Fifteen percent of the human male population is "color-blind"

Shadowshire

and evidently the TESO development managers don't have a clue. For example, most commonly I see the color "green" as either red, orange, or yellow -- or sometimes as gray or brown (e.g., khaki or beige). The only shade/hue/whatever of "green" that I can usually see as "green" is "apple green" -- usually motor vehicles painted with that color. But there are several other variations of "color vision deficiency".

While playing TESO, for example, I cannot distinguish the colors for the qualities of objects -- "Legendary" is the same color as "Fine", and "Epic" is easily mistaken for "Superior". At least two add-ons available from ESOU.com address this oversight in TESO. One is Quality Color Blind, and the other is No Green Incap. Each is helpful, but address the use of color for a specific feature of the game. What we need is a universal solution.

Several years ago, Blizzard Entertainment implemented a "colorblindshader" feature in World of Warcraft. Personally, I found it to be quite effective. With it, the player can specify a setting, according to which of the eight varieties of color-blindness which the player has inherited. Those varieties are discussed extensively in an article on Wikipedia: Color blindness

Enjoy!

OP post-edit: Thank all of you for your interest in this subject.

What everyone has overlooked, of course, is the obvious solution. Namely, do not use the color green to distinguish important data about objects in the game world -- whether it is the quality of a piece of gear, or whether an AoE is hostile (injurious) or friendly (healing). Unfortunately, in my experience, it rarely (if ever) occurs to members of software design and development teams to forego using the color green to signify an important attribute of any object in the game world -- if only because they do not see it as a problem.

Which is to say, it doesn't matter whether plants in the game world are green, unless I must distinguish a green plant from a red, an orange, or a yellow one in order to choose whether to harvest the plant for food or as an alchemy reagent. It does not matter whether a character is equipped with gear which has green colors unless the color green per se distinguishes that character as an enemy, as a neutral party, or as friend and/or ally.

We don't need expensive adaptive eyewear, retro-fitted filters, or "shaders". What we need is more awareness of the potential for problems in the design of the game by using the color greeen to identify the attributes of objects, so that the ensuing problems can be avoided or mitigated.

As to whether 15% of the (human) male population is "color-blind", as far as I know, that is the most commonly accepted estimate. It is an ancient recessive trait on the X chromosome which has survived, because "color-blind" men have 15 - 30% more rod cells in the retina than men with normal color vision. That gives them a survival advantage in two respects. One is significantly better night vision. The other is that camoflage works by blurring the "edges" of a creature or object. The extra rod cells increase the ability of a color-blind man to see the "edges" of everything, regardless of camoflage. So which man is most likely to see a deer standing in a patch of brush? Which man is most likely to see a bear sitting on its haunches in the deep shadow of a tree cast by moonlight? (I've been there, done that. )

Again, thank you for your positive contribution to this discussion.

Acrolas

Shadowshire wrote: »

and evidently the TESO development managers don't have a clue.

"Combat Cue customization has been added to game with Update 15, Horns of the Reach. You can change this in the in-game Settings, allowing you to customize the colors associated with the different in-game combat cues. This setting will be especially useful to those players who have trouble identifying certain colors in game, but anybody can edit and customize the combat cues however they see fit, including color and brightness for both friendly and enemy indicators."

https://help.elderscrollsonline.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/22870/~/how-do-i-change-the-color-of-the-combat-cues




If you want a solution for your specific eyesight, talk to EnChroma. There is no universal solution. Any correction option is going to help some people and hinder others:

Improvements needed to colorblind mode (applies to WOW too):
https://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20744974525

weedgenius

What about the non-human males? Doesn't anybody care about them?

Chaos2088

Yeah I am colour blind as well, I often get Superior and Epic items mixed up. Epic appears darker to me so only way I can pin point it. I did love when they allowed us to change the colour of bad aoe to anything we want....could not see the bad red or good green for the life of me half the time.....people in dungeons would shout at me. ...(don't be sad for me I am awesome)

I have both red and green cells missing, so often get quiet a few colours mixed up. But hey it is what it is.....improvise adapt overcome....and all that!

DanteYoda

Acrolas wrote: »

Shadowshire wrote: »

and evidently the TESO development managers don't have a clue.

