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The original was posted on /r/dota2 by /u/walkit_james_99 on 2024-07-31 01:48:07+00:00.
Please, even if you don't read this entirely, upvote this post for awareness.
This is a pleading from a colorblind person who has played this absolutely amazing and wonderful game for 8 years.
1/12 males (let's be real this is the majority of the population in this community) and 1/200 females have some type of color blindness/color deficiency. Please developers, do the right thing finally and make this beautiful game accessible to this population.
This amazing game has been out for 11 years, and after 11 years we still don't have the option to choose the colors of the players in the game.
This isn't a post criticizing the developers laziness, not at all, I believe that they think they have introduced tools to assist those who are colorblind. Now I don't speak for the entire colorblind population, but please allow me to debunk all of them from my perspective, a colorblind player of eight years:
- Q: "Why don't you just enable hero icons" A: When you enable hero icons the flaw is that you must distinguish between teammate and enemy by this teeeeny tiiinyy green or red border around the hero icon. The most common form of colorblindness is red-green colorblindness and in many cases, mine included, distinguishing between the two colors is incredibly difficult especially when the border is so damned small. Not to mention some hero icons are red or green which doesn't help the tiny border situation one bit. The 2nd part of this question asked is usually "well just remember all 10 heroes in the game and know", and my reply to that is no. I cannot after 8 years memorize within even the first 10 minutes which hero icons I need to remember as friendly. Maybe you can, even at 7.4k MMR and over 10,000 hours, I can't. Sorry. This is a distinct disadvantage for someone who is colorblind, having to associate a teammate/enemy by remembering which hero is on which team, it's simply another thought process added onto the many things going through a players mind in a Dota game that non-colorblind folk don't have to deal with. So, I play with hero icons off with alt-toggle icons that I've developed a habit of clicking probably >30 times per minute to know what is going on in the map because I can't associate the player colors with their hero. This whole alt-click ordeal is worsened if you play with alt-directional move, which I consider an absolute necessity - so I cant right click the ground and know the heroes on the map simultaneously.
- Q: "Why not use color filters, Windows and other programs have color filters that are made for the colorblind for this exact reason!" A: They do NOT work. These programs work by not magically fixing colorblindness but instead by applying a filter as the name suggests, it changes the color spectrum on the screen to a default static color spectrum that they assume will be effective for the majority of colorblind people. For example they allow me to distinguish colors on the red/green spectrum better, but they actually impair my blue/greys, and I have the exact same issue just on the other end of the color spectrum. I've talked to other colorblind folk who have also shared this issue with me, and I've not talked to anyone who has raved about color filters (maybe they're out there, I don't know).
- Q: "Why don't you just get Enchroma/Whatever brand glasses" A: 1. I shouldn't have to pay upwards of $500 on glasses (more than that because I wear prescription lenses) for a fix that is easily implemented by allowing us to change the colors of players in the game through the game-settings. 2. These glasses don't cure colorblindness, and they work at varying degrees depending on the individual, so it's not a solution for everybody.
- Q: "You can change the colors by using your Autoexec.cfg" A: As far as my understanding goes, this was removed in Source 2.0, the commands that once let us do this no longer work. Also, this is an absolutely dreadful process of sending these commands in until you find TEN colors that work well for you.
- Q: "You can use the simple-colors option though" A: Screw you dude. I would still have to spam alt-click hero icon toggle to see hero icons to know who is who; putting me at a distinct disadvantage from the non-colorblind.
There are probably more than this, but these are the ones I've heard over and over in the Dota 2 community for eight damned years.
The only other reason I can contemplate why the developers would be against this is that commonly people refer to teammates/enemies in-game by their color, but seriously, come on.. I've dealt with people calling me and calling teammates by some color that I can't even see and I don't know who they're referring to; let us deal with these consequences.
tl;dr I know the developers aren't lazy, they push out insane amounts of updates per year with absolutely insane amounts of changes, unlike any game I've ever played. They think they've implemented solutions that make the game accessible for the colorblind, but the reality is that they simply aren't effective. The solutions like alt-hero toggle are effective to a degree but leave the colorblind at a distinct disadvantage (why do I have to click alt to know which hero is which, and non-colorblind don't, in a game where literal milliseconds can determine so much.
Here is a quote from Wikipedia on the color blindness article on the digital design subsection that I fully agree with, "When possible (e.g. in simple video games or apps), allowing the user to choose their own colors is the most inclusive design practice."
Please upvote this post. I hope this reaches someone in a position that can make this happen. It's been eleven years.
Developers, please...