Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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.
Comments
You don't have "no information" just because the health bar doesn't tell you the opponent's HP. You have all the information of the 3d battlefield. Abilities flying, players approaching and retreating. If you can't take that information into account to make good calls, that's a skill issue. If anything, that makes the strategic dynamic *more* interesting, because the game won't just tell you the most efficient next target.
In PvE, it's fine if you want the game to give you enough information to make accurate efficient decisions.
In PvP, efficiency is supposed to be a luxury you earn by tracking the battlefield and your opponent's behaviour and build, not a presupposed habit of the next "correct" thing to do in order to win.
This applies regardless of whether we're talking about non-combatant health bars or all health bars being affected by these design choices.
This phrasing is better than before when you called it "exponentially less often," (ostensibly hyperbolic, but still out of character for you?), but even here I disagree with this assumption.
I don't know that the habit of helping strangers will be any less likely. I personally would probably make it a habit to help out anyone I pass by unless the context somehow makes it unambiuously apparent that they couldn't possibly need it. Specifically *because* I can't see their HP. If they have a freakout about me interfering by healing them or throwing an AoE, I won't care, because I know of myself that if I get any valuable loot, I'll trade it back to them without hesitation.
No matter which direction player tendency leans, I think you're blowing this way out of proportion by pretending that not seeing who's in danger would all-but-eliminate players quietly helping each other out. (Which is something that already rarely happens in games where you *do* see the HP, so really how significant is what we're talking about here?)
Also, if you can't take the time to type "help" into chat - how much do you really need the help?
Which leads to my general assumption about some of the arguments here:
It seems what some people *really* want to be saying is that an unusual health bar *feels* bad. Unfamiliar and unsatisfying.
All of which is true. But it also completely goes away after a week or two of adjustment. Because what's ultimately satisfying isn't lowering a player's health bar; it's actually taking that player down.
So what I think the real concern should be is that, whichever solution Intrepid go with, they should be extremely explicit about communicating the intended purpose of those unfamiliar design decisions to new players, and make it very clear how players are supposed to work with them.
Obviously this is just my experience, but none of this is true for me.
I don't like being helped when I don't need it.
I don't like helping people unless I'm sure they need it, but in games where I can see HP and understand a situation, then I help them basically whenever I can. 'People being in danger' might be rare, but FROM there, I'd say that if I can see HP and understand the area I'm in I generally will help.
I don't expect people to have time to even notice that someone might be around to help them, every time, if they are deep in combat with something serious, and they might not even know, and I definitely don't assume people have time to spare in a fight that they thought they could win and are desperately trying to win, to type anything.
Especially not in games with quicker and deeper combat.
This obviously means that sometimes I don't help people who I think have it under control, and I've definitely got the reaction of 'why did you just stand there and let me die?!' but that wasn't because I couldn't be bothered to help, it's because I saw their HP, saw how the fight was going, and figured they were fine. That reaction is rare though because normally I DO help, it's just too late because I overestimated them.
So, just throwing in the counter-anecdote, and my viewpoint on that. A bar divided into quarters is sorta-enough to know if to help or not but not when the player is at 28%, because it's going to show it at half. As long as 'reacting when I see it dip into the last quarter' is fast enough, it'd be fine, ofc.
I don't know, I think it is worth considering. I'd like to weigh up the pros and cons a bit, rather than just dismiss it as dumb.
I don't think you will.
You won't have time left to play the game if you do. You will also piss off more people than you will help.
It will not be long (minutes, perhaps) before you realize thst actually no, you won't help everyone out. You'll only help those out that you can see need it.
As to typing "help" in to chat - most people won't do that. First of all, the small number of people that even have local chat turned on in games are probably more the trolling type rether than the type to help someone out. Second, why take a second to type when you are in trouble? You're busy fighting for your (characters) life.
That may well be what is happening in some cases, however, since you said this in a reply to me I feel the need to point out that this is not the case here.
I'm arguing FOR the current system as we have seen it, against people wanting to see no rival health information at all.
Or a dead player surrounded by mobs, a great signifier that perhaps help was too late!
L2 definitely had the advantage of click-to-move control scheme, so obviously people chatted more overall, but still, this is more about ratios of chatting than just chatting overall.
Dragon Age health bars are quite clean, simple and slender.
Greedfall 2 has 3 bars each thick with space and other status indicators over.. complete opposite.
Throne and liberty comes out next week what?
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
i'm funny on the internet.
Did L2 have world wide chat, or custom chat channels?
