MSQ Requirement for people who find your dungeons too visually stimulating

[kingp82000]

Several of my friends this game and I'm committed to playing with them.

I'm autistic and I find the combat in dungeons to be way too visually demanding and stimulating. I have followed some advice on graphical settings to help with this, but the boss encounters you've designed all involve flashes of bright lights and very overwhelming visual effects.

I just want to do gathering/crafting in the game my friends play and I quit playing this game once before at level 54 because the MSQ skip was not available yet and I was getting headaches from the combat.

I'm back now with the sudden surge of players and I purchased the MSQ skip but the duties between 70 and 80 (I've only done the first two) are visually exhausting. My poor groups are very patient with me but halfway through every boss fight I'm visually exhausted.

To me it seems like a shame to have to make all these players carry me through dungeons that give me headaches all so I can get through the MSQ which is completely arbitrary to me because I have no plans to ever play a max level combat job.

I'm wondering if there's something I'm missing here, some way to make this a little visually manageable, in other games I've been able to turn the graphics settings down and mess with the colorblind mode to get something manageable, but there seems to be no way around the sudden flashes of bright colors in FF14.

[True-to-Caesar]

Decreasing graphic quality won’t do, you need to disable visual effects (flashes and other stuff made by your teammates and mobs too).

There is an option for this along with an option to force the game to show ONLY very important stuff (like enemies’ AoE attacks, or allies’ friendly areas of effect giving you buffs).

This video explains it nicely and shows you were to go in the settings :https://youtu.be/F947W9j5cPk

[Vidu]

Is there any way you could adjust the settings directly on your monitor?

Sadly there is no way to turn of the effects of enemies (you can only turn off effects your player characters) and I dont know enough about visual overload to say wether or not that will actually help, but when I compare how the game looks on my monitore compared to my boyfriends, the colors on his are a lot brighter and flashier, while my game looks a lot more "mellow". It wont help with sudden flashes of light and things like that, but maybe it would be a start?

[kingp82000]

I had already done all the steps in the video True-to-Caesar suggested, and the monitor settings are not the issue either. it is purely the enemy spell effects and how the game displays them.

For example the boss in the first 8 man you do as part of the 70-80 MSQ around level 73 has an animation combination where she floods the room with this rainbow colored wave and then immediately spawns the bright yellow arrows around a character so we know to all stack on them. This is so visually stimulated to me I'm disoriented for several seconds and feel almost dizzy. Meaning that I fail the mechanic the first time and then I'm able to limp through it on subsequent attempts because I understand the end state of what I have to do enough to perform it while a bit dizzy (or if I'm quick enough when the wave happens I close my eye or look away for a brief moment). The stacking doesn't always perfectly follow the rainbow wave on that fight so it's not a perfect example.

At any rate - every duty/trial so far has had a few bosses with mechanic I find disorienting, and it looks like from the comments here I'm going to have to suffer through. I don't like having to take a break after every bit of group content because I have a headache and I don't like feeling like I'm physically incapable of pulling my weight.

I've played a lot of MMOs and I've never had this issue to this extent - although it has come up once in awhile.

[True-to-Caesar]

I’m sorry about this kingp82000, the only things that come up to my mind would be playing a long ranged job like Bard or Black Mage, maybe changing color settings to have a desaturated look (at least if you do group content). Wouldn’t help with some flashes but at least you may be less annoyed with the flash of colors.

At least MSQ content isn’t too hard so if you can go with a group of friends/FC, I have no doubt they can help you go through it even if you die due to a mechanic. No shame in getting help from friends too. They aren’t doing this for virtual/irl money but for you. And you might return the favor through your focus on crafting and other activities.

Your issue reminds me of my time in GW2 group content, where there was so many useless flashes I couldn’t even see clearly what was happening (there was like a flash/VFX on each attack and it scaled depending on the size of the NPC, horrible).

