Flashlight clicking is a risk to Photosensitive Epileptic players
This is a 2 part request/suggestion.
First I want to inform the playerbase that flashlight clicking is more than a toxic mindgame, it is a serious risk for users or spectators who are sensitive to flashing lights, potentially causing seizures leading to harm or worse. Consider what kind of harm you could be causing to real life, and disable those clicking macros.
The second part of this is a call to action for BHVR to implement a 0.5 second cooldown in between flashlight clicks in order to meet safety requirements for photosensitive epilepsy:
Photosensitive epilepsy triggers:
– Any sequence of flashing* images that lasts for more than 5 seconds
– More than three flashes* in a single second, covering 25%+ of the screen
– Moving** repeated patterns*** or uniform text****, covering 25%+ of the screen
– Static repeated patterns*** or uniform text****, covering 40%+ of the screen
I would also like to point out that Dead by Daylight does not present a warning for Photosensitive Epilepsy on launch or in the EULA, which creates a risk of legal liability when posts like this are made public and met with inaction. Please add a warning, along with the functional cooldown of flashlights mentioned above, as these are very real health risks to many players/spectators.
This isn't a demand, or a threat, this is a genuine plead for assistance in helping to minimize the health risk for players and spectators of the game.
I don't recall any official statement being made regarding Flashlight rapid click macro use by the dev team, but the problem is still very present in the latest PTB from today.
Thanks,
Comments
I have very sensitive eyes to bright lights not seizures but I have had them in the past, not due to light but that could have easily been a mistake by my doctor, I am fully behind you on this as the safety of the community should be a thing every video game company wishes for their players.
I have been thinking they should put a small cool down between flashlight use for epileptic people for a while now. But I never bothered suggesting it to the devs since they probably won’t do it since survivors enjoy flashlight spamming people.
This would be a great change. Keeping people safe and making the game slightly less toxic. I fully support this.
They do not care. I have made Anti-epileptic mode requests every two weeks for months, and they do not care.
Playing video games in general is dangerous for ecliptics. It breaks my heart that this hobby could physically harm some people.
Really hoping that this catches a community manager's attention.
I have epilepsy and I really hate that police car on Haddonfield and just overall lights near gens on indoor maps.
I just always have to find least annoying camera angle, which sucks against stealthy killers.
At this point all we can do is spread awareness about the clicking problem. (Literally had a clicker today when they found out i brought lightborn) Im not very confident bhvr will go great lengths to recognize this as a problem...
While we really really need an epilepsy mode (or just change into flashlight mechanics in general)
you can’t really blame the people that do it for attention. Many people are simply not aware that this may cause issues and they are just doing it to be toxic/getting the killers attention and not to actually harm someone.
as much as it sucks, until BHVR changes their game, it’s really only the affected people that need to stop playing if this is an actual risk for them. Ask BHVR for changes, give this valid criticism. But don’t play the Game in its current state of it really is a risk for your health.
Hi, accessibility issues are always something that we're aware of, and this is feedback that I will bring back to the team.
@BastardKing you're not being ignored, I have seen your posts and if you notice on your last one, I did mark it with the BHVR read tag - to show that this was feedback that wasn't being ignored.
But if they changed this, how else could the Survivors strive to be as absolutely unlikable and obnoxious as possible? All they'd have left is tbagging, spam vaulting and telling people they hope their mother gets cancer in post game chat.
Considering they had to be bullied into adding colorblind options
They do in fact not care.
nobody was bullied into anything. Prior to the announcement that we'd made about colour blind options being added - it had been worked on internally for some time.
I will admit to being pessimistic and, in the belief of good faith, I will say the release of the color blind options after the complaints from the community reaching journalists was... very unfortunate timing.
Anyway, I can't think of a reason to not add like a half a second cooldown when using a flashlight. Would benefit the epileptic and we wouldn't lose anything of value with macros being sent to the shadow realm.