There were others too:
1. Local chat (short radius)
2. Shout (further radius)
3. Group chat
4. Clan chat
5. Alliance chat
6. Command channel chat (raid chat basically)
7. Global chat (described above)
Edit: 8. Trade chat - forgot about it
Trade and local shout (the one with the further radius) are active within the location you're in. And the vicinity chat has a farily small radius. I'll go check it in a bit to show it off
When your game leaves players starved for communication options, it isn't surprising that they use the meager ones on offer.
The reason people don't use local chat any more is because games every other MMO offers better options.
Saying you use local chat in L2 when you are only using it because the game doesn't offer you a better options isn't a great argument for either L2 or local chat. If you were using local chat in a game that had global chat channels and custom channels, then I'd have some more questions.
More user-friendly chat windows switch the active chat to the primary channel of the tab. So if you're looking at local chat, you're always chatting in local chat, unless you're actively using a channel command. Instead of locking you to your last active chat option, regardless of what you're looking at.
You can try to justify this with user preference all you like, but the only real reason modern games don't handle active tabs properly is because their UI devs get lazy, and can't handle balancing personalised customisability AND proper default behaviour. It's always one or the other.
In any game I've played where clicking and viewing the local chat tab automatically lets you respond in the local chat tab, people use it when appropriate.
2) You're being dishonest by calling the alternatives "better." Just because people use them doesn't mean the game should have them.
People use L4G tools, doesn't mean games without them are worse. Exact same logic. Not every type of chat channel players use is good for every game.
Even in L2, a game with diret teleportation, I couldn't give a flying fuck about someone on the other side of the world. Why in the hell would I need a global chat? I want to interact with people that I can see and with people in my location, in case there's a PKer or some pvp going down right around the corner.
This was one of your worst arguments so far, Noaani.
P.S. a ton of private L2 servers make one of the channel types (like shout or trade) global. You know what that does? It leads to pointless spam and useless convos between people that got nothing to do with each other (and this chat then has to be limited to only high lvl characters, in order to avoid bot spam and stuff like that).
AND EVEN THEN people use vicinity chat when they see each other, because spamming the fucking global chat when you're literally seeing each other is the most asinine thing I could think of.
This is not a good take, it is akin to saying everyone has vehicles but there is limits to the speed at which you can drive. So they should remove all speed limits.
Like everything there are rules in place to keep things in check, and over people spamming its done so in moderation so people that want to use it have a chance to interact. The solution isn’t to not have global chat, but to implement proper moderation to balance the experience for everyone. And you are trying to make a argument that balancing out the experience means global chat is dumb (which is one of the worse arguments you can make).
Ashes has a lot more going on then L2 information is going to be important, and though global chat won't give a whole picture it will help people in some element. Or simply just be part of community building in general.
This also completely removes the information brokership and the power that comes with that. If any random person can yell "omg, guild X is gathering at this location" - that completely removes the requirement for X's enemies to have outlooks or spies to track X's movement.
And this also comes from direct experience on L2 servers that had global chats. Even the Hero chat that was mentioned above would usually lead to a similar situation, even though there were ~30 Heros on a server.
It will be monitored the same way every mmo that has 100k+ concurrent players talking and using different chats in any game. This is literarily nothing new lol?
Gold seller argument makes 0 sense, they will be banned and its easy money since they need to buy another subscription.
These arguments do not make any sense.
At that point it becomes everyone opinion bias on what they consider spammy (not important to them). At the end oft he day its a community and not all information will be relevant to you. Nor do you need to read all global chat and pay attention to every moment if you don't want to interact. Though some people do and enjoy talking / connecting / bantering / etc.
If someone seems them gathering and calls them out they get called out. You already said you are for node chats (which there should be one as well) there is no difference for that. Either way they will be called out and if people are paying attention they will see them.
Either way this helps general and casual players more, to have the chat, interact and feel like they are pat of a community or more easily able to find one for themselves.
this concept on hiding information by not letting people interact in global chat is one of the worse takes. This is not 20 years ago, we have multiple discords and discord communities. With or without global chat people will get pinged on what is going on. There will be discords for the server, discords for nodes, guild alliances. The only players that are hurt are casual ones at the end of the day.
Anything going on that is important, is going to be found out with the use of discord. Rather then over use of discord keeping more of it in game is better.
Eventually you guys are going to wake up to the level of organization already going on in this game...Between guild discords, and other summit discords between guilds. When the game is in a stronger point in alpha you will see those develop even further. Which Ludullu i don't see you in a single one of those discords as well.