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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Identifying mobs, visual clarity
GrappLr
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
One thing that really stuck with me form the last showcase was how hard it was to identify what I was looking at.
There were 3 real issues I found when it came to identification of mobs:
1. Spotting important/elite mobs, and differentiating them from normal mobs.
I think it is really important for there to be a way to see when a mob is "special". Some games do this by making special mobs bigger. Others do it by giving special mobs specific types of nameplates. Either way, this was not the case in the last showcase. When the "leader" of the band was one of the objectives to kill, there was no real way to spot who that was, other than reading every nameplate and looking for his name. He looked like any old mob.
Furthermore, the mobs that were attacking were "Elite" mobs, but other than the word "Elite" in their name, there's no way to spot that yes, indeed, these are dangerous, non common mobs.
Finally, the "feel" of putting in 3-4x the effort to kill a mob than you normally would, just because the word "elite" is in their name, is not a great "feeling". But, if they had some visual indicator, apart from a word, to show me "yes, this is a baddass mob", then the "feeling" of killing it is more rewarding. Even a different nameplate would suffice.
2. Spells cover up enemies.
This is another problem. When there are lots of spells happening, the enemy bodies/silhouettes basically get entirely covered up and hidden. This maybe wasn't a huge visual problem in this event, but it's just not fun to see. First of all, not seeing the enemy also means we can't see when they're attacking, can't see enemy animations, amongst other problems (especially if later in the game, enemies become more dangerous and telegraph attacks). Secondly though, I think it's much more important to see what you're attacking, then seeing the full animation of your attack per say.
I believe there should be a way to increase the priority of enemy bodies over spells, when it comes to what is visually shown on screen.
3. Telling enemies from friendlies apart
When out of range from the nameplates showing, or not hovering over the characters, it's very difficult to tell who's the enemy and who's the friendly. I could see this being a problem for bigger scale PvE or PvP content.
These were my impressions, and I think there needs to be more work put into visual clarity in general.
There were 3 real issues I found when it came to identification of mobs:
1. Spotting important/elite mobs, and differentiating them from normal mobs.
I think it is really important for there to be a way to see when a mob is "special". Some games do this by making special mobs bigger. Others do it by giving special mobs specific types of nameplates. Either way, this was not the case in the last showcase. When the "leader" of the band was one of the objectives to kill, there was no real way to spot who that was, other than reading every nameplate and looking for his name. He looked like any old mob.
Furthermore, the mobs that were attacking were "Elite" mobs, but other than the word "Elite" in their name, there's no way to spot that yes, indeed, these are dangerous, non common mobs.
Finally, the "feel" of putting in 3-4x the effort to kill a mob than you normally would, just because the word "elite" is in their name, is not a great "feeling". But, if they had some visual indicator, apart from a word, to show me "yes, this is a baddass mob", then the "feeling" of killing it is more rewarding. Even a different nameplate would suffice.
2. Spells cover up enemies.
This is another problem. When there are lots of spells happening, the enemy bodies/silhouettes basically get entirely covered up and hidden. This maybe wasn't a huge visual problem in this event, but it's just not fun to see. First of all, not seeing the enemy also means we can't see when they're attacking, can't see enemy animations, amongst other problems (especially if later in the game, enemies become more dangerous and telegraph attacks). Secondly though, I think it's much more important to see what you're attacking, then seeing the full animation of your attack per say.
I believe there should be a way to increase the priority of enemy bodies over spells, when it comes to what is visually shown on screen.
3. Telling enemies from friendlies apart
When out of range from the nameplates showing, or not hovering over the characters, it's very difficult to tell who's the enemy and who's the friendly. I could see this being a problem for bigger scale PvE or PvP content.
These were my impressions, and I think there needs to be more work put into visual clarity in general.
3
Comments
Look wise visually, things will look like any old mob, and I think that is the intention of what they are going for, they wont even display health to us, just a deteriorating nameplate.
I do agree with your point on spells covering up enemies, thats a big issue in everygame and it kinda sucks. I don't want to lose out on the quality of seeing the spell, but I still need to see the movement of characters in the spell. I hope there will be a setting to show us the silhouette or outline of things inside spell effects.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Nameplate
p.s. hi Grap