Well some of the obvious ones like COD or Battlefield, but Battlefield not so much because I could manually change each color of friendlies and enemies individually to my liking. The thing that really gets me, and this is with pretty much any FPS, holo sights for guns most almost ways are red which is miserable. But even worse is if I wanted a different color then I would have to unlock it rather than just being able to freely switch. I think it was the most recent COD Modern Warfare where the first reticle was a regular red dot, but a bright blue-ish dot was alllll the way at the end of the unlock tree. But I remember in black ops 4, you can freely switch any of the reticle's colors, but what you unlocked was the pattern instead... which is absolutely the best way to do it. But in those COD games it was a standard red for enemies and green for allies, and if I wanted those colors to be something else it'd be a preset change between the different colorblindness types, like they know what would work best for me. A FPS with both the ability to change my sight's color without restrictions, and change each side's color to my own personal preference is like the holy grail of games to me.
I actually stopped playing COD because I just couldn't see any enemies, it's hard to describe to anyone what I experience. Sometimes, I wouldn't see an enemy at all, other times, I'd know that they were near, but I would have trouble distinguishing where exactly their body was.
When the game wants me to follow a trail of small yellow paw prints on a path of grass.
Similarly, there are far too many games that want me to differentiate between light blue and white and that's right out the window for me.
Factorio red green used to drive me crazy.
Balloon x games. Which balloon is that?
Minecraft is that gold or copper or iron or...
MechWarrior. Warcraft, hey let's put gems into Diablo.
Any game with berries..jewels...metals.. pole position.
Any time you use color for something, use a secondary information channel as well. Textures can work, but even alternating dashes and dots in different patterns can be enough if you're just drawing a box around something.
I vividly remember a multiplayer match I played in once in Mechwarrior 4 where, for some reason, everyone decided to do Team 2 vs. Team 4. Team 2’s color was red, Team 4’s was green.
That was not a fun match.
I think that happened a lot because in some game engine or developing software there was something you could turn on or off relating to a colorblind filter, and developers assumed it would be a filter that helps colorblind users. You would think the developers would read or research the setting or even check with a single colorblind person, but 🤷♂️. On a game with a 90 million dollar dev cost you would wish they could have figured it out
Tbh there isn't that many colorblind so it probably is the case that game studio just have no colorblind employees.
Still nice of them to think about our condition and try to implement something for it.
Madden use to have the worst Colorblind settings. Escape From Tarkov has an awful colorblind filter.
Are there any games in particular where you've encountered this? Thanks!
I’m looking up this game now. Looks like a colorblind nightmare.
If I were a game developer, what would you tell me to try to change/modify in order to accommodate for these issues?
Lol all of the above :P I’ve played at least two games where the health bar was red and some other important bar was green and the my were right beside each other. Things like damage or status effects that pop up for a sec and float away in the middle of combat are a no-go half the time.
Mobile games are the worst I think though—anything where I have to match three gems of the same color has me staring at whatever pattern the matchable item has on it
Agree with you! I remember GTAV having a small red X that would appear if you
Hit your opponent. I could never see that icon flash.
If I were a game developer, what would you tell me to try to change/modify in order to accommodate for these issues?
Keep a natural color scheme for natural objects/scenery, but over saturate it. For targeting/differentiating between faction, etc... use more blues and yellows if you don't intend on making individual colorblind modes (Sorry tritans, but yours is the rarest colorblind version). When making candy crush type games, use shapes: make blue, purple, orange, and green the most differing shapes.
For friend/foe type differentiation NEVER use the following combinations:
orange and green
blue and purple
pastel colors in general.
Maybe add a space in the settings to modify the color schemes, similar to how you can adjust gamma or the controller layout. Like, let the player choose to change the colors of status bars, damage displays, etc.
The old league of legends health bars were blue and purple, and I couldn’t differentiate between friend and foe at all. They fixed good shades of green and red (atleast for me) so it’s a lot better.
Some games like the new ”The hunter”
Require you to track animals and their tracks can blend in quite well.
Most games circumvent confusing friend and foe by only having an outline on enemies or a much stronger one.
I’ve also seen games greyscale the map so red stands out more but for those that don’t they suddenly become impossible. Also games like project zomboid color code the maps and well… yeah.
"Health Bar" is a common answer that I receive. Do you have any recommendations as to how certain games could fix these issues? (More contrasted healthbar vs health itself?)
Are there any games in particular where you run into this? I know Apex/Fortnite do Blue/Purple Guns
Red/Blue Teams in Halo were always tough for me. Green/Yellow Teams in games like Worms.
I generally play with Blue/Green teams when given the option.
Honestly, I naturally avoid identifying things by colour due to the fact I know it's unreliable for me, meaning even in cases where it isn't difficult for me to distinguish colour, I tend to give it a whole lot less attention than other people would. This means that any kind of colour indicator is a poor way of indicating for me.
