Eye Strain and seizure prevention. Game lighting and color Feedback.

Hello.

I've been playing poe since closed beta and i also suffer from very sensitive eyes.
Ever since there was only 1.5 acts in the game, Poe has always caused me excessive eye strain and nearly brought me many times to the point of feeling i was going to have a seizure. Which is a problem since i play the game a lot.

I've never seen this discussed anywhere so it's fair to assume that i'm a minority in having these issues so i've never brought it up thinking it's naive i can make a change to the game to fit my own needs.

However i realized recently that most likely the average player potentially experiences eye strain or eye fatigue after playing and not quite sure what the cause is. Since my eyes are crappy i can much faster detect issues since they give out maybe 10 times faster and i imagine by pointing out the worst issues i can help everyone's eyes.

I also realized GGG might have an interest in solving these issues but might not be able to since i imagine it might be impossible if you have no eye problems.

Also i'd like to point out that i don't want to claim to represent everyone with eye problems.
I also believe in respecting the artistic vision of the developers, it is possible that some things are precisely what they wanted. So i'm not demanding they change, i simply want to point out problems. And i also wouldn't accidentally want to change what someone else may enjoy.
I also might suggest things that are not possible for PoE, in the past i remember reading devs saying things cant happen because of engine limitations or whatever, so keep that in mind.

Even if none of my feedback has any effect on the current game i'd love for you to take these things in mind when creating new content.
I've also taken the liberty to create some quickly and poorly made images and gif's to help illustrate my point.

There are 2 major causes i'd like to discuss.

1 Areas.

2 Skills.

Lighting in Poe

Path of exile's theme seems like a sun bleached wasteland. Which means all outdoor areas are very bright and all the indoors are very dark. Forcing your eyes constantly to adjust between the opposite ends of the visual light spectrum. 2 examples are.
The Climb, bright > The prison, dark. The slums, bright > the sewers, dark. Almost like every other area changes between very dark and bright. This causes eye strain.
Solution? Make the beginning of dark areas almost as bright as the area before, either by natural light shining in or other light sources lighting it up and then gradually let the area get dark as you venture inside.
Example.


Path of exile i feel like it follows a color palette. There appear to be many instances of where the same color appears in many places. This used to be much worse before 3.0.0 since it changed the lighting of many areas giving the illusion of it not being the same color as much. But it's still very noticeable. There's an excess of the same colors being reused. Most notably is the color of sand and stone.
The following are examples repeated color themes through acts 1-3

There are many more good examples in those 3 acts. But i got lazy

This one particular sand-ish color has a huge presence in poe. It's almost like it defines the game.
I feel like the entire game is cursed with this colors vibrance Maybe it's intentional, but if you google image "sand" you see that sand can have many types of color.
Act 3 and 8 have always been the worst. Where everything seems to be made out of the same sand color. Every structure and nearly all the ground has the same color. After years of staring at this color it melts my eyes. Act 4,5,9 and 10 Do not suffer from repetitive colors as much as the other acts but it still shows it's ugly face sometimes.
This is similar to the lighting, if you stare at one color for a while and then change to another it causes eye strain.

Solution? At first i thought that simply fixing textures and giving the game more color diversity was good enough. However, i realized this is not a long term solution. Even if these textures are fixed new issues may arise in the future and then they'll have to be pointed out and then fixed.
Instead i thought up a different solution. I believe a day night cycle would solve any eye strain caused by the same color. If the colors of an area are always gradually changing you'll never have this issue.
Preferably this feature would be able to be turned on/off and either go by server time or your local time. Incidentally it's also better for your eyes if you do bright things on your pc during the day and dark things during the night.
Everyone's a winner.

For the transition between zones. The sewers for example are connected to the slums which seem to be a very sandy area. Makes perfect sense for there to have been sand falling through the grate and build up giving you an excuse to make the entrance the same color as above. Assuming you'd have natural light as well.

Skills

Path of exile in it's nature is a very flashy and fast game. However some skills are much worse than others. The worst of all are lightning and cold skills. Solutions for the strobe effect of lightning skills are hard because lightning is supposed to be that way. The solutions i have for these skills are applicable for all skills, but i will use lightning as an example.

