Accessibility options urgently in need of update

[Lokarina]

Yeah, Ex4 is rough even without colorblindness. Last time I had such a bad time was in p3s, and I'm having similar issues now where I just can't tell where anything is. Hoping for some sort of fix here.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

At this point I won’t even be surprised if they someday come out and admit that all the visual clutters being included are one of their idea to ‘increase difficulty of encounter’.

[Mawlzy]

At this point I won’t even be surprised if they someday come out and admit that all the visual clutters being included are one of their idea to ‘increase difficulty of encounter’.

Same.

Yoshi-P explicitly stated he felt regrets over making FF14 "too stress-free."

Well folks, the stress is back, as are the migraines.

[PaleYonder]

Adding my voice to this; I don't have colourblindness, but I do have a tendency for migraines, and the flashing lights in many of the more recent fights have just been too much and make me have to skip out on them. On edge-case days on which I would normally have been able to play a bit without triggering a migraine, I now have to forego roulettes in case one of those comes up. It's very frustrating. For me personally, the M6 raid, when the lala gets out her lightning, was too much; went from a good problem-free day to "better stop right here, migraine's at the door", and I'll be avoiding this fight going forward.

[Nyaesa]

I have a friend who is photosensitive and has seizures, she can't go into Heritage Found without having a seizure, she's had to stop playing the game because of all the lightning effects, flashing effects and it's just not acceptable.

Please add an option to disable or change visual effects for our photosensitive friends!

[CCheshire]

I support this even though I am not colorblind. I do find that the recent raids are super bright and hard to focus during the gameplay even with all effects turned off or lowered for the party.

[Colt47]

Hmm... to sum this up...

Red on red is bad. This is not as bad as p3s with the orange saturation but the choice of the spread marker colors in combination with Rosebloom makes things hard to track without pre-positioning.

[Rainfallen]

I have minor blue-yellow colourblindness, and while it doesn't really affect my daily life, it definitely affects my gaming experiences and can be absolute hell at times for mechanics in fights. Even in NORMAL content if I'm being honest. My static on Thursday had to literally sit there for 20 minutes to help me figure out how to read escelon 1 in EX4 because it was the same issue I had in M4S being too much of the same identical colours. I don't have much issues with the red on red in that fight, but I know others that do have issues and I definitely think it's a bad look from SE for sure.

I suffer from severe chronic migraines as well, and have various disabilities that make processing fights an absolute nightmare in raids (I probably shouldn't raid, but I'm stubborn and want to prove old guildmates wrong from WoW who said I would never be able to do raids like this). The VFX in fights have been getting progressively WORSE ever since DT launched. LHWs was an overstim nightmare, if I hadn't been relying on callouts in M4S especially due to colours and bright flashes, I would have been 100% throwing up during prog and reclears. I was having similar issues in EX3 as well due to some of the colour and VFX decisions. Consistent migraines after progging a fight due to VFX and colour designs on fights really isn't a good things to have players have happen.

I had some knucklehead say that "visual clutter is what makes these fights hard, lol, removing that would make these fights too easy" and while I agree SOME clutter should be there for difficulties, being there in excess like it has been recently isn't how it should be. M3S towed the line of almost too much given that it was almost as problematic for me as P3 back in Pandae, but M3S had a decent enough balance with the fuses and the like. I loved M3S (looking forward to M7S too), but that orange on orange was a nightmare. Visual clutter with layering the same colours on each other, especially when you have disabled players like me and others here in these replies who love this game and hard content; really isn't how fights should be designed.

It very much feels like alienation to a disabled player base that adores this kind of content, and it hurts me to point that finger toward a game I adore so much. They either need to add a filter that dulls some VFX or improve their accessibility settings across the board to give a better experience for those of us who need that extra hand for playability.

[Kaurhz]

I had some knucklehead say that "visual clutter is what makes these fights hard, lol, removing that would make these fights too easy" and while I agree SOME clutter should be there for difficulties, being there in excess like it has been recently isn't how it should be. M3S towed the line of almost too much given that it was almost as problematic for me as P3 back in Pandae, but M3S had a decent enough balance with the fuses and the like. I loved M3S (looking forward to M7S too), but that orange on orange was a nightmare. Visual clutter with layering the same colours on each other, especially when you have disabled players like me and others here in these replies who love this game and hard content; really isn't how fights should be designed.

It very much feels like alienation to a disabled player base that adores this kind of content, and it hurts me to point that finger toward a game I adore so much. They either need to add a filter that dulls some VFX or improve their accessibility settings across the board to give a better experience for those of us who need that extra hand for playability.

Calling the person is a knucklehead is absolutely generous, at this point I wonder if there's anything upstairs except compressed air. Visual Clutter adding to difficulty is an innate design flaw, and you don't need to have raided to understand this fact, honestly... Just a shred of common sense, and at least some rudimentary understanding of design practices in any capacity.

Praising visual clutter for making these fights hard is like me saying, "Let's add an innate 600ms packet delay to processing and then design fights that require low latency and/or high reaction times.", it's utterly ridiculous that people out there are adhering to this level of logic. Like for both of these points, neither of them are innate difficulties, but are extrinsic difficulty factors that in a significant amount of cases will just serve to hamper or annoy the player rather than actually present a skill-oriented challenge. They have managed perfectly reasonably difficult fights in the past without completely doing a massacre on accessibility.

There is no circumstance where it is appropriate, frankly... If you want to add reasonable visual cues which conform to even the most rudimentary accessibility practice then go ahead. If you want to add some flare then go ahead, but keep it at a reasonable level. No need to try and flashbang the screen with unnecessary information... It's so bizarre that they managed to do memorable moments and challenging moments in the past without needing to do half the nonsense they do now.

Honestly... This situation has made me not even bother or have faith in the design processes, really.. I haven't raided since Eden's Verse, due to some of these abysmal design decisions, so it's utterly disappointing to see they are trying to double down on this design aspect after 4 years.

[Catwho]

Going to +1 this because even though I am not directly impacted, it is a terrible design choice to red on red and these kind of issues shouldn't be in fight design to begin with.

We have a massive thread already in the forum as well about the 7.0 graphics changes causing eye strain and eye fatigue in many people. And every "fix" to it has only made it worse, or missed the original complaint.