Guild Wars 2

As Shown by the many, many other posts someone listed this is clearly a pretty important topic to the community.

Its nice it received some attention from Arenanet, and I am sure that they could but something in to help, as many other games, even mini games have done so.

i’m not color blind, but i would love to have an option to grey scale the game without modifying the game files.

alot like when you die in pvp with post processing on it goes grey.

I am not colorblind but I have several friends who are and implementing something like this will help a lot of people. I know that back in the day World of Warcraft implemented this system and I know it is definitely used by some of my friends.

+1 for colorblind mode.
+1 for community support

Good Thread
Pretty informative thread on Reddit on this topic I just discovered.
http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1nkduo/adding_colourblind_modes_to_a_game

SweetFX/FXAAPPI/GemFX
There seem to be ways of utilizing SweetFX to correct colors for those with differing degrees of colorblindness.
Discussion here: http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/sweetfx-shader-suite-download,37.html
And the shader linked in that post: http://ninjafada.com/sweetfx/colorblind/ColorBlind.h
I’m sure there are a lot of discussions and shaders for this issue by players.
May want to dig into using SweetFX or a similar program (FXAAPPI, GemFX, etc) to compensate for colors.

Overlay Programs
EyePilot

• There is (or was) a program called EyePilot that is an overlay for any open application that can be configured to correct color issues. Would need to run the game in windowed/windowed fullscreen mode to allow overlays to be on top of the game window, as with any overlay program. The www.colorhelper.com website doesn’t load for me so perhaps the program is no longer maintained, but I’m sure it can be found and tested if people are inclined to search for it and give it a shot.
  http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/03/eyepilot-colors-for-color-blind.html

Visolve

• I’ve not looked into this other app called Visolve, but a quick browsing of their site seems like it would be a great toolto give a try.
  https://www.ryobi-sol.co.jp/visolve/en/
  It says: “Visolve is the software tool that transforms colors of the computer display into the discriminable colors for various people including people with color vision deficiency, commonly called color blindness. In addition to the color conversion, it also has color filtering and hatching capabilities.”

Hope some of this helps someone.

GamerOnline.3650:

In appearance, I envision a ring with an aura (semi-transparent) extending upwards. It could even have symbols added to the aura for enhancement and identification purposes.

Skulls for poison.
Flame for burning.
Etc.

This is hands down the best idea I’ve seen on the issue. small Skull/crossbones rising for poison, swords for Might, etc. Whatever might be chosen.

http://www.colourblindawareness.org/colour-blindness/types-of-colour-blindness/
Just so people can realise the enormous impact it can have, scroll down that link and look through the 4 images. the first three all look exactly the same to me as I have deuteranomaly and protanomaly. In essence, I only have 1/2 of the red cones in my eyes that work. The others are all inert and I see in black, white and red.

Just putting this link out there.
http://enchroma.com/technology/how-it-works/

I was surprised. I did a test again, my girlfriend was able to see every shape within the colours, I couldn’t. Pink and green seem to get me WAY off. Anyway. The link explains that there’s actually glasses out there that help with colour.

If anyone has had any experience with this, or know of people who have this – does it actually help?

ALSO: I would like to put a bump here.

Colorblind here and really support that.

This game really need ability to customize UI (especially the highlighting of the target) and fix camera behavior (jitter) in a small rooms.

My eyes bleeding because of these problems.

DarkRed color of Target Mark is one of the main problem – for me it is hard to find this Target Mark on the screen.

Around 10% of males colorblind.

It is basically just being lazy if you don’t implement a colorblind option…

Gaile Gray.6029:

I did some research on this back in the early days of Guild Wars, and I was surprised to learn that about 11% of the male population is colour blind, so I can understand how this request is not one that would serve only a small number of players.

I have seen it discussed, but I believe there are quite a few elements that would need to be addressed in order to implement this. I’ll see if there’s any info to share on this. (And I’m super happy to hear the variety of Commander tags colours are helpful!)

Not to step on any toes, but it actually is 8% of males and .5% of females.

In the MMO genre [as well as FPS games], the latest studies show that population is 66% male and 34% female.

That would realistically put it at 5.99% of the MMO population as Color Blind if the statistics researched hold true to the populations.

To dedicate huge resources, time, effort, and possibly system changes to such a small percentage of the population is just on par with making raid content be the focal point of a game (I’m talking hardcore, no-finder, 20-40 man, weekly lockouts, one death equals a wipe, can only get to the 5th boss after everyone gears from the first 4 bosses RAID). That is not to be so callus to say I don’t feel for those plighted with this kind of disability; two of my close relatives have colorblindness. I completely understand the issues related to it. But there has to be realistic expectations with what can and cannot be done with trying to adjust the game in such a way.

