[quote name="SomethingEndless" date="2022-09-04 13:00:15" ]
[b]When your captchas is as anti-human as it is anti-bot something is wrong and you need to beta test it again before rolling out and leaving it up.[/b] I understand the importance of the anti-bot to the game overall but it's ridiculous how often dragons are essentially the exact same contrast and tone as the background and how impossible it is to tell the difference.
[/quote]
Oh boy I found this to really resonate with me. I really like the coliseum, but half the time I just don't want to play it because the stupid camping screens are so unnecessary. I wholly believe some other solution to botting could be found other than forcing players (with AND without vision issues) to entertain the absolutely awful dragon captcha.
I've come to this thread to complain a [i]good handful of times[/i], but it's still really surprising and [u]outright disappointing[/u] that this has only been swept away and not dealt with for this long, especially since this is a pretty glaring accessibility issue (among the other accessibility problems this site has, looking at you tiny check boxes, or the hand-pain inducing clicking and required mouse usage for most of the site - I think a lot of this site should be usable with keyboard shortcuts and if your site fails that, you're not really being accessible and are excluding lots of players with mobility or pain issues).
SomethingEndless wrote on 2022-09-04 13:00:15:
When your captchas is as anti-human as it is anti-bot something is wrong and you need to beta test it again before rolling out and leaving it up. I understand the importance of the anti-bot to the game overall but it's ridiculous how often dragons are essentially the exact same contrast and tone as the background and how impossible it is to tell the difference.
Oh boy I found this to really resonate with me. I really like the coliseum, but half the time I just don't want to play it because the stupid camping screens are so unnecessary. I wholly believe some other solution to botting could be found other than forcing players (with AND without vision issues) to entertain the absolutely awful dragon captcha.
I've come to this thread to complain a
good handful of times, but it's still really surprising and
outright disappointing that this has only been swept away and not dealt with for this long, especially since this is a pretty glaring accessibility issue (among the other accessibility problems this site has, looking at you tiny check boxes, or the hand-pain inducing clicking and required mouse usage for most of the site - I think a lot of this site should be usable with keyboard shortcuts and if your site fails that, you're not really being accessible and are excluding lots of players with mobility or pain issues).
Supporting this because this really words everything better than my post on this! I’m glad I’m not the only frustrated. As someone visually impaired, I’m happy this post has taken off as well as it has. I’m surprised they haven’t done a thing about it, though.
Supporting this because this really words everything better than my post on this! I’m glad I’m not the only frustrated. As someone visually impaired, I’m happy this post has taken off as well as it has. I’m surprised they haven’t done a thing about it, though.
I coli every day and half the time I need to get so close to the screen to see what I'm looking at- It's so anti-human it's insane. I like the coli otherwise rn but man it sucks having to stop every 2-5 battles to play a guessing game that can lock me out of the coli if I mess up too much.
And if it's been years, then really, really should've been fixed up years ago.
I coli every day and half the time I need to get so close to the screen to see what I'm looking at- It's so anti-human it's insane. I like the coli otherwise rn but man it sucks having to stop every 2-5 battles to play a guessing game that can lock me out of the coli if I mess up too much.
And if it's been years, then really, really should've been fixed up years ago.
Yeah a staff response here from over 4 years ago when there's been no actual, meaningful change and no word about how that's coming is......awful, to say the least. Wish we could get another update that has more meaning and some actual show of movement on the issue.
Yeah a staff response here from over 4 years ago when there's been no actual, meaningful change and no word about how that's coming is......awful, to say the least. Wish we could get another update that has more meaning and some actual show of movement on the issue.
Pings Welcome! Especially if you're quoting me XD
I've made over 10 comments in this thread over the last 4 years and it amazes me that it is still consistently on the front page of suggestions. Please, staff, do something about this accessibility issue. It has been far too long.
At the very, very least, eliminate the colourful backgrounds. Put all the items on a plain background. That will not fix this issue for everyone, but it is a bandaid fix that will help many of us while something more permanent is worked out.
I've made over 10 comments in this thread over the last 4 years and it amazes me that it is still consistently on the front page of suggestions. Please, staff, do something about this accessibility issue. It has been far too long.
At the very, very least, eliminate the colourful backgrounds. Put all the items on a plain background. That will not fix this issue for everyone, but it is a bandaid fix that will help many of us while something more permanent is worked out.
[quote name="kalinka" date="2022-09-28 21:02:18" ]
I've made over 10 comments in this thread over the last 4 years and it amazes me that it is still consistently on the front page of suggestions. Please, staff, do something about this accessibility issue. It has been far too long.
At the very, very least, eliminate the colourful backgrounds. Put all the items on a plain background. That will not fix this issue for everyone, but it is a bandaid fix that will help many of us while something more permanent is worked out.