[Frizze]

Have you tried playing with the colorblind settings too? You said it worked in other games, so maybe thats worth a shot? Admittedly, not having similar issues its hard for me to think of helpful advice beyond what has already been said. Aside from one thing. If playing at end game isnt part of your goals, you can wait until november and clear the pre-expansion content with your friends helping via the unsync feature. Slowly using trusts/friends to advance the next expansion as far as you need to so you have access to the crafting and gathering you want is possible. Good luck!

[Vidu]

I'm sorry that adjusting monitor settings doesnt help with your issue :/

The best option thats left and comes to mind would be to suggest/put in a request for a setting that would allow to disable or tune down battle effects for enemies - on a technical level that shouldnt be impossible and while I'm sure that some people would manage to argue against it, I can assure you that at least I would support such a request. And I wouldnt be surprised if others did aswell - there are medical reasons beside authism that would benefit from such an option (personal example: the spelle effect of "Holy" trigger migraines for me, so I've turned all party effects off and dont play WHM myself - and if I do, I turn off my own effects aswell. However, there are certain enemies in some dungeons that cast Holy aswell and my only option there is to play "blind", aka close my eyes whenever we get to that section - works surpringsly well... but I'd really like to just turn the effects off).

So... that would be my suggestion: starting a thread in the General Discussion section asking for such an option and/or waiting for the next live letter that allows for questions where this one would fit and suggest it there.

[Elissar]

There is a plugin that deal with this stuff be can't talk about it

[kingp82000]

thanks everyone for the advice - I got through the MSQ, mainly because the 3 of the 4 required duties after level 73 use very subdued color palates and it's much more manageable.

The Trial at level 79 is ridiculous, I'm not certain you could put footage of the enemy mechanics in that fight in a move or television show in the US without a seizure warning. But luckily my visual stimulation issues don't ever result in issues like that - I had a headache but my group 1 pulled it and it was over. The level 80 trial to finish the MSQ isn't too bad either. The first 2 dutes at 71/73 and the trials at 73/79 were the worst of it.

I have all the patch MSQ to do, but I will just buy the skip for that when the expansion comes out and work my way through the MSQ one more time. I will lookin to the plugins which shall not be named I'm sure google will help. To the suggestion that I skip the MSQ until the expansion, you can't do any of the end game crafting efficiently without unlocking features and aetherite stones that are behind MSQ progression.

For me I guess, it would be ideal if there was some way to progress through the entire game crafting and gathering and not having anything locked behind MSQ. But all said I only had to make it through 6 dungeons and 3 trials - I can live with it.

[Elizabetha]

I'm casting resurrection on this thread. I received my autism diagnosis about 6 months ago. Now I understand why I have always been so put off of instances in this game. I have recently gotten back into it due to meeting a small group of understanding Canadians "^_^"

Raids specifically are tortuous. I get visually overstimulated, even with every setting I can find turned off, or to its minimum display. When I am overstimulated, my outward response is anger. Also, as a former UI programmer, I don't understand why there aren't more settings to simply turn off what I do not want to see. I suppose the game makers would consider some instances too easy to complete (for normal people) if they could turn off everything but the mechanic markers.

It really is a shame. I love so much of this game.

I don't know what it feels like to be in a wheelchair, approach a building and find no ramp, but I sure can imagine it now. That is how I feel.

I know, as a culture, the Japanese seem drawn to spastic eye candy... even on something as benign as an auction web-site, but good grief... my money is just as good as any other players'. Can't I turn off some of this unnecessary stuff? It impedes my ability to play.

I may only be two years into FF14, but I've been playing MMOs since the last century. I've never had over-stimulation problems in any other one. Western studios often include options for game performance that marry nicely into an autistic person being able to cut down on what they do not need to see.

I am rambling... The topic has really been in my mind.

It makes me sad because I have zero hope that this issue will be officially addressed.

If you want to be in a global market, treat your customer base as if it, too, is global.

So FRUSTRATED.