Color-blind friendliness?

[kaffis]

The original Planetside wasn't particularly red/green color-blind friendly. I know because I've got a brother who is pretty solidly red/green color blind. He had a hard time getting into Planetside 1 because of the choices of faction colors -- the blue and purple were virtually indistinguishable to him. Unfortunately, I and all our friends were already playing NC, so the only viable empire for him to play (TR, since being unable to tell the Vanu from the NC isn't as big an issue when they're both enemies) had no friends for him.

Are there any plans to provide some remedy for this issue? Obviously, it's a little late to actually change empire colors, but is this issue even on the radar?

[Hamma]

Good question we don't know the answer to yet, but most recent games have colorblind modes hopefully PS2 will as well.

[Soothsayer]

Yes, accessibility is important, it must be very frustrating to him. Hopefully a solution can be cooked up...

[Bruttal]

I see this pop up in alot of games that are still in early development, I like to think that it couldn't ever be exploited however i know better =/. the better way to do it would be the type of armor everyone wares. like NC could have vary Rough texture with some rust or something. while TR could be vary solid looking armor and VS would be kinda reflective with a digital look to it. this could be aplyed to vehicle textures as well.

and just a question if your brother had good Red sight wouldn't he be able to tell the differance in there name colors? think you needed the adv targeting implant for that though.

[Goku]

If SOE really wanted to help those who are color blind they could always put in a special texture option for them specifically that can be toggled on or off. I obviously cannot speak from experience, but would be too hard to learn the armors for each empire and go about killing that way?

[BorisBlade]

The visual clues were there still and the names above their heads were red, thats the easiest way to spot enemies. When on my vs toons the TR vehicles were black while the vs and nc were grey with either blue or purple, and until you got very close you really couldnt tell the difference on friendly versus enemy. You just need to look for red names. The visual armor clues work when fighting softies up close and the red name thing still works too. And yeah as TR its really easy since tr vehicles were all black you just shot the non solid black ones.

PS2 is goin for this more modern look with only simple (rather boring imo) armor diffrences with really just some color swaps between empires and maybe a unique helmet. Its gonna be much worse for anyone who's color blind. Games like WoW have some color blind modes, hopefully they add somethin into PS2.

[Bruttal]

don't get me wrong am not aginst helping people with visual imparements or other handy caps just as long as someone cant make an aimbot out of it ;)

[CrystalViolet]

Wasn't there a lawsuit against SOE recently for not adding accessibility options to their MMO's? Hopefully they will be more mindful of this moving forward.

[Hezzy]

I'm red / green colourblind and I don't have any problems at all. You can tell who is who from the guns they're wielding, the style of their armour and the big red name above their head kind of gives it away!

[LordReaver]

I'm not color-blind, but I was gonna point the name bit out. You should be checking the color of the name even if you aren't color-blind. You can always change the color of the names. I once changed friendlies to red, and enemies to green, to see how hard it was for me to resist shooting friendlies. It was really weird to say the least.

[Kietharr]

Maybe simply offering pallet swaps, it's not hard to take a few skins and make an alternate skin set for the colorblind. Or maybe an option to have all friendlies one color and all enemies another, doesn't matter what color as long as it's distinguishable, maybe even black/white.

I'm all for helping the disabled out so long as it doesn't water down the game experience for everyone else.