Arachnophobia mode

Vaqual · August 27

Isn't confronting fears in a safe environment considered one of the tried and true therapeutic approaches to work on such problems?

Isn't a workaround like this putting the fear on a pedestal? Do you not entrench it even more that way?

I am not convinced that this is a sensible idea.

Tra_Lalan · August 27

Ok. So we have couple of posts from players affected by arachnophobia.
But have you tried searching "stuck in combat" on this forums?
- There are 1143 PAGES of posts on this topic.

I am really sorry for all people with phobias, that have a worse ESO expierience due to this. But as I mentioned before, DEVs' resources are not infinite. Also if you want to implement this mode, then you should implement a mode for every other phobia that is registered. That is the only fair way to do it. They all are medical conditions, and due to ESO's large population I'm sure that there are players with every one of those in our community. Or maybe you have a sollution how to decide which phobia is more important than other?

Sorry to say this, but this game needs a lot of work in many other important areas, there are bugs that affect all players, stuff that we request for years that isn't implementet, disconnection issues. I really don't think that arachnophobia mode is someting that should be prioritized over those fixes and worked on now. Maybe some day later, when the state of ESO is better.

zaria · August 27

Vaqual wrote: »

Isn't confronting fears in a safe environment considered one of the tried and true therapeutic approaches to work on such problems?

Isn't a workaround like this putting the fear on a pedestal? Do you not entrench it even more that way?

I am not convinced that this is a sensible idea.

This, my sister was afraid of crabs then we was kids, cured her by finding an very tiny crab, less than 2 cm wide and had her interact with it as it was to small to be scary, then moving up in size, it worked.

Now this might not be an real foiba, just was she was afraid they would pinch her. Probably some older kids had scared her.

JemadarofCaerSalis · August 27

Vaqual wrote: »

Isn't confronting fears in a safe environment considered one of the tried and true therapeutic approaches to work on such problems?

Isn't a workaround like this putting the fear on a pedestal? Do you not entrench it even more that way?

I am not convinced that this is a sensible idea.

The whole point is 'a safe environment' which is typically with a professional who can remove that fear should it start to negatively affect the person with it. So a home isn't typically considered 'safe' because there isn't anyone, typically, there that can remove the fear should a person start having a panic attack.

IE, someone doesn't just go into a trench filled with spiders and expect to come out the other side with no fear.

They work with a professional who gradually introduces them to the idea of that fear, then to the fear itself, and gradually work up to confronting the actual fear. Which, as might be evidenced by all the 'graduallys' takes time. Someone can be working on getting over their arachnophobia and want to avoid it in a game they use to relax from working on that fear.

As someone else said, either on this thread or another, sometimes therapists will suggest, if possible, avoiding that fear, until it can be worked on in a safe environment.

Beyond that, outside of concerns about lag and potentially taking away from things that might be more desireable, why does it matter if someone else wants to entrench their fear? To me, the only people who should care about that are relatives of that person, that person themselves and that person's therapist.

Also, again, and not to the above comment, but there is a reason why people with phobias don't often talk about those phobias on game forums. The responses to this thread and the Arachnophobia and ESO one are typical of someone mentioning the phobia (or related ones) in my experience. Even if it is something that would affect no one but the person using (and I am not saying that this one is like this), people will bring the same arguments (just did a quick search for skyrim and removing spiders, and even there, after the mods are already made, there were still people who used the 'confront your fears' 'use this opportunity to kill them all' without giving any help about finding mods that work with whatever edition the poster needed it to. Surprisingly, it wasn't as many as I thought there would be)

SilverBride · August 27

Four instances of players mentioning being stressed by game enemies, some of which were referring to wasps and not spiders, over a 10 year period is not a very high number. Does that really indicate that an anti anything mode is needed? And as has been mentioned what about wasps? And snakes? And Zombies? And every single other enemy in the game?

This does not seem to be a wide spread issue that needs intervention.

