MSQ Difficulty and Exclusion

[Packetdancer]

I think I've expressed that I don't see the MSQ needing the base difficulty ramped up, though I do think it would be super great if it did a little more to teach players about other things, like "the white bar over an icon means you can Esuna a thing" and "if the cast bar is blinking, you can interrupt the cast".

(I would, of course, be thrilled to have more higher-challenge content in the game overall; I just don't think it needs to be required content that blocks people from progressing the main story.)

However...

You are an example of those who I mentioned who simply do not understand the situations of those of us who struggle from time to time on the MSQs because of our conditions. Please understand that for some of us, we really are at our physical limits when we have difficulties and it has very little to do with the game teaching us how to play.

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.)

I ask mostly because, as detailed in a previous post, I do try to approach my own game design efforts in a way to make things accessible to people. And I do firmly believe that accessible content doesn't have to be easy content. (And that conflating "accessible gaming" with "people want easy mode on everything" does no favors to anyone.)

For instance, I don't have to make a fight easier to make it friendly to both folks with visual impairment and hearing issues; I just need to make sure that every move where I want the players to pay attention to the telegraph has both a distinct visual cue (for those hard-of-hearing) and an audio cue (for those who have vision issues).

For instance, if I were designing P4S, during the Pinax phase where you need to see whether the sword or the cape is glowing, to know whether it will be the cleave or the knockback... the visual cue (which thing is glowing) is already there, but I would make a distinct audio cue. It might be the sound of a sword being unsheathed (if the sword is glowing) or of a cape being unfurled (if the cape is glowing), or two voiced lines (one for sword, one for cape). It doesn't have to be obvious, but it should be there.

Regardless, that audio cue would mean that someone with vision issues doesn't have to squint to see whether it's the sword or cape glowing -- or rely on me as a raid-caller in Discord -- as they could listen for the audio cue instead.

Haptics, too, are a good way to offer subtle feedback. In the game I'm working on with a friend right now, I'm actually trying to use subtle controller vibration to telegraph if you're on unsteady ground; the texture of ground that might crumble will be visibly different, but as you step onto it the controller also starts a very, very faint vibration, just enough to pick up on almost unconsciously -- but certainly making it easier for folks who may not see fine details in texture (like crackled/crumbling masonry) to not plummet to their death.

Jumping puzzles are a source of much fury and frustration even to people who don't figure they need accessibility options, much less people who have trouble being precise enough with a controller to make a particularly finicky jump; as a result, the movement system in the aforementioned game will also detect if you'd just barely miss a jump and has a "pity" mechanic (though I actually call it a "sympathy mechanic" in the code) where it will accelerate your character just slightly, enough to ensure you make the jump rather than falling short (and thus falling, period).

(Frankly, that consideration is for me as much as anyone else, though literally no one I've shown the sympathy mechanic to has had any other response than abject relief. I think many of us have jumping puzzle trauma.)

Stuff like that. Anyway...

Since this is a thing I think about fairly often from a design standpoint, I find myself curious what part of this game you find yourself struggling with. Both because maybe there's a workaround present in the game already (just poorly documented, which is sure as heck a Thing), and because maybe it's an accessibility consideration I'm not already thinking about for my own game design stuff.

Again, feel free to decline (or ask to take the answer private); I just always want more data on what people do find to be places where a game is unintentionally difficult to play due to poor choices... like, say, orange and red mechanics on an orange and yellow arena, with some extra orange and yellow and red thrown in for visual spice. (As opposed, obviously, to intentional difficulty, e.g. mechanics.)

Of course, there are some challenges that are harder to tackle by just keeping accessibility in mind; for folks who have cognitive issues that make it hard to track mechanics and such, for instance, I have a lot of sympathy but few good fixes.