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Should health bars show exact numbers or only the bar?
Marzzo
Member, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Do you think other players/monsters/npcs health numbers should be hidden or should we see the health bar plus the exact health number of enemies?
I personally like when we only got the health bar, and no numbers, what do you think?
I personally like when we only got the health bar, and no numbers, what do you think?
1
Comments
Keep people guessing on how powerful is the enemy.
Are you willing to attack a player fighting a mob?
Do you want to risk landing the killing blow and gain corruption?
For PvE, mob/boss HP bar should show numbers and/or %.
Why not?
Just as the player UI showing visual indicators by less visibility, signs of blood at the corners and even audible cues like louder and faster heartbeat. Other cues might be loss of responsiveness in the player controls which would represent the physically weakened condition of the character or loss of mental faculty by slower casting times or slower cool downs. Want to really mess with the player, randomly reassign their hot keys to force greater mental processing time for the player.
Just watching the names/family names and guild names can feel uncomfortable for me so if there is a bar it's even worse. In AoC I prefer uncertainty.
It could also take some of that unease from players who suck DPS Meter cock. If numbers are less of a thing in the game in general and it only showed them when you wanted to improve your build. Then it could take some focus off of forcing the Meta early and actually allow people to use at least 40 of the 64 classes.
I generally do min max every build I've ever done, but what makes me feel like I have to do it are those giant numbers popping up distracting me every fight. If those weren't there and I felt like the build is working properly then I could focus more on the animations and how cool the game actually looks.
I don't really need numbers on the resources to tell how far away they are. I don't think it's possible to heal on a single or double digit integer accurately when you are looking at like 24 or more people anyway. Which is the only good argument against it I believe.
I think it's more fun watching the bar go down faster than to see the actual numbers involved.
U.S. East
It takes the bluffing out of open world PvP.
If you think the corruption system does not do enough to protect PvE players or Carebears then you should not want HP numbers to seen on health bars.
It is the first thing I look at when deciding If I want you shit.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
Exception for players in your group and raid. Another exception for mobs with unusually large amount of HP, like bosses. For these cases I would show the info if you have them targeted (except for party members which should always be visible for the members).
Totally agree.
With no founding on the idea, I have believed that the health bars came about at a time to achieve a purpose and compensate for what designers might have done should the graphis / technology be sufficent. That time has well passed but unfortunately players have got used to having bars (along with many other things) and so therefore lean towards the familiar.
The bar can become the focus, instead of the player or mob.
For immersion, I would much prefer less clutter on the screen, minimal supplementary information and any damage to players / mobs to be indicated by tells on the character themselves rather than some arbitrary bar above the head.
It's also why we really need a map and mini-map rather than just a compass to navigate.
Might be time for some new ways to represent health, sure.
Why would you assume not showing is the default go-mode?
Is like asking, should car have wheels?
%hp for bosses encounter, yes; %hp for pvp, silly.
Exact number, or to toogle-able for people that don't know better or have some niche % health scaling skills.
I'd also have an option to show healthbars with nameplates as well
if you know exactly how much health the other player has and exactly how much damage you can do with your abilities, you can leave them so low they die to a mob and don't get the corruption for the killing blow..
And also to know how far a player has progressed. Double your max health? Probably shouldn't attack them.
And would all that work with a player attacking a mob out in the open world, and another player hitting him just so that the mob lands the killing blow, effectivelly avoiding corruption.
If you are going to give useful feedback learn about all the systems of the game so far.
This is one of the first times i'm actually agreeing with Dygz. The numbers/lack thereof don't matter. What matters are percentages, being able to tell what % of max health a target is at. I always thought there should be a different method of judging how powerful a character is in the open world rather than health bars. Ideally level would serve this purpose of helping you distinguish if a target (mob or player) is worth taking on, but when everyone is at max level most MMOs just rely on health pool info to relay that information. I think functionally it'll have almost zero difference whether or not you can see them, so it's not really worth arguing over specifics like "well maybe you can only see them if X" or "no numbers except for X" or whatever