I have fully monochromatic vision, but that hasn’t stopped me enjoying 99% of games just like anyone would. That is all because of either the little detail devs put in to cater for that or because I can think of a reliable workaround for too colourful situations. This goes all the same for GW2, except for a few very select cases.
Some of my personal gripes have already been mentioned, and there’s been a few very good ideas thrown about. I’m all for customisation, so the opacity setting would ofcourse be essential to have. The pulsing/animating markers as casting bars is also a very neat idea. I personally don’t mind different timings for attacks, but I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, while some people just can’t or don’t want to memorise every single timing. Not to mention stuff without a tell or a timing (like the archdiviner’s lunge or the risen abominations’ backhand slap that feels it does more damage than the club swing).
Traps in Guild Rushes are my main problem. I know the traps are meant to be subtle, but since for me it’s dark grey on slightly darker grey in every instance of a trap, it’s somewhat beyond subtle. It’s, very simply, impossible for me to see half of the traps no matter how much I smash the scan skill. I know the circles are there, and I have memorised the location of a lot of them, and while I do find it a nice layer of personal extra challenge, it’s not worth the extra trouble it sometimes escalates to for the current rewards.
Now this veers off a bit into the whole telegraph side of things, but there’s circles involved. Namely I’d like to point out the Ascalon fractal staring Captain Ashym. Getting to the final boss on that one is a cluster…happening of it’s own with so many circles and random sources of damage you have to go the combat log for explanation and can’t possibly avoid or negate, while it’s not impossible it’s by far the most frusturating fractal.
And then there’s Mr. Fiery Greatsword to deal with, with no telegraphs (except him going “Hey look, you’re dead.” in some ancient Ascalonian accent.) and the worst of all AoE attacks, circle wise. The firestorm. The same way as with the traps in rushes, if the storm is aimed at me I can’t see it coming before it (barring misbehaving RNG) hits and downs, then promptly kills me. Because I don’t see a bit of red in my peripheral vision. Nevermind the overall ring and have little expanding “landing bar” circles where the meteors are coming down, screaming “reactive play” at people. Or something.
All around the game many attacks leave behind a field of some kind, and they all look fine as they are, but the initial signal on where it’s about to land is woefully inconsistent and as already stated many a time sometimes impossible to see. The orange circle can go away once the attack lands and be replaced with the current effects and everything’ll be fine.
But then there’s Tequatl. I think the circles there are perfectly fine. Because it is a fight you need to know, it’s a fight where you react to something else than just a circle in the ground. The cripply odd magic AoEs aren’t pre-telegraphed, but they feel perfectly fine and are visually distinct to instantly tell you what they are doing, forcing people to adopt one of a few tactics available to them (have enough armour/healing to counter it, move out of it, outheal it as a group, etc) and the poison from the fingers is pretty much telegraphed as “hey look, fingers, they will throw poison at you, do something about it” aka reflects, or look out for the incoming projectile and move, or have synchronised cleanses and heals, or… There’s a lot of stuff you can do, that’s one fight that is actually fine and doesn’t need any fixing at the moment.