I would like to address a serious shortcoming in visual aids/options for the visually impaired. I got a friend who is so extremely near sighted, that with the current “accessibility” options in the game as they are, he is extremely limited in his gaming experience.
For example we tried lowering the resolution in the hope of the in-game stuff becoming bigger, but nope, the game scales it all back to the same size with the only difference being that everything becomes extremely pixelated.
He cannot do the following because of his visual impairment:
Lair bosses without assistance because he cannot see them on the map.
Read the right click menu when in a party.
See world events like world bosses, legion events and the new incursions.
Find helltide chests on the map.
Do Grim Favors / Tree of Whispers (unless he happens to be in the area by coincidence).
He does not see when he has 10 grim favors (so he doesn’t turn them in unless i do).
Read anything on the mini-map.
Choosing skills or Paragons.
Read buffs, cooldowns or potion timers (only when they expire).
It would really be appreciated if players like him could change the mini-map size, or increase readability of in-game fonts beyond the current 3 levels of font scaling. Now the only way for him to play is guesstimate where he’s going. And he can forget about ever doing high content without help from someone else. His last friend who assisted him with this died 8 months ago. I’ve been doing it since then. But its far from optimal. He plays with the build i make for him, which is easy to play without paying attention too much to buffs/cooldowns and it severely limits him aside from his visual impairment.
Would be nice if blizzard would actually work on improving certain settings for people like him. Really hoping to hear back from someone official on this.
you wont get any official reply on this regard here, but they do have a dedicated page for this. There is also a link to an email address there where they specifically ask for further suggestions. You might want to try that out.
This is a D3 feature. Do you mean Grim Favors from the Tree of Whispers? I don’t want to be that nerd emoji guy, I just want to clear up confusion. Particularly on my part.
Being able to change the UI is pretty much a staple in most -online- games. And I don’t mean modding it, I mean being able to change the size of things, possibly even move some things around in some games. Some of what the OP is asking for isn’t anything out of the norm.
Different engine and coding from what I understand, but yes same principle. They could find a way to allow us more UI customization in this game. Even if it’s just changing the size of things.
Majority of the issue is a small UI for their friend.
We’ve been asking for the ability to alter our UI in anyway possible since the betas. This isn’t an unreasonable request. They weren’t asking specifically for Blizzard to change the whole game around. I genuinely don’t see the issue for an option to allow players to do this.
Going down the list, every single one is easily rectified by changing UI size of various elements. Keep in mind it would be an option, it wouldn’t affect you in anyway if you chose not to use the option.
I agree with this perspective. Blizzard takes pride in their accessability features as it is. I can’t imagine that they wouldn’t want to expand that. It might take some time, but it is good to give them the feedback. If they don’t have anyone on the staff that has these issues, how else are they supposed to know what they can do to help others.
There is some truth to this, but they aren’t asking for a spot at an elite level competition or a hand out. There are plenty of people who suffer less extreme impairments that could benefit from these features. I like having a bigger cursor and I would love a feature for bigger item text too.
Heck, SWTOR let you resize, rearrange, add, and remove UI elements back when I think the most you could do with WoW (without mods) was just add or remove some hot bars.
Basic QOL like this should not be so rare. But the entire UI experience of D4 is pretty backwards and substandard and in the case of craf–I mean gambling menus–it’s actually gotten worse over time.
Really?
Played games since the late 80’s and never ever saw a single game that allowed the user to change the UI…
Probably have been playing the most wrong games…
I should have clarified, most online games have various UI options. Even some offline games, depending. For a company that’s all about accessibility options it’s rather strange this isn’t one of them. Keep in mind we’re just talking about upscaling elements of the UI here.
Now I’d personally love the option to upscale, downscale, and rearrange parts of the UI as I see fit, but for now I’d settle for just an option to alter the sizes.
I’ve taken your suggestion and sent a literal copy/paste of this forum topic, including a link to it, so it may catch their attention with all the replies in here. Here’s to hoping for a reply. Thanks for providing the email. I did not know that even existed.
You’d expect it to be an option in the very least. But it is a blizzard game. With the exception of World of Warcraft thru the use of ingame addons, moving the UI around is quite nice. Its quite a shame they dont allow this in their diablo-series games. I would love to move the Buffs to a different spot on screen, or entirely remove the action buttons unless i need to edit them. Or move the minimap to a more central place on screen so i dont have to stare at the top right of my screen all the time to see where im going or where the monsters are (if playing with subo).
Why doesn’t he just get a bigger monitor? That would probably be the quickest fix since I doubt any UI change will happen on the near term for this very limited case.
Well not everyone has the money or the space for a huge screen. He’d have to buy an 80 inch TV or bigger for his level of vision impairment. He’s a senior player. Close to his 70’s. Retired and on a very meager income. He’d have to win the lottery for something like that or save up money for years and years.
To make his case more understandable for you. If you were standing 1 meter (3.2ft for US people) from his face. He would see you as a blob of colors. No details. He can probably tell your skin/hair color, but anything smaller, like eyes or details like a mustache. Impossible. You would have to be standing nose-to-nose for him to see facial details.
But i will take your recommendation to heart. If i ever win the lottery, i will buy him an 80 inch tv just for this. It’s not actually a bad idea. just a bit crazy
I should have clarified, most online games have various UI options. Even some offline games, depending. For a company that’s all about accessibility options it’s rather strange this isn’t one of them. Keep in mind we’re just talking about upscaling elements of the UI here.
