Could we have an option to reduce colors and flashes in fights, please?

[Veritas-Ancora]

Agreed on this. As someone with photosensitivity, I hope the devs are at least mindful of this.

[Catwho]

you mean the red mage ring of death?

That one got the nicknamed "Verblind" even before the graphics update!

A friend of mine has a widescreen monitor with really high nits brightness. There's been a lot of times when a major attack goes off that has a full screen fade to white, likely as part of a boss transition, and he has said, "Ah, my eyes!" half jokingly in Discord.

SE really needs to include someone with that kind of sensitivity on their QA team, and even for normal users, test it under ambiant room lighting conditions. If someone with good eyesight and no sensitivity can notice it, that's a problem.

[zarahleo]

Hey everyone,

I’d like to start by acknowledging that I’m likely in the minority here. My intention is not to ask SE to change its overall direction, but rather to highlight an issue that some people, myself included, are experiencing. I hope this discussion might lead to the consideration of accessibility options to help address these concerns.

As an autistic individual, I find myself struggling with overstimulation in the game lately, particularly in the new fights introduced in this expansion. For those who may not be familiar, overstimulation occurs when sensory input—such as loud sounds, bright lights, or visually overwhelming elements—becomes difficult to process, leading to discomfort or even distress.

Since the release of DT, I’ve noticed that much of the new content features bright, visually busy designs with not just flashing colors from all directions, but also intense, screenwide or raidwide flashes occurring in quick succession. While I encountered some of these challenges with EX1, it became especially apparent during the Chaotic Alliance Raid, where I was unable to complete it due to severe eye strain and headaches after about 30 minutes.

While there have been occasional instances of this in the past (for example, Mt. Gulg comes to mind), it seems to have become much more common in DT.
The new trial continues this trend, with an abundance of colors and effects from all sides. The extreme version, in particular, includes a mechanic with constantly exploding blue circles and bubbles, which I find extremely difficult and painful to look at for the full duration.

To be clear, I’m not asking for the game to be tailored specifically to my needs—I fully understand that I have my own challenges to manage. However, I wonder if it might be possible to implement an option in the accessibility settings to tone down these elements for those who need it.
Without such an option, I’m beginning to feel like I may have to give up much of the endgame content altogether.

Thank you for taking the time to consider this.

I agree the option should be there, I've found myself becoming mentally exhausted with severe eye strain after a short period of time. Where back in previous expansions I could play for hours longer. I think the graphic update is part of it too.

[Ankhira]

you mean the red mage ring of death?

That one can be so bad at times hehe

[Voryn]

I might be having something similar happen to me as well.

When I was doing the new trial (mostly its Extreme version) I feel a some discomfort but couldn’t tell exactly why.

Then I did M5S and M6S a bunch as tank last week and felt ok, although yesterday evening I played them with friends and I was RDM. After an hour I started getting bad headaches and had to ask for extra breaks. I’m suspecting that the flashing lights of M5S and the bright colours of M6S ended up being too much for me when I also had RDM’s big attacks happening, because I didn’t feel as much discomfort if I looked away from my screen during my burst windows, and I haven’t had this problem playing RDM in other content, or when doing M5S/M6S as GNB instead.

This has never happened to me before when playing this game, and I wasn’t sick yesterday and am feeling completely fine today. I started playing this game in 5.5 and started raiding in 6.2. However there are times if I’m playing other games, or am watching tv, or am at concerts, where I can have discomfort or headaches because of bright lights.

Next time if I’m in there M5S/M6S, if I’m playing RDM I’m going to turn my effects off and see if it helps. But it sucks having to use Limited effects for RDM because that turns almost everything off. In M6S’s add phase it’ll be hard to see if I aimed Resolution properly and hit all the targets I wanted to.

So I would really appreciate if the settings allowed for more customization to how certain effects are displayed. Both for boss effects and for our own jobs.

[Vesplume]

I might be having something similar happen to me as well.

When I was doing the new trial (mostly its Extreme version) I feel a some discomfort but couldn’t tell exactly why.

Then I did M5S and M6S a bunch as tank last week and felt ok, although yesterday evening I played them with friends and I was RDM. After an hour I started getting bad headaches and had to ask for extra breaks. I’m suspecting that the flashing lights of M5S and the bright colours of M6S ended up being too much for me when I also had RDM’s big attacks happening, because I didn’t feel as much discomfort if I looked away from my screen during my burst windows, and I haven’t had this problem playing RDM in other content, or when doing M5S/M6S as GNB instead.

