Guild Wars 2

This was a great (and horrible) patch. The story, the enemies, the war was all fantastic. It really was killer. Then leaving us with more questions and pushing us further off the edge of our seats! Curse you anet I want answers!

But I didn’t just come here to curse at anet. I wanted to point out that the fight during the pact assault had some really cool effects. The smoke rising to obscure vision, things breaking, the frantic pace to stay ahead of their attack. But there is one really big problem for me. I am color blind. So when the smoke is there I CANNOT tell the difference between a red circle and a friendly circle. This was really annoying during the story and has almost made me rage quit when trying to get achievements. The entire year i’ve been playing i’ve had to work hard to distinguish between various aoe effects. The mesmer purple vs enemy aoe is still a bit tough but over all i’ve got a good handle on it. But in that fight when my instincts tell me i am safe and then its the lobber attack that makes me lose achievement while i’m carrying the torch, it is something that is not cool. So please, anet, keep in mind that while your subtle visual changes are pretty cool some people don’t have the same ability to differentiate colors and it can be extremely frustrating for them when things like that happen.

So far my personal list:
- Hard to distinguish between friendly aoe and red aoe circles
- Hard to see red aoe circles on green terrains
- Magnetic Aura and Fire Aura looks exactly the same
- Hard to distinguish between Masterwork/Rare/Exotic rarities.
- Hard to see red commander tags on the mini-map/map
- AC Dungeon Path 2, “pull ectoplasm” and “lift ectoplasm” colors look the same
- Red jumping platforms (such as the ones in CoE P3)

Fortunately I’ve gotten a reply from Gaile:
“On a serious note, I’ve seen and contributed to continued internal discussion about this subject. We do understand the situation. Years ago, I got a very nice e-mail from a Guild Wars (original) player who told me about how both he and his brother were colorblind and what challenges that posed for them to play games. I did some research and was quite surprised to learn that approximately 11% of males have some form of colorblindness. I truly understand the challenges, and I know the team does, as well.”

So there is a good chance we’ll be seeing a colorblind assist option in the future

This patch also introduced enemy aoe that looks exactly the same as friendly aoe. In the first instance I was constantly standing in it because it looks like allied guardian symbols – blue, shiny, and not at all red. In pvp enemy guard symbols are easy to pick out (for not color blind people) because they have a red border, these ones don’t.