JemadarofCaerSalis · August 27

SilverBride wrote: »

Four instances of players mentioning being stressed by game enemies, some of which were referring to wasps and not spiders, over a 10 year period is not a very high number. Does that really indicate that an anti anything mode is needed? And as has been mentioned what about wasps? And snakes? And Zombies? And every single other enemy in the game?

This does not seem to be a wide spread issue that needs intervention.

There were many others that I just didn't bother to post, because they were more 'I have arachnophobia, lol, the devs must hate us giving spider non-combat pets' or along similar lines.

That is also, again, *just* the people who both visit the forums *and* felt comfortable posting on a public forum *and* felt comfortable posting that they have arachnophobia on said public forums.

I mean, look at that thread from 2018, the mods had to step in and *remove pictures of spiders*, from the sounds of it, because people thought it would be funny to post pictures of spiders in a thread about someone being arachnophobic.

Is that really conducive to making people feel comfortable enough to post that they are arachnophobic. Whether or not they are asking for some way to remove spiders from the game for themselves only?

(On a lighter note, even my spell check is against us. I wanted to make sure I was spelling conducive correct, and the only word that is highlighted is arachnophobic. Suggestions are 'arachnophobia' and 'agoraphobic'. Apparently while arachnophobia exists, arachnophobes don't.... Even Arachnophobes gets flagged and a suggestion is technophobe...)

Again, very early on in the thread, I mentioned a way that people could choose which enemies they would like switched out, so that people who dislike wasps (or have a phobia) could remove them from the game. The people with the problem with clannfears could remove those from the game. It doesn't *have* to be just for arachnophobia, but could encompass a lot more.

However, even if it *were* just arachnophobia, that still means that people will feel more comfortable playing the game and might bring people back to playing the game or have them start playing the game. It also opens the way, once the framework is there, to allow people with other enemies in the game to voice their thoughts and potentially have ESO be able to make the switch for them as well.

Again, the idea of 'well you can't hit every phobia to ever exist, so don't even bother trying' is ridiculous to me, because that same logic would mean basically nothing could ever get done, when extended to 'if a mechanic isn't a hit with everyone, don't even bother to add them' because no mechanic has 100% of the player base happy with them.

SilverBride · August 27

Every MMO has spiders, as well as other scary enemies, and players know this. This request is like someone going to see a horror movie and telling the theater that they need to show a version where the monsters are changed to look like bunnies because they are afraid of monsters.

JemadarofCaerSalis · August 27

SilverBride wrote: »

Every MMO has spiders, as well as other scary enemies, and players know this. This request is like someone going to see a horror movie and telling the theater that they need to show a version where the monsters are changed to look like bunnies because they are afraid of monsters.

Just because every MMO has spiders doesn't mean that MMOs can't accommodate people who are afraid of them. I mean, WoW is giving an arachnophobia mode, which is what started this debate.

The difference between this and a movie is that spiders are a relatively small part of the entire game. They are simply an enemy, they aren't the protagonists, they aren't even major enemies, outside of the one time when Mephala was the focus.

It also takes a LOT less effort and time and money to swap one model for another in a game than it does in a movie that has already been done. They don't have to rebuild (reshoot) ESO from the ground up to swap out the spider enemies for mudcrabs, for instance, which is what would have to be done if someone requested they change a movie to something else.

Outside of the development resources going towards something you don't like, how exactly would someone seeing dogs/crabs instead of spiders affect you?

I can understand not wanting the resources to go towards development, but I don't agree with it. I would prefer resources not go towards group or PvP content, because I don't do it. But, I am still happy for people who do utilize that content when they get updates/new mechanics centered around it. The next new major development that comes out might not be something I want to use, but I will still be happy for those who do like it.

Elsonso · August 27

SilverBride wrote: »

Every MMO has spiders, as well as other scary enemies, and players know this. This request is like someone going to see a horror movie and telling the theater that they need to show a version where the monsters are changed to look like bunnies because they are afraid of monsters.

That works until the leporiphobia community steps forward.