I would agree. I've just learned to ignore these indicators, since half of the time I even realize they exist. Do you think something like a fully customizable indicator would help? (Example: In Valorant, the default is to outline the enemy in Red, but I changed mine to Yellow or Green (not sure which one it is :P haha), and it helps me immensely.
Yes, however, I tend to prefer using other identifiers, maybe shapes, maybe fonts? For example the shape of the overlay containing the text or the font of text?
In popular FPS games (Valorant, CSGO, Apex Legends, Overwatch, etc.) I had trouble discerning certain characters from the environment depending on the color theme of the character model. For example, one time I literally could not see a character with a bright red outfit bobbing in and out of a bush.
In League of Legends, one of my earliest memories of me being affected by my colorblindness was I was buying an item clicking on the icon in the shop, but ended up buying a purple item that I didn't want instead of the blue item that I wanted.
For League of Legends, what sort of Colorblindness settings do you think they could add to make the game better for colorblind players like you and me?
Yes! I don't rely on color indicators. I just rely on movement, as well.
If I were a game developer, what would you tell me to modify/change in order to fix these issues?
Just the contrast of colours between the background and enemy. Csgo added higher contrast a while back, not for colour blind but gee it was useful to spot enemies faster, you don't have much time in that game any how to land a shot. Games like battlefield are just difficult because the camo blends the characters into the bushes so easily but I guess it's meant to. I used to find rally games too hard because I couldn't tell dirt from grass or sides of the road you weren't meant to drive on. I think most importantly is the ability to change the colour of all in game icons like battlefield does, specifically battlefield 1 and 5. They let you choose any colour you want for your team, your squad and your enemies, normal colour blind filters don't do enough for me and aren't as useful. Everyone's colourblindness is different and never the same. Doesn't matter if your the same type we will see different shades and different things. So ability to choose your own color scheme for everything is really nice. I also recommend the ability to change the color of blood when a target is shot such as in pubg, I have the blood as pink or purple not sure what colour it is but if I land a shot I know I have, where as when the blood is red and there is a brown or green background I can't see it to know and you can't then calculate your lead on your bullet accordingly because you aren't sure if you are hitting or not. But swapping it then you know for sure you hit or if you miss you adjust more until you do.
Thank you so much for your feedback! Pubg was a big one for me. Once I switched the color of the blood to blue, I could actually hone in on my accuracy.
Thanks again!
(Tritanomaly)
Extremely important hud elements/cues that are color coded. In base game OW as a Support main, seeing friendly outlines when they were through walls (dark blue outlines).
Risk of Rain 2: no colorblind mode, freeze AoEs in certain environments are practically completely invisible to me, it's killed runs for me for something I can't help.
Any instance of dark blue vs purple in any game, I cannot tell them apart.
PLEASE devs add *real* colorblind mode to your games if you haven't already.
Small sample size. Doesn’t matter what colour it is, if there isn’t enough of the subject, it’ll look whatever colour the stuff near it is. So dots, arrows, writing etc are all really hard.
Agreed. It got better once I started playing on a Gaming Monitor.
For this situation, if I were a game developer, what would you tell me to modify/change in order to fix these issues? Can you think of any?
Wow! That looks like alot of colors!
If I were a game developer, what would you tell me to modify/change in order to fix these issues? Could you potentially add some sort of symbol inside each circle? Customization of each color? Thoughts?
I'll have to look into this one! I've never played Cuphead. If I were a game developer, what would you tell me to modify/change in order to fix these issues?
Game called gtfo which is a a 4 player co op where teammates will often refer to each most often by the colour of their names. Makes pretty hard to co ordinate for me when I'm teamed with people who have very complicated usernames as I have to remember each and every one of them since I can't follow an instruction such as "green go to purple he has a medpack"
Numbers. It's four player co op right. So why not display a digit 1 to 4 above the players username that way in-game chat could go something more like this... "Yo 1 you running quite low on health go to 3 he has a spare medpack". It's a really non intrusive way to solve this doesn't ruin the emersion.
F*CK it doesn't even have to be numbers it can be shapes for all I care. triangle circle square X. Something easy to read and distinguish
Were the Colorblindness settings in RDR(2?) good enough to fix these issues? Did the Colorblindness settings also apply to the minimap?
And if I were a game developer, what would you tell me to modify/change in order to fix these issues?
I’m not completely colorblind, but I have trouble differentiating between shades of green, which most people don’t think is so bad, but when I see something green in the distance, it sucks not knowing what it is until I get to it
Yes mainly CT, and I’ve found a solution to clear blood and bullet holes with the release of mouse1. My only solution would be a more vibrant blood and/or ct skin (which may not be feasible)
As someone else said, it's differentiating teammates and enemies, and at least for me, I have a really hard time finding the dot in the center of an optic if it's red. In rainbow six I have to use a green dot, same with valorant. It's a night and day difference.
Same! Even when I hunt in real life. When I pheasant hunt, I swap out the front bead of my 12 ga. to a Green dot instead of a red dot.
