Embarrassed but asking for help from the Devs

I am a huge fan of the game and I hope this post is taken as intended, viz., a request for help. Not a demand, just a request that is in my view reasonable.

Let's start with my genetic defect: I am colorblind. I cannot tell the difference between red/green. Colors that are close look the same to me. And many others.

The monsters I am told are 'ranked' by color to tell us how hard they are compared to our avatar's skill. But I cannot see those colors.

Could it be made so easy monsters are blue (like medium blue not Navy) middle monsters are Orange and hard monsters Red? Then colorblind folks like me can use this important feature.

Using red and green is literally the combo we challenged folks cannot see.

Thanks for reading this. If this is too hard to change or would hurt anyone else's ability to play, please ignore this request. I would never want to impose my issue on others, because it is 1) hard to play without knowing monster difficulty (a reason I tend to stay in areas I know) and 2) my issue should not make any player's game less enjoyable.

Thank you.

King Robert of the House Baratheon, First of his Name, and Colorblind.

 

I don't know what this is like for the color blind. I can actually see much better using night vision than color regardless of time of day. The only downsides are (1) some wash-out in snowy areas, (2) less beautiful.

I am not suggesting that is a substitute for the requested addition, just trying to help.

 

I actually agree, but I have problems seeing resource nodes though with night vision.

 

It seems like they could add options to nameplate customization for color. There is a range of types of color blindness, so each person being able to select the spectrums they are sensitive too for nameplates would probably be the most inclusive solution.

 

While many of us take it for granted the basic ability to see different colors, I think there are more people out there with this condition than we think. Therefore, I support some kind of alternate enemy "conning".

Whether that be as simple as changing the standard color scheme or doing something different/extra to help these individuals would be a great idea IMO.

Changing the colors may not be the best solution though. For one thing, it will force the bulk of the population to re-learn what the colors mean. Also, maybe the new colors chosen will be an issue for other color-challenged people?

Fear not though King Robert. I have an idea that might resolve this issue for your and others:

Instead, I would suggest using a +/=/- tag appended to the name plate. Pluses can mean it's higher than your level, equal means equal, minus means lower level. You can add +'s or -'s to indicate severity of the level difference. So, a really hard mob might be BossMob ++++ ... a newby mob to a level 80 player might be SkeletonMob ----- ... and an equal opponent might be Obsidian Bear =

Now, to those who would complain this breaks your immersion, I would say we might need an option to turn this feature on/off... or you can just turn off nameplates completely.

Anyway, I think this type of system would be simple enough to not cause confusion for anyone, and also eliminates the issue of color comparison altogether.

Since the current system has coding that will alter the mob's name plate color compared to your level, this shouldn't need much more extra coding to implement. Along with simply changing the font color, it could add the appended +/=/- rating too and this could be set up to mirror the current ranges that determine which color we see now.

 

Some games have a color setting that can be toggled that swaps blue and green channels to make it easier for colorblind players. I wonder if there is an option for this in Unity, or if they could make one, that would allow this to be changed easily.

 

Please do not take this wrong . . . .

This is a Support@portalarium.com issue if there ever was one.

Although I am sure there are other players with the same problem and they should be tagging this thread with yes I also have this problem . . . .

BUT there are MANY disabilities that have been addressed with Port previously and they seem to just brush them off.

I would retitle this to say . . . If you are "Color Blind or have another issue (disability) that works against you playing this game please respond and show port that you .. . . . "

Just my two cents (prob only worth one)

 

If that is case (surely it may be so) please have this moved. I am/was mortified to post this (hard to admit the extent to which I am not functional) but just wanted to see if this was an easy fix or not. If not that is 100% on me not on the game. Thanks all for the constructive help. As Always!

 

Don't be mortified, it's very common issue and likely affecting many other. Port is not even aware there was an issue, I for one never even considered it. If nothing else port can now review their options.

 

This seems like a very easy thing for us to fix. It seems like a good reason to fix it too.

@Berek, since no one else has put a dev name on this yet. Please see if this is something we can change for those that have limitations seeing red/green.

Maybe something like this?

 

Nothing to do with your post, which I have no issues with, but I thought I'd mention these just in case you hadn't heard of them before.

There is a company that is making what looks like sunglasses that will allow people who are color blind, see colours.

Check it out here:

 

I know that we've made some UI adjustments here in the past, so I am sure that we can accommodate these other areas with non-color indicators. Reading through the rest of the thread here to see what suggestions have come up. What have other games done here?

 

Nice, thanks for taking feedback on this.. most games use the color system sota also uses the skull system /smart. Mabey make the skull system more obvious I dont like alot of junk on the scrn like the party leader icons.

Once in the zone people should be ok for example people know 5skull zone is t5-t8 and they can look at the hp and mobs unique name to identify the mobs strength. If they are new to the zone there might be some trial and error but that is pretty much even for everyone in the zone color blindness or no. I know a 5k hp is gonna suck for me to solo weather its orange or yellow.

 

I appreciate the problem - colour blindness is a fairly broad term, and I suffer from another part of the spectrum of it, red/green isn't usually my problem but other colours can be very difficult (I play lots of board games and often get annoyed that so many colour pairings are virtually identical to me, seems the suppliers of general components chose to use blue/green in particular that are of such similar intensities I need REALLY strong lighting to differentiate the two. And don't get me started on the designers of one game who thought pastel shades of yellow and brown, dark purple and dark blue, and very dark brown and black were sensible options for six of their sets of playing pieces.... as far as I am concerned that's a three player game at best since those pairings are just indistinguishable to me! ). Slowly it's getting better, more designers now include different symbols, patterns and colours on pieces - but it's still a minority who realise the problem.

On a computer, it's still almost unbelievable to me that these things can't be selected by the user, nobody else is affected by how I choose to present things on my screen and it's irritating that too many companies decide (assuming they even think about it, and honestly I doubt many do ) 'this is our default so everyone can just get used to it'. All that will ever do is lose sales, but adding options for the users to customise displays is really not 'cutting edge stuff' any more, and rarely a significant effort to include the options - if you think about it beforehand, when designing things, rather than building something and then concluding 'too late to change it now'. I get more options to change sound settings than colours, but in games where so much is invested in appearance on the screen, you would hope by now people would realise how it looks and can be made to look is more vital.

 

I would not be against this at all... I don't care what color scheme they use, and if it helps those who are colorblind I am all for it! In fact, as others have already stated, perhaps we have sliders for the colors and how they'll appear so WE can control this. That really doesn't seem that crazy to code/implement. I think there is no chance of any issues for anyone if that happened.