I rarely use flashlights and don't spam click at killers unless they bm first. However, very skilled flashlight users can quickly release and reclick them to correct for save timings. The same might be true for chain blinds but im not as sure on the timing of those.
See i understand your correct, but it effects all players and in my opinion removes some of the fun from the game. Maybe add a extra button to settings to make flashes only once a second.
we both know thats a lie
I know for a fact it's not a lie, cos I was part of the testing process, as I'm colour blind myself.
I never understood why there hasn't been a fix for this yet. Not only in dbd but other games as well.
I am happy to see that this isn't being ignored but it also shouldn't be something that the player base should have to request / suggest in first place, this should be standard for all video games.
sure, they just ignored the issue until it blew up by a couple of journalists how almo essentially talked down to the colorblind
I don't like macro clickers as well, but I never thought that it might be a safety and health issue for some people. This is very important and needs to be adressed SOON. Not in a year. Best would be in the next chapter or the mid-chapter after that.
Only will happen when someone has a medical issue and then they get hit by legal action watch how fast it gets pumped out. It isn't even that hard or long to code, literally any conpany could have put a 1-5 second delay between the flashing unless held down and let's be honest, it will take someone literally having a medical issue to get this pumped out fast. But that Pride charm was pretty fast in it's release, medical issues for people don't get enough attention it seems. :/ shame. Maybe if the community had more journalists in the forums and they did some work this could be done. Within a week.
Also teabagging. Survivors in flashy outfits teabagging you should be dealt with too. To help with epilepsy of course
Pride charm (or any art related content) is done by a different team. They have nothing to do with game design and/or programming. Therefore it is understandable, that charms or cosmetics get pumped out, but fixes etc might need more time. And adding even a single line to an existing code of thousands of lines and commands might accidentally "cutt off the elevator's power supply while turning on the light". So not every simple problem has a simple solution.
Very true but I don't think it shouldn't have been not already been done it should have gone to the point that it has.
Ah, so if there isnt a "BHVR read tag" on he post, it was indeed IGNORED, no matter its content?
Yeah, sadly these things are just forgotten.
I don't think so. About 2.5 years ago I posted an idea of a killer (The Impaler, my version of the historically inspired Vampire theme) who could teleport once after hitting a survivor 2 or 3 times and used the already sacrificed Survivors as hindrance to the still living. They could detect other Survivors and hinder their objectives. One of his perks made his lunge attack longer.
Later we got The Oni who builds his power by hitting survivors and literally flys across the map. And we got The Nemesis with Zombies that basically do the stuff I had in mind. And a perk that altered your lunge came with the Twins: Coup de Grâce.
I also posted a complete Myers buff&add-on rework to make him better. They buffed Judith's and Vanity Mirror similar like I would have done and they also plan to bring the stalk music back what I also suggested.
These are just examples and I think there are a lot more people out there who had (similar) ideas and found them later in the game.
They do care and get the information but they are very sneaky. They just go in and out without telling you.
That's not what I said, or meant. I specifically mentioned that because of the comment about their feedback being ignored - I pointed out that the comment was tagged so it shows it hadn't been ignored. I pretty much read all the feedback on this forum.
Could you take a look on this then?
Its an old post of mine, but i think its still an issue up to this day and these are pretty reasonable changes that could get tested on future PTBs.
Epileptic people are not meant to play the game as the EULA and warnings state.
There's no mention of a warning in DBD, not during boot flow or in the EULA.
I fully support this as well
Agree, and also useless, only good to make toxic Behaviors.
Unbelievable that this problem has not been resolved...
I made a post sometime ago and suggested that flashlight should have 1 second cooldown every time it's put on / off.
Once I met with a PC player who made a dozen clicks in a second with mouse wheel / macro.
Woah what à champ, comparing à sickness people can avoid to one they cant/that NEEDS to be advertised...
