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No more health bars?
ArchivedUser
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I'm interested on everyone's thoughts on not showing health bars for mobs OR other players. Ashes checks off 99/100 things I've been looking for over the years from an mmorpg but one of the things I've always hated is seeing health bars everywhere. As an in game character why can I see the health of everything around me??? It clutters up the UI, and takes away some of that 'edge of your seat' feel during a close battle and you don't know which of you will fall first.
You could always add it in as a skill or item, to be able to see all mobs/players health in a certain radius for a limited amount of time and then it would explain why there are bars floating over everyone's heads, and even then it could just be an estimation no numbers just a general status or something.
Think of how much more communication would play a part in the success of a battle when everyone's health is not universally known. Players and healers would need to better communicate, some stealthy rouge like characters may sneak around just to gather intel on the current stats of other players for their guild before a battle. It would make a lot more of the actions we take in game more satisfying when we can't just crunch numbers for everything. How awesome would it be seeing a giant dragon spawn and not knowing immediately what it's really going to take to kill it and have to attempt it many times to get a feel for what it's capable of.
I think that health bars have just been such a staple in rpg's over the years that no one has considered how awesome it would be if we got rid of them all and introduced new mechanics to improve gameplay and reduce the visual clutter.
Edit: I tried posting this in anther page but it doesn't seem to show up
You could always add it in as a skill or item, to be able to see all mobs/players health in a certain radius for a limited amount of time and then it would explain why there are bars floating over everyone's heads, and even then it could just be an estimation no numbers just a general status or something.
Think of how much more communication would play a part in the success of a battle when everyone's health is not universally known. Players and healers would need to better communicate, some stealthy rouge like characters may sneak around just to gather intel on the current stats of other players for their guild before a battle. It would make a lot more of the actions we take in game more satisfying when we can't just crunch numbers for everything. How awesome would it be seeing a giant dragon spawn and not knowing immediately what it's really going to take to kill it and have to attempt it many times to get a feel for what it's capable of.
I think that health bars have just been such a staple in rpg's over the years that no one has considered how awesome it would be if we got rid of them all and introduced new mechanics to improve gameplay and reduce the visual clutter.
Edit: I tried posting this in anther page but it doesn't seem to show up
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If the Devs find it something worthwhile then hopefully they can add an option to remove visual health and have your judgement purely based off of the characters stance/breathing pattern. You can see a system like that used in the Dark Souls games where the character actually starts to pant and hang themselves lower than they would if they were at full health.
An option to turn them off and have a 'immersive RPG' mode seems perfectly reasonable, however I get the feeling that you may want more information about your target's health state. I certainly would want more information than to randomly smack a target repeatedly until it falls over.
Thoughts?
Thoughts?
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Black Desert Online has a knowledge system for enemies, where once you have knowledge on them you can see their health bar go down. A similar system but improved in my opinion would be to see no health bars on new enemies, but once you have killed 1 of them maybe you can see a health bar now but nothing exact, just the color of their health, maybe even status conditions, and after like 10 or so, you can see the bar actually go down. Idk, just my thoughts. I also agree that if possible I would love a way to play effectively without them, but that's pretty hard for the dev team to figure out and implement I bet.
They don't just tell you how much health a player starts with compared to his companion, but they also make it simple to visualise how quickly people are taking damage...
If you make only the actual damage visible...i.e. have five stages of wounds on a character, you would be taking away a sizeable proportion of their effectiveness as it wouldn't be as easy to see.
Ok, so easy isn't what you want? You want me to learn your individual playstyle and remember it...
Um, not going to happen. You have to remember that every individual character here is going to have the option of 64 choices of build, not including additions via nodes, religion armor etc.
Communication?
Haha hahaha , oh but in my experience it's always the person of least importance to the survival of a group who shouts the loudest. Sorry that the tank died and the raid wiped, I had to heal that dps who couldn't take advice and manage his aggro, but who whined the loudest when anyone even breathed in him.
