QoL suggestion for our deaf players.

Recently I was chatting with some friends in a global and an issue came up with finding a glowie. The usual help was offered to include turning up the sound, something I have done on many occasions to aid in finding those pesky glowies. The player then mentioned they are deaf. I then recalled conversations like this in the past with some other players. A few suggestions were tossed around in the channel, then it occurred to me. Two thoughts on a seemingly easy way to help out those friends of ours with this limitation.

First thought is when a player is in "sound" range of the glowie, an icon appears on the map. Not sure the complexity of this sort of coding.

The second was an alteration of the first idea by a player "Chibi Lime" to instead have an icon appear in the health bar window like the proximity icons used for day job locations. I love this idea and hope the devs would seriously consider a QoL feature to help our friends enjoy the game more.

Thank you,
-Lachlin

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thanks lach, for posting this.

one thing that would be great for COH is if was accesible to people, both with hearing losses and people who are having to play without sound.

Microsoft and Apple both have screen blinks when an error message happens, in order to alert the user to the fact that there's a message.

City of Heroes does not have anything within the game that makes it accessible to different populations.

I was talking with a different player, who mentioned that one of their friends developed a program for them, like a sound meter, to let them know when they were getting close to the glowie...it was a version of getting hot, or getting cold.

I hate getting mad when I can't finish the mish because I'm scouring every inch of the map to find this glowie, only to ask people around me if they can hear it, and tell me to get closer to it.

While I do have hearing, it's a bit hard to tell the difference between the music and the glowies.

Please consider this for i15. Thanks!

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/signed now

/signed for the future when my left ear gives out entirely

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Both of my ears work fine, but I'm still behind this 100%.

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Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I was just the one with the most unsolicited sombrero." - Traegus

/signed as many times as it takes.

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And here I thought you were going to make a suggestion to patch the players...

/signed, absolutely. Yes, it's come up before. Yes, I'm completely deaf in one ear, in fact. Even without THAT consideration, I play with headphones - and am not always wearing them (such as when I have to wait for a phone call or some such.) This would help even those with full hearing when they can't have the sound up.

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/signed

It would help those members of our player population who are deaf and also be a boon to those of us who have the sound turned off for one reason or another.

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[ QUOTE ]
And here I thought you were going to make a suggestion to patch the players...

/signed, absolutely. Yes, it's come up before. Yes, I'm completely deaf in one ear, in fact. Even without THAT consideration, I play with headphones - and am not always wearing them (such as when I have to wait for a phone call or some such.) This would help even those with full hearing when they can't have the sound up.

[/ QUOTE ]

Wow. I did not know this.

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/signed. Just one of those things people don't think of, but is no less neccessary.

A buff icon would be okay, but I would think something more obvious would be appropriate. I know I'm not often paying attention to the buff list. I would say an added option, a small window with a sort of pseudo-radar, which pulses with increasing intensity the closer you get. Such a tool would be useful to everyone, deaf or not.

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The off-beat space pirate...Capt. Stormrider (50+3 Elec/Storm Science Corruptor)
The mysterious Djinn...Emerald Dervish (50+1 DB/DA Magic Stalker)
The psychotic inventor...Dollmaster (50 Bot/FF Tech Mastermind)

Virtue Forever.

My hearing's fine, but I /sign this with every fiber of my being. Deaf people deserve to have glowie assistance that's as useful to them as the audio cues are to those of us who can hear.

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The second was an alteration of the first idea by a player "Chibi Lime" to instead have an icon appear in the health bar window like the proximity icons used for day job locations. I love this idea and hope the devs would seriously consider a QoL feature to help our friends enjoy the game more.


[/ QUOTE ]

This would work and be a logical reuse of a similar piece of code.
I play 95% of the time with no sounds and would love a soundless glowie clue feature.

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@Catwhoorg "Rule of Three - Finale" Arc# 1984
@Mr Falkland Islands"A Nation Goes Rogue" Arc# 2369 "Toasters and Pop Tarts" Arc#116617

Fantastic idea. /signed.

