FAO Game Developers!! Disabled gamer here!

facetiusmaximus · March 2017

As a disabled (take the hint!) gamer with physical co-ordination and hand-eye co-ordination problems, I find gaming to have an extra challenge here and there. You, however, seem determined to rain on my parade by your thoughtlessness. I can get away with a lot in ST:Online, as the arc of fire on the starships mean that I can still fight even if I over- or under-control a little. But you just had to go and make the minigames (dilithium mining and radiation scanning) depend entirely on co-ordination I just don't have...
Here's a suggestion - when playing a minigame, how about you enable the damn D-pad?! That way, I can make precise moves and have a chance to keep up.
The same goes for events, such as the ice-races in the Winter Wonderland you had over Christmas. I couldn't keep up, as I tended to over-control, and my character would go sliding off into the distance, leaving me without any chance of winning. So I missed out on a entire ship, simply because you didn't realise that not everyone who plays the game can compete the same way. How about next time you asshats include a couple of different types of puzzles, so that people have a chance to keep up?!

angrytarg · March 2017

Yes, insulting the developers will certainly help your cause.

While I realise that this is an issue, assistance for disabled players is something still very uncommon. I feel that constructive dialogue outlining possible needs and ways to implement it, not only in STO but in the industry as a whole, would be much more helpful than insulting and stating "make it better".

facetiusmaximus · April 2017

The language used was carefully chosen to indicate my strength of feeling - if the developers are upset about it, they can contact me directly (my e-mail address was verified) and I will apologise. I will not, however, apologise for the reason I left the feedback - I was born disabled and there's nothing I can do about it. My games are usually carefully-chosen so that I can enjoy them without my disability getting in the way. Most of the time, ST:O achieves this - I have completed the main story arcs a few times now. It's the little extras that ruin the experience - things like requiring gamers to have a combination of perfect hand-eye co-ordination and lightning-fast reflexes. Something else to consider - I was hospitalised for a spinal injury and missed out on the anniversary ship by just forty tokens. Not the developers fault - neither they nor I knew that was going to happen - but they could at least reward those gamers who missed out by giving them something to use all those collected tokens on, rather than just have to bin them entirely. Those tokens represented weeks of effort, and have to discard them with nothing to show for it was most annoying. That's just TRIBBLE design, nothing to do with my disability, but it does give more evidence of thoughtlessness on the part of the devs, something that could easily be corrected.

angrytarg · April 2017

facetiusmaximus#2866 wrote: »

(...)Those tokens represented weeks of effort, and have to discard them with nothing to show for it was most annoying. That's just **** design, nothing to do with my disability, but it does give more evidence of thoughtlessness on the part of the devs, something that could easily be corrected.

You can slot the project, fill it up with 960 tokens and use forty tokens of the next anniversary to complete it.

FAO Game Developers!! Disabled gamer here!

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