No Hitpoint Bar for Monsters

Richard Garriott brought up the idea of removing the hit point meter from monsters and enemies.

I'm all for it!

However I'd like to see the following:

* To know how well I hit the foe. (graze, average hit, solid hit, and critical blow)
* To have a gauge of how well the foe is doing. (moderately wounded, heavily wounded, and dying) use of an anatomy skill is also a possibility.
* To know what percentage each of the hits (graze, solid...) are in relation to the weapon I'm using. For example a solid blow would be approximately 45-55% of my weapon's damage (or spell damage).

 

However I would rather there an indicator instead of text to say average hit, or critical blow, maybe just the sound and an optional color coded meter. So we can get used to the sound of a critical hit and/or see it go up to the redzone on the hit meter and know that sound means critical hit etc.

Like in baseball you can tell when you really hit the ball good. There's not only a feel but the sound is good too. FYI I'd probably turn off the meter and just listen to the sound.

***Oh and when I said Gage to see how well the foe is doing I meant a way to tell like using an anatomy skill or know that a certain amount of blood means moderately wounded. Well I guess that's basically what RG was saying in the first place.

 

There is also some good discussions in this thread too:
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?topic=monsternpc-health-barsnames

I like the idea of sounds for glancing blows or solid hits provided the game will include stuff like that in combat. If there are crippling blows the victim could cling to their limb and groan.

Not sure how much I like the gauge ability though. Maybe if you just get a general idea of the health, but I would like it better if everyone got the same information. Even limit its use to like when you are hidden or not in combat. You are in the middle of combat after all; no time for medical assessments.

 

I like the idea that you can tell what's going on by watching your opponent. But this really doubles the importance of having a very, very simple interface and combat system. It cannot work like WoW where I have 20 different skills and have to search all corners of my screen, stare at my keyboard, click with my mouse, etc.

It can only work if it's even simpler and cleaner than gw2 or neverwinter. The whole experience needs to come down to 3-4 skills buttons, WASD, and a mouse.

 

My .02:

I really like the idea of no health bars; RPGs are always more fun when you are mostly ignorant of the mechanics. The later Ultimas (7s, UWI/II,8) all moved away from numeric feedback in combat. Why not for the spiritual successor as well?

BUT there are an absolute ton of people that love dealing with the precision and optimization that numbers offer.

Would a more abstract feedback system be enough for these players? I'm thinking something similar to the Underworlds, where a UI element indicated the enemy's health. I believe it was a gargoyle, with eyes changed color depending on how damaged the enemy was. green for healthy, yellow for hurt, red for critical. That way players still get feedback- they know what weapons are effective and what monsters are out of their league, but it doesn't break the fourth wall and keeps things realistically vague.

 

I think the health bar serves a purpose in that it gives you an indication of the condition of the thing. Consider bull fighting. They have the picadors and banderilleros weaken the bull with a series of attacks. As the bull tires and weakens from loss of blood, it starts to hold its front legs closer together, which spreads it's shoulder blades farther apart, at that point, the matador engages the bull, tiring it further, and thrusts his sword between the spread shoulder blades to pierce the heart.

The health bar may be too much information, but in a fight, you have an idea of the condition of your opponent. Is he breathing heavily or gasping? Is he staggering? In he wounded, or bleeding heavily?

It's hard to simulate those things, so the health bar serves as a substitute indicator.

 

I'd like to see this as an optional feature. Some might find it more like a D&D game where you don't know necessarily how much health your opponent has left, and thusly more immersive. Others love to see and crunch numbers.

 

I'm really for what Mr. Garriott was saying in the dev chat. I am a big proponent of hiding mechanics from players. I think it would be a good move to remove things such as the floating numbers, or even putting hidden attributes on gear.

As a player, I find myself sometimes becoming much more interested in what is happening in the interface than what is happening in game. While it ultimately helps me fine tune my character, it also removes a lot of the uncertainty of combat and character building. Because of this combat, stats, and gear become very boring when it can all be accurately summed up on a spreadsheet. It becomes too predictable.

It would be very interesting to use sight, sound, and rumors/information from other players as a way to feel your way through and prevail in combat. I think the feedback should be enough to give you a general idea of if you're on the right track or not, but it shouldn't tell you exactly how well you're doing.

 

I also agree with Richard Garriott. Get rid of health bars!

And don't make it an optional feature, at least not in the persistent world. If it's optional, then those who enables health bars will have an advantage over those that don't. Which means *everyone* will have to enable them.

