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

[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.

One of the best Lasher users in my outfit was color blind.

[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.

[duomaxwl]

I'm red/green colorblind. It makes me very paranoid gunning vehicles because from a distance I may shoot friendlies on accident. I also have issues using tactical on the map. If they didn't do something to help colorblind players, I would make do, but it couldn't hurt to try.

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[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

[T-Ray]

Statistics say that 7-10% of all males have some form of colorblindness (usually red/green), and I imagine that PS2's player-base skews strongly male. Statistically, 10% of your players might not even be able to tell the difference between two empires. This seems to me a major concern, and something that needs to be taken extremely seriously in a game that relies so heavily on color cues. Do you have any colorblind people testing things? I believe that this is something you should strongly consider.

I don't want to be so presumptuous as to believe that I have any power to change anything, but I am so excited to play this game, and I want it to be excellent.[/QUOTE]

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.

[GTGD]

So, if a person has RG they won't be able to discern colors between TR and neutral bases. They can clearly see who is NC and VS though. Likewise, if a person has BY colorblindness, they won't be able to discern the NC's colors from... the NC's other colors.

I don't even see the issue with the names and health bars above characters (if they are returning). Even if they are completely RG colorblind, it's simple to understand that characters with names and outfits above their heads are friendlies and that characters with only health bars (and who are shooting at you) are enemies.

And like T-Ray said, people with colorblindness are such a small percentage of the population. Not all of them see the pairs of color as a greyscale of sorts either, some are partially colorblind and just have a little more difficulty recognizing the colors.

For what may amount to a GENEROUS 25 people out of every 1000, there is no reason to make the game completely accessible to colorblind people. Unless, should every game be made completely accessible to the deaf and people with hearing damage? Subtitles and visual cues should be included in all games, right? And that is a much larger population.

[Traak]

As I said, having a list of options you could toggle to assist in target differentiation by adding an icon beside enemy names, or a line, or something, is not that difficult.

[Xyntech]

If the aesthetics of the empires are skewing a little more towards Team Fortress 2's level of identifiability more than Planetside 1, I suppose it may be enough to make the difference. You've seen more gameplay than we have TRay.

Just keep in mind that even %1 of 20,000 players is 200 players. That isn't a large percentage, but it's a fair number of people who may be extra happy to buy stuff from the cash shop and help support a game that acknowledges their needs.

We all know you guys have a lot of stuff you want to get into the game and also want it launched ASAP, so I can see how you would have to prioritize things and not be able to cater to every eventuality, but with your experience with colorblind artists I'm sure you'll be on the lookout for any easy to implement, but also non game balance altering ways of further accommodating color blind players.

[morf]

Hi T-Ray

You're looking at the math in the wrong light imo. Sure, only a very very small percentage of the population of the entire planet will both play planetside 2 and be colorblind - as you pointed out. However, if 10 percent of males are colorblind, and your playerbase is 90 percent male, that's a full 9 percent of your players. This isn't even accounting for females who also may be colorblind.

Taking this a step further, if your target market is males who play shooter games, 10 percent of these males will be colorblind. So these decisions still affect a full 10 percent of your target market. 10 percent is 10 percent any way you cut it.

But hopefully it will be distinguishable by other means, like you said.

[Captain1nsaneo]

I think Valve added a color blind mode to TF2 post production. Might be something to be looked at after release.

[Redshift]

Originally Posted by morf

Hi T-Ray

You're looking at the math in the wrong light imo. Sure, only a very very small percentage of the population of the entire planet will both play planetside 2 and be colorblind - as you pointed out. However, if 10 percent of males are colorblind, and your playerbase is 90 percent male, that's a full 9 percent of your players. This isn't even accounting for females who also may be colorblind.

Taking this a step further, if your target market is males who play shooter games, 10 percent of these males will be colorblind. So these decisions still affect a full 10 percent of your target market. 10 percent is 10 percent any way you cut it.

But hopefully it will be distinguishable by other means, like you said.

your math is correct, T-ray should stick to art :P, although it is worth pointing out female colourblindness is rare enough to completely ignore

[Traak]

I just don't want to see a colorblind mode that yields and advantage that we are forced to use or have a reduction in leetness fall upon us.

"Isn't the use of swirling waypoints above enemy cloakers just a bit too much advantage to be considered 'part of colorblind mode'?"

[Aractain]

Wasn't the biggest problem in PS1 the names over peoples heads (since they were red and green)? So my question would be, does PS2 have names/bars etc over peoples heads? (And what colour are they?)

(Also T-Ray thinks 3% of 3.5 billion people will play PS2, thats about 100 million... optimistic.... :P The way I read it at least.)

His actual numbers would be about 40,000 colour blind people in PS2. But my numbers go like this: 1 MILLION!!!! players (I Wish) and about 75% male (because females are pretty useful too) of which lets say 7% are evil, sorry, colourblind - that means 52,500 people!

Asumtions 1 million players, 25% female (unlikely), 7% coulorblind.

Based on this SOE's projected numbers for PS2 are around 1 MILLION! :O

As you can see I am also optimistic.

[GTGD]

Originally Posted by morf

Hi T-Ray

You're looking at the math in the wrong light imo. Sure, only a very very small percentage of the population of the entire planet will both play planetside 2 and be colorblind - as you pointed out. However, if 10 percent of males are colorblind, and your playerbase is 90 percent male, that's a full 9 percent of your players. This isn't even accounting for females who also may be colorblind.

Taking this a step further, if your target market is males who play shooter games, 10 percent of these males will be colorblind. So these decisions still affect a full 10 percent of your target market. 10 percent is 10 percent any way you cut it.

But hopefully it will be distinguishable by other means, like you said.

1. Math is not opinionated, it is objective.

2. Your math and logic is plain wrong.

3. Unless the game is huge AND there is an abnormally high percentage of colorblind players that will refuse to support the game, it is not fiscally viable to waste money on the development of these features.

[DviddLeff]

Sorry T Ray, but your statistic argument is just plain wrong

The different shape basis for the empires should be enough I would imagine for the colour blind to cope with it not to mention the further differentiation of aircraft and such.

Do we have any colour blind players here who would care to comment?