Any skill that has a white effect is bad, many older lightning skills have this. For example, spark, discharge, herald of thunder. Some newer lightning effects like Arc which got a new look with incursion and Lightning strike has much less white in it. Which is great.
Second issue is skill effects that appear for a split second and then completely vanishes. Such as lightning strike. Poe being a game where you usually play for long sessions, and as you level up attack faster and faster, skills like lightning strike is like staring into a strobe light.

Solution? If you check out some videos on lightning in action you'll see that it leaves a very short fading light effect rather than instantly disappearing. Though realism isn't the issue, i believe all skill effects should have a clear fade in and out effect when used. Maybe this would cause performance issues? But it would be great for your eyes.
Example.



Long before MTX were introduced i remember reading about that there was going to be alternate skill effects. This made me imagine that most skills would have an alternate effect, not only for a more healthy change if your eyes got strained by the original but also for great immersive customization. This was one of the original aspects when poe was a baby that kept me playing. Sadly however, many years later there's still no intuitive introduction of alternate skill effects.

Now MTX are a touchy issue, i always believed that i can't seriously criticize ggg for any MTX they release or the ethics of how they decide to sell them since their company is entirely dependent on them to make profit so it has to be handled delicately. As long as it's not p2w of course.
I imagine that in terms of profit, what you can release is very hard. Maybe if you release an MTX that's too good and cheap, a player may never buy another MTX as you would want them to replace their current MTX with new MTX that they'd rather have.
It's hard to wrap your head around it accurately i imagine, unless you're the one organizing it. Which would explain why like 50% of all new MTX are wings, since they probably make the most money. Which of course they do. If the only thing you ever release are stupid wings.

Back to the alternate skill effects. Making an alternate skill effect is very easy in theory, all you have to do is change the texture and release it. You could outsource that to a monkey with photoshop and have every skill done in a day. So i imagine that ggg feels like simply just recoloring skills aren't ethical or good enough. That it might give the impression of not caring to players or whatever. Since it feels like almost every skill MTX available the entire skill has been redone. Very few are just color swaps. Which is a good example of ggg's good integrity. Not making something quick for a quick cash in.

In summary, i would love to have the ability to pay money to not have my eyes melt by buying a skill mtx if my eyes can't handle the original.

Solution? In a perfect world PoE would have a system like this.
I've had an idea for a great MTX a few years now. It's a very simple one that goes well with the current issue of most skill MTX that if your character only uses a specific element like lightning for example and using let's say purple arc MTX along with tempest shield and lightning warp. It looks wonky if one of the skills are a completely different color.

What you want is a themed character.

My idea is basically a MTX that would black and white the skills current texture and make you choose a overlay texture color from a selection similar to a premium stash tab or even better from a color wheel with a hex color code for sharing. Resulting in the skill being completely recolored in any color you want. Fixing any eye issues and introducing a very intuitive way of customization.
Example



Maybe you would say that would be immersion breaking if someone made all their skills, let's say pink. Which is utter crap since you're constantly releasing MTX sets that make characters look like they're marching in the gay pride parade.
https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/gay-pride-san-francisco-rainbow-balloon-costumes-21029344.jpg

Even if the result of the mtx is immersion breaking and simply looks bad with certain colors, why would that be an issue? If someone wants it to look bad let them have it that way, you don't have to do it.
The game is already filled with this in practice as for example kitava cultists use red lightning skills which isn't realistic. But certainly looks cool.

This wouldn't be the end all skill MTX you'd ever need, as i'd make it able to recolor skill MTX as well. For example. Dragon fireball MTX + this = any color dragon fireball.

Obviously i'm not a programmer and this may not be possible or much harder to create than i imagine, but one can dream.

Make it so you'd have to buy one for each skill, sell it for a billion points and buy yourself a pool of caviar. This would solve any related eye issues as well since you could chose the best effect for your individual eyes.
Everyone's a winner.

Also
If an MTX has the chance of making someone feel they'd never need to buy another MTX because nothing could replace it. Just make it cost the same as if you were to sell Path of Exile For retail price. I don't know, 60 dollars? Even if that person were to never buy another MTX afterwards you'd still have made enough money from that person i wager. Don't be so fickle about MTX.

I'd like to point out that this post is completely unrelated to the recent post about ggg hiring a new game lighting artist. I started writing this before that oddly enough.

Thank you for reading.