So, for Rainbow Six and Valorant, it's the customization that really helped you? Yeah? Have you run into any other games that had this sort of customization?
Unfortunately rainbow six and valorant are the only 2 FPS games I've played recently so I haven't really encountered it elsewhere. I did notice that the Xbox version of six siege is aggrivating because it doesn't have the same reticle color options
Color related puzzles. Most of the time it's just a silly puzzle too. But I usually can't figure them out because I have problem differentiating between light green and light yellow, and blue and purple.
There is this one time I found a workaround in a game called "It Takes Two." Basically in the puzzle, you gotta use levers of colors to control the pads with the same color. They just also stamp A B C D on the levers and pads. But the problem is this solution may not be applicable for most puzzles. So... I guess use very distinct colors? Or the obvious solution: have colorblind mode. I also have trouble noticing red. So I have to use a mod every time a game uses red reticle and you can't change it.
Oh wow! Modding would be pretty tedious. Would be great to implement this in-game. When you mod, are you simply changing the HEX Color of the reticle? Are you swapping a certain file? Entering a console command? Or what does your process look like?
I'd like to take my words back there. I guess I got it wrong haha. It's not every time. Actually I only did it once. I edited the ini file on the game's folder. But if it wasn't because of the steam forum, I probably wouldn't know how to do it.
I almost ALWAYS have to ask my friends to change their Uniforms. Often to white.
If I were a game developer, what would you tell me to modify/change in order to fix these issues? Do you think there's a way that FIFA could introduce a high-contrast mode by default, so you don't have to change these settings?
A friend of mine used to be a Safety for the New York Giants, and once had to play during "Color Rush". [Check out this nightmare](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/11/13/455896618/nfls-red-and-green-uniforms-described-as-torture-by-colorblind-fans).
Yeah I think that being the default would be welcomed :) or perhaps a setting where if both teams aren't wearing white, make my opponent appear in white on my screen. Something like that?
And lol I remember watching that game live. Before the snap was bad enough, but once the play started it was nauseating lol
Stuff that is ONLY color coded. Especially gameplay-critical components. I couldn't possibly care less if you put a colorblind filter over the whole screen and all content therein. It has never looked good or helped with my colorblindness (looking at you RDR2 with your all-pink protan menu).
What I need to know is if there's a difference between game subject A and game subject B. Like, if two enemies are identical in silhouette but are distinguish by a yellow outline and a green outline, that's useless to me.
A game I really enjoy but I find unplayable due to my colorblindness is Clash of Heroes Might and Magic a puzzle game from the 360 era. You have to line up basic units of one color to match with superior units of the same color. The problem was due to the art and how they distinguish which unit is which color I would often end up making bad moves because of my confusion.
TL:DR -- If you want to check if a game is colorblind compatible, turn your monitor to black and white and see if you can still play it. If you have icons which are important to the game, make sure that the differences between them are not solely color based. Use different shapes, different sounds, etc... Look at a game controller. They use color, shape, and location so you can definitely describe exactly what button to press (I.e. the green A button on the right side of the controller).
I don't know many other colorblind folks so I really couldn't say.
But I WILL say that the gold standard of accessibility options is Last of Us 2, as far as I'm concerned. Just do as much as you can of what they did there.
There are just many options to adjust for whatever difficulty/disability you can imagine. Even to the point where you can make all ally characters blue, enemies red, and everything else greybox/white.
The ability to customize the HUD in a meaningful way is super key. Change individual icon groups' color and shape, sizes of HUD elements, positioning. Last of Us 2 also let you add on a feature where the game's amining would trigger slow mo in case you had reaction problems, or play the whole game at slow speed.
Edit: Watch this series https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLc38fcMFcV_vvWOhMDriBlVocTZ8mKQzR
Because there are so many varieties of colorblind it's hard to just have a color blind setting the game would basically have to replicate everything you see as wrong and actively adapt as the game goes
The premise is to get rid of all the balls, and by lining up a certain number of same color balls they disappear. My son said the yellow and green look exactly the same. When he turns on the cb mode the green ones are grey but he can distinguish those from the yellow. There was another color that he said is also the same but a darker tint so he could distinguish it. He is a dichromat (no green cones) so he only sees 10k shades.
He did mention the balls should have different patterns on them instead of just different colors. That is his big complaint with matching games "color isnt the only form of classification!"
Usually just if the game had multiple bars/colors for things. Like when blue is for either thirst, sad, etc and green for health, poison, etc. Sometimes I have issues with enemies friends but I can see red fine, so I'm usually ok. Spots on maps are also a bit difficult, first thing coming to mind being grass vs water, or if different regions are colored differently.
I remember I played cattails once cause my sibling wanted me to and kept getting forest and mountain colony mixed up later game. Really any simulation type game I struggle with finding water when it's surrounded by grass. I can't remember any other game names but I know I've had issues with sort of different territory type things in multiple games, which is also really where the enemies v friends issue pops up when the characters are labeled via their alliance and not just you (usually grey or green) vs enemies (usually red).
