I’m a huge RPG fan and recently purchased Last Epoch, eager to dive into the world you’ve created. However, the current font sizes make the game difficult to play, especially for those with less-than-perfect vision, players enjoying the game from a distance, or those using a Steam Deck.
Current Font Size Challenges:
Comparing fonts at 1080p and 2160p resolutions, they fall below UX best practices for minimum recommended sizes.
Even for standard users, font sizes feel too small, especially at 2160p where item names, dialogue, menus, and buttons are challenging to read.
Recommendations for Improvement:
Implement a baseline font size increase across resolutions, targeting:
1080p: Minimum 27px
1440p: Minimum 36px
2160p: Minimum 54px
Headers/Dialogue: Consider 80-100px at 2160p for film subtitle-like readability.
Add an accessibility slider allowing users to further increase font size by 20-30% on top of the baseline adjustments.
Impact and Urgency:
Currently, the small fonts make Last Epoch unplayable for me, requiring sizes even larger than 54px at 2160p. Scaling technology seems to be used, but base font sizes need a significant increase.
Formula for Improvement:
For your reference, a common font size scaling formula suggests:
Font Size in Pixels = (Height / 480p) * 12
My Desire:
I truly want to experience Last Epoch and believe these changes would significantly improve accessibility and user experience for many players. Thank you for your time and consideration.
i guess im not the only one. I cant read the text without eyes hurting. Will research more tomorrow but only 30 minutes in and if it cant be fixed will refund. my eye sight is bad enough and dont need to make it worse
I sent in a similar suggestion. I would like those font changes like you mentioned and colorblind-aware colors choosable as label options. I’m the most common form of colorblind and I can’t see the difference between many of the current label color options.
Approximately 1 in 12 males is colorblind. That’s a big portion of your playerbase that would be affected positively by this simple update.
Interestingly, the UI does actually scale. The 1080p image on my TV looks the same as the 2160p image. However, the base font size they are using is far too small.
I am actually really surprised they started off with such a small font and nobody in their studio said anything. We know at least 30% of the world has poor vision - it seems a bit weird to dodge these people as employees and testers. If I worked there, I would have said something pretty early on.
Once the base font size is scaled to 54px at 2160px for items and other regular text, and dialogue fonts are increased to 100px or whatever it takes to make it look comparable to subtitles in film, there also needs to be an accessible slider to add an additional 0-30% on top of these baseline adjustments.
So in my case, the smallest font size I would want to see on at 2160p would be 70.2px. This would finally eliminate the eye fatigue and squinting. Maybe games do hit this font size, and I’m very happy when they do. I will pretty much always positively recommend a game that has accessible fonts to reward the devs.
But even the baseline change to 54px would be a huge improvement for pretty much everyone playing the game. 20-30px fonts at 2160px are not readable. We were using 12px at 480p…
On top of this, and I should have mentioned it before, is that the actual font chosen is pretty hard to read. A simple sans serif font - even if it’s not as immersive - is just easier to read. There should be an option for that too. People can criticize diablo 3 for its font face, but they are far easier to read compared to Diablo 4 or Last Epoch.
Very well put and interesting post. I heared Mike say on the interview with DM and Ghazzy that the font in Last Epoch is their completely own font they created themselves. Must admit they did a terrible job letting it go through so small.
Yeah, that’s actually not good. A lot of knowledge about typography goes into making fonts, and I wouldn’t expect someone who specializes in making games to have the master-level knowledge to do it properly. There is a reason certain fonts are used over and over again - they are actually designed to be read in a variety of different surfaces, distances, etc. for legibility. You can’t just make a font and say, “it looks cool.”
The font they made is not very legible. I’d rather they have used Helvetica, Roboto, Verdana, etc. and just called it a day. The Calibri font in Microsoft apps is also very good. There’s no need to reinvent the world here.
