An open letter to Kabam

Over the last few years I have attempted to get some feedback from you and each time it seems to fall upon deaf ears I have never once received a response
So now I am trying here in this public forum

There is a section of the community that kabam has not taken into account those with impairments

Such as myself I am legally blind & have been playing the game since it’s release

I feel with a bit of practice you can make it through any reasonable content

however there is some content that is impossible for individuals such as myself

not due to lack of skills but due to the impairment that one has

I’ve spoken to a few other legally blind players and have found out that we all have the same roadblock act six the champion boss

It’s not getting him down it’s actually the dash back mechanic required to defeat him

I will gladly put myself out there for those who wish to remain anonymous because not everyone wants the world to know that they have an impairment

Again I am more than willing to have a conversations with anyone from kabam I believe that no player should be punished due to their impairment…however that is what we have been experiencing with the champion boss

So on behalf of myself and the others that this situation affects I thank you for taking the time to read this letter and hope that we can turn a negative into a positive

Sincerely Venger77

Comments

GroundedWisdom

I'm sorry for your impairment. I can't offer a solution, but I can give a tip. If you allow him to corner you in that phase and just spam Dex, it will fulfill the requirement.

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Palistes

I'm colorblind, so I have issues in some games. Fortunately not many in MCOC, but red text is really hard for me to read. Hope things work out for you, Venger77!

(Is Venger77 your in-game name? If so, kudos to you! You are awesome!)

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Venger77

No special device
I play using an iPad Pro it gives me a decent enough size of a screen to be able to see

I am sorry about your impairment, I am just curious how are you able to play this game if you are legally blind? is it with sounds or you have some special device ?

I am amazed that you were able to get to Act 6. You have some awesome skills to achieve this much progress with your impairment.

I hope you find the solution for this roadblock and wish you more fun with mcoc.

Venger77

Thank you very much
yes that is my in game name

I'm colorblind, so I have issues in some games. Fortunately not many in MCOC, but red text is really hard for me to read. Hope things work out for you, Venger77!

(Is Venger77 your in-game name? If so, kudos to you! You are awesome!)

Palistes

Awesome, Venger77! I'm not very active on the forums, but this is the first time I've run into an alliance mate!

Noob_Master69

I hope Kabam is willing to get into contact and resolve some of these issues, be it being colorblind, legally blind or anything else.

In the mean time out of pure curiousity, what is it that makes the dash back mechanic harder for you? As opposed to a normal situation where you need to dex specials

Venger77

Thank you

To try and answer your question it all comes down to just a visual thing a lot of people that are legally blind have trouble judging distance this can affect things like real life and games also a lot of the champions flashing moves make it hard to see what he is doing not to mention the speed at which he moves I think is the best way to explain it

I hope Kabam is willing to get into contact and resolve some of these issues, be it being colorblind, legally blind or anything else.

In the mean time out of pure curiousity, what is it that makes the dash back mechanic harder for you? As opposed to a normal situation where you need to dex specials

Crusaderjr

personally i dex the champions sp2 as its easier to avoid.
but to the main issue, what changes in your opinion do you think would help or clarify this situation? i think playing mcoc blind is incredible and that honestly takes more skill compared to us none impaired. but if you are able to play the game as normal as possible dexing and playing the game should be the same? so i guess my question is what part of this is difficult? and why isnt it possible like dexing other special attacks?

Venger77

Thank you very much
If you take a look just above your comment you will see I attempted to kind of cover that information earlier…. but you are awesome for wanting to learn more

personally i dex the champions sp2 as its easier to avoid.
but to the main issue, what changes in your opinion do you think would help or clarify this situation? i think playing mcoc blind is incredible and that honestly takes more skill compared to us none impaired. but if you are able to play the game as normal as possible dexing and playing the game should be the same? so i guess my question is what part of this is difficult? and why isnt it possible like dexing other special attacks?

Jaded

Would adding sound cues for blind players be something they could add? Make it selectable in settings, so a special sound is made when the defender dashes/throws specials etc…?

Venger77

That is a very interesting suggestion maybe the same thing could be done with a successful dex as a visually impaired player the number to know how many times the dex has been done successfully is difficult to see… and as we all know taking your eye off the opponent will result in a KO

Would adding sound cues for blind players be something they could add? Make it selectable in settings, so a special sound is made when the defender dashes/throws specials etc…?