Siphaed.9235:

Gaile Gray.6029:

I did some research on this back in the early days of Guild Wars, and I was surprised to learn that about 11% of the male population is colour blind, so I can understand how this request is not one that would serve only a small number of players.

I have seen it discussed, but I believe there are quite a few elements that would need to be addressed in order to implement this. I’ll see if there’s any info to share on this. (And I’m super happy to hear the variety of Commander tags colours are helpful!)

Not to step on any toes, but it actually is 8% of males and .5% of females.

In the MMO genre [as well as FPS games], the latest studies show that population is 66% male and 34% female.

That would realistically put it at 5.99% of the MMO population as Color Blind if the statistics researched hold true to the populations.

To dedicate huge resources, time, effort, and possibly system changes to such a small percentage of the population is just on par with making raid content be the focal point of a game (I’m talking hardcore, no-finder, 20-40 man, weekly lockouts, one death equals a wipe, can only get to the 5th boss after everyone gears from the first 4 bosses RAID). That is not to be so callus to say I don’t feel for those plighted with this kind of disability; two of my close relatives have colorblindness. I completely understand the issues related to it. But there has to be realistic expectations with what can and cannot be done with trying to adjust the game in such a way.

It doesn’t take “huge resources” or anything like that. Many games—including many $1 indie games without huge resources but also many large budget games—have a colorblind mode. You just need someone who is willing to put an option in the game menu and then go through the game and shift colors if that options is checked.

For the record, SweetFX is okay-ish but I would prefer a native colorblind mode.

You could also just let people change all colors and let them configure it for themselves.

Siphaed.9235:

Gaile Gray.6029:

I did some research on this back in the early days of Guild Wars, and I was surprised to learn that about 11% of the male population is colour blind, so I can understand how this request is not one that would serve only a small number of players.

I have seen it discussed, but I believe there are quite a few elements that would need to be addressed in order to implement this. I’ll see if there’s any info to share on this. (And I’m super happy to hear the variety of Commander tags colours are helpful!)

Not to step on any toes, but it actually is 8% of males and .5% of females.

In the MMO genre [as well as FPS games], the latest studies show that population is 66% male and 34% female.

That would realistically put it at 5.99% of the MMO population as Color Blind if the statistics researched hold true to the populations.

To dedicate huge resources, time, effort, and possibly system changes to such a small percentage of the population is just on par with making raid content be the focal point of a game (I’m talking hardcore, no-finder, 20-40 man, weekly lockouts, one death equals a wipe, can only get to the 5th boss after everyone gears from the first 4 bosses RAID). That is not to be so callus to say I don’t feel for those plighted with this kind of disability; two of my close relatives have colorblindness. I completely understand the issues related to it. But there has to be realistic expectations with what can and cannot be done with trying to adjust the game in such a way.

Statistics : small percentage of the population / huge resources, time and effort
What about those words on the homepage: "Unsuitable for colour blind people , try it at your own risk. "
Five minutes work. Honesty and customer care.

This thread is awesome, thanks for bringing up the situation, Gaile!

I have a question for the colorblind players: does “font” really help in any way? or being able to change the text COLOR is enough? do letters become easier/better to read if you change its “shape” (through font styles for example)?

Is there maybe a way something like this could be implemented with HoT? one of my friends is red/green colour-blind and has issues seeing the aoe attacks, would make his gaming life and others so much easier if they could see what there suppose to be avoiding/dodging. :S

I’ve been trying to work on a set of CM armor for the last week or so, but thin red circles on a green terrain is a nightmare for me. While my groups have won in the end, I hate having to be carried because of a disability. This issue is doubly so for most guild rushes, and at this point I’ve just given up on them.

I’m glad Anet has, over time, introduced new circle features (orange world boss circles and the slight animation to usual red circles), but it’s not enough for many of us.

SweetFX seems like my only choice at this point, but I’m anxious about using it due to EULAs and whatnot.

The eula does not stop you from using gemfx. A net will not support it but you are free to use it.

Happy anniversary GW2!
Three years of challenging content. We had our raids from day one.
“Fight what cannot be seen.” – that is our big challenge.
Thank you. But more challenges are coming and my eyes will not feel better.
May we ask for (at least) a VISIBLE Mouse cursor now, please?

I would appreciate this.

I’m bringing up this topic (again) because it really needs to be addressed. When, oh when will the good folks at ArenaNet finally throw the color-blind folks a bone and give them the ability to set the colors for things like say… the big freakin’ red circles that telegraph an incoming attack? I’m not asking for a miracle here. And I’m not even asking for me since I’m not even color-blind.

