New UI Update: Gameboard

abmoraz

HoundofShadow said:

Interesting. How does other game developers accomodate to those three types of colourblindness? Is there some ISO standard for choices of colours or shades?

Disclaimer: I don't work for, nor am I affiliated with D3 or Demiurge, but I do work as a software engineer for a living.

Your question has 2 answers: a long one and a short one.  The short one is "They guess. They put something out and wait for feedback and hope they got it right."

The long answer is don't rely on color. Use shapes, labels, and textures.  Looking at the original post, the new board's "candy-like" icons lose some of their distinguishing shape and textures compared to the old board.  I fully admit that I had a HECK of a time on the old interface that had a board full of web tiles or repeaters, because both of those obfuscated the shape and texture of the tiles.

Another is to use BRIGHT contrasting colors.  "Bright" in this case means "saturated" not "light".  The colors don't have to look like the color their supposed to be, they just have to be easily distinguishable.  Shade is more important than color.  So it's not great to have the same shades of blue and purple if they look similar to a colorblind person.  It's better to have a light blue and a dark blue, as those are more likely to be easily distinguishable.

I found this site to be helpful, because it's hard to describe what I can't see to those who can.  It's like trying to have a deaf person describe the horror that is Nickelback to someone that's never heard them.

https://www.secretstache.com/blog/designing-for-color-blind-users/

thedarkphoenix

After playing more my biggest gripes are

The tiles losing there personality (aka the generic shape instead of more of the characters shape)

The screen dimming on enemy turns.


Everything else I can deal with, but those 2 really really bother me.

ThaRoadWarrior

abmoraz said:

HoundofShadow said:

Interesting. How does other game developers accomodate to those three types of colourblindness? Is there some ISO standard for choices of colours or shades?

[...]  It's like trying to have a deaf person describe the horror that is Nickelback to someone that's never heard them.

https://www.secretstache.com/blog/designing-for-color-blind-users/

Speaking of Nickleback related horror that involves sight in the game industry, i had a colleague nearly die because of a running joke in the office. It used to be pretty common at that studio if somebody walked away from their desk without locking their machine that they'd come back to a delightful new wallpaper chosen by their coworkers for maximum embarrassment. At a certain point, nearly everyone decided a press photo of Nickleback was the go-to nuclear option, except for this one producer who actually enjoyed them, and who just left it up. So one day, as the escalation of such things happens, somebody decided to cut out a printed picture of the band and tape it to the inside of his Oakley sunglasses. Well, it happens that this guy rode his bike home from downtown, and as he jumped on his bike, sailed out across an intersection, he put his glasses on and.....found his vision completely obscured by the band. Screeching his bike to a halt, he whipped off his glasses and found himself in the crosswalk with a car patiently waiting for him to get across. Lucky break nobody was hurt.

DAZ0273

Y’know Jim Shooter once told a fantastic story about colour theory and Stan Lee.

Back in the day, all Marvel comic book covers were coloured by a man called George Roussos, a mild mannered artist and all around swell guy. Every day, Shooter would discuss covers with Roussos and they generally got along just fine. Then one day – Shooter asked Roussos to colour a cover green. Roussos was besides himself and refused! “Stan Lee HATES green!” Roussos said, saying that Stan would fire him for such a terrible crime! Shooter scratched his head, he had never heard of this rule before. He DEMANDED the cover be coloured green. Roussos still refused!!! Eventually, under great duress, Roussos finally coloured the cover. Shooter grabbed it, told Roussos to follow him down the hall to Stan Lee’s office. “What do you think of this, Stan?” asked Shooter. Stan Lee looks up and says “It’s GREAT!”. So what on earth was going on?!!?

It turns out that at some point Stan might have said don’t use green because it is a mid-tier colour that can tend to blend in and that was set as some sort of “rule” but what he really meant was make your cover “pop”, so that it is clearly visible and does not melt into one. In this case, Shooter had a bright yellow to “pop” against the green. Here is the cover below:

TL;DR - If you want to use mid-tier or murky colours but you need your viewer to be able to discern important imformation else where on what they are looking at (like match 3 tiles), make your Match 3 tiles "pop".