"Combat Cue customization has been added to game with Update 15, Horns of the Reach. You can change this in the in-game Settings, allowing you to customize the colors associated with the different in-game combat cues. This setting will be especially useful to those players who have trouble identifying certain colors in game, but anybody can edit and customize the combat cues however they see fit, including color and brightness for both friendly and enemy indicators."

https://help.elderscrollsonline.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/22870/~/how-do-i-change-the-color-of-the-combat-cues




If you want a solution for your specific eyesight, talk to EnChroma. There is no universal solution. Any correction option is going to help some people and hinder others:

Improvements needed to colorblind mode (applies to WOW too):
https://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20744974525

That does not change the weapon colors...

brandonv516

My only problem is BGs when I am the purple team. I can't distinguish the green from the orange team.

Teammates will be like "focus the orange player!" and it's one of those moments I feel handicapped.

runagate

Shadowshire wrote: »

Personally, I found it to be quite effective. With it, the player can specify a setting, according to which of the eight varieties of color-blindness which the player has inherited. Those varieties are discussed extensively in an article on Wikipedia: Color blindness

Enjoy!

This has been asked for for forever now and I'm surprised it wasn't included from the start.

I must be emphasis-blind, though, as I see the above paragraph as though the word "inherited" as bolded for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

Acrolas

DanteYoda wrote: »

That does not change the weapon colors...

OP led with a blanket attack, so I demonstrated precedent that ZOS has indeed offered some specific assistance for color deficiency.

Item quality colors should not change because Green, Blue, Purple, and Gold are still a more consistent casual reference vocabulary than Fine, Superior, Epic, and Legendary. Adding the tier name to an item description could be helpful in bridging the familiarity between quality and reference color.

As OP describes some degree of Deuteranopia, which affects around 1% of the male population, corrective eyewear remains the best solution as that eyewear can be worn while using any product and during any activity.

Eiagra

Related interesting video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrqdU4cZaLw&t=0s

Yakidafi

weedgenius wrote: »

What about the non-human males? Doesn't anybody care about them?

Wait, what?

silvermistktralasub17_ESO

As an off note, I not too long ago discovered that I have a bit of color-blindness to me, mostly discovered when I was playing with some of Windows filters, and found out that the game looked more 'real' with one of the filters on. If you are on a windows machine, you can go and look at these through: all settings, ease of access, color filters. they made quite a bit of difference to me, even though I hadn't realized that I had any kind of color blindness before. But then again, for many, many years, no one realized that visual snow was a thing. I spent years trying to explain to people that I see in pixels, no matter what the lighting. Now, at least, science is beginning to study the phenomena.

@Alassirana

SneakyBo, ExSO_Gold, Demure Dragon Dealings

DanteYoda

Yakidafi wrote: »

weedgenius wrote: »

What about the non-human males? Doesn't anybody care about them?

Wait, what?

Hes talking about those Attack Helicopters again..

zeroIndex

Acrolas wrote: »

... corrective eyewear remains the best solution as that eyewear can be worn while using any product and during any activity.

So if I give you my paypal link are you going to spot the 500 bucks for the glasses then? I don't have that kind of money laying around and you talk about the glasses so casually that you must be able to afford that kind of luxury.

Acrolas wrote: »

Combat Cue customization has been added to game with Update 15, Horns of the Reach. You can change this in the in-game Settings, allowing you to customize the colors associated with the different in-game combat cues. This setting will be especially useful to those players who have trouble identifying certain colors in game, but anybody can edit and customize the combat cues however they see fit, including color and brightness for both friendly and enemy indicators

There is no universal solution. Any correction option is going to help some people and hinder others:

The combat cues are a nice addition for helping those with a color deficiency, but thats not the only thing in the game that uses colors. Having an option to change the colors of the items - banked / bagged / slotted inventory - should be a feature of the base game. It doesn't have to change for everyone, but instead ( get this ) be an option you select in the settings. Settings are for individual use. Do you play at the same resolution that I play at? Use the same distance, particles, shading, etc? There would be menu options like Default, Deuteranopia, Tritanopia, and whatever else. It's not a one color fits all and force people to accept it kinda thing.

max_only

DanteYoda wrote: »

Yakidafi wrote: »

weedgenius wrote: »

What about the non-human males? Doesn't anybody care about them?

