Saturday, 23 June 2012

The Many Colours of EVE Online

I can't be the only one for certain but I am blighted by a really frustrating problem when playing EVE Online. Now, please don't get me wrong, it isn't just EVE that I have this issue with as it's the same with many games.

So, what is this annoying problem then?

Colour blindness. Can you see the number 74 in the picture above? If you can't then you're colour blind too most likely. Generally I find that it is an ailment which is very much misunderstood by many. Typically with most people assuming that I cannot see colour at all and go through life in grey scale. Please be reassured that is not the case,  can see colours, even the ones I have issue with it's just that what I see as red f example you may not and certain colours I may not be able to pick out amongst others.

Personally I am colour blind to red & green like I think 8% of the male populace.

How does this affect my game play, well have a quick think. How many items or events happen in red or green in EVE? Here's some quick-fire examples:

  • We all love shooting those red crosses don't we? Well I struggle to see them, especially when the brackets appear red around them to indicate they have opened fire.
  • Probing, Trying to find that red box/dot that is a probe hit. Horribly horribly difficult.
  • Overheating, totally impossible o see heat damage.
That's just a few quick examples. I wonder if CCP can do something simple to help by giving us access to colour options?

4 comments:

  1. I'm colour blind and it makes flying ecm boats hilariously hard. Normally people say 'green background for gallente, blue caldari, red minmatar, gold amarr'. I cannot tell the difference between the caldari and gallente backgrounds and the minmatar and amarr backgrounds. So I use the wrong jammers and die :)

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  2. Mine isn't as severe, but I hear you. I appreciate that Eve seems to have a lot of customization in the UI. As a relative newb I haven't dug into all the overview tweaks, but can you use some of the stronger contrast and symbols to set up your own pattern you can follow?

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  3. Hey I made a post on the EVE forums just a few days ago about the same subject, feel free to go chip in and maybe they will do something about it?

    https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1545872#post1545872

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  4. Hopefully we can get some added functionality that supports this :)

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