ThaRoadWarrior

I wouldn't be surprised to hear there was some cost-of-printing related reason for Stan having said that at some point as well, but I don't want to undermine the point about contrast.

DAZ0273

ThaRoadWarrior said:

I wouldn't be surprised to hear there was some cost-of-printing related reason for Stan having said that at some point as well, but I don't want to undermine the point about contrast.

Yeah, quite possibly true.

dragonlover44

been lurking on the forum for a while now, just got an account to say I too had issues with the new look. bad eye strain immediately, then that  triggered a migraine after only a small amount of playing. I'm years into playing (day 1654) and I'll have to quit if things stay as is. 

I could live and play with the terrible colours and small indicators on the cover store, the dark background of the roster screen, and the change to the team select screen, even though I don't like them much. i can't do the same with the board update.

I'm regreting buying a Logan's loonies earlier this week before R223 went live.

Polares

freakygeek said:

...

My wife starts getting a migraine on the new interface.  I have heard this a lot.  The new scheme triggers vision issues and headaches.  

This.

dragonlover44 said:

been lurking on the forum for a while now, just got an account to say I too had issues with the new look. bad eye strain immediately, then that  triggered a migraine after only a small amount of playing. I'm years into playing (day 1654) and I'll have to quit if things stay as is. 

And This.

It is also happening to me and also, I think I am forcing my eyesight way more, after playing for 30min, my eyes were struggling and started developing a headache.

The constant dimming and lighting it back of the screen is AWFUL, like THE WORST THINK THEYCOULD DO. This must be removed ASAP, STOP the dimming! If it is not changed I will stop playing. I dont want to damage my eyes. 

PS: Seriously, did they test this? Did they have someone playing for an hour with this?

PS: In a time that most games try to make things easier for people with eyesight problems and colourblindness, MPQ goes the other way around (triple facepalm)

SilverAgeFan

It's 48 hours since this update has been released and reports of significant health effects have been reported. This is an inexcusable slow walk on the part of D3.

This should be treated with the same level of seriousness as if the central game server were down with hotfixes and top priority amongst their team to revert things back to a playable state while they take the new game board back to their internal development setup for necessary revisions.

I don't think D3 registers the longer they leave this out there with just a boiler plate "thank you for your feedback" as if this were a game balance issue, the more they open themselves up to a liability for the unintended physiological effects this is causing so many users. They should be taking this as serious as a restaurant would if two of their customers found shards of glass in their soup. Deeply disappointed at the indifference on the part of this game studio.

SnowcaTT

I have several alliance-mates who can't play now due to headaches and/or not being able to see the tiles due to colors.

Really, really wish the devs would make big changes like this with a toggle for on/off....or implement a player test base, who could have given a heads-up on this before it went live.

CubRob

Day 2380 Player: Basically the same opinion as everyone else:

1. Get rid of the dimming on the opponent turn
2. Make the charged AP bars easier to see
3. The colors should be changed if they are causing problems for people who are color blind

BriMan2222

SnowcaTT said:

I have several alliance-mates who can't play now due to headaches and/or not being able to see the tiles due to colors.

Really, really wish the devs would make big changes like this with a toggle for on/off....or implement a player test base, who could have given a heads-up on this before it went live.

Same. I've had several alliance mates unable to play for any length of time struggling to just get through the deadpool daily and some of them have said that they will not be able to play at all until/unless this is fixed.  For their sakes I hope this is resolved soon.

Polares

This change MUST be reverted ASAP, today, tomorrow at the latest. This is a MUST FIX (the same as the sever going down).

If Devs want to iterate and make this design better and address all these problems, sure, they can do that, and release it in the next update, but first, revert the changes and go back to the old UI so we can continue playing. I wont be playing the current event in this condition.

The rockett

Boss event starts tomorrow as well which is normally and increased of activity.   This could get very ugly for the Dev team.  

crakker

HoundofShadow said:

Interesting. How does other game developers accomodate to those three types of colourblindness? Is there some ISO standard for choices of colours or shades?