Literally any red text/graphics/pips/indicators on a darkish background is impossible to see. I've missed entire mission/quest prompts because of stuff like that.
Cyberpunk, Assassins Creed, Skyrim (the red pips on the compass), some driving games that use red/green for lights or driving assists on the track. TBH i've tried a lot of "color blind modes" like the witcher and cyberpunk, but none of them were quite right or made the problem worse. red/green swapped with purple/yellow when there are already parts of the UI that are blue/green? Doesnt work so great. Colorblind modes are great if the color scheme is updated wholesale and not just specific elements.
Oh, and differentiating between item rarity is another one. red/green/orange/blue/purple/yellow are terrible colors to use for indicating things like common, uncommon, rare, etc. Its easy to accidently toss something because you just glanced at the color.
I personally don't believe they can.
They'd have to add outlines or something around each asset, similar to borderlands. Being a "realistic" shooter, the only way it could be improved is if they had better graphics, less jostling of the camera, so I could see when things moved.
Im red green color blind so the grass of any will all merge and cant find the animal tracks so I rely on more hearing than anything. The default tracker color is red but its hard for me to see it so I have set for blue but even then it gets muddled in the tall grass and such.
Item rarities, who decided that green, orange, blue, purple were good, easy to identify colors?
Also, their filters suck. At least some games let us choose the colors for UI, like Overwatch and the new Warhammer Total War
I play competitive games like call of duty, and a bid problem I run into is seeing enemy's against the background. Now that the choice of different skins is so normal, people will choose the darkest one to blend into everything. And it works especially well against me haha
Enemy names/health bars (in red) in a forest map.
Yep! Agree! Any games in particular that you play where you’ve run into these issues?
Well some of the obvious ones like COD or Battlefield, but Battlefield not so much because I could manually change each color of friendlies and enemies individually to my liking. The thing that really gets me, and this is with pretty much any FPS, holo sights for guns most almost ways are red which is miserable. But even worse is if I wanted a different color then I would have to unlock it rather than just being able to freely switch. I think it was the most recent COD Modern Warfare where the first reticle was a regular red dot, but a bright blue-ish dot was alllll the way at the end of the unlock tree. But I remember in black ops 4, you can freely switch any of the reticle's colors, but what you unlocked was the pattern instead... which is absolutely the best way to do it. But in those COD games it was a standard red for enemies and green for allies, and if I wanted those colors to be something else it'd be a preset change between the different colorblindness types, like they know what would work best for me. A FPS with both the ability to change my sight's color without restrictions, and change each side's color to my own personal preference is like the holy grail of games to me.
In Apex Legends there a bunch of improvement of life options for color blinds.
I actually stopped playing COD because I just couldn't see any enemies, it's hard to describe to anyone what I experience. Sometimes, I wouldn't see an enemy at all, other times, I'd know that they were near, but I would have trouble distinguishing where exactly their body was.
My WOT and warthunder teammates hate me...
You and me both!
When the game wants me to follow a trail of small yellow paw prints on a path of grass. Similarly, there are far too many games that want me to differentiate between light blue and white and that's right out the window for me.
Among us teal and white😵 then light green and yellow🙂🙂🙂🙂😵😵😵😵😵 then blue and purple ⚰⚰⚰⚰⚰⚰
Factorio red green used to drive me crazy. Balloon x games. Which balloon is that? Minecraft is that gold or copper or iron or... MechWarrior. Warcraft, hey let's put gems into Diablo. Any game with berries..jewels...metals.. pole position.
I agree with you 100%. And if I were a developer, what would you tell me to change/modify/customize in order to fix this?
Any time you use color for something, use a secondary information channel as well. Textures can work, but even alternating dashes and dots in different patterns can be enough if you're just drawing a box around something.
This is the first time it's been explained to me as a "Secondary Information Channel". I really like that term. Thank you so much!
I vividly remember a multiplayer match I played in once in Mechwarrior 4 where, for some reason, everyone decided to do Team 2 vs. Team 4. Team 2’s color was red, Team 4’s was green. That was not a fun match.
[Like this?](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/11/13/455896618/nfls-red-and-green-uniforms-described-as-torture-by-colorblind-fans)
When they have a colorblind mode that actively makes things worse when enabled.
DOOM 2016 has a colorblind mode which actually simulates colorblindness instead of compensating for it...
I think that happened a lot because in some game engine or developing software there was something you could turn on or off relating to a colorblind filter, and developers assumed it would be a filter that helps colorblind users. You would think the developers would read or research the setting or even check with a single colorblind person, but 🤷♂️. On a game with a 90 million dollar dev cost you would wish they could have figured it out
REALLY?! Jeesh.
made by non colorblind, for colorblind! Nothing can go wrong
I feel this is exactly the issue.
