telling you about my condition. I have Parkinson's Disease. That coupled with me being elderly, makes it extremely difficult at times to complete content. My limbs, hands and even at times my whole body tend to shake if I get emotionally excited or engage in even minor physical activities (holding a full cup of water for example). Content that is even mildly complex or requires a somewhat significant amount of hand/eye coordination can be a daunting task for me at times. At the moment, the MSQs are tuned so that I am able to get through most of them without going to easy modes. For some I have to go to the easiest mode in order to complete them. For those who think I can get better at doing this I can guarantee that no amount of pushing or prodding me is going to make my condition magically disappear.

I still fail to understand why people keep clamoring for making the MSQs harder for everyone. If the developers simply made a hard mode for those who want a real challenge, wouldn't that be good enough? Why are they so hell bent on forcing everyone else to have to conform to their standards?

My husband is also a Parky! I think his brain would explode if he tried to play this because flashing lights affect his Parkinsons.

[Packetdancer]

THANK YOU for taking the time to ask what is causing me difficulties. It is so refreshing to see someone actually take the time to ask about something rather than throw out an uninformed opinion. I have no problem telling you about my condition. I have Parkinson's Disease. That coupled with me being elderly, makes it extremely difficult at times to complete content.

Ah, that's right! We did have this discussion earlier in the thread, I forgot; I mentioned that my father has Parkinson's -- progressed to the point that he's developing cognitive issues, which is depressing and terrifying -- and that I'm considered high-risk myself due to that family history.

(Apologies for forgetting. My own challenge is chronic migraines, and while my medication works very well, it also is a once-a-month medication that lasts just over three weeks. I get to next take it on the 14th; as you might guess, my brain is presently reduced to tapioca and my world is pain for the next four days. Frankly, it's a miracle I can compose coherent posts; I'm functioning on caffeine, painkiller, and possibly spite.)

My limbs, hands and even at times my whole body tend to shake if I get emotionally excited or engage in even minor physical activities (holding a full cup of water for example). Content that is even mildly complex or requires a somewhat significant amount of hand/eye coordination can be a daunting task for me at times.

Out of idle curiosity, do you play with a controller, or a keyboard/mouse?

I know from helping my father that the tremors/shakes, at least as regards hands, are not actually that different in nature from the nerve damage my friend Bryan had; I thus wonder whether the issue you're having is similar -- e.g., not that you can't see what you need to do, just that it's really hard to hit the correct keys with a hand tremor -- and so whether the solution we worked on for him might not also help in your scenario.

As I touched on in a past post, the solution we came up with in his case was a program that he could run that mapped multiple keys on the keyboard to a single key; for instance, taking 'Q', 'W', and 'E' and mapping all of them to 'W' so he could more reliably move forward, etc. We basically just made a keyboard map of regions of the keyboard, and mapped a given set of keys -- usually about six, two rows of three each -- to the keys he was likely to need to use.

Now, we never got past the experimental phase before he died of flu complications (side note: get your flu shots, and if you run a high fever go to the damn hospital); I lacked the heart to finish the project after that, and tossed the code out there into the wild for someone else to use.

Still, the early experiments had been promising, and now I wonder if the same sort of tool might not also help in the case of things like Parkinson's. Obviously it wouldn't be a perfect solution, but...

Edit: Alas, the forum says I've posted enough for today and I'm being cut off. Guess I'll return tomorrow!

[Eraden]

Ah, that's right! We did have this discussion earlier in the thread, I forgot; I mentioned that my father has Parkinson's -- progressed to the point that he's developing cognitive issues, which is depressing and terrifying -- and that I'm considered high-risk myself due to that family history.

(Apologies for forgetting. My own challenge is chronic migraines, and while my medication works very well, it also is a once-a-month medication that lasts just over three weeks. I get to next take it on the 14th; as you might guess, my brain is presently reduced to tapioca and my world is pain for the next four days. Frankly, it's a miracle I can compose coherent posts; I'm functioning on caffeine, painkiller, and possibly spite.)



Out of idle curiosity, do you play with a controller, or a keyboard/mouse?

I know from helping my father that the tremors/shakes, at least as regards hands, are not actually that different in nature from the nerve damage my friend Bryan had; I thus wonder whether the issue you're having is similar -- e.g., not that you can't see what you need to do, just that it's really hard to hit the correct keys with a hand tremor -- and so whether the solution we worked on for him might not also help in your scenario.

As I touched on in a past post, the solution we came up with in his case was a program that he could run that mapped multiple keys on the keyboard to a single key; for instance, taking 'Q', 'W', and 'E' and mapping all of them to 'W' so he could more reliably move forward, etc. We basically just made a keyboard map of regions of the keyboard, and mapped a given set of keys -- usually about six, two rows of three each -- to the keys he was likely to need to use.

Now, we never got past the experimental phase before he died of flu complications (side note: get your flu shots, and if you run a high fever go to the damn hospital); I lacked the heart to finish the project after that, and tossed the code out there into the wild for someone else to use.

Still, the early experiments had been promising, and now I wonder if the same sort of tool might not also help in the case of things like Parkinson's. Obviously it wouldn't be a perfect solution, but...

