My girlfriend has phobia to cockroaches and deep dark water. When she has to play The last of Us, Conan Exiles and others, for example, I have to help her in water levels. In Fallout 4, she kill mutaroaches with eyes nearly closed. Having a phobia is no joke. She's triying to be strong againts it.

So OP, I hope you will find a way to enjoy this wonderfull game without suffering

I like killing the nasty things. Maybe we can get a shoe or boot thay we can step on them with.

The tricky thing about fears is that they're irrational for the most part and can't be simply governed with common sense. Fear is an important emotion because it functions as a life saver in a situation where an actual threat is imminent. The problem is that fears can grow out of hand and getting triggered through things that are not dangerous. Also somebody who doesn't have any kind of phobia probably cannot understand what's happening in the mind of someone who has.

Short of professional help I see no good solution either, there will always be monsters in a game like this. Sorry you're affected by them @Lieblingsjunge

They do have the best spiders in ESO. It wigs out a friend of mine.

Turn the graphics down to low as possible, they then don't look quite as scary. But I think it is more how they have hem move and lunge just like real life spiders that really gets people.

Perhaps its time ESO was renamed to ESZ - from Elder Scrolls Online to Endless Spiders & Zombies ..

GeorgeBlack wrote: »

Would you pay for an addon?

I mean people sell pharma, they dont give them away

If it were ZOS they were paying for the add-on, possibly, though I wouldn't think much of ZOS for selling a clearly QOL addition to the game,
instead of freely like the colored enemy and friendly effects they took a long time to implement for color-blind folks. I would think anyone other than ZOS would get in trouble for selling an addon.

Doctordarkspawn wrote: »

Oh, I'm so sorry my irrational fear cant be solved by rational means.

Seriously, where do you get off buddy? It's about as helpfull as walking down to the hospital and telling the amputee's to grow a new limb.

I suppose images are irrational but the fear of spiders overall isn't a phobia. It's not irrational to be scared of something that can kill you.

emilyhyoyeon wrote: »

AlexanderDeLarge wrote: »

Doctordarkspawn wrote: »

Oh, I'm so sorry my irrational fear cant be solved by rational means.

Seriously, where do you get off buddy? It's about as helpfull as walking down to the hospital and telling the amputee's to grow a new limb.

I suppose images are irrational but the fear of spiders overall isn't a phobia. It's not irrational to be scared of something that can kill you.

sure, but a phobia of spiders is irrational. The OP is talking about a phobia of spiders, not a fear of spiders

Major difference indeed. Fear is what could possibly save you in certain situations, a phobia would make you do something irrational, like freeze or panic.

Thanks for the thoughts and ideas. Guess I'll wait with buying Summerset until I know if it's worth it.
Any1 knows if you can do the Jewellery craft without the chapter?

AlienSlof wrote: »

I have a similar issue with wasps - even though I can one-shot most of them, I still find myself going around them whenever possible! I really, REALLY don't like wasps! I tell myself they're just pixels, but I still go around them!

i have the opposite effect with the bees/wasps in the game ... im allergic to bees in RL ... and find myself going out of my way to kill everyone i see in the game lol

Feanor wrote: »

Also somebody who doesn't have any kind of phobia probably cannot understand what's happening in the mind of someone who has.

It's not that they probably don't understand, it's more of being somewhat polite and skirting the real issue: if a person has this much of a phobia, why are they deliberately putting themselves into a situation which triggers the phobia?

Unfortunately, this sounds like victim blaming, but the reality of the situation is most people who have these types of phobias actively prevent from being affected by them.

People's concerns of "change" would be justified, because we're not just talking about "spiders" in this game. There are centipiedes, daedra, crabs, and Dreughs, all of which exhibit similar features to a "spider".

Then, someone else will come along and announce a fear of ghosts, projectiles, blades, skirts, or thunder, just to name a few.

The reality of the situation is making a request like this is shying away from the responsibility of addressing the trigger which causes the phobia to intensify to the point of being uncomfortable.

I get the OP is terrified, but the single best option they have at this point is to stop playing the game, seek help, and return once they're confident a virtual representation won't trigger their phobia.

I've a growing concern these small populations have an affect profound enough that the majority either deal without or are punished.

Such as the young 8 year old who brought a peanut butter sandwich to school which banned peanuts because less than 1% of people are allergic was suspended.

This type of situation doesn't mean we don't care about the afflicted, but there are better ways to deal with it than a removal.

Fix the problem instead of attacking the source.

Violynne wrote: »

Feanor wrote: »

Also somebody who doesn't have any kind of phobia probably cannot understand what's happening in the mind of someone who has.

It's not that they probably don't understand, it's more of being somewhat polite and skirting the real issue: if a person has this much of a phobia, why are they deliberately putting themselves into a situation which triggers the phobia?

Unfortunately, this sounds like victim blaming, but the reality of the situation is most people who have these types of phobias actively prevent from being affected by them.

People's concerns of "change" would be justified, because we're not just talking about "spiders" in this game. There are centipiedes, daedra, crabs, and Dreughs, all of which exhibit similar features to a "spider".

Then, someone else will come along and announce a fear of ghosts, projectiles, blades, skirts, or thunder, just to name a few.

The reality of the situation is making a request like this is shying away from the responsibility of addressing the trigger which causes the phobia to intensify to the point of being uncomfortable.

I get the OP is terrified, but the single best option they have at this point is to stop playing the game, seek help, and return once they're confident a virtual representation won't trigger their phobia.