You've got to remember a good tank doesn't ask for healing, ever, even if they're almost dead, they trust their healer
Ok, so having a skill that shows you health bars... that'd be fine by me, attaching it automatically as an optional skill (opt out for those who desire it) to anyone who's got any cleric skills would work....
In a non healing role though... meh I'm not too fussed
I say let them die if they don't want health bars.
" babied " by the Healer - mainly as a DPS. DPS always boast about how strong they are, but can never last long enough to inflict that damage.
The first MMO i played - each player had to be Self-Sufficient with their own HP. Sure they had Recovery HP Potions - but it made each be mindful about their own HP
Which is why I'm hoping all Classes can have a Basic-Healing-Spell ... but still needing other ways of sustaining their own HP
(Hence: " Proving their worth " ... or at least that's how i viewed it
Also, a bit of on a tangent but, every game on the shelf just gives you a 'heal x hp' spell. What if health mechanics were a little more sophisticated like other aspects of the game seem to be. Instead of 'heal x' have spells that mend broken bones, stop bleeding, etc. spells that aren't as simple as (just add x hp over y time to target z). I guess those would just be status removal spells but you get the point, make healing, if it's something you want to level in, be more involved than just watching health bars and timing your heal x spells accordingly.
I recommend watching this video if you want to know where I'm coming from.
Not knowing how much HP an enemy has can be a challange, but imagine fighting a bugged npc that behaves normally but takes no dmg. If you never encountered this enemy before, you could 1) think this enemy is just too tough for you, or 2) fight this thing for ages.
I personally consider health bars to be helpful. But there should be an option to turn them off and to just turn them on in combat.
Sure. There should be a toggle for the HUD.
Can't really hide your health status during combat in real life - especially once you're close to death.
Hi Bleeinc,
I primarily play healers or spell casters (mages) in the games I play. As a healer, it is critical to see everyone's health and if you were in my group, you would want me to take the time to notice you are almost dead and save you.
That said, quite a few of the games I have played have given one the option to alter their windows on their game. Plenty of these games allow you to alter your group bar, so that you can make everyone in your group not even show up, or you can have their names show up and not their health.
In addition to that, for many of these games there are custom UIs that you can use that allow you to completely eliminate the health bars altogether. I recommend that you search out the custom UIs for the games you play to see if you can find one that works for you.
You can't hide fatigue, external bleeding, burning flesh and non-functioning, dismembered limbs.
You are the person who mentioned immersion.
Immersion means that we will be aware of the health of our allies and opponents.
Disguising the accuracy of health gauges with stealth or illusion skills is really a separate topic from health gauges existing.
Healers can see healthbars of allys at melee range;
Rouges can see healthbars of enemys in melee range while in stealth;
Hunters can mark a enemy which allows everyone to see its healthbar with no range limit;
Summoners can curse one enemy and see its healthbar at all times even when not in visible range;
Bards can mark one ally so every person in the bards group can see the healthbar.
All players and npc's still have a name and show status effects etc. below anyway;
Average percentage of actual health without healthbar is displayed by visual effect that depends on the type of dmg the unit recived:
Physical dmg=Bleed effect that gets more visible the lower the health;
Fire dmg=unit is litteraly burning and flames get bigger the lower the hp;
Frost dmg=Parts of the body is frozen and has a increasing number of blue ice fragments attached;
Arrow dmg from hunters=Arrows sticking inside the victim;
Shadow dmg=Body parts get black with a black glowing effect;
etc.
So if the unit in question has 20% hp left,lost 20% of its hp by a physical warrior attack and 60% by a fireball from a mage, it would be bleeding a little bit and burning alot.
If he then get healed back to 80% the burning and bleeding would reduce but not change in its proportion, so it would still burn 3 times more than bleed..
However the effect shouldnt be tooo huge even at 5% hp, or we would have shiny orbs jumping all over the place during siege fights hehe