Guild Wars 2 and accessibility

[Adotiln Urthadar.1823]

With a new expansion comes lots of new players, and the return of old ones. While End of Dragons is undoubtedly great, conversations with friends and family have brought to mind the ways that Guild Wars 2 is still failing to accommodate players with various disabilities. Below are a few examples that have been in the game basically since launch. While this was par for the course when GW2 was released, it feels like it's falling behind when it is getting major releases in 2022 and is still full of issues.

 

Motion Sickness

I don't know how widespread this is, but I've got the impression that more people are having issues with motion sickness in this expansion than previous ones. With the game taking control of your camera much more often, it feels like this is causing issues for some people. Similarly, my partner finds the way the login screen shifts as you move the mouse to be actively nausea-inducing, to the extent that they have found themself trying to select characters as soon as they can before the background can load in. A real shame considering how gorgeous it is! 

 

Visual Processing

This is something that has got worse over time. The PoF era in particular was in love with filling the screen with glowing or flashing visual effects. It's often stated that visual clutter is a problem in this game, but even aside from that a lot of the effects being used make it difficult for some players - I know a few experienced raiders who find wing 7 in particular difficult to look at in times with its heavy use of brandstorm effects, and in particular the way that the floor tiles appear and disappear between phases at Adina.

Some of the new skill animations don't seem properly affected by skill LoD, and there are a multitude of existing effects that cannot be consistently toned down, even with LoD and postprocessing options.

And partly related - I've also heard people say they find tracking the fishing bar quite difficult, sometimes even inducing motion sickness, which definitely ruins the relaxing gameplay typically associated with fishing.

 

Colour-blindness

Frankly, the game is appalling for colour-blind people. I think every single person I know with colour-blindness has had some issue with seeing parts of the game, so it's definitely widespread. I've had some raid encounters where success and failure basically comes down to "Let's hope the colour-blind player doesn't get this mechanic"

 

Audio

While audio cues are great, there are times when an audio cue is the ONLY good cue that is provided. Additionally, there are no proper subtitles in the game, and not all dialogue appears in the chat box, forcing you to read a small stylised box floating over someone's head that may even be in motion. In EoD there are a few cutscenes where there is dialogue, but no subtitles.

 

UI

Not a lot of detail needed, simply that having an almost totally-uncustomisable UI prevents players from making adjustments that they may need to play the game properly.

 

Sustain

This one is perhaps less obvious, but the recent (much-needed) nerf to battle scars seems to have brought with it a game-wide reduction in sustain traits (and Tormenting Runes). To the best of my knowledge, none of these traits (except battle scars) was used or causing problems in high-level PvE, PvP or WvW, and many of them were on classes that were otherwise pretty weak. I can see the argument that these traits were too powerful, but they were also an incredible tool for players who have slower reactions or limited mobility, who otherwise may not be able to avoid a lot of the damage the game throws at you. This change will have made the game significantly harder for such players, just because some other players were able to solo content too easily? 

 

 

I bring this up in part because I know there are people at Arenanet who care about accessibility, and it is a disappointment that such a wonderful game is continuing to fail to accommodate large groups of people. 

[Lyssia.4637]

7 minutes ago, Adotiln Urthadar.1823 said:

Motion Sickness

I don't know how widespread this is either, but I do have this problem.  From my perspective, EoD itself isn't significantly worse than the other expansions for the most part, and the things that bother me elsewhere do continue to bother me here.  BUT, the parts that are worse are MUCH worse.  Some things can be avoided; I simply walked away from the computer during a certain tour on a moving platform.  But the log-in screen is brutal - moving the camera as you move your mouse is the worst, nastiest, and most horrible thing anyone could do to someone with motion sickness - and having to take control of the Jade bot is equally vicious.  Weight of the World, in particular, flattened me.  More than 24 hours later, after failing the mission, I'm still coping with the aftereffects.

 

I try to understand that devs, developers, artists and programmers may not have the same problem I do, and take the things that bother me in stride.  But logging in IS a significant problem now, and I can't simply skip or avoid it like I can parts of the story or using the jade bot.  It significantly lowers the amount of time I can play and what I can do.  Whoever created that screen, I want you to know: I hate your guts. 