There was a game screenshot above where it just said "SPIDER", and that is pretty much the only replacement that can work. Applied to all creatures in the game, every one of the zoophobias is effectively addressed and people in zoophobia mode are simply chasing after words.

Yes, I am aware of graphophobia.

SilverBride · August 27

JemadarofCaerSalis wrote: »

WoW is giving an arachnophobia mode, which is what started this debate.

This is exactly what is happening. WoW did it so some think we should jump on the band wagon, too, regardless if there is a real need or not.

tomofhyrule · August 27

I support accessibility being added (especially if it came to removing that flash from the older HMs, hint hint). Lots of games can just replace models for various reasons - you even see it with certain regional editions where blood is removed or recolored or anything like that. But those are static models, or at least changing two things that are the same shape, like a skeleton or zombie for a person. The problem of "oh, just swap the models!" is that it needs to also not change the fights, so swapping a spider for a clannfear which doesn't have the same animations is a lot harder. And yes, if the animations change, that will change the tells and potential effects of some fights.

There's also how important the spider is to the game at that point. Yes, I'm sure nobody in this thread would really have an issue if a delve like the Scuttle Pit was filled with voriplasm mobs instead of spider mobs - canonically they're not in Valenwood, but whatever. It's trash mobs, who cares. It's when you start talking about changing major boss fights where the spider and its animations are fundamental to the difficulty that it could get dicey - there's no way to change something like Lamikhai without changing the fight.

Case in point: giant spiders have a tendency to bodyblock people, and are really bad at pushing even playable characters around - that's especially bad with Lamikhai, who is (part of) the final boss of Scrivener's Hall. I don't think that just replacing that boss with another model (and another model's animations) would be the answer since then effects of the fight could change. Would that mean that, if you chose a smaller model, that you wouldn't have to deal with getting pushed around or having your taunt eaten by a giant hitbox? Does that mean that all tanks for SH trifectas would be expected to go into 'arachnophobia mode' to trade out an annoying model with something else? It's similar to the hypothetical about "all races should have just flavor bonuses!" - If they did, then we'd still have raid leads asking people to bring the best race, i.e. Argonians' flavor bonus is actually effective in combat in Dreadsail since you can get to the first group of mobs faster and get in and out of deluge faster due to faster swim speed.

Essentially, to keep the fights the same, they'd need to keep the attack hitboxes the same... which means that either they replace the spider model with an 8-legged spider-shaped blob thing that's colored differently, or else the hitboxes won't end up matching the animations of the new model. Remaking the entire fight around replacing a model's animations could change how the fights are intended (remember back when Nintendo made Twilight Princess for the Wii and unfortunately-for-us-lefties decided to make Link right-handed, they found it was better to mirror the entire game and flip the canonical world than to consider just changing the handedness of the hero since the fights were based on the animations being made in a specific way). I also remember one of the first arachnophobia mods for Skyrim was one that just replaced the spiders with static bear models - they still were spiders, but the whole thing was just replaced with a bear-shaped sandbag and then you got attacked by invisible spider legs since the bear didn't have animations of its own.

You'd essentially need to consider that either way would also mean that people with the arachnophobia would have a different time with these fights. Sure, nobody cares about the trash mobs, but bosses either need to be 1) still spider-esque things, 2) different models shown but invisible spider animations, but now the tells can't be seen, or 3) different models with different animations, which means the fight is different.

Yes, the encounter team could essentially redo every major fight in the game to be around a different enemy as well. But I can't see how the encounter team redesigning (just looking at bosses, may have missed some) 2 WBs, 4 PubDun bosses, 8 Group Dungeon bosses, 5 delve bosses, and 7 boss-type characters in quest hubs would not take time away from developing new things, since it is the encounters team that designs all other PvE combat encounters. And again, that's just bosses, not including mobs that are not as important and easier to replace. That also isn't considering replacing world decor (e.g. spiderwebs or eggs), or dialogue specific to spiders, or even dealing with spideresque-but-not-spider bosses like Velidreth or the Whisperer.

