At first, i need to say I’m an experienced tester of the Accessibility functions for a Games.
My role is to make developers aware of harmful designs for the community so i also have option to design games to be more Accessibility for others and open games for more people. But here I want to share my feedback and knowledge as a “tip” and friendly reminder. I love last epoch and i will support it. And The feedback will be arguet due to some know regulations and designs that can save some part of people from seizures and headaches. As I’m a person who is touched and fight with epylepsy for 15 years I just can’t ignore how poor LE is bad on this segment. Currently i don’t have seizures but game makes in me massive headaches and prevent me from longer play sessions.
Lets start
Flashbacks on hits( PRIO 1 critical)- that was not disabled via “flash on hit”. The purpose of existence for disabling “flash on hit” is not just aesthetic. It exist due to people with seizures and various disabilities about brain and other dysfunctions similar to them.
Test scenario: Use necromancer build with skeletons and mages. Disable the “flash on hit”
Result of test scenario: Every hit with skeleton projectiles makes big FX flash that covers entire enemies and as there are many,many skeletons and enemies it’s just FX fiesta.
Secondly, it destroys readability and, with some visual dysfunctions, makes game completely impossible to play for them. https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/539074459177582645/952537764736430110/unknown.png?width=838&height=511 ← link to a image how big is that flash. Last Epoch - Hit on Flash. - YouTube <–Link to YT where I recorded how it looks ingame and how bad it’s in current state.
It’s not even a problem for Accessibility, but also it makes game less aesthetic.
My suggestions:
Replace this flash on hit to Blood splash (small and not for 3x of enemy)
Create few mesh decals that was used on “hit” for fire “ash” for ice “frozen decal” for physical attacks - blood wave/splash (based on skill)
But all of this should be minimal to not cover entire enemy model (in current state one flash cover few enemies around)
I wrote about it with the developer in the in-game chat. I don’t remember his name, but he assured me that he would stay soon, and it has been six months now.
There’s many UI issues with Accessibility that can make game unreadable for some people. For some part of them with higher disabilities, it makes game even not playable due to used colors for UI and wrong contrast - they will not see these parts of ui.
Thank you for reading and understanding.
I hope you will listen to that and make game better and more accessible for others.
Stay safe and for contact: Discord: Puszek#0666
Thanks for this feedback and especially the references to WCAG… I had always known that there were “general things to do” to make applications/webpages etc more accessible to those affected by things like this but never went beyond that.
Both of the issues you mention have been brought up in the past - interestingly by people with and without disabilities… The flash on hit issue even has a toggle in the settings but unfortunately it doesnt go far enough. The UI contrast has been a thing with many (myself included) and is not restricted to your example, but even to the contrast between uniques/legendaries/exalts border shading etc show up in the inventory & stash - its hard to see at the best of times - and I have no visual disability that I know of.
I dont recall any recent comments from the devs about this. They are in a scramble the week before a new patch (18th March) so they may not have time to specifically reply here right now, but maybe they will…
If you say you have mentioned this directly to a game dev, then chances are its on a roadmap somewhere - no idea what kind of priority they may have made it tho…
ps. Out of personal interest as I have nothing to do with EHG: Do you have examples of games that have implemented the WCAG requirements - I would like to see what they have done just for my own curiosity. I know games generally address things like colour-blindness but never delved deeper than that…
Game accessibility guidelines | Full list ← there’s a good explanation about Accessibility at games. For some reason about NDA I can’t talk much about games I work on but I can sent you Xbox Accessibility Guideline 102 - Microsoft Game Dev | Microsoft Learn it’s documentation for partners who works with MS that need to implement all of these things to their games and parity with documentation is acted like a bug.
Entire content of this is open to read for everyone.
on other side we have Sony which currently implements these in some games and some… not.
next: https://caniplaythat.com this site review games about accessibility level but unfortunately these are “short” and not “in deep” reviews.
but entire WCAG is not accorded to the web sites - it’s accorded to UI of the everything you can name “UI” and there’s also more in this than only “UI”. Like entire input system, clear descriptions that are enough to be understandable for people with some brain dysfunction like asperger syndrome - where bad explanation can provide them to attempt doing stuff over and over.
Anyway more important than UI are these flashes on hit which can lead to a court action for damages to health - even if there is an appropriate flash note. What is in Last Epoch is unacceptable, and even though I am not struggling with epilepsy anymore, it is impossible for me to play for more than an hour because I just get migraines and feel very tired.
When in other games it is not a problem for me to sit before the game for up to 7 hours with breaks for 15 minutes.
it’s caused by number of flashes x intensifies of them and size of flashes (look at screen from first post)
is even more detailed for some missing stuff. guidelines and at left side menu you can choose different accessibilities guidelines.
and i think LE should invest into small-3-ppl team which will be rensposinble for all of the “Accessibility functions and designs”. It’s more than quality assurance - it will improve the entire feeling even for people with no dissabilities.
I will say I get eye fatigue like crazy trying Necro builds. I know exactly what you are talking about and I agree it is an issue. Flash on hit could definitely use a scale-back / alternative version for sure. I like the idea of a small blood spurt on hit or just turning it off entirely as an option.
Thanks for the detailed feedback. This is something that we are well aware of and actually had a meeting yesterday to work on this specific thing. We want to improve several aspects of combat feedback and feel in general and this is probably the worst part of it at the moment.
I would like to add one small piece of information. The “flash on hit” setting is actually functioning and functioning as expected. The visual effect which is causing problems is the On-Hit VFX. This is 1/3 of the hit visual feedback at the moment, hit flash and when-hit VFX being the other 2/3. The other parts are really hard to see because the on-hit vfx is way too bright in several cases.
I know it work as expected - there are two different flashes where this from option have no impact on health and the second one is a trigger.
In every line i talked about on hit VFX flash and not the option. I showed it on video just for people who complain we can turn it off.
There few things in design to follow
First: Health of players (this what we got, should never happen)
immersion: Game is Dark Fantasy themed so always from flashes a blood n gore will be better for theme of the game
Visual representation and visibility: Represent skills on hit is hard in game dev and is something important to make hits feel viable and enjoys the gameplay via them. Make them themed for dark fantasy. IF i can tip you can use mesh-decals for elemental effects and blood splaters to cover ground and environment around.
