Quote Originally Posted by Kohashi View Post
Examples of artificial difficulty that can be applied to all fights are :

Blinding flashing effects from bosses sometimes covering the entire screen
Obstructed Character model, hidden by a spawned object or the boss model itself
Camera view
Overly large models or either bosses or mobs
General visual noise

UWU is a prime example of all of these. Ultima 3/4 of map view sometimes more, Titan, Garuda, and Ifrit all spawning randomly further altering your view.

FF14 does have a lot of noise that inflates the difficulty.
These aren't intentional sources of difficulty. This isn't "artificial difficulty", it's just bad game design.

The exception being restricting the player's view, which is pretty commonly used to create a feeling of claustrophobia and force the player to move cautiously in horror games. I don't think that's inherently bad design unless it makes it impossible to see things that you're supposed to be able to see - then it's just bad game design.