Again, what could 'easily' be done would be to just hide the spider model and put a new one in its place, but then keep all of the attacks and dialogue the same so that the fights don't change. But that will definitely put people with the setting on at a disadvantage if they don't have addons like Code's to give the tells for attacks. Is that an appropriate compromise for this, or would they need to say that we're also not getting Q3 dungeons next year so all fights can be redesigned to remove spiders instead?

JemadarofCaerSalis · August 27

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Again, what could 'easily' be done would be to just hide the spider model and put a new one in its place, but then keep all of the attacks and dialogue the same so that the fights don't change. But that will definitely put people with the setting on at a disadvantage if they don't have addons like Code's to give the tells for attacks. Is that an appropriate compromise for this, or would they need to say that we're also not getting Q3 dungeons next year so all fights can be redesigned to remove spiders instead?

While I agree that there would be a lot to consider, I feel that it would be up to the person with arachnophobia to decide whether it was worth it to lose tells, or see something like a giant clannfear that uses spider attacks, or things like that.

Again, this would be optional for the people who want it. If they find that boss fights are too hard without the tells, they can always turn off the mode and then fight the spider however they do it, or just don't go into that particular dungeon. Basically same as they do now.

Or maybe ZoS could give additional tells that work on all platforms that would make it so you don't have to visually see the tell from a spider like creature. These tells would just be added on to all creatures, so no fights would have to be redesigned. (think things like audio tells, such as a chime, or some sort of notification on screen like when you need to block or break free of a crowd control). They could also be disabled for those who don't want to see them.

That way, no matter what the model is, the tells would still be there.

For the hitbox thing, they just would need to upscale the size of the creature being used.

Again, if it is too much of an issue to allow players to select the model, ZoS can just choose a model of their own or create a brand new one, so that it is easier to replace them all, and that way hitboxes would still stay the same, so if a creature has a pushback functionality, they would still have it even with the new model.

Initially, yeah, it probably would be a lot of work, but the nice thing is, once it is in place, it should be like a lot of the other mechanics, much less work, because you are just plugging information into the mechanic. So, again, going back to 'why just arachnophobia' that some people keep raising, if they make the mechanic versatile enough, if they get enough calls for other phobias related to creatures, they can just swap those out for those who want them to be swapped. Because it would just be plugging the information into the same mechanic they put the spider creatures into.

spartaxoxo · August 27

“We made it retroactive so it does everything,” associate design director Maria Hamilton told Eurogamer. Any spider-like enemy in the game can be transformed with the mode on, ensuring there’s no surprises while wandering WoW.

Per Eurogamer, the mode works very smoothly, and “the transformation doesn’t erase a sense of what you’re fighting.” Rather, it’s a simple visual switch to make the game more approachable.

In recent years, arachnophobia modes have become more common in games, to better accomodate all players. Grounded features a prominent arachnophobia mode that turns spiders into wandering balls with no legs. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor also has a similar mode, to transform the game’s spider-like Wyyyschokks.

Per Hamilton, the reason why the World of Warcraft team didn’t implement an arachnophobia mode earlier is simple: they didn’t realise how much the fear of spiders impacted people.

“I think we didn’t realise it was such a big thing for people, honestly,” Hamilton told Eurogamer.

“When we started talking about [The War Within] internally, like, ‘Oh we’re going to do Nerubians,’ a lot of people within our team said, ‘Oh, I’m really bad with spiders. Could we not do Nerubians?’ We were like, ‘Oh hmm… We do want to do Nerubians. That’s definitely a thing we want to do. But if there’s a lot of people that…’ Then we started doing some research and we realised, wow, this actually is a big thing – for quite a lot of people this is a big thing. And we started looking at what other games had done to deal with this problem as well.”

After deep research, the World of Warcraft team developed its new arachnophobia mode, with the view to include as many players as possible.

Again, the issue was lack of awareness by other game developers. It was not lack of need. WoW didn't have it because they weren't aware that so many of their players were struggling or that so many people never even gave their game a try because of it. They did their research. They realized it was more common than they realized. And then they acted accordingly.