The same rule should apply to any UI feature that trades convenience for immersion. They should not be optional, and they should not be moddable (except in single-player or player-run servers). In games like WoW, UI mods resulted in a kind of UI arms race, where to stay competitive, your screen became cluttered with horrendously ugly, distracting and immersion-breaking buttons, bars and text spam.

 

I am also in favor of a system that gets rid of the numbers, or even an option toggle them.

 

I definitely don't like the idea of this being optional. I am for customization and choices, but if the goal is to "NOT" make this a game of spreadsheets then you have to hide these mechanics for everyone.

I would even go so far as to say don't even add the option for Single Player offline. Since we reached the Modding goal the community can take that up if its important to that group. I also hope there is some randomization of creature health, so even if health bars get in through modding it will still be difficult to min/max, dps, spreadsheet your way through encounters.

I also like the idea of using sounds as well as animations to determine when strikes are blocked or glancing vs solid and critical.

 

I admit I'm drunk so I haven't read the thread carefully yet but my 2 cents is that I'm skeptical about this

Hit bars are a graphical outgrowth of hit points from the pen and paper game and they both exist as a counter balance for the fact that you cant show realistic wounds and and actions. The technology doesn't exist to realistic show as someone weakens from a sucking chest wound, No matter how strong someone is they will show a reaction to having a lung collapse, they will show a reaction to having a compound open fracture (and yes that comes from real life experience) not to mention having a limb hacked off.

So when a monster shows no feedback from a wound, when they hit with the same power, when they don't stagger and weaken THAT breaks immersion (for me at least because I know what to look for for an injury ).

Health bars \ hit points go some way towards balancing that

Oh and I apologise for any spelling errors or gramatical inconsistencies (as I said I'm currently drunk )

 

I suggested being able to toggle the numbers because some folks really don't play games for the immersion and realism that others like.

I am opposed to any viewpoint that says "the only way to do something is the way I say".

 

I am fully in favor of what RG suggested and I do not think it should be optional. I agree with both visual and audible cues for damage.

 

In reality if you see someone limping, clutching an arterial wound in there carotid artery then you know you can take them even if you would have no hope if they were full strength

To me the whole resident evil thing where you fight bosses till all of a sudden they fall over is a complete break in immersion because reality is just not like that. As you take injury you weaken, you bleed, you fall down, you cant respond, your thinking becomes muddled as shock sets in etc

 

I like the idea of it being optional When fighting landscape mobs and during the initial learning, I'd rather turn it off so I can be immersed. But when fighting a challenging mob, I'd rather have the option of getting the extra control.

 

Since this isn't real life and I won't have all the clues I would have in a real fight If you do go with the no hitbars, I'd like some conventions to be followed, like the damage decals show up initially on the torso, then the legs/arms/head as damage progresses. That would help make it more consistent and easier to gauge.

 

If you have too many options for turning things on and off, I think you start to lose the identity of the game. How many MMO's have the same UI ?

 

Well, I've only put a lot of time in about three MMO's.

One had a very rigid UI, which I didn't like, but used anyway. Interestingly enough, about the only thing you could toggle was the numbers on the health/mana bars.

The other two had very flexible build-your-own UI's, which I liked very much. I've never forgotten which game I'm playing, since the stuff outside the UI was fairly unique.

And, don't you think if there was an option to have the numbers shown, and you couldn't resist having them on, wouldn't that sort of indicate you really want them on? Whereas, if you strongly prefer not to see numbers, you would never turn them on?

Options are good.

 

I love the idea of getting rid of the hitpoint bar for monsters, and getting rid of the "your attack hits for 17 damage" messages and floating damage numbers.

There is definitely a need for a feedback system, but these common practices are very immersion breaking and lead to "playing the numbers" instead of "playing the game."

I love the idea of having a general condition of the enemy based on your Anatomy skill. The better your skill is the more accurate and detailed information you will get about the enemy. This could be a creature-specific skill. Fighting a monster for the first time, you may think he's weak and near death, but really he's just getting ready to launch into a frenzy.

For feedback on our performance, I like the general description of the hit. It glances. It cuts. It slices. It eviscerates. It beheads. Sound effects would be nice, but text would be needed for the hearing impaired as well. Min-maxers will still be able to do their thing by testing in PvP areas against each other, they'd quickly learn that "cuts deeply" means 30-40 damage, but this just adds a lot more flavor.