I have tried several tile matching games that I had to quit immediately because the colours confuse me. A few nice ones have a colourblind option that make the colours more contrasting but maybe more garish for a regular user.

Spider_Ham42

I’m jumping in on the UI update.  While I appreciate trying to evolve the game, but the new tiles certainly leave a bit to be desired.  I spent time playing the game to see if I become familiar with the UI that I can adjust, but the tile screen is just too dark.  Everything just feels muted. The tile colors, fortified, animations, enemy tile select, and the action bars (friendly and enemy) just don’t pop like they did prior to the update.  I did enjoy the highlighted numbers popping from the board, so I did find something I liked.  I’ll continue to wait on the update from the dev team on this topic, but note that I will be playing less until the UI is either reverted or updated with some changes.  Sadly, It’s just not as enjoyable.

Kwahder

Polares said:

This change MUST be reverted ASAP, today, tomorrow at the latest. This is a MUST FIX (the same as the sever going down).

This isn’t in the dev’s hands. Even if they just rolled everything straight back (and I don’t think they can do that), it’d still have go through Apple & Google’s approval process. ‘Early next week’ is my best guess for something happening.

Notwen

I like that the icons on the tiles are much more distinct than before.

aithene

First-time poster, long-time player (day 1978 of daily play, today). I'm also a UI designer, so I tend to wait before passing judgment on new UI changes since I know that Baby Duck syndrome is real and powerful. However, I'm running into several serious gameplay issues with the new design.

Don't get me wrong, I love the design, aesthetically. Looks beautiful. There are some strong steps forward. But there are a number of color issues I'm surprised made it through testing.

1. The BIGGEST issue I have is with the fade to black during the opponent's turn. Depending on screen brightness, the screen dims so much that I struggle to see anything that is happening. It takes me completely out of the gameplay. It's like I've been pushed out of the game, and then brought back in after the move, and I have no idea what just happened.

2. The power-up bars draw much less attention to themselves than before, and honestly, they were never really eye-catching to begin with. Now, I have to stop and look and wait for the 'wave' to be sure that a power is actually ready to use. And while they have never been great at capturing my attention while looking for matches, the new design fails completely to pull my eyes to a power that is ready to go.

3. When nightshift is on (which is a lot of my gaming time, actually; early morning, late evening) you have a lot of color issues. As you know, nightshift pulls the blue from all colors, so that purple looks like red, and blue looks like green. This affects a number of features.

The power bars are completely indistinguishable since they are the same shape. Storm, for instance, has blue and green power, and when one is powered up, you cannot tell which it is by simply looking. Same with Deadpool's red and purple powers.

Blue and green tiles look nearly identical since the square and rectangle are too close in shape and the colors are the same. I've been surprised a number of times by failed matches when I have accidentally tried to match blues and greens with each other.

Interestingly, I have also found that red and purple cause issues when the colors cannot be distinguished. I know that an upside-down triangle and a right-side-up triangle should be distinct enough for easy identification, but cognitively, they are too close together in shape to dismiss out of hand. It definitely takes extra brain-power to sort them while playing with night-shift on.

Of course, it would be all too easy to say, 'turn off night shift while playing.' And while that might work for me, it won't work for someone with actual color-blindness issues.

Hope this helps! Keep the updates coming.

zonatahunt

Kwahder said:

Polares said:

This change MUST be reverted ASAP, today, tomorrow at the latest. This is a MUST FIX (the same as the sever going down).

This isn’t in the dev’s hands. Even if they just rolled everything straight back (and I don’t think they can do that), it’d still have go through Apple & Google’s approval process. ‘Early next week’ is my best guess for something happening.

If this is the case, then once again, open and transparent communication with the player base is the answer.  If they announced that they realize mistakes were made but they can’t do a “quick fix” because of an approval process, I would understand and be more patient.  However, they’ve chosen to issue a single blanket statement across multiple info outlets for the game; that’s why people are becoming increasingly frustrated and impatient.