Do you folks realize how many folks stopped playing the game because they cannot see red? I’m quite certain there are more than you realize.

Please make this part of the HoT expansion… please, please, please.

I am one of these people. In many encounters I cannot see the thin red circles that specify incoming AoE, especially when its covered by a bunch of combo fields.

They added the super obvious ones which was a godsend, but then left it at that for some reason. It makes things unnecessarily difficult.

While they’re at it, can they please figure out how to not lose your mouse cursor when there’s a bunch of action going on. So annoying.

I have no experience with color-blindness at all. I’m just wondering if it would be possible to make a third-party overlay that can be adjusted to help certain types of color-blindness. It’s an idea I have because of seeing the many overlays available.

Again. I have no idea if that is possible, it’s just an idea I had.

I’m not color-blind, but since the topic is narrowly related, I’m taking the liberty of posting here.

I have relatively poor eye-sight, so the mouse cursor troubled me for a long time, until someone pointed me at the tool YoloMouse, which allows to change it.

What troubles me more is the size of the boon / condition icons and their stack numbers. They are much smaller than most other UI elements, hardly readable for me.
Yet increasing the overall Interface Size causes everything else to change from already big uncomfortably huge.

Perhaps ANet could address those related issues in conjunction.

Edit: Same about that tiny range indicator bar under the hotbar icons. I’ve tried to use a magnifier tool (OnTopReplica), without very convincing results, though.

This consideration applies for colorblindness, ANY partially sighted person, and many learning disorders including dyslexia. To omit them is ableist and excluding a HUGE population of potential gamers.

It matters folks… a lot. Instead of trying to solve all of the problems, why not attack it using the 80% rule. Providing a way to change the colors of the “red telegraphs” might just bring back a large number of players who have given up on GW.

http://www.charitablegamers.com/blogs/3-years-later-guild-wars-2-still-isnt-color-blind-friendly

+1 x 1000 – continuing to ignore this consideration is absurd and prejudiced.

one thought, as far as the post there though, is that this game can be done without aoe circles though. I have known players who have turned off indicators and trained themselves to read animations and spell sounds to know what’s coming. but it takes a lot of practice and trial and error. it still doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be options to change red ANYTHING to something else (looking at you, team and map chat, too)

I have problems to see the cursor pointer. This problem is worst in battle or scenes with a lot information. I think the game needs options to change cursor color or contrast, maybe size.

I always have a hard time finding the red commander tag on the mostly green maps (red-green blind).

Looking back over the posts in the past few months, I feel people are slightly insensitive about this issue and don’t actually realise the struggle. I am going to list a few of the problems I encounter on a daily basis hoping for a fix in the future.

Red aoe circles : The worst problem is these are hard to see on so many terrains in GW2. This has restricted me from certain content in the game. (Mostly pugging dungeons as I have a slight case of Atychiphobia)

Certain fonts in the chat window.

Finding commander tags on the map

Finding my cursor in big fights.

Selling my greens at the trader : This is hella annoying. I have to look at the picture and read the gear type as it is too hard to tell between orange/green/yellow. When I have hundreds of things to sell I get headaches as the square where you read the gear rarity bobs around the place depending on different items (not sure why this happens).

I feel like most of these are simple fixes and hope Anet will bring in colour blind filters to help the affected!

I found a short, neat video about the subject for anybody (like me) who doesn’t know about the impacts that colour-blindness has on gaming, and how much we take for granted being able to discern different colours and shades: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CavKxQG7WsA

Does anybody know of any MMOs that have colour-blindness support?

Surely GW2 should be able to give a variety of post-processing filters for colour-blind people that can be applied with a check-box/drop-down list under the graphics settings? We already have post-processing filters in-game (depending on environment) that drastically changes the colour of the surroundings, so it doesn’t seem like a stretch to make one that helps people with different types of colour-blindness.

As a general QoL improvement, make it so that we can change the colours of each type of chat. Iit would just be a nice bit of customisation for the average player. It can also help people with dyslexia (I’ve heard that reading white on a black background, or yellow, can improve the speed of reading and comprehension?). Of course, being able to choose colours would help a variety of people who suffer from colour-blindness. I would imagine that “say chat” and “guild chat” would be difficult to discern between, as well as “team chat”, “map chat” and “say chat” for others.

That is an awesome video and i will probably save it for use in the future when people ask me what i can and can’t see.

Hi, I’ d like to know if there will be at some point a colorblind mode ?
I haven’t seen any add-on addressing the issue yet. I’m having a really hard time differentiating item rarity (mainly masterwork, rare and exotic)

The game has been out for 3 years and I dont really understand why there isnt any colorblind mode yet. Unless i havent looked in the right place ?