I play with a keyboard and mouse. My shaking, when it gets really bad, makes it so that pressing the proper key or mouse button becomes enormously difficult ( I either miss, press a nearby wrong key by mistake, or press the key/mouse button multiple times). The best option for me that I have found is to wait for a period where my condition is not flaring so bad and I have mentally prepared for each step. Extended periods of combat though, always tend to overwhelm me as there is just so much that I can handle before my brain begins to go haywire. This is why I rarely engage in raid content and I NEVER engage in Savage mode. I don't mind missing these however, as I still get to enjoy the storyline.

Addendum: You need not apologize for forgetting. You were polite and asked for clarification. I really appreciate that. As for your descriptions of what you do as a game developer, I find that quite fascinating. It seems like a very complicated profession!

[ZedxKayn]

I play with a keyboard and mouse. My shaking, when it gets really bad, makes it so that pressing the proper key or mouse button becomes enormously difficult ( I either miss, press a nearby wrong key by mistake, or press the key/mouse button multiple times). The best option for me that I have found is to wait for a period where my condition is not flaring so bad and I have mentally prepared for each step. Extended periods of combat though, always tend to overwhelm me as there is just so much that I can handle before my brain begins to go haywire. This is why I rarely engage in raid content and I NEVER engage in Savage mode. I don't mind missing these however, as I still get to enjoy the storyline.

If you haven't tried a controller yet, it might be worth a shot, I think with the ergonomics and how spread apart the buttons tend to be, it might be easier.

[Packetdancer]

For me personally I have the type of colorblindness where if it's two different shades of the same color and there isn't enough contrast between the two shades, I cannot differentiate them. Which is why Peacekeeper is so painful for me, and P3. Also, Ra La, gold on gold on cream yellow, spare me, please ><.

You are not the only one I know who has trouble with the Ra-La fight due to the yellow-orange telegraphs on golden grass.

I firmly believe that a huge number of difficulty complaints people have with regards to this game would be solved if they made ground telegraphs either have a user-settable color, or made them just be (as I've done in a past game) the negative/inverted color of the ground texture.

I also have depth perception issues [which is why I hate jump puzzles and will never have flight in The Ruby Sea] and poor reaction times.

FWIW, you can have someone else who has a multi-seater mount fly you up to whatever aether current you're missing in the Ruby Sea; I've done this for folks before.

(Heck, I could log in my poor neglected Mateus alt and give you a lift; she's still back somewhere in Shadowbringers since I haven't touched her in ages, but she's got flight in that zone and a multi-seater chocobo carriage.)

So arena design that forces you to rely on fast reaction times and randomly placed mechanics are the bane of my existence. If it's something I can actually memorize I don't have a problem, though.

As for random mechanics, fwiw, almost no mechanic in this game is truly random, though they're pretty good at making it feel like they are sometimes.

In my experience, generally there's between 2 and 5 possible patterns at most for anything. The worst I can think of is something like Act IV or Curtain Call in P4S phase 2, where you could be tethered to any of the eight positions... but even then, Act IV you resolve your mechanic in one of only two possible ways, and Curtain Call in only one possible way.

That said, speaking of Act IV... I really wish that all mechanics that put a marker over your head also put a debuff on your status bar. I know people who have trouble seeing limit cut markers and such over their heads (especially if people are standing together), but who can increase the size of the status bar and put it somewhere easily visible to them.

Meaning they had little trouble with mechanics that put things there (like Intermediate Relativity in E12S phase 2, or Aetherial Shackles in P1S) but much more trouble with things that rely on you seeing a specific icon that appears over your head for a bit without any matching debuff in your status icons.

[redheadturk]

As for random mechanics, fwiw, almost no mechanic in this game is truly random, though they're pretty good at making it feel like they are sometimes.

Limit Cut and Kampos Harma [my static before we had to break because our raid leader is currently on night shifts were progging P2S] are the two mechanics I'm having issues with. Kampos because of the random nature with which he chooses who to hit first, Limit Cut because I can't see the damn marker if I'm in a crowd. That is the same reason that as far as I'm concerned Four Fold Shackles can burn in the deepest pit of the Seventh Hell lmao.

[Eraden]

I will say this, SE seems to really care for those of us who struggle occasionally. The new event which involves navigating a jumping puzzle, is almost impossible for me to do but SE included a bypass for players like me so that we can get the glams. My only regret is that there is an optional extra jumping puzzle to get to the very top, that does not seem to offer any reward if successfully done. It would be nice if there was a reward for that so that skilled players could get an additional reward. I have no problems with players who complete harder content, getting rewards that I will not be able to get. After all, those players earned it!

[Packetdancer]

I will say this, SE seems to really care for those of us who struggle occasionally. The new event which involves navigating a jumping puzzle, is almost impossible for me to do

To judge from the frustrated/exasperated /shout-ing I saw in Costa del Sol when I arrived to do the event (and the cursing about jumping puzzles on my static's Discord), apparently it's almost impossible for a whole bunch of people.

Though really, this game's engine is not particularly well-suited to jumping puzzles, and I say this as someone who routinely climbs Kugane Tower and jumps down onto the lamppost while waiting in party finder. I don't think there's a jumping puzzle in this game that I haven't done, including some things that may not actually be meant to be jumping puzzles, like how to get on top of the market gate in Shirogane.

(It's possible this qualifies as a video game variant of Stockholm Syndrome, and I've just convinced myself I like jumping puzzles as a coping mechanism...)

[VelKallor]

Packet..it isnt the jumping, its the bloody camera angle. i swear half the time on that tower, thats what i was doing, trying to get the cameras focus so the above area / steps wasnt occluding what I was aiming at