Wait, what?

Hes talking about those Attack Helicopters again..

There’s always one.

In this case you can put away your phobias because he was talking about species: “non human”, not gender. But people gotta go with the super original “I identify as Apache attack helicopter huehuehuehue” :eyeroll

To OP, even without color blindness I have trouble distinguishing item quality. I always double check the descriptors are the same when doing writs. Like it asks for epic weapon, in my head I don’t immediately thing purple so I double and triple check with the craft menu to be sure I chose the right thing. I don’t know how they can make it more accessible than it already is, maybe a sound cue over when rolled over? I tend to use sound cues a lot in this game.

nemvar

max_only wrote: »

DanteYoda wrote: »

Yakidafi wrote: »

weedgenius wrote: »

What about the non-human males? Doesn't anybody care about them?

Wait, what?

Hes talking about those Attack Helicopters again..

There’s always one.

In this case you can put away your phobias because he was talking about species: “non human”, not gender. But people gotta go with the super original “I identify as Apache attack helicopter huehuehuehue” :eyeroll

To OP, even without color blindness I have trouble distinguishing item quality. I always double check the descriptors are the same when doing writs. Like it asks for epic weapon, in my head I don’t immediately thing purple so I double and triple check with the craft menu to be sure I chose the right thing. I don’t know how they can make it more accessible than it already is, maybe a sound cue over when rolled over? I tend to use sound cues a lot in this game.

To play devils advocate: Isn't it a bit weird that the title is specifically mentions 'human'. You would think it would be pretty obvious. After all, nobody really cares if a dog can see the difference between tempering alloys and grain solvent.

It's just such an odd choice of words.

As for OP: Fully support integrating colourblind options into the game. But I really hope the go the full way and give us full control of all the colours in the game. I don't want to see just some templates made by ZOS but rather be able to fully costumize ALL the colours myself.

weedgenius

nemvar wrote: »

max_only wrote: »

DanteYoda wrote: »

Yakidafi wrote: »

weedgenius wrote: »

What about the non-human males? Doesn't anybody care about them?

Wait, what?

Hes talking about those Attack Helicopters again..

There’s always one.

In this case you can put away your phobias because he was talking about species: “non human”, not gender. But people gotta go with the super original “I identify as Apache attack helicopter huehuehuehue” :eyeroll

To OP, even without color blindness I have trouble distinguishing item quality. I always double check the descriptors are the same when doing writs. Like it asks for epic weapon, in my head I don’t immediately thing purple so I double and triple check with the craft menu to be sure I chose the right thing. I don’t know how they can make it more accessible than it already is, maybe a sound cue over when rolled over? I tend to use sound cues a lot in this game.

To play devils advocate: Isn't it a bit weird that the title is specifically mentions 'human'. You would think it would be pretty obvious. After all, nobody really cares if a dog can see the difference between tempering alloys and grain solvent.

It's just such an odd choice of words.

That's the only reason I pointed it out, I wasn't trying to make any sort of statement about anything other than it was funny that OP specified "human males" as if cats and dogs are playing this game

Recremen

It's definitely something the whole industry needs to work on. You'd think there'd be some kind of industry standard at this point to address such a common problem! At least it's clear that they're willing to work on it, as shown by the customizable damage indicators. Let them know some of your suggestions! For example, would a tooltip help for equipment quality issues?

Yakidafi

weedgenius wrote: »

nemvar wrote: »

max_only wrote: »

DanteYoda wrote: »

Yakidafi wrote: »

weedgenius wrote: »

What about the non-human males? Doesn't anybody care about them?

Wait, what?

Hes talking about those Attack Helicopters again..

There’s always one.

In this case you can put away your phobias because he was talking about species: “non human”, not gender. But people gotta go with the super original “I identify as Apache attack helicopter huehuehuehue” :eyeroll

To OP, even without color blindness I have trouble distinguishing item quality. I always double check the descriptors are the same when doing writs. Like it asks for epic weapon, in my head I don’t immediately thing purple so I double and triple check with the craft menu to be sure I chose the right thing. I don’t know how they can make it more accessible than it already is, maybe a sound cue over when rolled over? I tend to use sound cues a lot in this game.