Post for support. Fix at least the AoE rings, either add a “saw” edge to attacks, or something similar, or then dropdown to options to select colors for them! Should be very quick fix!

Good news:

Hey folks,

Wanted to give you a quick heads up on a handful of notes relevant to Heart of Thorns launch in a few days:

Combat Visibility

One change you’ll notice when the expansion goes live – a number of FX for skills have changed. We’ve tried to cut back some of the visual noise of some of the “noisiest” skills to make it easier to see what’s going on in combat with multiple players/mobs on screen. We’ve also made some skill FX end much faster to align with the length their actual combat effect happens in the world – previously some FX lingered much longer than the actual outcome of the skills combat interaction would occur. This is also to help make it easier to see what’s going on in combat.

Again, thank you very much

I’ve always had a hard time seeing enemy aoes, but i’ve managed…but with HOT and the new guild arena I can’t see the enemy AOE inside. Why can we not switch aoe colors to yellow or something. Even wildstar had that option, it was great. I tried sweetFX but it was not friendly to me or my computer lol.

Squads have introduced a new colour frustration for me.

The new squad chat and say both have the [S] prefix and as someone with a colour vision deficiency, I cannot tell them apart without comparing them closely, which distracts from the game.

(Of course there’s an easy fix there – give the Squad chat a D prefix to match the keystroke used. But we still need the colour blind option ‘cos it’s just good game design.)

OK Anet, it’s been three years now that colorblind people have been asking for a colorblind mode. You guys have been saying on the forums that you would look into it, that’s been going on for years now, so my question is why in the world haven’t you accommodated us yet? Seriously how hard can it be to simply set the colors differently? I know it’s not that hard to code in and you have had years to do it. So PLEASE help us out here. I know you’d get more players to play, I know I get really frustrated and /rage quit when I die because i thought i was standing in a friendly aoe ring.
Every other big MMO and most other games that aren’t MMOs have colorblind mode, so there’s really no excuse.

And as others have stated, it’s nearly impossible to be efficient in raids when you’re colorblind.
Please help us out!

Hi, please see this post I made that includes solutions for many disabilities.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Raids-NOT-Color-blind-Friendly/first#post5785028

Color blindness covers a colossal range of troubles. The one thing that AFAIK all color blind people have in common is that we see shades really well. I can’t tell apart the green and red pheromones at triple trouble (red and orange? whatever the colors are, I have no idea without reading them) because their shade is extremely similar. But if one were black and one were white it couldn’t possibly be a problem for any type of color blindness. If a red is very dark (RGB 160-15-10) and a green is very light (RGB 200-225-0), I think all levels and types of color blindness can tell those apart.

Basically: contrast.

Zephuros.5073:

OK Anet, it’s been three years now that colorblind people have been asking for a colorblind mode. You guys have been saying on the forums that you would look into it, that’s been going on for years now, so my question is why in the world haven’t you accommodated us yet? Seriously how hard can it be to simply set the colors differently? I know it’s not that hard to code in and you have had years to do it. So PLEASE help us out here. I know you’d get more players to play, I know I get really frustrated and /rage quit when I die because i thought i was standing in a friendly aoe ring.
Every other big MMO and most other games that aren’t MMOs have colorblind mode, so there’s really no excuse.

And as others have stated, it’s nearly impossible to be efficient in raids when you’re colorblind.
Please help us out!

Try posting on reddit instead…

+1 to this. I have difficulties in differentiating red/green/brown, and having a red circle on floors that are mostly reddish/greenish/brownish is a real PITA.

This question usually comes next, so I’ll answer it now:

q- how do you drive?
a- top is stop, mid is caution, bot is go.

Hi,

I write to You from Poland and I’m also a colorblind player. In fact I can’t recognize any color by name, it’s very similar to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achromatopsia

I would also be very grateful for a colorblind mode and any other solutions related to onscreen information transparency. You guys are already great for the in-game color names showing when you trigger a color, it’s something I’ve never seen in any game, very helpfull.

Regards.

Gaile Gray.6029:

I have confidence that the team will be looking at the benefits as well as the “cost” in time and resources in relation to this situation…

Today is the best day to reinforce what was said above.

Do we know if this is still being discussed by the developers? It has been a while :/

I have a good friend who plays the game. He has trouble with red, and obviously that’s a problem with this game because red is important. I know it is difficult, or maybe not, but is there any chance of getting a high contrast mode for poor vision. It would be nice if just a change in color for enemy players indicators and names could be implemented.

8% of euro ancestry males have a form of color blindness.

EQ2 has an option for color on targeting rings, but don’t hold your breath here.

You will get more of “maybe this isn’t the game for you”

Unfortunate, but it seems to be the reality.