Accessibility options urgently in need of update

[Vesplume]

It's the target demographic that's probably going to have to make the most noise about this for it to get anywhere. I'm curious to see if there's any dev commentary regarding the complaints about visual clutter in the game's encounter design, because at this point I feel that's the best chance for them to even bother paying attention to the issue.

Nevermind players dropping the game because playing it gives them migraines or seizures...

[discotune]

I was thinking of this in the dragon boss in Jeuno, I can't see anything past hit ginormous body/hitbox. I was practically begging for everything to become smaller even though that would make uptime harder because I wanted to see what was going on. I play with my camera fully zoomed out at all times.

1000% this. Any boss that has visual tells but you can't see them fully zoomed out unless you wobble your camera a bunch is my biggest pet peeve of this game right now (especially since I'm on controller, where moving while changing view takes up both my thumbs). I'm always fully panned out, top-down view--that view is the best view (for me, at least) to try and see around all the noted visual clutter and not get headaches/nausea. E10s shadow puppy is another good example; you can't see his right/left tells from top-down view. I don't know how "normal" people watch both the floor and the top of those bosses at the same time. Just watching how other people spin their cameras around while playing can make me sick--but I'm not sure this is as common a problem for other people as the colors obviously are.

Also, as someone that mained SMN for a minute last tier, summoning ifrit when you're trying to see orange (over a red/orange screen) is terrible. The summon tinges the whole screen with color and a blinding flash, even if you have a small egi and personal effects at minimum. I also don't want to turn effects off just for this one class.

The colorful backgrounds/sets of m5 and m6 when you also have 8 colored waymarkers in savage is also a giant clusterF for me. I wish we could lower the color saturation of the environment selectively so the otherwise-helpful waymarkers weren't just making it worse. It's all too much.

[SnakeBlue]

Adding an addendum to my earlier comment, since I have now completed the new MSQ trial and the new raids.
This is truly unacceptably visual noise heavy. I am clumsy and a few seconds slower to react due to an old, physical injury. I can't see what I need to react to quickly or well enough to survive any of it.
The MSQ trial was worse than the raids on multiple levels that have been well outlined throughout this thread. My PF party wiped three times before we cleared it... I was down most of the fight because I simply couldn't see.

I have average vision. I need glasses but can usually see what's going on. This, I'm afraid, was simply too much.

There's 10 pages of people who love your game here, devs, and are suffering because of recent and even not so recent design choices. Please? For all of us and those to come, give us usable accessibility options so we can keep loving and playing your game?

[Amarande]

one thing to point out,. the effects that we can turn down in game are only player effects and we have no options for boss effects, (which idk why we cant limit boss effects at least x.x) but your post is SPOT ON

This, I expect is because of how turning down effects works in program settings terms.

Player effects can be tuned as easily as they can because the options are easily put in terms of "whose effect is this?" and because the only other-player effects you typically need to be able to see are things like ground healing AoEs or where Doton is placed (which are few enough specialcases that can easily be specifically put under the "cull some effects" option).

Boss effects are different. To do the same would likely require one of three things:

1, a massive amount of special-case coding in which each specific mechanic of each boss, past and present, is arbitrarily deemed by SE to be so and such level of essential in order to shoehorn it into the "full/some/minimal" rubric ("none" not being an option for bosses, ofc)
2, allowing you to fine-tune rendering options the "high tech" way (ie the "enable/disable specific graphics performance API options" method seen in many games); however, this (barring a regimented system of "only this significant of a mechanic gets to use this API" that would require also huge amounts of back-rework) tends to easily result in egregious corner cases of missed mechanic tells (those of us who played WoW BFA or knew people that did will not forget Mekkatorque for a long long time, LOL).
3, allowing you to tune each specific boss graphic render more or less freely (this results in basically integrating nearly all the cheaty raid addons into the game as a side effect and would be the spoiler to end all spoilers, because for content like this you cannot afford to wait for a .x1 patch to enable it on the latest content as by then the effects of missing out on the community bandwagon are too perceptible!)

As option 3 is not feasible and option 2 is not desirable, this only leaves the first option as one for SE to pursue, and I'm not sure that one is practical, either.

It is also important for the community to become less ableist, but in these days where even bad RNG, Comcast outages, or being forced to work an oddball RL job shift to make ends meet are "Skill Issues" I'm afraid we're fighting pretty uphill there.

(I have tried to pressure MMO raiding culture back into a less prickly direction overall. I've pretty much only run myself into the prickles and gotten myself a nice collection of Discord blocks and bans over the years for my trouble, without really solving the problem *sigh*)

[Daralii]

Adding an addendum to my earlier comment, since I have now completed the new MSQ trial and the new raids.
This is truly unacceptably visual noise heavy. I am clumsy and a few seconds slower to react due to an old, physical injury. I can't see what I need to react to quickly or well enough to survive any of it.
The MSQ trial was worse than the raids on multiple levels that have been well outlined throughout this thread. My PF party wiped three times before we cleared it... I was down most of the fight because I simply couldn't see.

I have average vision. I need glasses but can usually see what's going on. This, I'm afraid, was simply too much.

There's 10 pages of people who love your game here, devs, and are suffering because of recent and even not so recent design choices. Please? For all of us and those to come, give us usable accessibility options so we can keep loving and playing your game?

Even people without injuries/disabilities/conditions have voiced problems with not-Beatrix, which hopefully means it'll get some visual adjustments like Phoinix did, but at the current cadence that could easily be a year from now if ever.

[Salmonking]

I agree with the many suggestions in this thread. Offering accessibility options helps the game reach more people, and it is cruel to make design choices that sideline others from enjoyment of a hobby and refuge that they could otherwise participate in freely. I have migraines and the flashing lights on certain mounts such as the Diamond Gwiber and abilities such as Holy are extremely irritating; I avoid these situations when I can but it is not always possible. Disabling certain effects, or implementing options for color blind accommodations, should be a toggle in just the same way as battle effects are; I don't understand why this hasn't been done yet. Please address this so that all can enjoy this game as it's meant to be played.

[Balmung_Griffin]

Unfortunately, this company is incapable of swift action or to acknowledge feedback.

Where should we put this one? PS4 limitations pile? The job design pile? Maybe together with the Hrothgar and Viera threads, so many options to handwave and ignore!

[Rainfallen]

So coming back to this and being at M5S Enrage, while Mecha Beatrix EX is bad, I want to confidently say that Dancing Green is far worse as while Mecha Beatrix EX is rough for colourblindness, Dancing Green is a LITERAL hazard with the flashing raidwides. I find myself getting headaches in his fight, and my static right now is at 1.5% enrage on the savage version which is even worse than Normal mode. I get so frustrated by this fight and I can say woth full confidence that I hate this fight and never wish to see it again once my group is done with reclears.

The graphical update, while incredible, has absolutely made things much MUCH worse for people like myself who are disabled with visual or learning based issues that make life a pain already without gaming updates.

SE I'm desperately begging you to have a team with photosensitivity issues and other disabilities, or for crying out loud, offer a beta test for players with disabilities that are DIRECTLY affected by the flashes and whatnot to offer solutions and alternatives for fight difficulty because we do not need all that visual clutter or flashes that can trigger an epileptic episode or cause your playerbase to have headaches, or in my case, nearly vomit from some of the visual overstimulation

[Rainfallen]

So it looks like they listened to feedback on Recollection, they adjusted the contrast in the fight

[SnakeBlue]

Definitely glad they listened, and I hope it really helps.