No Hitpoint Bar for Monsters

Death to the Health Bar!
There's nothing else to say.

 

As I've said before, I could go either way on the health bar itself. This is what I'm trying to avoid:

To pick on WoW since most people have played. In the upper right, I have my buffs. Including some temporary procs I need to watch. On the top of the screen, I have my opponents buffs/debuffs. I need to watch those to see if I should re-apply something. In the upper left I might have most stuff for my mechanic. I'm also watching an enemy health bar and enemy cast bar and need some awareness of my own health bar. Then I have a huge pile of skills which I have to watch for procs and cooldowns. There's way too many to bind to 1-4, qer...I've got binds all over, using modifiers like ctrl-alt-shift, and still likely have to click some stuff. Any I'm probably staring at my keyboard trying to do all of this. I also have text feedback, sound, and add-ons screaming at me to do stuff.

What I want to do is watch my opponent. And possibly the area around me. I shouldn't need to look at my skills because they're few in number and I know what they are. If there's a proc to "swing sword better" just overwrite in over my normal "swing sword" key.

As I said, I could go either way on the healthbar. But the overall clutter of watching a half dozen places and choosing from a dozen skills isn't immerse at all. I liked games like Mike Tyson's Punch Out! where you have very few buttons but a whole lot of watching your opponent.

 

In a battle situation, you have no idea the exact amount of damage you have done. It cheapened WoW when the player was able to assign a numerical value to his opponent's health. I think LB's idea is fantastic.

QD

 

Also, if we are going with minimal information about monster health, there is no real need to display 'exact damage values' of weapons and spells ... when I use an offensive weapon, I really have no idea how much damage I am dealing, do I?

 

Agree with PrimeRib. I don't particularly care in what way feedback is given, as long as the direction the devs take is not staring at a row of icons. The graphics and animations might as well not even exist in many modern MMOs, especially rotation based ones. I still get dizzying headaches just thinking about staring at those cooldowns.

 

Forget calculations & numbers... I like this idea & can't wait to test it.

 

I like the idea of monsters/enemy combatants not having health bars. If they were able to put in visual queues, like they stated, to let you know how you are faring against said enemies I would be all for it. I mean they could have the blood spew more profusely, or have the ability to have a decreased efficiency modifier based on the parts of the body you have attacked. With this decreased modifier that can be added to you or the enemy it would be added based on the limp received or maimed appendage that has been hit. Taking this a step further, I think it would be cool that when you fell a creature and you come close to it, seeing it has no health bar, it could have the chance to make one final thrust at you and if you don't act within a certain time it could severely maim you where you would then need to go to town to heal up.

just my two cents thanks for reading

 

I agree with this gameplay strategy. Anything that is more like Monster Hunter in terms of hiding real-time enemy statistics is a great thing. I don't want to fight a giant health bar, I want to fight a terrifying monster and pull through by the skin of my teeth.

 

I totally agree with no health bars, as i have also noted that in this one among some of my other thoughts. Please review and add if you'd like, i would like a Dev to see one of these.

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?topic=dev-chat-may-24th-lb-yes-i-totally-agree

 

I, too, am fully behind the idea of no damage bars. In fact, why not get rid of ones over your characters as well? We could use the same visual cues to see how badly we are damaged. Just an example: the more hurt someone is, the more bloody and hunched over he becomes. At full health you (or your enemy) would be standing erect - nearly dead would be hunched over to the point of nearly collapsing. Just a thought.

Less is more when it comes to immersive games. So, hopefully, there will be very little (or maybe nothing!) on the screen that's not actually in the game world that we're playing in.

 

@Sit By-tor good suggestions, that's kinda what I mentioned in my post right above you, talking about no health and possibly when someone hits a certain low percentage, maybe give us an option to "finish him" type thing.

Should see my post as well guys, and keep these ideas rolling!

 

Just read your link, ThommyGunn. Great minds think alike.

I think those kind of visual cues would be a fairly simple thing for them to put in the game.. and it wouldnt be subjective on how hurt someone really is. If we go by wounds or arrows alone.. who really knows how hurt someone is? Physically crippled cues such as hunching: (half way hunched over, 3/4 hunched over, etc) is easily recognizable but still immersive.

 

I would prefer toggle options. There are times when I like to see the bars and other times when I don't.

 

i personally want to know exactly how I'm doing. In real life you can tell when you are exhausted but still have the ability to run a little further if your life depended on it. You can also tell when you have nothing left and your going to die.

I don't want to be surprised when I die. So I say Health bar for us, but not for our foes.

 

Not sure how the lack of a health bar / status bar for your character got mixed into this. The post is no HP bar for monsters.

I've been playing Mass Effect 2, thats got a neat system for displaying your constitution. A health bar shows up after you have taken significant damage and as you get close to death, the screen closes in your avatar. I wouldn't mind something like that.

 

That sounds like a good way of handing monitoring your own health. That would be a good system.

 

I encourage people to try ME 2. Its pretty cool when you think your doing well and the screen starts going red on you lol. I've only been playing it a few days but I wanted some other insight and heard it was a great game.

Sure you could youtube the gameplay too.

Now the creatures do have Shield / Armor and Health Bars. The reason being, certain weapons are good vs shields and other armor. So you need the bars to know when to switch weapons. Shield bar goes down then the armor bar shows. However, I can see the shield on a Merc i'm hitting and when I see it disappear, I'll switch without checking the next bar.

Its sorta of a combo Bar System with visuals to back it up.

 

Yes yes yes, lots of good ideas. I'm all for "hiding mechanics from players" as Zook said. Please forgive me for my endless MUD references, but I have seen this put to good work in a text world, and it really encouraged RP. EmpireMUD went to phrasing instead of numbers for stats, HP, damage dealt, level progression & experience, and skill percentage. It was a difficult transition to make at first, but in the end it really enhanced immersion.

There was a "consider" skill to size up an opponent's approximate level, and an "assess" skill to compare a weapon or piece of armor to your current eq. On a related note (and perhaps we can discuss this elsewhere) I would like hidden or approximated item stats. Having to identify items to find their true value is durn cool. This would help the economy in several ways, and player compiled item stat lists are the hallmark of an organic system.

 

I'd like to see them get away from on screen bars all together. If there was something like hunching down the more damaged you or your opponent is.. or like Gunga mentioned in ME 2... the screen closing in as you approach death... or, for example, like Call of Duty where the screen gets more covered in blood the more injured you get. Something that is easily readable but still immersive .. unlike the standard damage bar that you see in practically every game today.

 

So would you use any system to ID monster difficulty? Ex. Green / Yellow / Red - As a marker next to monster's name? Corresponding to the skill of your character. Other games use levels to determine that ratio or use "Hard" for elite mobs.

NO numbers but should we have any indicator?