Guild Wars 2

For those of you who are not color receptive deficient it is a very hard thing to describe. Fortunately technology has made it possible to ‘almost’ share with others what my world looks like using filters and photo editing tools. Nearly 10% of all males have a form of color deficiency or ‘color blindness’. The most common is Red-Green. Basically, the cones that perceive red and green are fused for lack of better terms and it makes it difficult if not impossible to see some colors. The severity and the range of color varies from person to person. Mine isn’t as severe as most but I do have a hard time seeing reds, purples, and pinks. Most of the time they come out as browns and grays to me.

So, how does that relate to gaming? Well, the common colors used in gaming to indicate friend or foe is, red and green! In some cases this renders the game nearly unplayable for me. Take for example, the early Modern Warfares and Battlefield 3 on launch. I was unable to differentiate between friends and foes as the green and red were nearly the same color for me. Fortunately, BF3 patched and they use an alternate color scheme where enemies are orange, friendlies are blue. Genius!

This problem has persisted through MMO’s as well but I’ve been able to mostly work around it since typically the PVP has been against two (or three) sides fighting and most of the time with entirely different races or looks. So I could identify friend or foe just on appearance and the color above their heads didn’t matter so much. In GW2, we are all the same races. The PVP isn’t so bad as I look for the words ‘Defender’ or ’Invader over their head, so I can work around it. There is another issue that has made it nearly impossible for me to play effectively in dungeons or PVP. Red circles for ground target AOE. I die frequently usually with the laughter of my friends as they watch me run into some ground AOE and I die :-)

I will applaud you on adding descriptive text to the items. Most games use Blue and Purple on the items. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve disenchanted a purple thinking it was a blue. Or attacked a purple monster because I thought they were blue.

I’ve included some examples of what the game mostly looks like to me (The filter is slightly off, I can see color a little bit better than the filter). I spent a few days capturing screenshots and I think these are the two best examples.

Example 1: Outdoors in a snowy area. Light and shadow playing with the light. I can see the red circle ok in the shadow but it nearly disappears for me in the light.

• Normal Image
• Protanopia Filter Applied

Example 2: Outdoors in a brown structure. No shadows. If I stare at this really hard I can see the circle (I died standing in place to get this one knowing if I kept mashing the screen capture I’d get one. GF helped pick out one you could see a circle in)

• Normal Image
• Protanopia Filter Applied

Suggestions!
1. Implementing a colorblind option in the user interface. This could be as simple as the following

• Red Circles now show as Orange Circles (the brighter color contrasts enough for us to see it)
• Red Enemy names are now Orange
• Friendly names are Blue
• Party names are a light blue (If I remember right they are blue today)

2. Implementing a color picker. This would allow people to select colors for the following options

• Friendly AOE Circles
• Hostile AOE Circles
• Hostile names
• Friendly names
• Party Names

Personally, I’d go with option 1 and call it good. I’m more than willing to help test out etc and even rally some other color deficient people to help out with testing etc. Looking forward to playing on even ground!!!

This and controller support are two ways that ANet could make their community more inclusive to those who are operating with some kind of disability, be it colorblindness, RSI, or various other things.

I knew a guy with one arm who was GREAT with a controller but, obviously, could not use a mouse and a keyboard. I have a friend who’s colorblind and, based on the filters you’ve shown, I can’t imagine the frustration one would face in playing this game with colorblindness.

colorblindness and this game doesn’t mix well, it makes it very hard for me to play any PvP/WvW and i’m an ELE so it makes it hard for me to support my team when i can’t tell where i’m placing my skills at. some more color customization with the UI and skills would be awesome

Any ideas to support people with disabilities i strongly support. I’m a normal guy with no friends with disabilities, but i constantly think about those who can’t play games for one reason or other. even worse, those who fell in love with gaming then suddenly had the thing they loved ripped away from them due to some accident.

I think about how i would manage if i became disabled and i think all gamers should think about this. if you like gaming then it is in EVERYONE’S best interest that methods be developed to allow as wide a range of disabled people to play.

I agree to this, however these things should always be thought of already before game creation. Even making Websites, and E-books, is now standard to tend to the disabled.

I just want to add that I also suffer from protanopia and in the set of pictures with a green environment, I cannot pick up any red circles that would indicate the presence of AOE mechanics.

In fact I largely avoid dungeons at the moment because its no fun dying over and over again to things you just cannot see until after it kills you, and I hope it will change for the better soon.

gets embarrassing when i go into dungeons and run right into traps i can’t see or die every 5 seconds from aoe skills. i really with that we could change the color scheme of things, it would help out a lot

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Color-Blindness-Accommodations/first#post677298

As this is a colorblind topic I am posting in it. I’m still wonder how many times we have to request these features before they get implemented. So far my solution has been to turn off the circles and let everyone I play with know so they don’t think I’m either kitten or colorblind. I want my (technically not) disability to be hidden. I have to deal with it all day in real life (tech support is hard when you can’t tell people what colors things are, and some people are less than polite when you mess up). When I come to Tyria I don’t want to deal with the same ketteh that I get all day long from the entitled pricks that call in asking why their porn crashed their computer again. I WANT THE GAME TO BE AN ESCAPE!

That said, my guild usually gets a good laugh from me fighting the centaurs with siege equipment. maybe the circles should just disappear for everyone and make them watch the enemies more.

excellent suggestion, as previously stated any idea to help those with disabilities gets my backing.

This should definately be implemented

I hear you, I’m red green colorblind aswell.