Guild Wars 2

I was pondering the bold subject, but I think it’s warranted given my frustration with this issue. It’s not a rehash of too hard / too long / no rewards / tedious fights – there are plenty of subjects on those issues (some that I agree with, some that I don’t).

This topic is about my inability to complete certain encounters due to my color vision deficiency. My overall color vision is about 1% of what a non-color deficient person sees. In addition I have an eye condition that causes some glare/blurry vision so it’s a double whammy.

In either case, the main reason I am not even going to try to do Giganticus Lupicus and in general don’t want to do dungeons at all, is that I can’t see the red circles. Most dungeons seems to be red on black (known bad combination) and red on green (really – red/green is the most common kind of color blindness). If the color wasn’t bad enough, all “circles” are exceedingly thin (artistic?) which makes it hard for me to even see friendly circles at times.

One thing SWTOR did well was this – a quick youtube search later:

Commando gameplay video

This is the friendly AoE target. Enemy one is exactly the same but red. As you can see, it’s very for a number of reasons – well filled in area, 3D glow (it sticks up from the ground). It also pulses making it more visible than a static circle.

There are other color / vision related issues in GW2 but this is the number one issue I have (although I really wish the enemy target health bar wasn’t red on black – I can’t see that at all either, if the environment is light).

Thanks for the consideration.

P.S. Also see this other thread on color blindness issues

im red/green colourblind. The problem I have is seeing the red circles on the floor... Its almost impossible for me But im hearing everyone seems to have this issue so maybe its not my genetic differences that are the problem here? I know turning off camera shake can help alot.

Also on a side note ive do arah alot pretty much every day and i find i can do giganticus lupicus, but yeah i seem to die more tha others jus because i find it hard to see those circles.. so... do non color blinds have difficulty as well or?

I believe they said they’re working on something for people who are colour blind (Don’t quote me on that). I’m quite surprised myself they hadn’t implemented this already but I’m confident they will

If it makes you feel any better, those AOE things are hard to see/avoid even when not colour blind!

ahhhh cool so is not jus me lol

Aw…this really sux:/ Hope Anet adds something to aid those who are colorblind:/ This should be one of the top priority:(

I know your pain because I’m color blind as well.

that’s an unfortunate oversight. i’m surprised none of their playtesters were colorblind.

what would have to be done to fix it? just change the color scheme?

There was another topic made about this on another forum, I suggested they add the ability to switch on sound effects for colour blind people for when aoe lands and when standing on aoe (I assume different colours wont help those who can’t see any colours but grey tones)

Changing colors would help but I think even in general, that the AoE circles in particular just aren’t very visible (especially larger circles), since it’s just a thin outside line. It is a solvable problem – WoW at times had circles that were hard to see (red on orange for example) even though they were filled in – in that particular case they made the circle blue instead (which was very visible on orange). Both WoW and especially SWTOR has better visibility regardless of colors though – solely because they also fill the circle rather than just a thin red line.

Bumped to keep this up top since it deserves a sticky since it is a huge problem for some people, and this is definitely one thread that doesn’t need to buried under one-shot/dungeonz sux threads.

Apparently my youtube link had some offensive random characters in it, making it kitten unclickable. Fixed it now.

I believe 25% of males are color blind to a degree, so say perhaps 12.5% of the gw2 population has this problem to an extent. It has turned me off dungeons so I hope they do fix it somehow.

I’m not colorblind but I truly hope it will be fixed for those that have this issue. I can see why it’s needed as it’s an easily missed line for those with any vision issue.

My friend is color blind and he complained about this everytime. Although I myself am not colorblind I can see avoiding AOE as a huge problem for any person with eye sight issue as there is only a thin line around the circle ussualy surrounded by a 100 other spell effects.

I just realized that there’s examples of much better “AoE circles” in GW2 already – namely when you target an AoE as well as (At least) symbols on the ground. The AoE target has nice thick circles (still artistic), and multiple of them (so it’s filled in).

Symbols are even better in that their edges have a 3D effect (i.e they have height) in addition to an effect inside the circle.