This has never happened to me before when playing this game, and I wasn’t sick yesterday and am feeling completely fine today. I started playing this game in 5.5 and started raiding in 6.2. However there are times if I’m playing other games, or am watching tv, or am at concerts, where I can have discomfort or headaches because of bright lights.

I want to highlight this post because this is a textbook example of how the lighting in this game impacted me and other players who have brought up this issue here and in other threads. It's not like staring at the sun where the pain is immediate and you reactively look away. The effect when playing the game is subtle and sustained over a long period of time. If you play games or work with computer screens regularly, you might not even think to question it. Out of nowhere your head hurts (and keeps getting worse). You might feel sick to your stomach. You might start making mistakes for no apparent reason and play worse than you normally do.

I do have light sensitivity so when I started feeling sick when running Vanguard, I was able to identify the culprit quickly - the sirens and flashing lights are obvious. The Arcadion fights are so brightly lit already and amplified by the flashy new effects. Bright on bright on bright may not consciously click as something wrong when you're focused on trying to clear the fight, but your eyes are still processing that visual information. For some people, it's overwhelming. For the people who have spoken up here and in other threads, it's game-breaking. If you're reading this and thinking this sounds familiar, please go easy on yourselves.

But as stated in this quoted post, I'd also never reacted that badly to something in-game before. This has been an issue with previous duties but it has gotten significantly worse in DT and specifically 7.2. Players need ways to mitigate this if they want to keep playing this game, and it has to be something implemented by the devs and not mods.

[Ankhira]

I want to highlight this post because this is a textbook example of how the lighting in this game impacted me and other players who have brought up this issue here and in other threads. It's not like staring at the sun where the pain is immediate and you reactively look away. The effect when playing the game is subtle and sustained over a long period of time. If you play games or work with computer screens regularly, you might not even think to question it. Out of nowhere your head hurts (and keeps getting worse). You might feel sick to your stomach. You might start making mistakes for no apparent reason and play worse than you normally do.

I do have light sensitivity so when I started feeling sick when running Vanguard, I was able to identify the culprit quickly - the sirens and flashing lights are obvious. The Arcadion fights are so brightly lit already and amplified by the flashy new effects. Bright on bright on bright may not consciously click as something wrong when you're focused on trying to clear the fight, but your eyes are still processing that visual information. For some people, it's overwhelming. For the people who have spoken up here and in other threads, it's game-breaking. If you're reading this and thinking this sounds familiar, please go easy on yourselves.

But as stated in this quoted post, I'd also never reacted that badly to something in-game before. This has been an issue with previous duties but it has gotten significantly worse in DT and specifically 7.2. Players need ways to mitigate this if they want to keep playing this game, and it has to be something implemented by the devs and not mods.

Agreed, I have seen the argument thrown around on other threads/social media that the flashing lights and such is part of the difficulty but that just makes very little sense to me.. it's not difficult it's just causing pain for a number of your players
I tried m5s the other day and all the rainbow colors going off constantly was driving me insane I felt like I was going to have a seizure or something

[Daralii]

Agreed, I have seen the argument thrown around on other threads/social media that the flashing lights and such is part of the difficulty but that just makes very little sense to me.. it's not difficult it's just causing pain for a number of your players

But imagine how hard the next ultimate would be if they replaced all the visuals with a solid white screen and the audio with a dozen tornado sirens. The challenge would finally be back.

[Jamini]

I too would appreciate the ability to turn down boss effects. Both Ex4 and M5 have given me a marked increase in Dx crashes (it happens elsewhere on occasion, but those two in particular seem to really make my graphics card strain.

A "simplified effects" setting would be very nice.

[Nighthawky2010]

I agree with this post. Evening adjusting the brightness or colors on my TV setting doesn't help much. For many of those raids especially M4 & M5, doing them back to back will give me a headache or strain my eyes, even doing those during them in the early evening when it is still light outside. Sliders would be helpful to adjust the brightness, color, & flashiness. Those small percentage of photosensitive players would not like some of these raids. Sometimes I think...Does SE want players to have seizures?

I main RDM & I used to love to see the effects but now since many of the skills are flashy, I turned off the effects which I like better.