I've a growing concern these small populations have an affect profound enough that the majority either deal without or are punished.

Such as the young 8 year old who brought a peanut butter sandwich to school which banned peanuts because less than 1% of people are allergic was suspended.

This type of situation doesn't mean we don't care about the afflicted, but there are better ways to deal with it than a removal.

Fix the problem instead of attacking the source.

The OP in no way "attacked" anything. They made a polite query.

This is like a bleedin' game of "telegraph".

Violynne wrote: »

Feanor wrote: »

Also somebody who doesn't have any kind of phobia probably cannot understand what's happening in the mind of someone who has.

It's not that they probably don't understand, it's more of being somewhat polite and skirting the real issue: if a person has this much of a phobia, why are they deliberately putting themselves into a situation which triggers the phobia?

Unfortunately, this sounds like victim blaming, but the reality of the situation is most people who have these types of phobias actively prevent from being affected by them.

People's concerns of "change" would be justified, because we're not just talking about "spiders" in this game. There are centipiedes, daedra, crabs, and Dreughs, all of which exhibit similar features to a "spider".

Then, someone else will come along and announce a fear of ghosts, projectiles, blades, skirts, or thunder, just to name a few.

The reality of the situation is making a request like this is shying away from the responsibility of addressing the trigger which causes the phobia to intensify to the point of being uncomfortable.

I get the OP is terrified, but the single best option they have at this point is to stop playing the game, seek help, and return once they're confident a virtual representation won't trigger their phobia.

I've a growing concern these small populations have an affect profound enough that the majority either deal without or are punished.

Such as the young 8 year old who brought a peanut butter sandwich to school which banned peanuts because less than 1% of people are allergic was suspended.

This type of situation doesn't mean we don't care about the afflicted, but there are better ways to deal with it than a removal.

Fix the problem instead of attacking the source.

If I may, I'd like to summarize my understanding of your argument.

TLDR: changing the game to be more comfortable for arachnophobes is a slippery slope that will surely lead to everything fun in the game being taken away.

I cant say I agree with your slippery slope argument, particularly since arachnophobia is pretty common and other games have successfully made missed work-arounds and not seen hordes of people "claiming" phobias destroy the game/punish the majority as you seem to expect to happen with your "give an inch, they'll take a mile" argument.

Ultimately, this is why we can't have nice things. Because neither individual responsibility (bootstraps and fix yourself admonitions) or community responsibility (we can all give up a little to make it more comfortable for everyone in the community) satisfies everyone.

Violynne wrote: »

DieAlteHexe wrote: »

The OP in no way "attacked" anything. They made a polite query.

Polite as the request may be, it's still attacking the source, not addressing the problem.

VaranisArano wrote: »

I cant say I agree with your slippery slope argument, particularly since arachnophobia is pretty common and other games have successfully made missed work-arounds and not seen hordes of people "claiming" phobias destroy the game/punish the majority as you seem to expect to happen with your "give an inch, they'll take a mile" argument.

Clearly the point of the request was missed, and this very request is me seeing it as "they'll take a mile" when I look at things outside of just this game.

I'm not unsympathetic to the OP's situation, but the reality is they represent such an insignificant number of people as to see this request is ignoring the true issue.

Yes, it's true people many do have arachnophobia, but it's also true to say the majority of those who suffer it clearly don't have issues with spiders in the game.

Taking this, then the OP's demographic is even small within this very group.

For the record, I'm not aware of developers making changes to remove "X" from a game because a few were upset about it. I'd like an example of this.

I'm not against the request, just so I get this "on record", but if it's going to be changed, do the developers need to worry about what they'll change things into?

Don't ever make the mistake to think if ZoS applies this change it won't come back to bite them in the potato when someone else claims to have a fear of ghosts.

The game changes I'm familiar with have been modders. Since this is an MMO, any mod/add-on developers would have to get permission from ZOS to modify the API to a greater extent than previously allowed, so whether or not ZOS allowed it or did it themself, a mod/addon that changed the appearance or blocked visuals of certain creatures would require official sanction for development. I assume ZOS would have to be in communication with that add-on developer to talk about limits of what the add-on could and could not do. Any "ghosts" would need the same thing, though I suspect that would be a simply matter of removing the ghostly transparency textures on the models for that add-on, if such were a serious issue.

Ultimately, ZOS might chose to say that they don't want to open up portions of the game for modification by outside add-ons. That's their right and privilege. Then they might say they have more I.important things to deal with in QOL issues, which given the laundry list of fixes they have to work on would not be a surprising response.

Nevertheless, if ZOS chose to open the game for modification specifically for phobia-specific, officially sanctioned or officially produced add-one available for players who needed them, I neither have a problem with that nor think it would prove harmful to the game. It woukd be a new thing -ZOS altering or allowing an official sanctioned team to alter the visuals of the game for an add-on- but it could certainly be done if ZOS wanted that to happen. Since it would have official sanction, it could be adapted to other issues like your ghosts as ZOS desired and ZOS could monitor and design the impact on the game as a whole.

There are ways to implement such an add-on properly if you go at it with an attitude of "how can we make this QOL improvement happen with the least number of problems" but if all people see are the possible problems and don't buy into it being a necessary QOL issue for some players, I see why people don't what anything like this implemented.

AlienSlof wrote: »

I have a similar issue with wasps - even though I can one-shot most of them, I still find myself going around them whenever possible! I really, REALLY don't like wasps! I tell myself they're just pixels, but I still go around them!

Funny I have a phobia of wasps IRL but I've never had any problems with wasps in game...