[/quote]
If they do that then they might as well remove the captcha entirely. Because today's bots are more than fully capable of recognizing different individual image silhouettes against a solid color background.
I understand the frustrations but I think some players here just don't quite understand 1) how sophisticated bots have become, 2) how damaging they can be to a game's economy and 3) how captchas are developed and used and why this process has taken as long as it has.
Bots these days are incredibly sophisticated. Their image recognition is basically better than human eye sight at this point. That's why the backgrounds have to be so colorful and distorting and the dragons in them are often wearing silhouette-breaking clothes. It's the only way to combat a bots' ability to essentially auto-reference all the existing dragons' silhouettes and find the dragon immediately thus negating the captcha.
Veteran players who were here before the captcha was installed in the Coli can tell you how much a beating the game economy was taking from bots. It was bad. And if you don't want to listen to them, there's any number of horror stories about online games being completely ruined beyond repair due to bots. Bots are serious business and stymieing them is very important to a game's health and longevity.
So I hope one can understand why developing a captcha that is effective against bots but not completely inaccessible to humans can be an extremely tricky balancing act. It's also not even as simple as just instating one of the more commonly used/already existing captchas as those are often the property of their development companies (Google, etc.) and can cost serious money to use. FR is small and may not be able to afford a more proprietary captcha system and these systems have their own problems any way (for example, many players have said they do not want one of the "pick the squares with cars in them"-style captchas).
Taking into account that FR has been trying to update and upgrade site code that is going on 10 years old now or more and I think it's incredibly understandable why this particular feature has had to sit as-is. It's not ideal, but it is preventing bots while allowing most players to utilize the Coli.
Honestly, I think most of the current captchas problems could be fixed by simply making the already-existing Zoom feature work correctly. Bots can't/won't be able to utilize that feature in a way actual human players can and it should sufficiently help those who have trouble seeing the dragons.
kalinka wrote on 2022-09-28 21:02:18:
I've made over 10 comments in this thread over the last 4 years and it amazes me that it is still consistently on the front page of suggestions. Please, staff, do something about this accessibility issue. It has been far too long.
At the very, very least, eliminate the colourful backgrounds. Put all the items on a plain background. That will not fix this issue for everyone, but it is a bandaid fix that will help many of us while something more permanent is worked out.
If they do that then they might as well remove the captcha entirely. Because today's bots are more than fully capable of recognizing different individual image silhouettes against a solid color background.
I understand the frustrations but I think some players here just don't quite understand 1) how sophisticated bots have become, 2) how damaging they can be to a game's economy and 3) how captchas are developed and used and why this process has taken as long as it has.
Bots these days are incredibly sophisticated. Their image recognition is basically better than human eye sight at this point. That's why the backgrounds have to be so colorful and distorting and the dragons in them are often wearing silhouette-breaking clothes. It's the only way to combat a bots' ability to essentially auto-reference all the existing dragons' silhouettes and find the dragon immediately thus negating the captcha.
Veteran players who were here before the captcha was installed in the Coli can tell you how much a beating the game economy was taking from bots. It was bad. And if you don't want to listen to them, there's any number of horror stories about online games being completely ruined beyond repair due to bots. Bots are serious business and stymieing them is very important to a game's health and longevity.
So I hope one can understand why developing a captcha that is effective against bots but not completely inaccessible to humans can be an extremely tricky balancing act. It's also not even as simple as just instating one of the more commonly used/already existing captchas as those are often the property of their development companies (Google, etc.) and can cost serious money to use. FR is small and may not be able to afford a more proprietary captcha system and these systems have their own problems any way (for example, many players have said they do not want one of the "pick the squares with cars in them"-style captchas).
Taking into account that FR has been trying to update and upgrade site code that is going on 10 years old now or more and I think it's incredibly understandable why this particular feature has had to sit as-is. It's not ideal, but it is preventing bots while allowing most players to utilize the Coli.
Honestly, I think most of the current captchas problems could be fixed by simply making the already-existing Zoom feature work correctly. Bots can't/won't be able to utilize that feature in a way actual human players can and it should sufficiently help those who have trouble seeing the dragons.
[quote name="Twizz" date="2022-09-28 22:17:40" ]
[quote name="kalinka" date="2022-09-28 21:02:18" ]
I've made over 10 comments in this thread over the last 4 years and it amazes me that it is still consistently on the front page of suggestions. Please, staff, do something about this accessibility issue. It has been far too long.
At the very, very least, eliminate the colourful backgrounds. Put all the items on a plain background. That will not fix this issue for everyone, but it is a bandaid fix that will help many of us while something more permanent is worked out.
[/quote]
If they do that then they might as well remove the captcha entirely. Because today's bots are more than fully capable of recognizing different individual image silhouettes against a solid color background.
