Colorblindness: a response to T-Ray's Massively interview

[blakmarkit]

Originally Posted by Captain1nsaneo

Would switching out the Red for blue in the HUD elements fix this? Also wondering if adding an option to turn up the brightness on the teal and gold aspects for VS and NC would take care of it.

A worry: Making a color blind mode that makes it easier to pick out people at night. That would lead to players switching to color blind mode even if they didn't have issues just for another advantage.

I'm not sure it was ever the HUD that was the problem for me. It was especially difficult in the continent/world maps and it would be a problem if I was playing VS or NC against the other. If I were to be playing as one of those empires, I'd probably be doing a lot of griefing, so I just stuck with TR, and I knew to shoot the bluish looking guys.

And yes, it's hard to think of a good way to maintain a game balance that doesn't give an advantage to non-colorblind players.

I know for myself, my brain, while it can still process color, it processes color after shape, brightness and texture. I have to actually focus on color as an attribute of something in order to comprehend it. Those tests where you write the name of a particular color in a different color font and try to read off the list? I can do those without even trying, while they completely scramble a normal person's brain. (I only speak from my own experiences, not from the experiences of the colorblind population at large)

Originally Posted by Captain B

With the stark differences between models you'll be able to tell at a difference. If you can't, then they're probably so far off you wouldn't be able to see color to differentiate them anyway. They'll be all black at a distance before you can't distinguish them by armor type anymore.

That would definitely be reassuring, if there's a recognizability similar to TF2 or some other visual style that makes it very apparent who is from what empire.

Originally Posted by Xyntech

How about if you have color blind mode turned on, a bright easy to see circle appears in front of your allies when you look in their general direction (it could get smaller as they got further away so that you could still see most of their body). Anyone without the circle could be presumed an enemy.

You could play test it to make sure it was no more effective at identifying friend or foe than it is with the option is turned off for non color blind players. If it's harder to tell who is who past a certain range, the circle could match this by starting to fade away past a certain distance. Color blind players would just have to learn not to pop off shots at distant players without checking if they were a friend or enemy first, but if it was properly balanced, non color blind players would have to be equally careful.

With it only being on friendlies, it would give no advantage at spotting an enemy who is in the dark or behind cover. You still have to use your visual acuity to find the hard to spot enemies. After all, accommodating color blindness in a FPS is awesome, accommodating regular blindness in a FPS would be silly

This seems a decent enough solution...finding a way to grief less often would mitigate a lot of the handicapping.

Originally Posted by T-Ray

I have a couple of friends that are r/g cb, one that I went to art school with. I know how he dealt with it and it wasn't easy, being an artist in all.

Thank you for this post, I would like for you to respond to mine if you would...

ok, 10% of ALL males are colorblind
How many of that 10% plays video games? lets say 7% of the 10% play video games.

How many of that 7% play first person shooters? lets say 5% of the 7%

How many of that 5% will play PlanetSide2 lets so 3%

I am being generous with these numbers and I assume that a LARGE number of people will LOVE and play PS2. So if 3% is the most generous case...if you ran the company, what would be your orders?

The shape language is a large part of PS2 if all the characters were black and white, you would still be able to pick them out of a line up. Color will not be the only distingusing factor

I'm not trying to be insensitive at all, I just want to hear your thoughts.

It's cool, dude. I appreciate you taking the time to respond to my concerns.

Good for your colorblind friend, man. I'm glad that you've had that experience, because I know so many that go through art school to go into various fields and don't take much time to consider it as a problem. I have an art degree, too. I worked really hard to earn it. I understand that it's a lot to overcome.

Just to clarify, I wasn't saying the game needed to be designed around complete accessibility (colorblind, deafness, etc.), or that any game needs to be designed around accessibility. I just think that the nature of PS particularly lends itself to at least a level of consideration of the issue, being that it relies so heavily on color cues as the very identities of the factions. Take a game like StarCraft-- the factions are visibly differentiated enough that all the factions could be the same color and you'd still be able to tell which faction was which. I think, if I'm interpreting correctly, what has been inferred is that PS2 will be heading more in that type of direction, with other visual cues to present the same information in multiple ways. I guess that's my main concern is that there is a redundancy of visual information in a way that isn't overbearing or unbalancing. Like I said in my last post, I see testing at least minimally with a few colorblind people and getting their feedback on the readability of of the visual cues might offer some ways to improve the game, not just for the colorblind, but for everyone.

I think in a way, it's almost analogous to a localization issue. You want you game playable in a language that the player can interpret. You can't localize to every language, of course, either, because that is too costly, so I see the dilemma.

Statistically, I am in a fairly small minority of players, and I understand that. I'm extremely excited for this game, and the color issue in the first game was, while not a game-killer/fun-killer, it was definitely an obstacle for me to be able to be as effective a player as I could be (slow to read maps, slow to make friend/foe decisions). I'm glad, at the very least, that it's something that you've considered, and however you may or may not end up implementing any sort of solutions in the game, I appreciate you taking the time to read this and make me feel like my voice was heard.