FWIW (which is admittedly not much, because there can only be so much worth to something that isn't in your hands:P), colorblind-friendly combo/powered-up glows are one of the biggest things that I refuse to let the team forget about - it's not ignored, it's just goddamn slow to get something that checks all the boxes we need it to for it to ship.

Basically, stupid as it sounds (and is; everything about this feels like it should be stupid-easy), all the easy fixes we've tried so far don't work. We don't want to just do a color change, because subtle ones are enough and full hue shifts change the whole look of the mechanic more than we want to and even then will always leave someone hanging. I tested a brightness change on a bunch of colorblind buddies fairly recently, but even with Combo wildly blown out it wasn't really enough for them to just be able to spot the difference (plus now Combo looked like over-brightened shit to color-seeing people). We don't really have a practical way to do an Elemental PoweredUp-style particle overlay, because that has to be added manually to every single card. The current hope is that a combination of silhouette and animation speed change will work, but because the highlight system is a goofy old thing that no one's touched in seven years and things like color and brightness changes are easy but screw you if you want to do non-dynamic texture changes, at this point we have to find a nontrivial chunk of time from an engineer to go spelunking and figure out where all that crap lives and which parts we need to modify. (Staffing makes the slowness even worse - this is something that isn't officially on the schedule because both I and all the engineers who could help me with this are booked to the gills, and we can't just hire more people because there's an industry shortage of both engineers and FX artists - the last time we had to hire for either of those roles it ten months to find a good candidate, and then you have to ramp them up.)

So it's not like we're over here like 'lol whatever colorblind scrubs', it's just surprisingly hard to get a good effect that doesn't dramatically shift the visuals for everyone else, that solves the issue for all types of colorblindness, that isn't wildly loud, doesn't generate a ton of manual hook-ups forever and ever, and that everyone who's part of this conversation agrees upon.

TL;DR: "Wow Hadidjah, that's an awful lot of detailed excuses when you could have just said "We haven't forgotten you guys, I swear.""

Also, whenever we finally bloody well get something live, I'll probably be creating a thread here to get feedback on it since I only have like... six people to test it on. So hopefully it'll get fine-tuned from that as well and just get better and more readable. In the meantime, if you guys have suggestions (or want to understand why we didn't go with obvious-thing-x), feel free to reply here!:)

My reddit-history-fu is being useless right now, but, you're the one who was posting when DK Anduin's hero power was bugging out and giving you trouble too, right? I'm really sorry this one is an issue for you as well. :C

It isn't something I'll have any sort of final say in, but I'll ask around about adding a "Menu Animations" checkbox to Options. I don't know what will come of it, if anything, but it's worth asking, and your case is a damned good one for why we should have an option like that. Fingers crossed.

As far as things I can directly control: are there any other FX (or groups of FX) that consistently give you problems? Could be something as simple as a list of card names or something as broad as specific levels of texture noisiness or combinations of brightness and speed, whatever sorts of buckets of FX traits tend to give you grief. If there are specific factors that we know cause epileptic issues, then we can try to just avoid doing those things upfront and do a better job nipping the whole problem in the bud.

And anyone else reading this who has epilepsy or other visual/FX-based issues, you can reply to this with any suggestions too and I'll try to do a better job taking these things into account.:)

Hey, sorry, I hope you don't mind me asking, but is there anything Hearthstone that causes you seizure issues? (Between 'I don't have photosensitive-triggered ones' and 'I feel for you' I wasn't sure, figured I'd just ask.:))

Hey, I hope you don't mind me popping in and asking, but are there common traits between the things that tend to give you grief? Is it particular brightness+speed combos, particular individual FX, does the amount of screen that the effect occupies affect things at all? The more of these traits we know up front, the more we can try to just account for those upfront and make FX that avoid or minimize these issues as much as possible.:)

Thank you! I hope I'm not imposing by asking.

Thank you for writing all this out! It’s a really helpful chunk of information, especially having multiple problem FX to compare and see the common visual threads (or ones like the screen shake that you specifically called out - my mind autmatically goes to things like bright flickers, but screenshakes make perfect sense once you cited them).

Also, it’s really kind of you to have PSA’d this out for others who have epilepsy.<3

So uh, I’ve obviously made your night worse and I’m sorry about that. I am honestly looking forward to your explanation tomorrow.

Partially replying just to acknowledge, but also so there’s an easy thing for you to reply to and I’ll be guaranteed to see it (since as far as I know reddit doesn’t alert me if someone edits a reply).

Haha your response made me realize how conspicuously absent “full colorblind mode” was from my ramble about a single glow type.:B. I updated my base response a bit since you’ve put this in my mind, thank you!:)

The more graphical elements as part of a toggled mode are a cool suggestion, too, I really like that they completely bypass the more common issues with wholesale colorblind filters sometimes bludgeoning colors together for some people.

(N)icejordan. :)

Haha I realized after people started replying that it probably came off weird as hell that I never mentioned just implementing a full colorblind mode. Don’t reddit whlle tired.:P

I’m not sure why we don’t have a toggled colorblind mode (I’ve been so focused on that set of glows because it’s something that I can actually work on myself, and it seems to be the one that bites the most people). I know just slapping a filter over things tends to still mess with certain types of colorblind (not saying that’s why we don’t have one, just to segue into this last bit), but people here’ve been throwing out some really cool suggestions for ways to make a toggled mode completely color-proof, which would be freakin’ awesome.

