LoL Player Exposes the Uselessness of Colorblind Mode
A Reddit user posted a video complaining about the poor usability of Colorblind mode in League of Legends. This is a big problem for people who suffer from colorblindness, especially the Protan variety.
- A Reddit user pointed out the problem with Colorblind mode in League of Legends;
- According to him, it does not fulfill its role, and only slightly changes the color palette in the game.
For more than 10 years, League of Legends attracted players who enjoy the MOBA genre. Among the fans of the title, however, is a large percentage of people whose problems have been forgotten by Riot Games. We are talking about people suffering from color blindness, commonly known as daltonism.
In a nutshell, this disease is a disorder of color recognition, caused by abnormal reception of waves in the so-called eye cones. The disease can affect various colors, but in the case of LoL the most severe is Protan blindness, which involves lack of distinction between red and green colors. There a are two variations to the condition: protanomaly, which causes red to be perceived as greener, and protanopia, in which distinguishing between the two colors is much more difficult. A Reddit user suffering from protanopia has pointed out that Colorblind mode is almost completely useless for sufferers of this condition.
The most popular mode on the Summoner's Rift map is dominated by the color green, which causes quite a few problems for those affected by Protan colorblindness. Colorblind mode should, in theory, make the environment, the map, and other graphical elements more readable to the colorblind, but it doesn't. The only visible changes are different color palettes for our and other players' health bars (our health bar will be yellow instead of green, and our allies' will be blue), as well as similar changes in the case of minions, totems and skills of some characters.
As you can see, the introduced measures are not enough to provide gamers suffering from colorblindness with a comfortable gameplay. In a Reddit post, a LoL player suffering from a variant of Protan colorblindness shares his problems during gameplay, and the list includes the inability to distinguish between minions and totems, as well as the inability to properly read the minimap, and recognize pings. It follows that while Riot Games has gone in the right direction in trying to help those with colorblindness, their efforts in this regard are inadequate.
The lack of support for Colorblind mode is also a hindrance in competitive esports. One of Cloud9 - players - Sneaky - suffers from colorblindness. As one internet user recalls:
"I still remember seeing Sneaky midlessly walk into Xayah feathers at worlds and thinking that he was inting.
Then I found out that he actually couldn't see the feathers due to his color blindness. It's honestly ridiculous that being colorblind gives you such a huge disadvatage and Riot doesn't do anything about it."
Perhaps with proper publicity, Riot Games will improve Colorblind mode - after all, this is a company that strives for an image of caring about player feedback, and there are more people affected by colorblindness than it seems. Daltonism in various forms affects about 8% of men in the world and 0.5% of women.
