New UI - Unplayable with vision disability, need help

Hello,

I’m not a native English speaker, but I will try to describe things as good as possible.

With the new UI, the game is for me not playable anymore because of my visual disability. I am partially blind on one eye, have grey spots on the other and a red/green blindness.

In battle, I cannot see the numbers anymore. They blend in with the troop art and especially when they are green, they are basically invisible for me. White and yellow are, depending on the troop and its art, not necessarily better. Damage is 100% invisible. I literally cannot play anymore because of this.
The kingdoms now have their stars displayed in a white box… or so people told me, because I see a white, blurry dot and that’s it.
The troop rarity was indicated by a big colorful border around the whole troop before. This was great because it was easily visible. Now it’s a small bar and everything small is bad for me to spot. I cannot tell the rarity easily anymore.
Actually, everything seems to have become smaller…

I loved this game because it had this big, bright, colorful art which made it easily playable even for me. Not many games do that and I loved to have found something I could play. I spent hours upon hours on this game and also some money. And I am not a person who is unwilling to try new things. But I literally cannot play anymore. I need bright, big, colorful things to see things clearly.

Is there any way to use the old UI? Because, as sorry as I am to say, this game is not playable for people with vision problems anymore when before it was actually the online game I found best suited for that (or at least for my vision problems). I don’t want to quit. I love this game. I really, really do - so, so much. But I literally cannot play a single match anymore.

Please, is there any way to undo the new update? I love the changes on the troops (like the Wisp nerf), but how am I to enjoy them if I cannot play the game anymore?

Thank you for any help!

EDIT: I should add that I play on PC, so a much bigger screen than a mobile user. It’s not helping and I could imagine that even people with far less severe vision problems can’t play on mobile (I have no smartphone to check how it’s there because well… I can’t see things on them well enough).

EDIT 2: Thanks to everyone who replied and reported having the same problems even with less vision issues than I have! I hope that even if no one can help and there is no way to go back to the former UI at the moment, the devs will see this and realize that for people with vision problems, lots of different colors with clear lines around them are just a big help for everyone. I know I used to be able to just zone out and relax for hours in this game, which was wonderful after a hard day. Losing this game would actually mean losing life quality for me, so I hope there will be a way to bring the old UI back!

EDIT 3: As the devs have finally posted in another topic that they will not go back to the old UI and that playerbase has actually increased since the update, I do not require help anymore. I’m quitting. Thank you everyone for keeping this thread alive and being so understanding and supporting. Best of luck to all of you!

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I second all of this!!

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I’m on PS4 and I third this.

The numbers are unreadable on most of the card backgrounds for me. Holy eye strain, Batman!

I wonder if a color blind mode is possible. Just adding a solid non blue/green/white color behind the green/white numbers and text would be extremely helpful, I think.

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I have 20 20 vision and am having trouble seeing this, I feel for you. I think the update is a good idea but maby they need to make it more visible instead of invisible. Very hard to see. Hope they alter the colors and visibility for those hard of seeing

Also I remember in call of duty they had color blind option for minimap i used it, made the arrows and players much easier to see/ track in the minimap maby they can add a color blind or visibility options soon

hope this terrible ui will removed from game, and UI/UX Junior Designer with 0yrs XP will be fired.

Alas, I am in the same boat. Logged in just now and was like “well, I can’t play this game anymore”. Googled “Gems of War New UI” and this was the first hit. Literally said everything I was thinking and feeling. I have low vision and this was a bright and simple game I could play without much of a struggle… and many of the changes, such as all the ghosted/transparent numbers and text on troops, team powers etc, are unreadable. I won’t reiterate everything that was said above, but unless I can go to some ‘classic mode’, this game is literally unplayable for me now. On top of that, many of the changes are simply disappointing, and LESS user-friendly (vision aside). Not giving me a compact list of everything earned in chests or trying to make everything very visual with tons of graphics beneath all the stats after games and so on. The simple old-school feeling graphics was half the appeal fo this game. This new flat and overly stylized approach that everything is using (like Apple) just doesn’t suit the game.

I will say the map and general home view is more visually friendly, but pretty much everything else has just ruined this game for me, which is extremely disappointing.

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I have no vision disability and I simply can’t play. All the colors mesh together. The backboards in dark and transparent. I’m speechless that this went though without being tested out more. I seriously may have to quit because I simply can’t play.

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I hope the devs take this opportunity to consider their next step on the game. Now that we are on this plataform, Unity, wouldn’t be better to make some effort to allow us the option to chose what UI we want on Settings?

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They desperately need to include the option to select either the new or the “classic” UI ASAP this new forced UI is not a good change for GoW.

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very very very terrible interface, all colorful and not readable. where were the betta testers?

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Team score, how much? What is it? New UI-Unpayable, ++++++ from me.

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This text visibility issue really needs to be addressed immediately.

My score is virtually unreadable.

image
Even this is hard to read!

Also, the troops on the battle screen contain way, way too much plain white text/graphics. Even with the very faint gray background, this causes huge amounts of eyestrain. Can we PLEASE get some sharper contrast around all the white text/symbols?

“Gems of War UI Designer goes to Apple”

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Surely watching paint dry is better than playing gow with the new UI.

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hahahaha… same feeiing here… gow feels really like seeing white screen only… :rofl:

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Again, thank you everyone who replied to this thread! I just learned from some guildmates that they don’t have the UI update because they play on mobile and decided not to get the update because of what they read. I have no smartphone, but can anyone tell me if there is a way to do a rollback to before the update?

On the steam forums, it was posted that there will be an update to readability in the beginning of next week, but I have decided for myself to quit completely unless we get the old UI back, not just because of the vision problems but because of the whole feel of the game which I do not find myself enjoying anymore. This was originally intended as a help thread, after all, so I wanna ask again if there’s a way to roll versions back. I don’t even care if I can’t do multiplayer things anymore, I’d be fine with it being an old-version single player game not connected to server anymore. I play(ed) this game to relax. I know other games on steam (well, at least Terraria) can be rolled back to former update versions, so I was wondering if really no one can help me here.

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It will hopefully be fixed in the next update

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As the devs have finally posted in another topic that they will not go back to the old UI and that playerbase has actually increased since the update, I do not require help anymore. I’m quitting and don’t need to sit here anymore and hope for a miracle. Thank you everyone for keeping this thread alive and being so understanding and supporting. Best of luck to all of you!

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