Please stop flashing bright lights in my eyes

sharkclanb16_ESO

For specific events, like reading hard mode scrolls or for when you are having a bad 'eye' day I use the 'Eye Strain' addon. Set the colour overlay to what suits you and bind the activation of it to a key. Hopefully it helps.

Cambion2401

SilverBride wrote: »

every time I completed a step a very bright white light would flash on the screen. This is painful and I have to quickly close my eyes and turn my head away. [..]. If you need a way to transition, fade to black instead, like it does when you turn in parts of the Vardenfall map. But flashing very bright lights in your player's faces is causing unnecessary pain.

DinoZavr wrote: »

Normally, no game vendors take care. [...]
Game-makers LOVE explosions (as and many players do), so they normally never care about photosensitive gamers minority. [...] Photosensitive players only might hope to be heard, but the chances are barely zero, this is why I even don’t bother to tag ZOS managers in this message. I am afraid we are to live with that. Just close your eyes..

I wouldn't say game vendors (in general) don't care about things like unnecessary bright screen transitions, nor are they in line with things like explosions. Those are two very different things. Explosions and similar kind of effects are important for the experience, so removing or altering them removes/alters an important part of the game design just for a minority of the player base.

Bright transition effects and such on the other hand are not a necessity. In some cases they may be there to show there was some big fancy magic thing that caused the transition which would be the only exception, but this doesn't really count for opening a chest or other simple quest progression. Changing it to be more muted or a black fade doesn't change the experience much, unlike an explosions that seems less big and impactful if you dim it. Yet it does increase the comfort of the player. Even more so, even a lot of people without photophobia struggle with this (especially loading screens and splash screens are notorious), especially with PC gaming. This is simply due to people not always sitting in a fully lightened room, and games generally not being continuous bright and often using a muted colour pallet for realism. Since eyes need time to adjust, it's hurt anyone just like turning a light on in a dark room. Due to this, normally, game devs would try to avoid this.

Mostly when there are issues like this, either it's a console port that's not adapted properly (considering the larger distance to the screen the light is more distributed so it feels less extreme than when sitting nearby a monitor, so bright screens are less troublesome there). The Yakuza games are a good example of this, having a bright white Sega screen at start up. Kiwami 2 luckily dimmed the screen to solve the issue. Or it's caused by a light coloured (non-white) screen that's underestimated in brightness. For example The Sims 4 had the loading screens changed from light blue to dark blue due to this.

Point is, I would definitely tag Zenimax in this kind of stuff if you can. While some things are indeed very unlikely to change for people with photophobia, the complaint here is exactly the kind of thing that might. I like to think they just don't realise it's a big issue for a large amount of players and that they just underestimated the brightness much like those Sims loading screens, as I rarely hear much about it compared to other topics (in the 6 years I'm here). But even if we assume the worst that they in particular don't care about it right now, enough complaints might change their mind and at least tone down if not change the effects that are too bright but not adding any actual experience.

magnusthorek

Thank you for the heads up. I'll close my eyes when I decide to play this prologue

Nirntrotter

Haven't started the prologue yet so thanks a bunch for the heads up... currently scrying is the biggest offender for me, ugh.

SilverBride

Cambion2401 wrote: »

Since eyes need time to adjust, it's hurt anyone just like turning a light on in a dark room.

This. Imagine being woken up in a dark room to find a spotlight in your face. That is how intense it is.

I'm not bothered by any other effects like explosions because they are usually different colors and don't blast the entire screen. The scrying doesn't even bother me because it's not pure white, although it does bother a lot of others and should definitely be looked into.

I will edit my original post to tag @GinaBruno and hope they will look into this issue.

Miukipt

I actually sent a ticket today regarding this exact situation. I wear glasses with blue light treatment and honestly the bright light at the end of quest and scrying make my eyes hurt ALOT and have given me migraines too, the blue treatment does nothing for this bright white lights btw.

So yes it would be amazing if Zenimax could look into this and do something about it, because I love this game, it's so nice and pretty but this puts me off a bit since I don't want to have migraines every time I play it.

I hope someone at the company listen to us photosensitive people that really want to enjoy the great game they've created but are getting hurt and sick over a light that honestly can be removed and something different added for the same affect.

SilverBride

I hope they listen, too. I close my eyes when I know it's coming and I can even see the flash through my eyelids, but it's bearable then. But when it catches me off guard it can be rather startling and painful.

The scrying flash didn't used to bother me as much because it wasn't pure white, but lately I've found myself having to look away from that, too.

I've played a lot of MMOs and this is the only one that does these bright white flashes. They do not have to do this. The quest in Vardendfall where you build the map fades to black when you turn in the pieces. ZoS please... replace all the bright flashes with this dark transition.

@GinaBruno please.