JemadarofCaerSalis · August 27

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Again, the issue was lack of awareness by other game developers. It was not lack of need. WoW didn't have it because they weren't aware that so many of their players were struggling or that so many people never even gave their game a try because of it. They did their research. They realized it was more common than they realized. And then they acted accordingly.

Yeah, that is what I was trying to get across. It isn't that there are only a handful of people that would benefit, because there are a lot of people who would benefit. The reason why it seems like there is only a handful of people is because of threads like this one (and there is a thread on another pet site, that was mostly positive, but there is yet another 'no support because your phobias are yours, and developers shouldn't be expected to cater to you') pushes people to just either ..not play, which means that the game is missing out on income from those players (for instance, if I were to take all the 'if you have an issue with spiders, don't play, ESO would have missed out on an ESO+ subscription and a renewal to said subscription) or simply not point out that they have problems with phobias for fear of either being mocked or having it belittled.

SilverBride · August 27

I do not find it reasonable to willingly purchase a game that a player knows has something in it that causes them distress, then expect the game to customize it to them personally.

the1andonlyskwex · August 27

JemadarofCaerSalis wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Again, what could 'easily' be done would be to just hide the spider model and put a new one in its place, but then keep all of the attacks and dialogue the same so that the fights don't change. But that will definitely put people with the setting on at a disadvantage if they don't have addons like Code's to give the tells for attacks. Is that an appropriate compromise for this, or would they need to say that we're also not getting Q3 dungeons next year so all fights can be redesigned to remove spiders instead?

While I agree that there would be a lot to consider, I feel that it would be up to the person with arachnophobia to decide whether it was worth it to lose tells, or see something like a giant clannfear that uses spider attacks, or things like that.

Again, this would be optional for the people who want it. If they find that boss fights are too hard without the tells, they can always turn off the mode and then fight the spider however they do it, or just don't go into that particular dungeon. Basically same as they do now.

Or maybe ZoS could give additional tells that work on all platforms that would make it so you don't have to visually see the tell from a spider like creature. These tells would just be added on to all creatures, so no fights would have to be redesigned. (think things like audio tells, such as a chime, or some sort of notification on screen like when you need to block or break free of a crowd control). They could also be disabled for those who don't want to see them.

That way, no matter what the model is, the tells would still be there.

For the hitbox thing, they just would need to upscale the size of the creature being used.

Again, if it is too much of an issue to allow players to select the model, ZoS can just choose a model of their own or create a brand new one, so that it is easier to replace them all, and that way hitboxes would still stay the same, so if a creature has a pushback functionality, they would still have it even with the new model.

Initially, yeah, it probably would be a lot of work, but the nice thing is, once it is in place, it should be like a lot of the other mechanics, much less work, because you are just plugging information into the mechanic. So, again, going back to 'why just arachnophobia' that some people keep raising, if they make the mechanic versatile enough, if they get enough calls for other phobias related to creatures, they can just swap those out for those who want them to be swapped. Because it would just be plugging the information into the same mechanic they put the spider creatures into.

Any implementation that loses functionality (like visual cues) could easily wind up being worse than not having anything at all. Just from a PR perspective, it's better to have nothing than to have something that seems like inadequate pandering. If ZOS is going to add accessibility features, they need to be careful to do them right.

TheMajority · August 27

SilverBride wrote: »

[snip]

the game don't have "there's spiders in here" on the label, you realize people buy it without ever playing another elder scrolls game and dont always know off hand right?

also it dont effect you to have an optional mode. so why fight it?

[edited to remove quote]

JemadarofCaerSalis · August 27

SilverBride wrote: »

[snip]

As said, as far as I know, there isn't an 'arachnophobia' warning for ESO. If this is their first game in the TES franchise, they wouldn't know that the game has spiders nor has a prince associated with them.

