Guild Wars 2

Glad there was some kind of response here. I posted up over a month ago with few example images too. I’ve got a link in my signature. Seriously, 85% of the time I can’t even see the circles. First few weeks I didn’t even know they existed until someone said something. Changing chat colors would be great too. I can’t tell if I’m talking in Party or Whisper unless I read the beginning where it says ‘to’ or ‘from’.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/GW2-and-the-Colorblind-An-Essay-in-Handicapped-Gaming/first#post449825

Cool documentary on color blindness here. http://www.nosuchthingascolor.com

Just showing interest as I haven’t been able to fix my color blindness. All the repair bills are really getting me down.

Haha, Party and Whisper are different colors? They look the same to me.

I agree. I even wrote up a big post with some examples of imagery (with help from the GF). I had to tell my group I was with last night that I’m likely to die alot in AC since I can’t see all the AOE circles.

Here’s the write up with examples.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/GW2-and-the-Colorblind-An-Essay-in-Handicapped-Gaming/first#post452852

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!!!