Jaded

That is a very interesting suggestion maybe the same thing could be done with a successful dex as a visually impaired player the number to know how many times the dex has been done successfully is difficult to see… and as we all know taking your eye off the opponent will result in a KO
Would adding sound cues for blind players be something they could add? Make it selectable in settings, so a special sound is made when the defender dashes/throws specials etc…?

Yes, correct. Other tones to specify other aspects of the fight. Of course a tutorial explaining each sound would be required to learn first but there’s probably enough interest to put a team to.

Venger77

As I think about problems that affect impaired players as well as non-impaired player the hitbox comes to mind

it would be nice to have some sort of bar underneath bar to indicate to the player if they’re inside that box so they know if their dex will count against the boss

That is a very interesting suggestion maybe the same thing could be done with a successful dex as a visually impaired player the number to know how many times the dex has been done successfully is difficult to see… and as we all know taking your eye off the opponent will result in a KO
Would adding sound cues for blind players be something they could add? Make it selectable in settings, so a special sound is made when the defender dashes/throws specials etc…?

Yes, correct. Other tones to specify other aspects of the fight. Of course a tutorial explaining each sound would be required to learn first but there’s probably enough interest to put a team to.

Jaffa_

I'm colorblind, so I have issues in some games. Fortunately not many in MCOC, but red text is really hard for me to read. Hope things work out for you, Venger77!

(Is Venger77 your in-game name? If so, kudos to you! You are awesome!)

I get trouble being Elbe to see the champs against certain backgrounds. The worst one for me is the surtur, champs like void, NT etc just almost disappeare. Be nice if we could just pick a background for ourselves for all fights

Darth_Nihilus

Sorry to hear that
Maybe Kabam can make different difficulties for each act

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Darth_Nihilus

Sorry to hear that
Maybe Kabam can make different difficulties for each act
That's a ridiculous idea
OP has issues with visiblity and not on skills

Yes but it would lower the difficulty by removing certain nodes that cause issues

Terra

Sorry to hear that
Maybe Kabam can make different difficulties for each act
That's a ridiculous idea
OP has issues with visiblity and not on skills
Yes but it would lower the difficulty by removing certain nodes that cause issues

🗿

GeneralNappa

Sorry to hear that
Maybe Kabam can make different difficulties for each act
That's a ridiculous idea
OP has issues with visiblity and not on skills
Yes but it would lower the difficulty by removing certain nodes that cause issues

Removing them nodes takes away the majority of the challenge in the fights. We should work to make the game more accessible to the impaired rather than just hand them easier fights. As I'm sure that's not what the OP is looking for. Like another guy suggested sound prompts or the like would be a cool step for the visually impaired of any severity.

Magrailothos

Would adding sound cues for blind players be something they could add? Make it selectable in settings, so a special sound is made when the defender dashes/throws specials etc…?

I was thinking the same thing. Doesn't Korg have an audio 'tell' for Dexing his SP1? I wonder how hard it would be (and how helpful) to add a similar audio cue to the GM?

Also, maybe an audio cue for each order he gives you (dash/block/hit)? Three different order 'pings', with a follow-up audio 'tell' would be something a visually-impaired person could follow; whilst presumably being similarly difficult to the visual cues the rest of us are relying on.

Amazing work getting so far with a severe visual impairment, my friend: kudos!

DNA3000

Would adding sound cues for blind players be something they could add? Make it selectable in settings, so a special sound is made when the defender dashes/throws specials etc…?

This would be tricky, because the visual cues associated with the vulnerability points of champion animations are not always easy to spot (visually) and in some cases, it is unclear if the playerbase as a whole even *know* what they are for some really hard to dex specials. If we create sound cues for everything that are unambiguous, that would actually be an obvious shortcut way to know something that is currently intended to be much harder to figure out.

How precisely we would replicate the "fog of war' with audio cues that we currently have with visual cues would be a potentially very complex problem to solve. We can try to level the playing field for visually impaired players, but we can't make the supplemental cues easier for everyone, whether visually impaired or not, because that has the danger of trivializing content.

