VIsual cues on health/mana bars for status effects

Gui10

Hi! Apologies of this has been extensively written about already but I couldnt find a thread for it, except a really old and archived one.

So first of all, did they answer this already in one of the streams?

So far, I feel some games have done very poorly at this and it didnt help the game experience. Some games put a lot of effort into it and it showed!

It can be quite hard to remember every single little image of buffs and debuffs from specific skills from all classes. And sometimes, there is so much going on that under a players healthbar, you can see 10 icons each representing his current buffs or debuffs on him.

So, the classic "read health" and "blue mana" bars are cool and all, but I really appreciate when they are not 100% static and actualy give some informaiton on what is happening to the player. Whether it be you or enemies.

For example, for status effects such as bleed, blind, poison, cripple, and more, there could be a different visual cue indicating that this player is under those debuffs. IS can be very creative about this... modified the color of the bar slightly or adding specific general icons for each status effect. These visual cues would appear the same if they were caused by many different skills. For example, you can bleed from a barbed wire trap, from an axe slash, from a sword pierce, same with armor penetration/armor disabling.

It would also be interesting for some buffs: health regen, armor boost, damage mitigation, protection, speed buffs etc.

I still want to see the specific icons of buffs/debuffs under the player's health, and I want to be able to hover over and read their description, bar but I would also like to see the health and mana bars change according to some general status effects.

Ludullu

As long as I can turn this off - I'd be fine with it. But I'd prefer the normal colors and just icons for however high the limit on buffs is (I'm used to 36+a separate line for trigger buffs and a separate one for debuffs).

Red and blue usually stand out from the general background of the game, so it's easy to see their rough values in your periphery rather than having to look directly at them.

And if any of the debuffs influence the visuals in the same way - I'll still be looking at the buff first, because I need to know what I was hit with rather than just the fact of "oh, I have a debuff on me". And that important cause, I'd assume, all debuffs will have different lengths and strengths and additional effects.

Gui10

NiKr wrote: »

As long as I can turn this off - I'd be fine with it. But I'd prefer the normal colors and just icons for however high the limit on buffs is (I'm used to 36+a separate line for trigger buffs and a separate one for debuffs).

Red and blue usually stand out from the general background of the game, so it's easy to see their rough values in your periphery rather than having to look directly at them.

And if any of the debuffs influence the visuals in the same way - I'll still be looking at the buff first, because I need to know what I was hit with rather than just the fact of "oh, I have a debuff on me". And that important cause, I'd assume, all debuffs will have different lengths and strengths and additional effects.

So, for the background visuals, one interesting feature is having the two teams of seperate "colors". For example, in certain types of PvP where there is an attackker and a defender, there could be a red blow and a blue flow on either team to diferentiate who is friendly and who isnt.

As for the debuff markers, my example is specifically to help you quickly know what debuff it is. Lets say you are bleeding or ur friend is bleeding, you dont want to hover over the icon or even have to look at the 36 icons to see what its doing to you rfriend, you just want to know hes bleeding, regardless if was caused by a warriors slash, ice shards, necromancer spell or what not. No?

Ludullu

Gui10 wrote: »

So, for the background visuals, one interesting feature is having the two teams of seperate "colors". For example, in certain types of PvP where there is an attackker and a defender, there could be a red blow and a blue flow on either team to diferentiate who is friendly and who isnt.

I meant background as in literally any and all locations in the game. Super bright red and super bright blue are quite rare in most games, so there's good contrast between your bars and the bg.

Gui10 wrote: »

As for the debuff markers, my example is specifically to help you quickly know what debuff it is. Lets say you are bleeding or ur friend is bleeding, you dont want to hover over the icon or even have to look at the 36 icons to see what its doing to you rfriend, you just want to know hes bleeding, regardless if was caused by a warriors slash, ice shards, necromancer spell or what not. No?

Like I said, unless all those bleeds are literally the same - I don't care for the more obvious indicator that there's an effect. I need to know whose effect it is.

And if all those effects are in fact all the same - I'm fucking disappointed at Intrepid.

Gui10

NiKr wrote: »

Gui10 wrote: »

regardless if was caused by a warriors slash, ice shards, necromancer spell or what not. No?

Like I said, unless all those bleeds are literally the same - I don't care for the more obvious indicator that there's an effect. I need to know whose effect it is.

And if all those effects are in fact all the same - I'm fucking disappointed at Intrepid.

Well it got me thinking, keeping it simple for example's sake, lets say you have 5% bleeds, 10-20% bleeds, etc, the visual cue could also be tuned to that, becoming more red, or adding a number of "blood drops" symbols on the health bar depending.

The point of these cues is obviously not to describe any and all buffs and debuffs. Most of spells will have their unique animations and visual effects on the players themselves, as well as the icons, but some re-occuring, all-classes type buffs such as the ones mentioned, could be interesting.

Another example is lets say a little upwards green arrow to symbolize "buffed" and a downward purple arrow for "debuffed", and then you would have to check for the specifics etc...

Ludullu

Gui10 wrote: »

Well it got me thinking, keeping it simple for example's sake, lets say you have 5% bleeds, 10-20% bleeds, etc, the visual cue could also be tuned to that, becoming more red, or adding a number of "blood drops" symbols on the health bar depending.

Would this just be purely on top of the HP bar and purely on top of the full red part or even the empty part too, if I'm below 100%? And if I'm at, say, 20-30% how would I know if there's a single blood drop or several?

Gui10 wrote: »

The point of these cues is obviously not to describe any and all buffs and debuffs. Most of spells will have their unique animations and visual effects on the players themselves, as well as the icons, but some re-occuring, all-classes type buffs such as the ones mentioned, could be interesting.

Another example is lets say a little upwards green arrow to symbolize "buffed" and a downward purple arrow for "debuffed", and then you would have to check for the specifics etc.

Again, as long as I can completely turn of this UI feature - I'm all for it. I don't need it cause I plan on learning all effects, all their icons and get a feel for their timings. And all I need to do that is just their icons.

I expect not only different lengths/strengths from different archetypes on the same effect, but also different additional effects from any potential augments. And I expect the icon to represent that, so if some ranger hits me from behind me with some effect which has a religious augment on it - just by looking at the icon I'll know that it was a ranger and not a mage, I'll know that he has religious augments (ideally its type too) and depending on the ability used I'd probably know the class (at the very least I should be able to determine that from hovering over the icon).

This kind of detail is what I expect from a game that wants to have owpvp and big battles. And, imo, my hp/mp bar glowing differently or having some small particle on it to show that I have an effect on me would really tell me any of that info.

But I'm sure that someone would prefer to have this kind of feature, so just let me turn it off and we're golden.

Gui10

@NiKr

Here's an example, done on paint (it could also be on the left side)



And yeah making it an optional feature would make sense, just for personalization's sake.