To play devils advocate: Isn't it a bit weird that the title is specifically mentions 'human'. You would think it would be pretty obvious. After all, nobody really cares if a dog can see the difference between tempering alloys and grain solvent.

It's just such an odd choice of words.

That's the only reason I pointed it out, I wasn't trying to make any sort of statement about anything other than it was funny that OP specified "human males" as if cats and dogs are playing this game

I thought you were thinking of females at first, but then read again and it said "non human males", like what? Oo

VaranisArano

weedgenius wrote: »

nemvar wrote: »

max_only wrote: »

DanteYoda wrote: »

Yakidafi wrote: »

weedgenius wrote: »

What about the non-human males? Doesn't anybody care about them?

Wait, what?

Hes talking about those Attack Helicopters again..

There’s always one.

In this case you can put away your phobias because he was talking about species: “non human”, not gender. But people gotta go with the super original “I identify as Apache attack helicopter huehuehuehue” :eyeroll

To OP, even without color blindness I have trouble distinguishing item quality. I always double check the descriptors are the same when doing writs. Like it asks for epic weapon, in my head I don’t immediately thing purple so I double and triple check with the craft menu to be sure I chose the right thing. I don’t know how they can make it more accessible than it already is, maybe a sound cue over when rolled over? I tend to use sound cues a lot in this game.

To play devils advocate: Isn't it a bit weird that the title is specifically mentions 'human'. You would think it would be pretty obvious. After all, nobody really cares if a dog can see the difference between tempering alloys and grain solvent.

It's just such an odd choice of words.

That's the only reason I pointed it out, I wasn't trying to make any sort of statement about anything other than it was funny that OP specified "human males" as if cats and dogs are playing this game

*waits for the Argonian, Khajiit, and Met roleplayers to complain about discrimation*

Saturn

Shadowshire wrote: »

and evidently the TESO development managers don't have a clue. For example, most commonly I see the color "green" as either red, orange, or yellow -- or sometimes as gray or brown (e.g., khaki or beige). The only shade/hue/whatever of "green" that I can usually see as "green" is "apple green" -- usually motor vehicles painted with that color. But there are several other variations of "color vision deficiency".

While playing TESO, for example, I cannot distinguish the colors for the qualities of objects -- "Legendary" is the same color as "Fine", and "Epic" is easily mistaken for "Superior". At least two add-ons available from ESOU.com address this oversight in TESO. One is Quality Color Blind, and the other is No Green Incap. Each is helpful, but address the use of color for a specific feature of the game. What we need is a universal solution.

Several years ago, Blizzard Entertainment implemented a "colorblindshader" feature in World of Warcraft. Personally, I found it to be quite effective. With it, the player can specify a setting, according to which of the eight varieties of color-blindness which the player has inherited. Those varieties are discussed extensively in an article on Wikipedia: Color blindness

Enjoy!

It took ZOS exactly how long before they added any kind of improvement to help colour blind people? They didn't care about their consumers enough to anticipate this issue and implement it at launch, like pretty much all other AAA titles do, and even after a lot of feedback from colour blind people, it still took them almost 4 years to implement. MMOs are usually always about inclusivity and accessibility, but ZOS don't really have that as their focus. I don't get why they even give us the ability to submit feedback, since they really only listen to outrage on the forum, and don't seem to employ any kind of logical thinking. Like, why is it so hard to look at what other games do right and simply adapt to that, or learn from it, instead of stubbornly wanting to reinvent the wheel and coming up with some wonky-ass *** that doesn't even work right.

Valrien

Saturn wrote: »

Shadowshire wrote: »

and evidently the TESO development managers don't have a clue. For example, most commonly I see the color "green" as either red, orange, or yellow -- or sometimes as gray or brown (e.g., khaki or beige). The only shade/hue/whatever of "green" that I can usually see as "green" is "apple green" -- usually motor vehicles painted with that color. But there are several other variations of "color vision deficiency".

While playing TESO, for example, I cannot distinguish the colors for the qualities of objects -- "Legendary" is the same color as "Fine", and "Epic" is easily mistaken for "Superior". At least two add-ons available from ESOU.com address this oversight in TESO. One is Quality Color Blind, and the other is No Green Incap. Each is helpful, but address the use of color for a specific feature of the game. What we need is a universal solution.

