[request] Colorblind - another color scheme
Since I have Daltonism (red-green color blindness) I have trouble distinguishing ally and enemy units. I can only guess by their positioning or the player name on hero unit. From what I understand, for other people it is quite easy to distinguish units by glance.
Would you consider adding an option for another color scheme? For example making all allies the same color as own units (the same way as in replay) or switching own units color with ally unit color. Even making the ally units HP bars the same color as own units would be huge help.
Comments
This should be on top priority.
Agree, competitive games should have this kind of accessibility features.
As an anecdote, I'm not daltonic but I usually end up using Colorblind mode in many games because I don't like seeing too much green
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Musings and Suggestions for Colourblind Mode
My brother and I are both colourblind and have been playing games and discussing colourblind settings since we were small, neither of us have very strong colour blindness and obviously colourblindness comes in a lot of different forms so my experience will not always be the same as others but red - green colour blindness is the most common form and so hopefully this will be useful.
How I experience colour blindness
For me colourblindness is not having certain colours that you can't see at all, it is more like a colour dyslexia. If I stare at a colour hard enough and for long enough I can normally figure out what it is but if I only get a glimpse of a colour, or if there is only a small amount of it/ it is far away I have great difficulty telling what it is. Obviously this is a problem while playing games as if you see units you need to instantly know whose they are and if an ability is coming towards you you don't have time to figure out whose it is. I also have particular problems with colours of similar shades, particularly very pale shades or very dark shades. However I find I can see the difference between shades more easily than the difference in some colours. Colours can also appear to change in different lighting or in certain situations depending on what they are surrounded by, all of these must be considered for a colorblind mode.
The best examples of colourblind settings
Various games have done various things with their colourblind modes, I will try to collect all my favourite bits here. Overall I think my best experience with colourblind settings has been SC2, specifically the enhanced team colours settings (previously it was a mod I think). This is great because it means the team colour takes up a large amount of the unit and it is also made brighter, almost so it is glowing. This is singly a lot more useful than changing colours as larger amounts of brighter colours are so much easier to distinguish at a glance. In terms of actual colours the main ones to avoid are red/green, green/yellow, yellow/orange and orange/red. Basically any colours next to each other on a colour spectrum. Personally I like fairly pale blue for self, fairly dark purple for allies and red for enemies. Although blue and purple can be hard to distinguish by having very different shades it makes these colours easy to distinguish. Differing shades are also important for the minimap, when looking at small amounts of colours I can distinguish shades much better than colour. An approach I like for colour schemes that is extremely inclusive for all kinds of colourblindness is the option to customise the colours for ally, enemy and self; Because colourblindness is so varied I think this is the easiest way to cater to everyone. Overwatch is an example of how a good colourblind menu should look, they have preset colours for the main kinds of colourblindness and also the option to customise. Unfortunately the preset colours chosen were worse than the defaults so if this is the route take the colour presets would need to be improved.
Conclusion
Tl;dr Differing shades and large amounts and brightness of colour are as important as colour choices, Customisable colours are the easiest way to cater to everyone as colourblindness is so varied.
But the most important thing is to test the settings on as many colour blind people as possible as they are the only ones who can tell you if they are helping as intended.
Actually I didn't find the Overwatch system much useful. I tried to fiddle with the settings, but the "perceived color difference" between ally and party member was always much bigger then between enemy and ally. I actually liked the ally/party/enemy colors from other color blindness type filter (blue one I think), but with that on, the entire game color scheme was altered and the texture and environment looked different and bad.
After that experience I would recommend to keep it simple and only change colors on relevant units and GUI elements (HP bars, spell circles), instead of doing color filter on entire game screen.
Is it silly to ask, would changing brightness on screen help, like a bit?
Edit reason: it is silly, nvm move along
A colorblind mode will definitely happen at some point, no exact ETA yet but it's on our list.
Suggestions are great!