Hi Reddit, it's my first time making a reddit post so please bare with me. I'm making this post on behalf of my friend and the 80,000 players who this affects on a daily basis.
I introduced my colour blind friend to csgo in late 2015. These past 5 years have honestly been the greatest years of our lives so far, so many good memories and moments, we even went to the Faceit Major London in 2018. I am Supreme in MM and he (was) Legendary Eagle.
My friend suffers from deuteranomaly which is the term for red-green colourblindness. You can read about this here. Here are some images that portray what this type of colourblindness appears to the sufferer. If you don't have the time to check that out, here is the main point you should understand:
People with deuteranomaly and protanomaly are collectively known as red-green colour blind and they generally have difficulty distinguishing between reds, greens, browns and oranges
It's also important to note that this is the most common form of colourblindness, and affects about 8% of males, and about 0.5% of females. I hate to extrapolate statistics, but if we are looking at the csgo playerbase, looking at up to 1 million players a day, this condition could affect up to 80,000 players; not a lot in the grand scheme of things. Perhaps valve think that such a small amount is not worth compromising for. We really hope that this isn't the case, and even if it is, we have come up with a very simple compromise that really doesn't affect the appearance of the models, and does not include disabling them outright.
Possible solution
We understand that it's simply not realistic to add an option to disable all custom models in csgo. We also think that changing the colour hues based on the map is not realistic because that calls for a big change in the overall colour scheme of the skin.
So, we are simply asking for very minor adjustment. Before I tell you what the solution is, we need to understand why these models are causing a problem for colour blind players in the first place.
Take a look at the IDF model on Dust 2: https://gyazo.com/fe36db9c897b25ab363a1c6cd19bae91
As explained in the image, the model appears difficult to identify for red-green colourblind players such as my friend. However, due to the black cloth that surrounds the model's neck, and shadow under the beret, this black colour helps a TON in identify this player model due to the crucial contrast it creates. If it weren't for this bit of cloth, the IDF model would be a tough model to identify for colourblind players. This approach is consistent with other original models on csgo's release and is why you didn't see colourblind players complain about visibility in csgo until now.
However, let's look at one of the washed out green models, also on dust 2 - take a look at this screenshot: https://gyazo.com/e690cb445d9928ce078c83dacb2adbf5
If you struggled to find him, imagine what it must be like for a red-green colourblind player. here is the player if you couldn't find him
To resolve this issue, I added a very similar black contrasting cloth texture to the player's neck and helmet area, to help the model be more visible: https://gyazo.com/cd1c893d966f3e7cabaca4d493aef85a (please forgive my awful paint skills, I would imagine someone working at valve would do a much better job). Just a very minor change like this would help colour blind players immensely.
I actually pulled a sneaky one on ya' (and myself).
While I was looking at this screenshot, I realised that THERE'S ANOTHER HIDDEN MODEL IN THIS IMAGE that even I didn't notice! This makes me wanna just cry :( https://gyazo.com/bf5785683bb04c1cc98d8ec6f553cc52
Another example (Rickshaw model), also on dust 2: https://gyazo.com/b97c7f5008fe5d811a6192b9d7e87397
Us normal sighted folk can probably make him out fairly easily, but for my colourblind friend, he could not locate the enemy in this image at all. Let's add some kind of minor identifier and see how much of a difference it makes: https://gyazo.com/c2009004cbd1581fb898ef4b364c6fac Just a little bit of contrasting, strong solid black on the neck and the head area can make so much difference. It makes us really optimistic that this can be implemented, because it's such a minor addition and does not include outright adding a disable button for the models.
I hope you get the idea Reddit. What colourblind players desperately need is very minor adjustments to the models. We don't need to be radical, like changing the colour hue of the entire model, or allow disabling of them entirely. We just need very basic, contrasting pieces of cloth on the head area of the model to help better identify their location.
On behalf of the colourblind playerbase, this is our last resort, I doubt this post will change anything. I just want to play cs with my friend again :'(.
Thanks for reading.
P.S If you were wondering, all these screenshots were taken after the update that sought to "improve model invisibility". https://blog.counter-strike.net/index.php/2019/12/27508/ . We were extremely disappointed with how lackluster this was. It provided nowhere near enough improvement, especially on dust 2 and mirage.
P.S #2: We reluctantly played FaceIt after the update, because they had disabled the models. It honestly turned out to be the most fun we've ever had. But then they too enabled the agent skins. That was heartbreaking for us.