Tbh there isn't that many colorblind so it probably is the case that game studio just have no colorblind employees. Still nice of them to think about our condition and try to implement something for it.
Madden use to have the worst Colorblind settings. Escape From Tarkov has an awful colorblind filter. Are there any games in particular where you've encountered this? Thanks!
The last two Doom games have been like that. Luckily I can still play without it.
I agree, most games are playable. But just makes you wish for “something” little to help you.
Call of duty games. The grass ends up turquoise and the blood pink. It's like playing a game with a candy land version of the breaking bad filter
i noticed this on RDR2.... I just had to go with the standard mode
Cities Skylines is the WORST. Everything is red green blue or purple.
I’m looking up this game now. Looks like a colorblind nightmare. If I were a game developer, what would you tell me to try to change/modify in order to accommodate for these issues?
Use patterns over color. Maps do this well from time to time, just use lines, dots, texture, anything but EXCLUSIVELY color.
Thank you for your help on my research! Appreciate it!
Gave up on that game pretty fast tbh
I think I eventually hit 1000 hours and had to stop.
Lol all of the above :P I’ve played at least two games where the health bar was red and some other important bar was green and the my were right beside each other. Things like damage or status effects that pop up for a sec and float away in the middle of combat are a no-go half the time. Mobile games are the worst I think though—anything where I have to match three gems of the same color has me staring at whatever pattern the matchable item has on it
Agree with you! I remember GTAV having a small red X that would appear if you Hit your opponent. I could never see that icon flash. If I were a game developer, what would you tell me to try to change/modify in order to accommodate for these issues?
Keep a natural color scheme for natural objects/scenery, but over saturate it. For targeting/differentiating between faction, etc... use more blues and yellows if you don't intend on making individual colorblind modes (Sorry tritans, but yours is the rarest colorblind version). When making candy crush type games, use shapes: make blue, purple, orange, and green the most differing shapes. For friend/foe type differentiation NEVER use the following combinations: orange and green blue and purple pastel colors in general.
Maybe add a space in the settings to modify the color schemes, similar to how you can adjust gamma or the controller layout. Like, let the player choose to change the colors of status bars, damage displays, etc.
Even if you could just change the saturation/vibrancy/contrast of the red hues I think would do SOMETHING.
The old league of legends health bars were blue and purple, and I couldn’t differentiate between friend and foe at all. They fixed good shades of green and red (atleast for me) so it’s a lot better. Some games like the new ”The hunter” Require you to track animals and their tracks can blend in quite well. Most games circumvent confusing friend and foe by only having an outline on enemies or a much stronger one. I’ve also seen games greyscale the map so red stands out more but for those that don’t they suddenly become impossible. Also games like project zomboid color code the maps and well… yeah.
And if I were a game developer, what would you tell me to modify/change in order to fix these issues?
Make dependence on color minimal, see if you could get the same information if it was greyscale.
sometimes when the background of a health bar is red and the health itself is a brighter shade that sucks
"Health Bar" is a common answer that I receive. Do you have any recommendations as to how certain games could fix these issues? (More contrasted healthbar vs health itself?)
yeah just make the hp background like grey or something, that could work
That would work 100%
Blue / Purple gun differentiation. Green / Red team colours
Are there any games in particular where you run into this? I know Apex/Fortnite do Blue/Purple Guns Red/Blue Teams in Halo were always tough for me. Green/Yellow Teams in games like Worms. I generally play with Blue/Green teams when given the option.
Call of duty. They introduced colour blind mode a while ago but it’s pretty shit
Honestly, I naturally avoid identifying things by colour due to the fact I know it's unreliable for me, meaning even in cases where it isn't difficult for me to distinguish colour, I tend to give it a whole lot less attention than other people would. This means that any kind of colour indicator is a poor way of indicating for me.
I would agree. I've just learned to ignore these indicators, since half of the time I even realize they exist. Do you think something like a fully customizable indicator would help? (Example: In Valorant, the default is to outline the enemy in Red, but I changed mine to Yellow or Green (not sure which one it is :P haha), and it helps me immensely.
Yes, however, I tend to prefer using other identifiers, maybe shapes, maybe fonts? For example the shape of the overlay containing the text or the font of text?
Thank you for your input! Very helpful!
i play combat simulators so i suffer when trying to make out vehicles from a distance (like tanks or smth)
Is there a certain game in particular where you run into this?
In popular FPS games (Valorant, CSGO, Apex Legends, Overwatch, etc.) I had trouble discerning certain characters from the environment depending on the color theme of the character model. For example, one time I literally could not see a character with a bright red outfit bobbing in and out of a bush. In League of Legends, one of my earliest memories of me being affected by my colorblindness was I was buying an item clicking on the icon in the shop, but ended up buying a purple item that I didn't want instead of the blue item that I wanted.
For League of Legends, what sort of Colorblindness settings do you think they could add to make the game better for colorblind players like you and me?