Guess Epileptic people shouldnt play anygames then? Nor watch TV, have à Phone, watch movies....
If the game doesnt tell you that you cant play it while being photosensitive/epileptic then there shouldnt be à problem
Epileptic people amsp have the right to play the games they want, its not hard to avoid light flashings, ESPECIALLY IN DBD
But i guess you really wanna keep your clicky clicky Flashlights more then thinking to other persons huh?
Sorry its not the answer you wanna hear, but its the truth
I perfectly understand that person but a warning is all they can do so far unless there is a better idea. The cooldown is a terrible idea. People who actually know how to play the game /which are very few around here sadly/ know very well a cooldown will ruin the timing of the flashlight saves. It is already very hard to get the blinding right so often even the best players have to click the flashlight twice in a very fast sequence to get it right /way less than a second between 2 clicks /. And this is the primary use of flashlights. If they are willing to remove the timing of the blinds now that would be another story / Lets say you can start 2 secons earlier and still get the blind/. Since everyone here seems so concerned about the that problem I tihnk it is fair all to agree to that change as well should be a must.
The problem gets more dangerous with people using macro's... I know it's an external program and you can even exclude it or something but. Do you think an official statement could be made? As in, a twitter message, it doesn't need to be long, just to say people "we're aware of this problem and we are against this kind of behaviour" ... also, this does take a bit but you can add a disclaimer... I have suggested it somewhere else but I believe my comment was not really seen by a mod, so taking advantage of you being here, this not only protects you as a company but also protects those that might think "Alright, I want to play this game" and end having a seizure... I can understand, the game as per se it's not prone to create seizures... also, not every player is aware of seizures and it's not because they're bad people but you tend to ignore those things that are not affecting you. Do you think this could be possible? I mean, the advertisement or the twitter message?
Does Doctor's Madness trigger epilepsy as well? I play him myself, and I can understand the fustrations of the voices, screaming, and the static noises as well.
Literally had a friend who had to stop playing the game mid-round twice due to survivors clicking at him and causing a mild seizure. The first one was a survivor mashing the flashlight button rapidly then the second one was using the scroll macro for it. Thankfully the fits were nothing severe those two times as he looked away quickly, but he rarely plays killer now due to the risks of random toxic survivors.
The game had, and still has, zero warnings anywhere about flashing lights or photosensitive imagery and there is nothing in the game to limit rapid flashlight clicking in your face as the killer (or even survivor for that matter). With no warnings and no protections against it, they're asking for someone to take legal action against them the moment the wrong person has a seizure and gets sent to the hospital. Hopefully, they'll realize what a risk it is to them publically and financially before it's too late for both sides. And quite frankly anything that limits either side (killer and survivor) from acting toxic is good to begin with.
DbD has an epileptic seizure warning, doesn't it?
Flashlight spam-clicking is a pointless mechanics regardless, though.
Oh sweet summer child.
3 months are nothing.
We can only hope that something is done before someone gets hurt (disregarding the fact that it's very possible someone already has experienced an episode from this problem.
Just to add some details, just now i played against 4 survivors.
Normal match, non toxic, at the end they managed to survive all 4, was a relaxed match i didn't tunneled or camped, the game, full of pallets, it was ok.
In the endgame they macroclicked in front of me to disturb me from the final chase.
In the chat i told them to flashlight normaly and not doing that because that can cause issues in some persons.
They all, thinking i was that kind of person told me will keep doing that and they hope the next time i die.
Please, take away this dangerous toy from the hands of these kids.
There is absolutely no reason whatsoever a flashlight needs to be clicked that fast. Damn sure not 12 times/second with a macro.
To piss off, disturb or catch your attention.
I would keep an option to do it like once or twice fast. It's needed when you have started to blind too early for save and is quite high skill to delay it. But you really don't need to do it 20 times per second...
What's most annoying it just takes so little charges, so you can do it for really long time. Well, I just let them bleed out for it...