I understand the frustrations but I think some players here just don't quite understand 1) how sophisticated bots have become, 2) how damaging they can be to a game's economy and 3) how captchas are developed and used and why this process has taken as long as it has.
Bots these days are incredibly sophisticated. Their image recognition is basically better than human eye sight at this point. That's why the backgrounds have to be so colorful and distorting and the dragons in them are often wearing silhouette-breaking clothes. It's the only way to combat a bots' ability to essentially auto-reference all the existing dragons' silhouettes and find the dragon immediately thus negating the captcha.
Veteran players who were here before the captcha was installed in the Coli can tell you how much a beating the game economy was taking from bots. It was bad. And if you don't want to listen to them, there's any number of horror stories about online games being completely ruined beyond repair due to bots. Bots are serious business and stymieing them is very important to a game's health and longevity.
So I hope one can understand why developing a captcha that is effective against bots but not completely inaccessible to humans can be an extremely tricky balancing act. It's also not even as simple as just instating one of the more commonly used/already existing captchas as those are often the property of their development companies (Google, etc.) and can cost serious money to use. FR is small and may not be able to afford a more proprietary captcha system and these systems have their own problems any way (for example, many players have said they do not want one of the "pick the squares with cars in them"-style captchas).
Taking into account that FR has been trying to update and upgrade site code that is going on 10 years old now or more and I think it's incredibly understandable why this particular feature has had to sit as-is. It's not ideal, but it is preventing bots while allowing most players to utilize the Coli.
Honestly, I think most of the current captchas problems could be fixed by simply making the already-existing Zoom feature work correctly. Bots can't/won't be able to utilize that feature in a way actual human players can and it should sufficiently help those who have trouble seeing the dragons.
[/quote]
I honestly cant say I agree entirely.
While i do agree that this is a much more complicated issue to fix than many of the users here would understand (not many of us would understand web development and the economy of the game as a whole, and we aren't devs)
I still maintain the belief that letting it sit for 4 years without so much as a comment or acknowledgement or reassurance that "hey, we're working on it! staff acknowledges the accessibility issue and wants to help, but we have internals to work out" is kind of insulting.
The least they could do is at least stop trying to ignore the issue and say something to reassure us they haven't forgotten, or that they aren't intentionally ignoring the problem.
I get theres much other stuff to fix at the moment, but coli is a huge part of FR, and so many users (disabled and abled alike, in regards to eyesight and hand mobility) are finding it hard to use the coli because of the overbearing frequency of the captcha and the tiny tiny images.
I do agree just actually making the zoom feature useful or upping the resolution of the images so that native browser zoom functions would work would help.
I cant even use my browser's zoom feature to see the captchas because theyre so grainy and it doesnt really help at all. And I think that simply replacing the intricate backgrounds with simpler ones would help a lot.
Or even eliminating familiars that have webbed wings would help A LOT with accidentally clicking on things with wings that aren't dragons.
Twizz wrote on 2022-09-28 22:17:40:
kalinka wrote on 2022-09-28 21:02:18:
I've made over 10 comments in this thread over the last 4 years and it amazes me that it is still consistently on the front page of suggestions. Please, staff, do something about this accessibility issue. It has been far too long.
At the very, very least, eliminate the colourful backgrounds. Put all the items on a plain background. That will not fix this issue for everyone, but it is a bandaid fix that will help many of us while something more permanent is worked out.
If they do that then they might as well remove the captcha entirely. Because today's bots are more than fully capable of recognizing different individual image silhouettes against a solid color background.
I understand the frustrations but I think some players here just don't quite understand 1) how sophisticated bots have become, 2) how damaging they can be to a game's economy and 3) how captchas are developed and used and why this process has taken as long as it has.
Bots these days are incredibly sophisticated. Their image recognition is basically better than human eye sight at this point. That's why the backgrounds have to be so colorful and distorting and the dragons in them are often wearing silhouette-breaking clothes. It's the only way to combat a bots' ability to essentially auto-reference all the existing dragons' silhouettes and find the dragon immediately thus negating the captcha.
Veteran players who were here before the captcha was installed in the Coli can tell you how much a beating the game economy was taking from bots. It was bad. And if you don't want to listen to them, there's any number of horror stories about online games being completely ruined beyond repair due to bots. Bots are serious business and stymieing them is very important to a game's health and longevity.
So I hope one can understand why developing a captcha that is effective against bots but not completely inaccessible to humans can be an extremely tricky balancing act. It's also not even as simple as just instating one of the more commonly used/already existing captchas as those are often the property of their development companies (Google, etc.) and can cost serious money to use. FR is small and may not be able to afford a more proprietary captcha system and these systems have their own problems any way (for example, many players have said they do not want one of the "pick the squares with cars in them"-style captchas).