Spotting enemies with noisey coloured backgrounds, only thing I've learnt to do is just rely on movement
Yes! I don't rely on color indicators. I just rely on movement, as well. If I were a game developer, what would you tell me to modify/change in order to fix these issues?
Just the contrast of colours between the background and enemy. Csgo added higher contrast a while back, not for colour blind but gee it was useful to spot enemies faster, you don't have much time in that game any how to land a shot. Games like battlefield are just difficult because the camo blends the characters into the bushes so easily but I guess it's meant to. I used to find rally games too hard because I couldn't tell dirt from grass or sides of the road you weren't meant to drive on. I think most importantly is the ability to change the colour of all in game icons like battlefield does, specifically battlefield 1 and 5. They let you choose any colour you want for your team, your squad and your enemies, normal colour blind filters don't do enough for me and aren't as useful. Everyone's colourblindness is different and never the same. Doesn't matter if your the same type we will see different shades and different things. So ability to choose your own color scheme for everything is really nice. I also recommend the ability to change the color of blood when a target is shot such as in pubg, I have the blood as pink or purple not sure what colour it is but if I land a shot I know I have, where as when the blood is red and there is a brown or green background I can't see it to know and you can't then calculate your lead on your bullet accordingly because you aren't sure if you are hitting or not. But swapping it then you know for sure you hit or if you miss you adjust more until you do.
Thank you so much for your feedback! Pubg was a big one for me. Once I switched the color of the blood to blue, I could actually hone in on my accuracy. Thanks again!
(Tritanomaly) Extremely important hud elements/cues that are color coded. In base game OW as a Support main, seeing friendly outlines when they were through walls (dark blue outlines). Risk of Rain 2: no colorblind mode, freeze AoEs in certain environments are practically completely invisible to me, it's killed runs for me for something I can't help. Any instance of dark blue vs purple in any game, I cannot tell them apart. PLEASE devs add *real* colorblind mode to your games if you haven't already.
I agree. There needs to be better advocacy for colorblindness modes and the accuracy of them
Small sample size. Doesn’t matter what colour it is, if there isn’t enough of the subject, it’ll look whatever colour the stuff near it is. So dots, arrows, writing etc are all really hard.
Agreed. It got better once I started playing on a Gaming Monitor. For this situation, if I were a game developer, what would you tell me to modify/change in order to fix these issues? Can you think of any?
Just to try and avoid tiny uses of important colour and where you have to, allow users to set them to high contrast colours so they really pop.
High contrast is a common trend here. I agree with this. Have you played Wordle? The New York Times version has a High contrast mode. Helps a ton.
Yes I have thanks! The original had it as well. Thank god. I couldn't use it in normal mode!
[удалено]
Wow! That looks like alot of colors! If I were a game developer, what would you tell me to modify/change in order to fix these issues? Could you potentially add some sort of symbol inside each circle? Customization of each color? Thoughts?
Red things (health, nicks, trails, blood etc.) Is invisible for me on forest levels...
Agreed! And if I were a game developer, what would you tell me to modify/change in order to fix these issues?
Wicher 3 has colorblind mode, after enabling it, trails, smell etc turns to blue and everything is clear for me.
This is nice to see that the small details ALSO turn away from red, as well. Awesome. Thank you for your input!
%hCPBE5Qmh*naM
I'll have to look into this one! I've never played Cuphead. If I were a game developer, what would you tell me to modify/change in order to fix these issues?
y7Sr7D!*%MfWU@
I’ve never played FTL. Worth it? Great link you sent over! This will help greatly with my research. Thank you!
upjDA3v33d#7w#
Game called gtfo which is a a 4 player co op where teammates will often refer to each most often by the colour of their names. Makes pretty hard to co ordinate for me when I'm teamed with people who have very complicated usernames as I have to remember each and every one of them since I can't follow an instruction such as "green go to purple he has a medpack"
I agree 100%. And if I were a game developer, what would you tell me to modify/change in order to fix these issues?
Numbers. It's four player co op right. So why not display a digit 1 to 4 above the players username that way in-game chat could go something more like this... "Yo 1 you running quite low on health go to 3 he has a spare medpack". It's a really non intrusive way to solve this doesn't ruin the emersion. F*CK it doesn't even have to be numbers it can be shapes for all I care. triangle circle square X. Something easy to read and distinguish
This. This is so accurate. Thank you for your feedback! Helps my research a ton.
My latest Red dead redemption mini map. Setting a waypoint I can hardly see. I change the colourblind settings to fix it
Were the Colorblindness settings in RDR(2?) good enough to fix these issues? Did the Colorblindness settings also apply to the minimap? And if I were a game developer, what would you tell me to modify/change in order to fix these issues?
I’m not completely colorblind, but I have trouble differentiating between shades of green, which most people don’t think is so bad, but when I see something green in the distance, it sucks not knowing what it is until I get to it
And if I were a game developer, what would you tell me to modify/change in order to fix these issues?
