Different borders to show how powerful an enemy is

What do you people think about different portrait-borders to show how elite is the mob you are looking at? Right now it shows "+" near the level of the mob, but I doubt this is how it's going to end up looking at the end. Archeage did it quite well, they had different borders with stars, but stars is something you need to count. How strong is that drake? Wait, let me count the stars... The best way it was ever done was in LOTRO, where the moment you targeted the enemy you knew immediately how strong it was, and you didn't have to count anything or memorize anything, it was very apparent. If it has a bunch of flames coming out of it's portrait, don't touch it!

L0282sgG_elite%20borders.png

Like this post if you think something like that should be added into the game.

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Soez

Samson wrote: »

Soez wrote: »

Why not just leave it to players to gauge monsters strength ? Whats fun in knowing beforehand What you need to defeat the monster ?

I think people can go a little overboard with saying that players just need to figure it out on their own. And many that tend to argue for this are the ones that say, "But my immersion... :'( " Some UI information is important to have in MMOs and should not be taken away because of the my immersion argument. This goes for mob/enemy/NPC borders, icons over the heads of important NPCs, AOE indicators, etc.

Immersion is important but it can definitely be taken too far where the game suffers from the removal of certain UI info and game mechanics. If you would like to figure out if a mob will kill you in one hit or not without any visual indication, you can just play the game with the UI toggled off and see what happens.

names, levels and titles of the NPCs are necessary info, but when you notice that some mob looks bigger
and more menacing than anything else around you, you instinctively know that mob is strong, but how strong?will you need teammates to defeat it or you can do it alone?

problem with strength indication is that it depends on individual players, you and your friend might defeat some subset of 4-star bosses easily but others might have hard time defeating them even as full party. Hence strength indication is irrelevant in that sense.

No UI info is just as bad as having UI info on everything. You have to identify which UI infos are necessary. In this case fancy enemy name borders are not necessary because they dont apply to everyone.

Spurius

Soez wrote: »

but when you notice that some mob looks bigger and more menacing than anything else around you, you instinctively know that mob is strong

This is something Steven might actually say. He likes silhouettes being informative on their own.

Soez wrote: »

not necessary

It's not necessary, but it is cool.

Soez wrote: »

Hence strength indication is irrelevant in that sense.

Hence any strength indication is "irrelevant". In that sense.

Luthienstorm

I think it's too specific. It's the difference between being told the story and showing the story. This system leads players to not have to think for themselves and leaves a certain level of exploration and risk out of the equation. I'd prefer it to be done in a different way.

maouw

Luthienstorm wrote: »

I think it's too specific. It's the difference between being told the story and showing the story. This system leads players to not have to think for themselves and leaves a certain level of exploration and risk out of the equation. I'd prefer it to be done in a different way.

I like this take.
Let the difficulty of a mob be experienced, instead of indicated - keep players on their toes when trying new stuff.

There are so many stories of people accidentally wandering into areas way beyond their depth, and you basically kill all that sense of adventure by putting up guard-rails for players.

Noaani

maouw wrote: »

Luthienstorm wrote: »

I think it's too specific. It's the difference between being told the story and showing the story. This system leads players to not have to think for themselves and leaves a certain level of exploration and risk out of the equation. I'd prefer it to be done in a different way.

I like this take.
Let the difficulty of a mob be experienced, instead of indicated - keep players on their toes when trying new stuff.

There are so many stories of people accidentally wandering into areas way beyond their depth, and you basically kill all that sense of adventure by putting up guard-rails for players.

PvP in Ashes provides that sense of adventure.

Let PvE be known.

Spurius

I don't think that the point of these borders is to inform you of something. In LOTRO when you saw these it's not like you were expecting something else. When you go to the dungeon you expect the mobs to be stronger, and you expect the boss to be stronger then the mobs. The borders just represent what you already know. I doubt we are going to have a "surprise raid boss" scenario, where the boss appears out of the bushes, but he looks like a rabbit, so you don't know.

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