[sewenewes.4176]

I have expressed my views on this in the past so not much point repeating myself. Arenanet seems to have little interest in accessibility and they rarely make changes to help people with handicaps. The usual suspects will likely come into this thread soon enough to tell us that we don't need to be accommodated and video games are a luxury, not a human right. No one has ever claimed that game developers have an obligation to accommodate anyone but some individuals are so hellbent on defending companies they develop a parasocial relationship with that they tend to bark up the wrong tree and not notice nor care.

 

I moved on to spend more time and my disposable income in games where I'm not a burden to the developers but I wish you good luck with the thread.

[Infusion.7149]

Maybe turning off motion blur will help with motion sickness as well as disabling post processing and using the "Effect LOD" setting. Hope that helps a bit.

[Lyssia.4637]

12 minutes ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Maybe turning off motion blur will help with motion sickness as well as disabling post processing and using the "Effect LOD" setting. Hope that helps a bit.

Yes, I have done those things, and really appreciate the reminder to check as sometimes, for whatever reason, they get reset after updates.  The big problem with the log-in screen is the "pull" towards wherever your mouse moves.  Hopefully, they'll add a setting that will change that as well eventually.

[KurokouNekoki.7891]

1 hour ago, Adotiln Urthadar.1823 said:

Colour-blindness

Have been asking this for years by now, it is in the work, but at such of a slow pace that we probably just going to ditch the game by now. ANet limitation with 3rd party application makes solving this in our own purely impossible, meanswhile our enjoyment of the game suffers a load while we wait for the options to be "officially" available.

It made DRMs unbearabe, it locks some Raids Encounter "Slothasaur as the biggest example".
And then the intensity just augment with all the visual clutter.

I am a Deutan (cannot see Greens (which appears as Red to me)) and there is so much red right in my face in Cantha that I litterally was sick and outted my dinner 3 times by now...

Community are like, just go buy a 600$+ pair of glasses. Like yeah fun guys, hope you also end up with a condition that heavily impede your performance and enjoyment, and understanding how much this reply can make you feels. We never asked to have that sort of conditions but here we are.

People has praise GW2 for its achievements and that's fine... but I'll be honest in the accessibility criteria it is far far far behind.

Edited March 4, 2022 by KurokouNekoki.7891

[Tet.5032]

Thank god I haven't spent any more money on this game, the motion sickness is absolutely disgusting.

It's 2022 and developers still haven't figured it out yet? I've seen some posts reporting motion sickness as far as 2017 or even earlier. I'm not spending a minute on this game again since there are competitor games who doesn't have these problems in any shape or form.

Have fun to those people who enjoy it.

Edited April 5, 2022 by Tet.5032

[Grahckheuhl.7549]

On 3/4/2022 at 1:48 PM, Lyssia.4637 said:

Yes, I have done those things, and really appreciate the reminder to check as sometimes, for whatever reason, they get reset after updates.  The big problem with the log-in screen is the "pull" towards wherever your mouse moves.  Hopefully, they'll add a setting that will change that as well eventually.

 

first, i totally agree that we need better options to help out people who suffer from these types of issues. i will however mention that you don't need to move your mouse on the character select screen if it gives you motion sickness; you can navigate character select with the arrow keys and enter.

[standardFoe.2983]

My own personal wish for accessibility is a difficulty slider for the story and dungeons since it's nearly impossible to form groups for older content. Before anyone decides that I must be ignorant in some way on game mechanics, just don't. I've been playing for about 8 years, have several full builds, understand defiance bars, know what a combo skill is, how to dodge AoE, am capable of changing my settings and actually enjoy that GW2 is a complicated and challenging game.

But I have a chronic illness that on top of the visual and aural sensitivities makes me tired and weak, this leads to me being unable to keep up with other active players. It takes me a lot longer to learn fight mechanics because I have to take a lot of breaks which makes it hard to keep groups together.  My illness has made me a recluse irl and I spend most of my online gaming without making lasting friendships. I'm not saying this for pity invites, it is just the way life ends up for some people and am already in an awesome guild.