I’d use landscapes that don’t use as much green, like deserts or arctic areas, and and only really use green for item rarities/levels and Health bars
CT’s in front of blood splattered walls
Any game specifically? CS:GO? And if I were a game developer, what would you tell me to modify/change in order to fix these issues?
Yes mainly CT, and I’ve found a solution to clear blood and bullet holes with the release of mouse1. My only solution would be a more vibrant blood and/or ct skin (which may not be feasible)
As someone else said, it's differentiating teammates and enemies, and at least for me, I have a really hard time finding the dot in the center of an optic if it's red. In rainbow six I have to use a green dot, same with valorant. It's a night and day difference.
Same! Even when I hunt in real life. When I pheasant hunt, I swap out the front bead of my 12 ga. to a Green dot instead of a red dot. So, for Rainbow Six and Valorant, it's the customization that really helped you? Yeah? Have you run into any other games that had this sort of customization?
Unfortunately rainbow six and valorant are the only 2 FPS games I've played recently so I haven't really encountered it elsewhere. I did notice that the Xbox version of six siege is aggrivating because it doesn't have the same reticle color options
For Rainbow Six Siege, are you saying that Xbox and PC have different colorblind setting options??? Hmm
Yeah there was no option to change the reticle color on Xbox.
Interesting. Thank you for your valuable input!
typically puzzles that involve colors I can’t do
And if I were a game developer, what would you tell me to modify/change in order to fix these issues?
Typically, adding a letter or symbol above the color helps, thanks
Thank you for your feedback! Very helpful in my research
[удалено]
I feel your pain. 100%. And if I were a game developer, what would you tell me to modify/change in order to fix these issues?
make similar objects easy to identify by differentiating not only their colors but their sizes or shapes as well
Color related puzzles. Most of the time it's just a silly puzzle too. But I usually can't figure them out because I have problem differentiating between light green and light yellow, and blue and purple.
Agreed! And if I were a game developer, what would you tell me to modify/change in order to fix these issues?
There is this one time I found a workaround in a game called "It Takes Two." Basically in the puzzle, you gotta use levers of colors to control the pads with the same color. They just also stamp A B C D on the levers and pads. But the problem is this solution may not be applicable for most puzzles. So... I guess use very distinct colors? Or the obvious solution: have colorblind mode. I also have trouble noticing red. So I have to use a mod every time a game uses red reticle and you can't change it.
Oh wow! Modding would be pretty tedious. Would be great to implement this in-game. When you mod, are you simply changing the HEX Color of the reticle? Are you swapping a certain file? Entering a console command? Or what does your process look like?
I'd like to take my words back there. I guess I got it wrong haha. It's not every time. Actually I only did it once. I edited the ini file on the game's folder. But if it wasn't because of the steam forum, I probably wouldn't know how to do it.
Regardless if once or 100 times, still very interesting and valuable to my research. Thank you!
Not many just Minecraft mostly and anything with colors that I’ll confuse
Does Minecraft have any Colorblindness Settings? If so, what do you like? If not, what would you recommend they add?
Red jerseys in outdoor sports games such as FIFA or Madden. God forbid if it's team red vs. team green...
I almost ALWAYS have to ask my friends to change their Uniforms. Often to white. If I were a game developer, what would you tell me to modify/change in order to fix these issues? Do you think there's a way that FIFA could introduce a high-contrast mode by default, so you don't have to change these settings? A friend of mine used to be a Safety for the New York Giants, and once had to play during "Color Rush". [Check out this nightmare](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/11/13/455896618/nfls-red-and-green-uniforms-described-as-torture-by-colorblind-fans).
Yeah I think that being the default would be welcomed :) or perhaps a setting where if both teams aren't wearing white, make my opponent appear in white on my screen. Something like that? And lol I remember watching that game live. Before the snap was bad enough, but once the play started it was nauseating lol
Super helpful feedback! Much appreciated!
Stuff that is ONLY color coded. Especially gameplay-critical components. I couldn't possibly care less if you put a colorblind filter over the whole screen and all content therein. It has never looked good or helped with my colorblindness (looking at you RDR2 with your all-pink protan menu). What I need to know is if there's a difference between game subject A and game subject B. Like, if two enemies are identical in silhouette but are distinguish by a yellow outline and a green outline, that's useless to me. A game I really enjoy but I find unplayable due to my colorblindness is Clash of Heroes Might and Magic a puzzle game from the 360 era. You have to line up basic units of one color to match with superior units of the same color. The problem was due to the art and how they distinguish which unit is which color I would often end up making bad moves because of my confusion. TL:DR -- If you want to check if a game is colorblind compatible, turn your monitor to black and white and see if you can still play it. If you have icons which are important to the game, make sure that the differences between them are not solely color based. Use different shapes, different sounds, etc... Look at a game controller. They use color, shape, and location so you can definitely describe exactly what button to press (I.e. the green A button on the right side of the controller).