I’ll ask them how they did theirs! (Some places do it with filters, others with custom textures, etc.- I’m not sure which they did.). A full colorblind mode isn’t something I would be able to implement myself, but the green/yellow borders problem is a white whale for me even completely separate from a colorblind mode, because it’s something I can actually work on directly (and I know it’s the one that seems to bite people the most). It’s been... way more difficult to find a fix that looks good to everyone both color-seeing and -blind than I ever expected, but I’ve been iterating on it whenever I have time and bloody hell I’ll find it one of these days.^{^}

Apologizing for throwing out ideas is the last thing you should do, I think it’s awesome that you guys are willing to take time to talk about this!:)

The border thickening is part of the next thing I want to try, as part of the silhouette/animation change. (The boring TMI version of why I didn’t test this yet is because changing those particular aspects of the glow means finding time from an engineer to help out.) I’m really hoping that that one works - the fact that you thought of it as well gives me extra hope!:D

Hey, thanks for replying and giving more data points! The smaller details like the Epic vs. Rare gems are ones I hadn’t known about before this tread, so I’m glad to be hearing about them, even if they aren’t nearly as soul-crushing as a whiffed Reno.

If you don’t mind me imposing on a little more of your time - are there games that you feel have really excellent/readable colorblind modes? I’m focused on the green/yellow glow issue because it’s a discreet thing that seems to cause the vast majority of colorblind pain, but I’d love to have good examples of colorblind-friendly settings/games to reference (as far as I understand , the success of colorblind modes tends to be mixed, and I can’t really judge by myself which ones do it well enough to be worth referencing...).

Cheers and thanks again!:)

It’s more scattered, but I’ve been trying to ping people in the thread who mention they have some form of epilepsy. OP was super helpful in listing off a few particular FX and visual factors that tend to get them, along with their typical management/coping methods, the toggle suggestion, etc, I’m hoping maybe more replies and data points from others in the morning.:)

Since we’re talking, do you have any form of epilepsy? And if so, if you don’t mind me asking, are there particular FX, combinations of visual factors, etc. that consistently trigger episodes for you? I’m hoping that with a better set of known factors maybe we can better set up the FX from the get-go to at the very least avoid the most egregious cases.

the only video game I play now is Hearthstone!

So unfortunately, no good examples for you..

I hope that was intentional, ‘cause that was savage af and you should be legitimately proud of yourself if it was.XD

Haha I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to accuse you of being mean-spirited, I should have clarified in my savage post that I was teasing; you're very obviously being friendly and helpful.:)

That would have just been some amazing ribbing if it had been intentional.:D

Awesome, trawling patch notes is a great idea, too! Thanks! :D

:O These are so cool! Thank you!

Still good examples! Thank you!:)

Also, I like your name.

Small mercies I guess. Glad to hear you've still got games. :)

Thank you for all of this, it's really helpful! Especially all the details of exactly why various things are hard for you to read.:) (The difficultly of identifying class on spells, weapons and goldens compared to minions is a great call-out, that's the first someone's mentioned of that one.)

This thread has been giving me a lot to think on there. The Combo/PoweredUp glow is something I've been chipping at and testing on people for a while now, but things like the persistent difficulties of epilepsy are pretty fresh to me as of this thread (someone mentioned it back when DK Anduin's hero power was wigging out, but that was part of a bug so we just fixed the bug...).

So I'm not sure yet exactly what the best fix is. Turning off in-game FX entirely is honestly unlikely to happen, because any version of that that I can think of either gives a huge advantage to a player who turns things off (if we also cut out the time allotted to the animations), or it looks buggy as hell (if the game just... doesn't really do anything during the time where the FX would normally be playing) and I don't think that's a game we want to be putting out into the world. But I'm wondering if there are ways we could put all the FX on a layer that can be dimmed/clamped, or things like that, to help with contrast/brightness-based issues, look into alleviating problems with screenshake, things like that. Maybe all of those ideas turn out to be terrible and we have to pop right on back to the drawing board.

Any version of those will take a lot of time, work and iteration to get a good version of. But I think they're worth experimenting with and seeing if we can find a good fix, for sure, and in the meantime being more conscious of the really consistent triggers in our FX. :)

Oh my gosh pleeeeease tell them.<3 Engineering, VFX, and UI/UX are so hard to hire for.

Wait there is a color change when Combo is active?

Exactly. ;n;

Shape and movement is the thing that's getting tested next, so I'm glad it seems like we're heading in the right direction with this one!:)

Oh sweet, thank you for the link! I appreciate it.:)

Aww, thank you! Pretty much this entire thread has been full of people sending awesome links, suggestions, information on their particular difficulties, etc., so all-in-all it's been pretty sweet.^^

Yeah, Heroes' approach is one of my absolute favorites (even more so with people here pointing out things like the red-on-red health text that it seems like a filter wouldn't help at all). Also, my best friend helped out a lot with that (he's colorblind as shit and my main litmus test), and you made his night with your comment.=)

I'll hit you up to guinea pig for me at some point here, I hope you don't mind. Thank you for offering!

Those are the cutest freakin' edits I've ever seen.=) I'm stealing your format, hope you don't mind.

There's no late to this thread.=)

I'll ask Audio if there's a good way to fix this. Just so I make sure I understand what the fix you need is, it's the tavern mumbles specifically, correct? There aren't other aspects of the audio or combinations that give you trouble?

Thanks for letting me know!