Arachnophobia

To all the children saying stuff like "what do you want, its a dungeon crawling game", "oh no, spiders spit poison, you can't change spiders" and all that fluff, just shut up.

Changing the spider model to anything else with the same size, hitbox and abilities is almost completely trivial from a technical standpoint. It might take artists work and some dev work to make it fit in, but it isn't by any means one of:

- An unreasonable request.
- An undoable thing.
- Something that would break the game for anyone.

They're asking for an arachnophobia mode. Not to delete spiders from the game. Some people really are very good at maliciously misinterpreting stuff and its completely tiring.

You put an arachnophobia mode button in Game or Interface. You turn it on. Now your spiders aren't spiders, they're something else. Satisfactory just puts a big cat picture because they're trolls, but it works. Factorio removes the legs of the Spidertron. There are a lot of people with phobias who want to play the game and have the same experience you have, and they're asking for a reasonable concession so they can. Same deal with colorblind people asking for shapes on things so they can distinguish stuff by shape and not color.

I know it could be a low priority thing, but its perfectly reasonable to ask for it. The game already sold 1 million early access keys, you realize there's a lot of different people with diferent viewpoints, opinions, and needs than you, right?

I don't have any phobias, but I live with someone with a phobia of snakes and I would make the same request for a snakeless mode.

Specially in 2024, when making a new entity in game isn't SUCH a big deal (I do know it takes work), and the GGG guys are very fast at asset creation and dev work, so I would expect them to be technically able to do it. Their audience grew by a lot with PoE2 and these are the kinds of things a game dev has to start worrying about when their game has a growing audience like this.

If you have a tiny little restaurant in a corner and some vegan or person with Crohn's disease or allergies asks you for a concession, you don't have to care, but when you are a big franchised restaurant you kinda do. Same deal.

I would like to suggest "ponyfication" option. Replace spiders with 8-legged ponies with blood dripping down their fangs. Web can be safely reimagened as half-digested bodyparts of their victims.

I don't have Hemophobia, but I started to feel some of that in ACT3.
Getting rid of all the blood in Act3 is impossible.

That is why nothing will change. Once you put a disclaimer/edit one thing, you have to put one for everything. It may cost no money for a simple disclaimer, but there is a cost.

Gonna be honest. If you have a phobia that is THAT debilitating, then it is on you (your friend) to make sure you avoid it. With the advent of Google and reddit it is easier than ever to do so. Your friend was a bit foolish to assume that this game would not have any triggers for them, especially after going through ACT1.

I will also add that you are a bit of a hero for helping your friend out like that.

You cannot cater to everyones little Eccentricities. Not everything is for everyone.

I love that every topic in this forum have people that are just... VERY obtuse.

In the United States, 12.5% of adults experience a specific phobia, according to the study byHarvard

That's one in eight people. People with arachnophobia are around 3.6% of the population.

In one million people, that's about 36 thousand people.

It seems, according to This study that arachnophobia and ophidiophobia (spiders and snakes) are two of the phobias with the strongest responses in people with them.

So no, it's not about catering to all the people with phobias. The request is very simple: There's a not insignificant amount of people who could be able to enjoy the game if you were to be able to hide spiders. It's that simple.

It's not that the folks with these phobias are weak or want to bend the world their will or whatever. These people not only have a fear that they can't control or rationalize about, but they also are cursed with being the ones who have the most fear of the people with phobias.

I neever see anyone complaining about dogs, cats, thunder, clowns, or whatever in games, but I often see people asking for arachnophobia mode.

It's pretty clear to me that a quick google investigation is enough to have some sense of the scope of the issue.

Stop being so obtuse and close minded, nobody is going to do anything to the game that affects anyone else, except the people who need it.

Has it occurred to you to ever in your life put in other people's place for a bit and think about why would they want something like this?