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The City of Heroes Community is a special one and I will always look fondly on my times arguing, discussing and playing with you all. Thanks and thanks to the developers for a special experience.

I think a UI element with an increasing/decreasing glow would be good; it's less distracting (and less easy to immediately 'read') than a pulsing light, and so serves the same function as the increasing/decreasing volume. Making this available only to people with the sound disabled ("deaf mode"?) would also be acceptable, although I think that some players who simply can't distinguish between sounds very well might complain.

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[ QUOTE ]
I think a UI element with an increasing/decreasing glow would be good; it's less distracting (and less easy to immediately 'read') than a pulsing light, and so serves the same function as the increasing/decreasing volume. Making this available only to people with the sound disabled ("deaf mode"?) would also be acceptable, although I think that some players who simply can't distinguish between sounds very well might complain.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, that's another instance it would help.

Tech lab maps. Usually at the entrance, and in one or two of the rooms - the sounds "blend" to where it sounds like there's a glowie nearby. A UI indicator would let you know right away that "No, you're just hearing things."

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When I posted this, I never considered all the different people it would be useful to.

Keep the ideas flowing, hopefully it gets noticed and we can see something put in place to help out.

Thanks everyone.

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i feel so blessed to have such a wonderful community of people who are in support of this idea!

i'm also grateful to lachlin for posting it here, after listening to me gripe about it. thank you so much!

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/signed

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Totally agree on this. Sometimes the glowies are hard enough to find when you CAN hear them, much less when you can't... Since they've got an audio hint already, the logical step to other kinds of hints shouldn't be that hard.

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@Mindshadow

I totally agree on this... many times I am on vent. or I am listening to Itunes and hate having to turn one off to hear glowies!! I fully support this propisition!! *hooah Pinnbadges*

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Also, How about this: Remember last years April Fools joke? Replacing sound with comic sound effects? Put that in the game as a 'Hearing Impaired' option. The glowie detector could operate when that mode is in effect, but not when it isn't.

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/signed (with my own signature and as many other people's as I can reasonably forge)

This is a great idea.

I don't think the devs were intending to shut hearing impaired players out at all, far from it. I think they just didn't THINK about it when they designed things.

Any of the ideas suggested above would be an improvement, and I think it would e awesome to see it make it into the game.

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[ QUOTE ]
thanks lach, for posting this.

one thing that would be great for COH is if was accesible to people, both with hearing losses and people who are having to play without sound.

Microsoft and Apple both have screen blinks when an error message happens, in order to alert the user to the fact that there's a message.

City of Heroes does not have anything within the game that makes it accessible to different populations.

I was talking with a different player, who mentioned that one of their friends developed a program for them, like a sound meter, to let them know when they were getting close to the glowie...it was a version of getting hot, or getting cold.

I hate getting mad when I can't finish the mish because I'm scouring every inch of the map to find this glowie, only to ask people around me if they can hear it, and tell me to get closer to it.

While I do have hearing, it's a bit hard to tell the difference between the music and the glowies.

Please consider this for i15. Thanks!

[/ QUOTE ]

This proposal gets the Dark Ether seal of approval, and must not wait for I-15.

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100% on both!!!! this also helps players like my who play with no sound on at all. I like adding my own music and stuff and hate it when i have to stop and ajust my settings.

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A wonderful and very useful idea. So usefull in fact, it makes me wonder why it hasn't been implemented yet. I haven't been able to play with sound since i9. That update overloaded my poor underpowered computer causing it to crash on a regular basis. (Can anyone say, framerate 6?) Turning off all the sound improves my playing so I can team and enjoy the game (except when we have too many MMs on a team) but does make those glowies difficult to find.

Hopefully we don't have to wait for i15 for this.

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Both of my ears work fine, but I'm still behind this 100%.

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ditto

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