It is perfectly possible to get a game, or see someone playing a game, and think 'that looks like fun' and buy it, only to realize that the clips they saw weren't showing certain aspects (such as fighting a spider boss, or Mephala). I personally got the game free through epic (though I come from a TES background and a gaming background so even if I hadn't known about Mephala, I expect *every* game I buy, no matter how simple, to have spiders by this point)

Also, of course the game isn't responsible for creating such a mode, but it would be a nice action towards players who do have arachnophobia (and if it can be worked out, other zoophobias) if they did create such a mode. There are a lot of things that people would like to see that the game isn't 'responsible' for developing but that people would be overjoyed if they did.

[edited to remove quote]

SilverBride · August 27

TheMajority wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

[snip]

the game don't have "there's spiders in here" on the label, you realize people buy it without ever playing another elder scrolls game and dont always know off hand right?

also it dont effect you to have an optional mode. so why fight it?

I've never seen a MMO that didn't have spiders. Also, there is a lot of information about ESO that players can find online before they decide whether or not to purchase it.

And it does affect the entire playerbase when resources are put into something that there is not a pressing need for and that very few, if any, would even use.

This whole thing only became an issue after WoW made their mode.

[edited to remove quote]

spartaxoxo · August 27

I don't think someone with a medical issue should be excluded from an entire genre of game, when it accomodations can be made to increase accessibility.

Edit

SilverBride wrote: »

This whole thing only became an issue after WoW made their mode.

That is not correct. People have been complaining long before they did. People were complaining before ESO even existed. There are arachnophobia mods for oblivion and skyrim.

TheMajority · August 27

SilverBride wrote: »

TheMajority wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

[snip]

the game don't have "there's spiders in here" on the label, you realize people buy it without ever playing another elder scrolls game and dont always know off hand right?

also it dont effect you to have an optional mode. so why fight it?

I've never seen a MMO that didn't have spiders. Also, there is a lot of information about ESO that players can find online before they decide whether or not to purchase it.

And it does affect the entire playerbase when resources are put into something that there is not a pressing need for and that very few, if any, would even use.

This whole thing only became an issue after WoW made their mode.

it was an issue before it was just ignored and dismissed by people. you cant say an issue wasnt an issue, people been suffering forever with these health problems and now that awareness is happening, people fight against it? just why. I feel so bad for those suffering.

People with a phobia arent going to rush to google to google stuff about it and risk seeing it....if its their first mmo ever how would they know if all mmos have spiders? the notion takes knowledge for granted and acts like everyone knows about all mmos, when thats not a knowledge all prospective buyer will have

[edited to remove quote]

JemadarofCaerSalis · August 27

SilverBride wrote: »

[snip]

I mean, my account of having to look away from the screen or off to a little portion of the screen isn't negative?

Someone saying their anxiety is triggered by in game spiders isn't negative?

Someone having to contact staff to get them to remove a spider non-combat pet they got through a free crate, because it would affect them negatively, isn't negative?

People avoiding dungeons because of spiders isn't negative?

Also, again, I have pointed out where ESO alone has had people going back as far as 2017 raising issues about arachnophobia.

This is a 10 year old game, meaning it came out in 2014. 2017 is only *three* years into the game's life span.

I also *only* looked for arachnophobia. I didn't look for any potential misspellings of it, nor did I look for spiders, nor did I do an exhaustive search looking for people who had negative opinions of the spiders in game. There very well could be more that I just didn't find due to only looking up one search term.

Beyond that, as has been pointed out, people have complained about spiders in games long before ESO was even a thought, and where the game allows it, have wanted ways to get rid of spiders. This is not a new thing.

WoW giving an arachnophobia mode has simply shown people suffering from arachnophobia that some developers *do* realize that people who are terrified of spiders exist, and they either play the game or might like to play the game.

Before, it was up to random people to decide whether they wanted to mod the game in order to get rid of spiders.

[edited to remove quote]

ZOS_Icy · August 27

Greetings,

With this thread derailing pretty quickly, we're going to go ahead and close it down. For further posts be sure to stay constructive when creating topics.

Thank you for understanding.