For me HoT and LWS3 are the most engaging and re-playable maps since events are on short reliable timers and only require in-game chat for coordination, not to mention the rewards continue be lucrative. Due to this EoD is a bit of a disappointment for me, mostly because I didn't have a problem with how GW2 kept the casualness of open world and the rigidness of instanced content separate with the earlier releases.

Although I am tentatively excited about the upcoming changes to WvW which is a game mode I really enjoy but it needs updating.

I haven't seen as much discussion in the community about accessibility in a while and it would be wonderful if the developers to notice and actually implement changes. But considering they never have in the past I won't hold my breath.

Edited April 6, 2022 by standardFoe.2983
spelling

[Cait Sith.4650]

Thank you for creating this topic and I sincerely hope ArenaNet provides changes to all of the aspects you mentioned, to make the game more accessible to everyone.

[Rasimir.6239]

16 hours ago, Tet.5032 said:

It's 2022 and developers still haven't figured it out yet? I've seen some posts reporting motion sickness as far as 2017 or even earlier. I'm not spending a minute on this game again since there are competitor games who doesn't have these problems in any shape or form.

To be fair, motion sickness from games has been an issue way further back than any gw title. I remember first being hit with it badly when rpg games moved to seamless 3d worlds back in the 90s. I remember looking forward to games like Ultima Underworld, Wizardry 8, or later on Elder Scrolls Oblivion, and never getting past the tutorial in any of those games because the graphics would make me violently sick.

 

With GW2 I've had significant problems when they introduced mounts back with the release of PoF, but have found the settings that agree with me best (and in one case the skin ... the turtle skin is the only skimmer I can safely use for some reason). I remember lots of complaints back then from different people (that all were affected slightly differently). My impression actually was that complaints were worse back then than they are with EoD, but I have no hard data to decide which of the two expansions really has more problems with motion sickness.

 

I did find out that some of it is a question of getting used to how your mouse/keyboard input relates to the movement of your character on screen. I know I have considerably worse problems with motion sickness when playing either Elder Scrolls Online or Genshin Impact, unless I have a stretch where I play one of those games almost exclusively. I find that in that case the time I can play without problems slowly increases, and getting back into GW2 then is more difficult. I do however get back into GW2 in a couple of days, which I suspect is just due to the fact that I've played this game so much over the last decade that my brain has gotten used to its movement a lot more than any of the other games I try.

 

As far as "developers figuring this out", you might as well say "it's 2022, and car manufacturers still haven't figured out how to build a car that doesn't make people motion sick". The human brain is a complicated, highly individual thing, and "making video games motion-sickness proof", while still maintaining somewhat modern graphics, is next to impossible. And to be honest, while there are plenty of us affeccted by this issue, we are likely still a tiny minority among the players of this game. Dumbing down graphics to avoid motion sickness triggers will probably cost the game much more players that are missing their interactive movie, than it will bring in extra people that didn't play because of motion sickness.

[FelidaeRyl.9147]

I've got trouble with hand stiffness and reaction time, get a bit overwhelmed when a lot is going on or if there's a time limit, stress kicks in and it makes a favourite game horrible to play, and I only play a few anyway, it stood out above the others so much before. I'd been looking forward to doing the many story parts I'd missed, just returned after 2 years off the PC due to my hands and fatigue, it's sad. The jumping puzzle in Storm Tracking is very tricky. I can do the jumps, but get halfway through and then the  path is blocked by the insta-kill storm cloud. It took a long time and a lot of stress to do From the Ashes too. I enjoyed working it out, but it left me drained and nauseated.

There's loads the team could do and people to ask what, why and how. The points raised by OP and others like difficulty options eg  turning off time limits, pressing a key once to do things, not repeatedly or holding one down, easier routes in jumping puzzles, it's all there to care about and prioritise. I love jumping puzzles when I can do them and I'll redo things up to a point, but not a dozen times getting more stiff, painful and tired. Spitting in the wind here I guess if we're still saying it now, but you never know.

Idk why this is confusing. That reaction is ambiguous, but seems rude.

Edited August 28, 2022 by FelidaeRyl.9147

[vinterberg.2783]

By login screen do you mean character selection? You can use arrow keys to flip through characters instead of the mouse.