Taking into account that FR has been trying to update and upgrade site code that is going on 10 years old now or more and I think it's incredibly understandable why this particular feature has had to sit as-is. It's not ideal, but it is preventing bots while allowing most players to utilize the Coli.
Honestly, I think most of the current captchas problems could be fixed by simply making the already-existing Zoom feature work correctly. Bots can't/won't be able to utilize that feature in a way actual human players can and it should sufficiently help those who have trouble seeing the dragons.
I honestly cant say I agree entirely.
While i do agree that this is a much more complicated issue to fix than many of the users here would understand (not many of us would understand web development and the economy of the game as a whole, and we aren't devs)
I still maintain the belief that letting it sit for 4 years without so much as a comment or acknowledgement or reassurance that "hey, we're working on it! staff acknowledges the accessibility issue and wants to help, but we have internals to work out" is kind of insulting.
The least they could do is at least stop trying to ignore the issue and say something to reassure us they haven't forgotten, or that they aren't intentionally ignoring the problem.
I get theres much other stuff to fix at the moment, but coli is a huge part of FR, and so many users (disabled and abled alike, in regards to eyesight and hand mobility) are finding it hard to use the coli because of the overbearing frequency of the captcha and the tiny tiny images.
I do agree just actually making the zoom feature useful or upping the resolution of the images so that native browser zoom functions would work would help.
I cant even use my browser's zoom feature to see the captchas because theyre so grainy and it doesnt really help at all. And I think that simply replacing the intricate backgrounds with simpler ones would help a lot.
Or even eliminating familiars that have webbed wings would help A LOT with accidentally clicking on things with wings that aren't dragons.
[quote name="Twizz" date="2022-09-28 22:17:40" ]
[quote name="kalinka" date="2022-09-28 21:02:18" ]
I've made over 10 comments in this thread over the last 4 years and it amazes me that it is still consistently on the front page of suggestions. Please, staff, do something about this accessibility issue. It has been far too long.
At the very, very least, eliminate the colourful backgrounds. Put all the items on a plain background. That will not fix this issue for everyone, but it is a bandaid fix that will help many of us while something more permanent is worked out.
[/quote]
If they do that then they might as well remove the captcha entirely. Because today's bots are more than fully capable of recognizing different individual image silhouettes against a solid color background.
[/quote]
Then get rid of the super busy ones. Keep stuff like the Sandswept Delta bg... and get rid of ones like the tentacles vista bg. That one is super busy and always gives me trouble.
Twizz wrote on 2022-09-28 22:17:40:
kalinka wrote on 2022-09-28 21:02:18:
I've made over 10 comments in this thread over the last 4 years and it amazes me that it is still consistently on the front page of suggestions. Please, staff, do something about this accessibility issue. It has been far too long.
At the very, very least, eliminate the colourful backgrounds. Put all the items on a plain background. That will not fix this issue for everyone, but it is a bandaid fix that will help many of us while something more permanent is worked out.
If they do that then they might as well remove the captcha entirely. Because today's bots are more than fully capable of recognizing different individual image silhouettes against a solid color background.
Then get rid of the super busy ones. Keep stuff like the Sandswept Delta bg... and get rid of ones like the tentacles vista bg. That one is super busy and always gives me trouble.
Yeah i think removing the "busy" / complicated / intricate backgrounds would help A LOT as well as removing any familiars that have dragonlike wings
Yeah i think removing the "busy" / complicated / intricate backgrounds would help A LOT as well as removing any familiars that have dragonlike wings
[quote name="Twizz" date="2022-09-28 22:17:40" ]
Veteran players who were here before the captcha was installed in the Coli can tell you how much a beating the game economy was taking from bots. It was bad. And if you don't want to listen to them, there's any number of horror stories about online games being completely ruined beyond repair due to bots. Bots are serious business and stymieing them is very important to a game's health and longevity.
[/quote]
Genuine curiosity as someone who was here long before the new coli system and wasn't much involved in the community back then- what were the issues that bots were causing?
I thought the CAPTCHA was implemented when the keyboard controls were added in order to prevent botting, but thinking on it now that's sort of silly to think considering bots can click a spot on a screen just fine. Hell, a simple macro does that.
Twizz wrote on 2022-09-28 22:17:40:
Veteran players who were here before the captcha was installed in the Coli can tell you how much a beating the game economy was taking from bots. It was bad. And if you don't want to listen to them, there's any number of horror stories about online games being completely ruined beyond repair due to bots. Bots are serious business and stymieing them is very important to a game's health and longevity.
Genuine curiosity as someone who was here long before the new coli system and wasn't much involved in the community back then- what were the issues that bots were causing?
I thought the CAPTCHA was implemented when the keyboard controls were added in order to prevent botting, but thinking on it now that's sort of silly to think considering bots can click a spot on a screen just fine. Hell, a simple macro does that.
