Enhance Your Gameplay: More Accessibility Updates Available

Thommas-stonemaul · April 7, 2022, 10:16pm

I have Blessing of Freedom on Shift-Q. So to self cast, I would press Alt-Shift-Q. It doesn’t work any more. Is this new update the reason why? How can I revert it back to the old way?

Pharazon-thorium-brotherhood · April 20, 2022, 3:57pm

The dev team puts effort into adding accessibility features and espouses that accessibility is important; however, according to Jeremy Feasel, Dragonriding will work in this manner: “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.”

Well, I can go ahead and say right now that this sounds like the control schemes in “Flight School: Flapping Frenzy” etc and a doubling down of the precision 3D-platforming gameplay that have been present in recent patches.

Quoting myself from this thread:

Pharazon:

More accessibility options are certainly appreciated; I just wish whoever focuses on accessibility would try to make sure the design team takes fine-motor-control accessibility issues into account the next time they add platforming-style content like the ZM jumping puzzles, World quests like Up and Away, Jumping Jellies, Like the Wind, etc.

I’m not saying that those types of puzzle design shouldn’t exist at all, but some accessibility design sensibilities applied to said 3d movement workouts would go such a long way towards said content not feeling like the devs don’t care about the experience of those with hand, wrist, finger pain/injuries/nerve-damage/apaxia/etc. We know accessibility is on the minds of at least some of the team, otherwise we wouldn’t have seen more accessibility features added over the years. However, many of the 3d-puzzle elements that have been added to the game—though, these additions are admittedly few and far between—represent the complete antithesis of accessible design.

I think the concept of Dragonriding sounds very interesting; however, can the designers please keep in mind that there are fine-motor-control accessibility issues with regard to movement types like this. The movement controls need to at least be fully usable with just the mouse or the mouse+only-1-or-2-keys. If you have anyone there on one of the teams with apraxia, ataxia, some type of hand/wrist nerve damage, etc that affects fine motor control, have them try Dragonriding and get them to provide feedback.

I—and surely some other players as well—provide feedback via the in-game feedback forms related to accessibility and 3D precision movement; however, the explanation of Dragonriding has me nervous about how that’s going to control, and it certainly seems that only certain types of accessibility issues are import to the company, since the design team seems intent on doubling down on this type of movement mechanics. That’s fine but the design—at least with regard to movement in the world in outside zones—should take into account that some players have impairments where 4 directional keys a mouse is about our dexterity limit (and actually hitting the ‘A’ button in WASD when wanting to is a 50/50 gamble at best).

Dragonriding is a cool concept on paper, just please carefully design it and keep accessibility in mind.