And this right here is the root issue with regards to this design team and accessibility: they only consider accessibility with regards to vision and hearing and do not consider the issues those of us with fine-motor-control impairments might face. I’m not that old—will be 40 in the next couple months—but have left-hand issues due to an injury years back.
Stuff like the jumping puzzles in Zereth Mortis were not just impossible to do but quite painful to try repeatedly. Company apologists just stated “Wait until flying,” “Hire a 'lock,” “Switch covenants,” etc: bypass the issue and don’t complain because this is a temporary problem. I said a couple of times in response—generally just to have some community members belittle motor control accessibility issues…—right after the 9.2 release that if we don’t provide feedback about this stuff, they will continue to expand on these types of fine 3D movement puzzles:
And, what have they done with Dragonriding? It certainly sounds like they are doubling down and making the 3D precision-movement puzzles and integral part of travel in Dragonfight.
I like what I’ve heard about the rest of the expansion so far, and I even think the idea of Dragonriding is interesting. However, if Jeremy Feasel’s “You press the spacebar and you do a giant takeoff. And then the whole mini-game is that you’ve got height and speed and you have to try to figure out how to get as far as possible before you land again” statement means that I have to perform some kind of movement gymnastics that result in me having to take prescription pain medication—which I try very much to avoid taking at all—just to simply move about in the zones…well, I simply won’t play.
But, I’m going to give it a shot anyway during the beta and provide feedback on any inaccessibility. I’m hopeful that it’s not an issue for myself and others afflicted with such issues, so I want to see for myself how it works before completely writing it off.
I’m not even advocating to also have normal flying (well, at least off the bat): all I want is for the design team to keep motor-control disabilities in mind and make sure required movement is accessible to all of the playerbase. Optional puzzles? Okay, fine, make them difficult—read, impossbile—for me, but please make required-to-get-to stuff in the open world accessible enough for everyone.
And, please, if you do suffer from accessibility issues, report those in in-game feedback whether in the retail client or during alpha/beta/PTR. I don’t know if it actually does any good, but at least feedback through that might be seen by someone on the team versus random forum posts that probably never get viewed at all.
There is also the Accessibility Updates blue post from a few weeks back that I posted in a day or two ago where I aired some concerns I have about Dragonriding.