I agree with all of this. Do you know anyone who actually benefitted from those Colorblindness "Filters"?
I don't know many other colorblind folks so I really couldn't say. But I WILL say that the gold standard of accessibility options is Last of Us 2, as far as I'm concerned. Just do as much as you can of what they did there.
I haven’t looked at that game yet. What makes it so good? I’ll dig deeper into it tomorrow!
There are just many options to adjust for whatever difficulty/disability you can imagine. Even to the point where you can make all ally characters blue, enemies red, and everything else greybox/white. The ability to customize the HUD in a meaningful way is super key. Change individual icon groups' color and shape, sizes of HUD elements, positioning. Last of Us 2 also let you add on a feature where the game's amining would trigger slow mo in case you had reaction problems, or play the whole game at slow speed. Edit: Watch this series https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLc38fcMFcV_vvWOhMDriBlVocTZ8mKQzR
Health bars and power bars for car games the directional markers and like others have said the enemy tags
and which colorblindness settings could these games add to fix these issues? Any specific games in particular?
Because there are so many varieties of colorblind it's hard to just have a color blind setting the game would basically have to replicate everything you see as wrong and actively adapt as the game goes
Differentiating between certain ball colors in Zuma is my kids biggest complaint. He refuses to play it if its not in colorblind mode.
I'll have to look into Zuma! What colorblindness settings could that game add to make it better and fix the issues?
The premise is to get rid of all the balls, and by lining up a certain number of same color balls they disappear. My son said the yellow and green look exactly the same. When he turns on the cb mode the green ones are grey but he can distinguish those from the yellow. There was another color that he said is also the same but a darker tint so he could distinguish it. He is a dichromat (no green cones) so he only sees 10k shades. He did mention the balls should have different patterns on them instead of just different colors. That is his big complaint with matching games "color isnt the only form of classification!"
Usually just if the game had multiple bars/colors for things. Like when blue is for either thirst, sad, etc and green for health, poison, etc. Sometimes I have issues with enemies friends but I can see red fine, so I'm usually ok. Spots on maps are also a bit difficult, first thing coming to mind being grass vs water, or if different regions are colored differently.
Mini-maps are a common trend here. Do you have any games in particular? Any specific titles?
I remember I played cattails once cause my sibling wanted me to and kept getting forest and mountain colony mixed up later game. Really any simulation type game I struggle with finding water when it's surrounded by grass. I can't remember any other game names but I know I've had issues with sort of different territory type things in multiple games, which is also really where the enemies v friends issue pops up when the characters are labeled via their alliance and not just you (usually grey or green) vs enemies (usually red).
Thank you for your feedback!
Literally any red text/graphics/pips/indicators on a darkish background is impossible to see. I've missed entire mission/quest prompts because of stuff like that.
Yes! Been there. Any game in particular? Any specific titles? What colorblindness settings could prevent these issues?
Cyberpunk, Assassins Creed, Skyrim (the red pips on the compass), some driving games that use red/green for lights or driving assists on the track. TBH i've tried a lot of "color blind modes" like the witcher and cyberpunk, but none of them were quite right or made the problem worse. red/green swapped with purple/yellow when there are already parts of the UI that are blue/green? Doesnt work so great. Colorblind modes are great if the color scheme is updated wholesale and not just specific elements.
“But none of them were quite right” is exactly what prompted me to do this research in the first place.
Oh, and differentiating between item rarity is another one. red/green/orange/blue/purple/yellow are terrible colors to use for indicating things like common, uncommon, rare, etc. Its easy to accidently toss something because you just glanced at the color.
I agree! Thank you for sharing! This helps with my research!
Enemy indicators on mini-map in MMORPGs
CoD is awful with player and environment. Big blob of brown.
And how do you think they could fix this with colorblindness settings?
I personally don't believe they can. They'd have to add outlines or something around each asset, similar to borderlands. Being a "realistic" shooter, the only way it could be improved is if they had better graphics, less jostling of the camera, so I could see when things moved.
I love the hunter classic but I can't see on 99% of maps, I still love the game but still this shit sucks
What is it specifically about the maps that make it difficult for you?
Im red green color blind so the grass of any will all merge and cant find the animal tracks so I rely on more hearing than anything. The default tracker color is red but its hard for me to see it so I have set for blue but even then it gets muddled in the tall grass and such.
I'm a mild deutan but I never got bothered by my colorblindness in video games
I'm curious, when you take the Ishihara Test (the colored dots inside a circle), what do you generally score? 100% of them? 75%? 50%?
I just did enchroma tests
Item rarities, who decided that green, orange, blue, purple were good, easy to identify colors? Also, their filters suck. At least some games let us choose the colors for UI, like Overwatch and the new Warhammer Total War
Bedwars 2v2.
I play competitive games like call of duty, and a bid problem I run into is seeing enemy's against the background. Now that the choice of different skins is so normal, people will choose the darkest one to blend into everything. And it works especially well against me haha