Less particle effects and more gameplay

[UkcsAlias]

Yes tried that, both with in-game graphics settings and computer settings, still causes pain sadly.

Most of the time its not the brightness itself being the issue, its the relative brightness. Yes eyes can increase/reduce the amount of light they receive (thats why at night you can still see). Some people have a lower acceptable range between these upper and lower limit. And there is nothing you can do against it without facing problems elsewhere.

Reducing brightness is 1 thing, but that is just the same as increasing brightness of the area around you. It will make it harder to spot diffirences in darker colors, this can equaly disrupt. However, the monitor often still only covers a portion of your vision (im guessing 30%), so increasing room brightness might help, especialy if you also reduced ingame brightness. And all you might need is have some light behind your monitors to brighten up your wall.

But in the end, there are limits you cant get around. If these things dont help, its very likely nothing will, and any game dev should be aware of this. Flashing effects do normaly give a warning for a reason, its not just epilepsy.

[Fiel_Tana]

Most of the time its not the brightness itself being the issue, its the relative brightness. Yes eyes can increase/reduce the amount of light they receive (thats why at night you can still see). Some people have a lower acceptable range between these upper and lower limit. And there is nothing you can do against it without facing problems elsewhere.

Yes, that is definitely part of the problem here. That and adjusting too slowly towards the brighter end of the scale. They are great in the dark and adjust to that rather quickly. (Friends joke that I have cat night vision.)

I have tried increasing the ambient light in my room and having light behind the monitor as well but it didn't help. Tried wearing sunglasses instead of the usual blue light glasses I wear at a computer but then I had some difficulty seeing the darker regions and the flashes still burnt my eyes anyway since the pupils were just adjusted to a slightly darker ambient light so I was still blinded by the light imprint for a few seconds, same as without. Not sure "light imprint" is the right term, what I mean is the ghost like burn-in of the bright object hanging in front of the vision for a bit. Lots of people get that if they look directly at a light bulb then look away. My eyes are rather sensitive so all it takes is a flash effect on the screen and it feels like daggers jabbed through my eyeballs into my brain along with seeing ghostly tracers for a bit. It truly is the least fun mechanic lol.

What I don't know though is why this game, which is now worse after the graphics update, causes this when most others don't. WoW, and to a lesser degree, BG3 had some bright flashes and it didn't cause pain. Do they have lower intensity? Slower flash? Different colours used? Less contrast? Not a clue.

This thread covers other eye strain problems since the update, hopefully the devs will be working on it soon and will add in options for combat and arena graphics:
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ate-Eye-Strain

Like you say, the devs really should be aware that flashes of bright lights can cause many different issues for people, and test for that. That's why there's usually warnings on films, theatres and night clubs that have flashing or strobe effects. I count myself lucky that for me it's 'only' headaches and eye strain, as terrible as that is, it could be far worse. I worry about how it could effect others with more serious sensitivities.