To put it by way of example, we can't have a "dex when you hear the ping" thing in the game, because that would be, for many attacks, unambiguously easier for everyone (except the deaf, presumably). If we added a "swoop" audio cue where someone would have to figure out and discern the precise moment in the audio cue to dex at, that would in a sense translate the visual search for a cue with an audio search for a cue, and not reduce the problem space arbitrarily.

And that seems to be very non-trivial to implement, especially globally.

Kabam Miike

Hey OP, thank you for the thoughtful post. I can't say much, but I have passed it on to the team. If you have any ideas or particular areas of concern, please don't hesitate to share them!

Jaded

Would adding sound cues for blind players be something they could add? Make it selectable in settings, so a special sound is made when the defender dashes/throws specials etc…?
This would be tricky, because the visual cues associated with the vulnerability points of champion animations are not always easy to spot (visually) and in some cases, it is unclear if the playerbase as a whole even *know* what they are for some really hard to dex specials. If we create sound cues for everything that are unambiguous, that would actually be an obvious shortcut way to know something that is currently intended to be much harder to figure out.

How precisely we would replicate the "fog of war' with audio cues that we currently have with visual cues would be a potentially very complex problem to solve. We can try to level the playing field for visually impaired players, but we can't make the supplemental cues easier for everyone, whether visually impaired or not, because that has the danger of trivializing content.

To put it by way of example, we can't have a "dex when you hear the ping" thing in the game, because that would be, for many attacks, unambiguously easier for everyone (except the deaf, presumably). If we added a "swoop" audio cue where someone would have to figure out and discern the precise moment in the audio cue to dex at, that would in a sense translate the visual search for a cue with an audio search for a cue, and not reduce the problem space arbitrarily.

And that seems to be very non-trivial to implement, especially globally.

I only specifically said “special sound”, could be anything. I was only asking OP if that would be helpful, as most helpful attributes there is a fine line of exploiting users can do.

Berjibs

Actually I used the sounds of his sp1 as my dex cues, they line up well and was able to consistently dex hits 2 and 5. Maybe give that a try. To get hit 5 as well you dash forwards after the sound of the 4th hit and then back again.

Berjibs

The other thing you can do is duel him, just heavy attacks to get him to a special and these should also act as a bait mechanism in most cases, then when you try and dex his specials you can see if the precision buff appears. Obviously is you use dex to bait this won’t work.

Panchulon21

Good luck man! You must be pretty skilled to have made it this far.

Venger77

Thank you

Good luck man! You must be pretty skilled to have made it this far.

RickyG_Chicago

The worst one for me is the surtur, champs like void, NT etc just almost disappeare.
THIS THIS THIS!!! I hate this stage background. It feels like the person that designed it is personally giving me the finger every time I play it (maybe I kicked their puppy in a past life or something ). As @Jaffa_ stated, having a dark red and black stage in a game where 85% of the characters have red and black costumes is a nightmare for those of us with low visibility issues (yes, playing against/as Void on this stage is a complete guessing game for me). I did notice in the last update that the lighting for this stage was changed slightly to offer a little more contrast (thank you!!!!!). However, and at the risk of further insulting the designer of this stage, I think it should either be removed or the design modified more to greatly further increase the contrast.

And thank you @Venger77 for starting this post. I've sometimes found myself close to tears trying to overcome some of the visibility issues I encounter in this game (i.e. low contrast backgrounds, reverse type on dark backgrounds, miniscule type sizes that can't be changed, etc.). I've many times thought about making my own post, but usually get so depressed about it that I talk myself out of taking any action (e.g. "...well Kabam will never listen to me" or "...it's a visual medium, just enjoy what you can..."). It's amazing the things we'll convince ourselves we don't deserve for one reason or another. I truly hope @Kabam Miike is in fact bringing these issues to the design team. I've been playing MCOC since 2016 and have no intentions of putting it down any time soon. As more and more updates to the interface are rolled out, it'd be great to know they are being evaluated through an accessibility lense. Even this very forum should be part of the discussion. Not being able to adjust the text and background to something more readable in 2022 seems a bit cruel and outdated.

And to our fellow players, thank you for the kind responses above (and some really cool suggestions). Community reaction was also a factor that kept me "in the closet" so to speak about publicizing my issues. It's nice to know folks are so understanding about some of the challenges faced by other/different segments of the gaming community.

Cheers!