Accessibility Request: Reduce/Turn off Boss Mechanic Effects

[Breezelyn]

NOTE: Please keep this on topic and don't derail please. I don't mind disagreeing but name calling, ragebaiting, insulting behavior can get a thread locked. I don't want that, so please try remain civil even with disagreements. This is a suggestion / request thread to help other players out there like myself.

Hey there! As a player that gets migraines from over saturated effects, I see there is no way to reduce how flashy and flashbangs on my screen. I can do that with job skill effects and that has helped me a lot with being able to focus on duties I que for. However, I noticed in Dawntrail there has been an increase of boss mechanic effects were they are overly bright and hurt my eyes. I have looked into ingame options to see if there was a way to reduce the brightness, but there is not.

Things I've tried on my end:
- Messed with monitor settings, but there's little improvement
- Graphics card settings I'm able to tweak. (Doesn't exactly help tbh)
- System settings ingame to tweak graphics there, but again, not much difference.

I'm surprised SE/CBU3 hasn't improved on their accessibility options in game to help players that struggle with stuff like this. I was doing great for most expansions until late EW and now DT. Too many overdone boss attacks have way too much brightness/flashbanging. I'm certain other players like me may struggle with how certain duties are.

I'm just worried with seeing how overly bright the attack patterns are for Jeuno's 2nd raid I've seen in the 7.3 trailer. I already have a very hard time completing the 1st one with how bad the brightness was for certain mechanics going off. Ex: Shadow Lord I died so much to with how flashbanging the attacks were. I want to enjoy the game, but having the increase of overly bright visual effects hinders my gameplay. There is barely any ways to adjust such settings myself.

Is there anyway possible for a reduction in vfx or boss attack effects to be in the options eventually? If I can do it with my job skill effects, there has to be some leeway they can do here.

[PaleYonder]

I agree, as someone who's been struggling with migraine triggers specifically since DT's graphical update and the effects of its battle content. I play on console, so the settings are limited, and I don't have this with any other game I play nor did it occur before DT. If they don't tune it down overall, I'd really like an option like that because it affects what I can play and how often in a practical way. Migraines aren't a mechanic to learn and overcome, they just make me avoid the content because I have to exercise a modicum of common sense to avoid hurting myself.

[RedLolly]

I've had to turn battle effects on party members way down, and now I'm likely going to need to turn even name plates off. I really don't know why FFXIV doesn't let us change the colors of battle markers. I would really like to darken the generic AOE one.

[Keumjo]

Adding my support to this request.

[Atma]

Whilst I am 99.99% sure you'd just get a response like "being able to identify which one of the 17 swords is glowing in the middle of a superrave is part of 'ThE cHaLlEnGe', I will happily lend my support to this as well. If we can tone down player effects for visibility, we should be able to do the same for bosses.

[AmiableApkallu]

If we can tone down player effects for visibility, we should be able to do the same for bosses.

Except we can't actually tone down player effects. We can turn them on, and we can turn them off.

Taking Jeuno's last boss as an example, for the mechanic where he holds two glowing orbs in his hands, one of which changes to indicate which side he's going to cleave, you can't just turn the orbs off and still understand the mechanic. You have to redesign the visuals.

[DynnDiablos]

Honestly, I find most normal raids and alliance raids these days extremely unpleasant to play due to all the effects. I usually have zero idea what is happening because so much is going on visually.

[Wyssahtyn]

the visual vomit is part of their intended encounter design in an attempt to obfuscate that the only thing they can come up with is just left/right cleaves, stack/spreads, etc.

[AnnaUK]

Except we can't actually tone down player effects. We can turn them on, and we can turn them off

You can show all, some or none in battle settings.

[RedLolly]

Except we can't actually tone down player effects. We can turn them on, and we can turn them off.

Taking Jeuno's last boss as an example, for the mechanic where he holds two glowing orbs in his hands, one of which changes to indicate which side he's going to cleave, you can't just turn the orbs off and still understand the mechanic. You have to redesign the visuals.

Right. I was actually confusing the ability to turn down "physics" on characters and enemies without turning them completely off.

It's curious that Endwalker really pushed making uniform battle mechanic indicators only for DT's battle design team to mostly ignore them for single-battle only flash. Would rather that graphical budget go into fixing eyelid bugs.