Missions and Colourblindness
As an ingress player who enjoys exploring new areas and missions/banners. I have, over recent years found it increasingly harder to follow missions. I can't remember now how following missions looked in the old REDACTED scanner, however I seem not to find them so difficult. My issue comes when in a portal dense area (cities). Following a mission can be easy, in an area with neutral portals and few links, my issue arises when walking in a heavily fielded and modded areas (ESPECIALLY ENLIGHTENED). The indicator for the next portal in the mission is almost impossible to view. I find myself staring at a screen or tapping on multiple portals hoping to match the names of the portal to find out where I am going. I can't be the only one who struggle to pick out the thin small broken lines surrounding the portal (mission indicator). Surely, there is a way to make this a more customisable feature or easily to view.
Comments
If you go into the mission detail, there is a checkbox for "Hide Mission Prompts". Is that checked by any chance? Not sure if this is maybe what you were referring to
It's the difference between this:
and this:
No, but thank you for the response. For me seeing the next portal is easy when RES hold the portal. The issue for me on Prime is the colour of the next portal indicator when green ownership, the two colours are so similar that unless I'm stood over the portal it's incredibly difficult to see. I wish I had a screenshot to show. The issue is the colour of the marker and proposing an option to customise the colour or another method to make a portal stand out.
Interesting question! I found: "1 in 12 men (8%) and 1 in 200 women are colorblind (approximately 4.5% of the world population)", and "99% of all colorblind people are suffering from red-green color blindness".
Yellow brackets indicate which portal is next in a mission. But they are not pure yellow - they have some red (orange) in them. So it makes sense that, for many people, yellow/orange brackets would be hard to see in a green field.
Maybe Niantic could make the brackets black if they're under a field? And keep the yellow (orange) for when there is no field.
EDIT: Source https://www.colorblindguide.com/post/colorblind-people-population-live-counter
I think the OP as a good point. Maybe NIA could implement more accessibility options in future updates for the visually impaired.
We've been harping on Niantic about visibility issues since 2019. (WCAG guidelines, et al)
Niantic has been mostly deaf. It's pretty clear that they have no in house expertise on usability / visibility issues, and no intent on improving in this area.
@NianticThia
Android, and I imagine iOS as well, has built-in color filters. Search for "Color Correction" in the Settings app:
Not being visually impaired (aside from common near sightedness), I can't say how well this works.
I'm not color blind, but even for me it is sometimes difficult to find the next portal in scanner. The markings are very light and if you are too near to the next portal it doesn't have any markings at all. Using the mission portal prompt helps but it doesn't solve the basic issue that the graphics aren't user friendly at all.
We've been asking for such things, literally for years now. @NianticThia
I was going to say exactly what @Chamyra said... I'm not colorblind but when I was doing missions recently I found it rather difficult to identify the next portal when I was in a dense cluster.
It's possible the latest update might have adjusted the colors for these prompts
I can't go through all of the prompts but can anyone confirm any differences?
@Hosette @Chamyra totally aggree.
I haven't color recognition problems but even for me to find right portal could be problem especially under green feelds or high density portals.
Also it should be added some additional mark for next mission portal, especially in sequense mission. Something like this:
Having an indicator of which portal is part of the mission, regardless of color recognition concerns, should definitely be a thing. It would help mission progress immensely.
There is already a mark, that indicates the next mission portal. It's two yellow brackets around it. Problem with this is:
Also, I very much like the idea by @Perringaiden that also the other portals still to come in the mission - not just the very next one - get some kind o marking. This would help a lot. It often happens, that missions skip a portal at first occurance just to include it a bit later. Now, you'll have to check the mission data first: Will it come next? Or risk some waiting time if you're out of heatsinks.
@Chamyra i don't remember and cant check it now, but problem was with high density portals. If you click and 2-3 portals showed to choose which one to select its not easy to understand which of them i need to select
@Chamyra
I very much like the idea by @Perringaiden that also the other portals still to come in the mission - not just the very next one - get some kind o marking. This would help a lot. It often happens, that missions skip a portal at first occurance just to include it a bit later. Now, you'll have to check the mission data first: Will it come next? Or risk some waiting time if you're out of heatsinks.
What you're describing is likely a sequenced mission, so you don't want to hack ahead of time.
It might also happen in "any order" missions, if the mission-maker didn't add portals to the mission in a logical way. I haven't seen it, but it seems possible... if portals are geographically in a row 1,2,3,4,5,6 but the mission is built 1,6,3,2,5,4. Sometimes mission makers don't bother to put them in a logical order because they can be done in any order. But Niantic's code to highlight portals could go in the order listed in the mission. (A reason to order portals non-geographically is: so the first portal is at the most public place. When you use the scanner to find missions, it lists them based on distance to the first portal listed on that mission.)
a) It doesn't happen in "any order missions" and it's one of the big complaints about those missions.
b) It's very easy to use different indicators to say "These are part of the mission" vs "This is your next portal".
Currently it only shows any indicator for the next portal in a sequential, and only the 2 closest portals for any order while you're not in range of any, then drops to only one portal when you're in range of multiple in an any order. It's nonsensical and likely was designed by someone who doesn't mission at all, or only while testing.