Several years ago, Blizzard Entertainment implemented a "colorblindshader" feature in World of Warcraft. Personally, I found it to be quite effective. With it, the player can specify a setting, according to which of the eight varieties of color-blindness which the player has inherited. Those varieties are discussed extensively in an article on Wikipedia: Color blindness

Enjoy!

It took ZOS exactly how long before they added any kind of improvement to help colour blind people? They didn't care about their consumers enough to anticipate this issue and implement it at launch, like pretty much all other AAA titles do, and even after a lot of feedback from colour blind people, it still took them almost 4 years to implement. MMOs are usually always about inclusivity and accessibility, but ZOS don't really have that as their focus. I don't get why they even give us the ability to submit feedback, since they really only listen to outrage on the forum, and don't seem to employ any kind of logical thinking. Like, why is it so hard to look at what other games do right and simply adapt to that, or learn from it, instead of stubbornly wanting to reinvent the wheel and coming up with some wonky-ass *** that doesn't even work right.

Oversight = "I hate the consumer"

JinMori

15% seem a bit much to be honest.

Hokiewa

JinMori wrote: »

15% seem a bit much to be honest.

It is too high. It's about 8%, or 1 in 12.5 men. Assuming human lol

Itacira

Don't women have color blindness????

VaranisArano

Itacira wrote: »

Don't women have color blindness????

Yes, but the genes causing the more common forms are on the X chromosome. Women have 2 copies of that, making them far more likely than men to have the functional genes.

https://nei.nih.gov/health/color_blindness/facts_about

OrphanHelgen

I am colorblind and totally agree as well as having multiple more points. ESO is not good with this, I can't see any alchemy stuff or almost no nodes to pick up. Battleground is a real struggle, I don't see the difference of the enemy teams, and using the map is awful. I don't know if we own the flag or not. Yes I can pay attention to the icon and stuff, but those who are not colorblind have no idea how easy they have it compared to us.

Itacira

@VaranisArano Oh, interesting !

Seems a bit silly to specify "males" in the original post then since women can be color blind too. The more the, well, not necessarily the merrier, but definitely the more you weigh in this kind of discussions. Which are necessary. There definitely should be a color blind mode.

ZeroXFF

It's only 8%, not 15%. http://www.colourblindawareness.org/colour-blindness/

Still a lot, but if you're going blow the numbers up by a factor of 2 I'll call it fake news.

On topic though... To address the problem, the game needs a colorblind mode that would put additional info in form of text on the screen. There are however people who already thought of things like that ( http://www.esoui.com/downloads/info1680-QualityColorBlind.html ), so there are solutions to that already.

WhiteCoatSyndrome

+1 support. If you use colors as an indicator for something you're supposed to have a secondary indication as well (EX: different shape) for just this reason. It's basic UI.

Shadowshire

Itacira wrote: »

Don't women have color blindness????

Yes, about one woman in 254 sees only black, white, shades of gray, and sometimes a few hues of blue. This is because the color-blind trait is recessive and on the X chromosome. Only a girl whose father is red-green or yellow-green color-blind and whose mother's father is also red-green or yellow-green color-blind is at risk of having the recessive trait on both X chromosomes. If she has one normal X with the dominant trait from her mother or father, then the recessive color-blind trait will not be expressed.

Frankly, I doubt that many color-blind women are playing TESO or any similar MMORPG. But there are millions of players of both sexes, so there might be a few.

Auldjohn

Acrolas wrote: »

DanteYoda wrote: »

That does not change the weapon colors...

OP led with a blanket attack, so I demonstrated precedent that ZOS has indeed offered some specific assistance for color deficiency.

Item quality colors should not change because Green, Blue, Purple, and Gold are still a more consistent casual reference vocabulary than Fine, Superior, Epic, and Legendary. Adding the tier name to an item description could be helpful in bridging the familiarity between quality and reference color.

As OP describes some degree of Deuteranopia, which affects around 1% of the male population, corrective eyewear remains the best solution as that eyewear can be worn while using any product and during any activity.

There is no corrective eyewear solution for either Protonopia or Deutonpia, according to both my Opthalmologist and Retinologist, as well as my own research.

@Shadowspire correctly reported that 15% of the male population has inherited Color Blindness. ZOS and other Developers should address this as they have for other game features that interest 15% of the player base.