Monster/NPC Health Bars/Names

Hey Lord_Darkmoon! I would like to reply to your post, step by step, describing my toughts about our different points of view. This is not something like " i'm better than you", it's like... comparing our ideas. We represent two different schools of thought XD! I represent a percentage of players and you represent the other one LOL! So... let's start!

" I?m still for no UI at all. "

I'm for the UI ^_^. As I said before, UI is a part of a game's aesthetics, especially for role playing games. We're not playing a game like Shadow of the Colossus, we're playing a RPG where you need to do LOT of things. It would be like a blank/prototype game without UI. Watching my XP stats bars growing up, slashing a monster and watch its health status slowly dropping down, watching my companions' portraits while I'm fighting and checking their status, opening my inventory/GUMP and manage my equipment, watching a baloon popping out the head of my Avatar while i'm talking with other people, checking my world map, click "that" special colored icon who activates a special move/magic (please, don't talk about cooldown times and WoW ), reading the monsters' names to understand who I'm actually figthing... these are some things about UI who are very important to me and to other players.

" How to measure your health if there is no health bar for you? When you get damage the screen gets slowly red and you can hear your heart beating. The more damage you get the more red the screen gets and the faster the heart beats. So you get a feeling for when you should heal yourself without having a bar floating around. "

Imagine You with 4 companions, fighting against lot of elements on screen without any kind of reference to check your status except for your heartbeats and your allies' battle cries... that will result as a total audiovisual mess, in my opinion.
You've also talked about red screen : That's not a bad idea... but I honestly don't like this mechanic in a RPG. Also, imagine your screen getting red every 20-30 seconds: isn't that annoying?
Another thing: I'm no hardware fan, I've a low laptop who can barely play modern games. I'm almost sure that looking into characters' damage details would be like a trauma for people like me who have low-spec computers, LOL.


" We should think outside of the box with SotA. Yes, it is a game but it is also a virtual world you live in. Imagine if the devs include support for Occulus Rift. You will then be in this game and there would be health bars and names and numbers floating around? This would totally rip you out of the feeling of being in the game. "

Sorry, I've never been a fan of those technological enhancements and I would never care about Occulus Rift in a game like this :S.
I feel like i'm a part of the game if the product is designed at the state of Art, even with the oldest graphic engine in the world.


" We should do away with all of those things that would make the game a standard-MMORPG. Let?s create something new, something unique, something that is not UO or WoW or all of those other games. MMOs have become less of immersive games and more of number calculations. Some of you might like it this way but let?s face it ? counting numbers is not about gaming. "


This is not a MMO, this is like a traditional Role Playing Game contaminated by multiplayer mechanics.
What's immersion for me and other people who have my same thought? A perfect gameplay.
In tihs game you'll be able to buy a house, go on adventure, enter dungeons and collect treasures, skill up your secondary skills like in Ultima Online. That's total variety and fun.

PLUS, beyond all things that i've described about UO, SotA will also have a complex story with quests, sub-quests, missions evaluations (it's very Retro-Arcade style, and I like it <3 ) , secret quests, secrets in general, "special" secrets (that thing about special dungeons/cities popping up on your world map depending on astrological alignments *_* ), character development, character's storyline development based on your choices during the game and God only knows what other amazing things they're making for us.

I don't think that numbers or health bars can represent a problem for a game like this
Do you want to know what ruins a game like this in my opinion? That kind of stuff like " pvp tanks" ; nerding like fools on PvP trying to find the " perfect build " , is dumb. You don't enjoy the actual game. Surely you can be competitive and everything, but that's not the meaning of an entire game.
PvPing is very good, except when you're obsessed and you use a calculator to evaluate the damage of all your hits.
Oh and also: I've never been a fan of World of Warcraft and games like that ;P , only time I played WoW was in 2005, just to test out the game. I Quickly got bored after three days of playing and never came back to WoW.


As I said in the beginning of this post, we some kind represent two different schools of thought ^_^.
Why Don't we directly suggest to Richard Garriott to fuse our suggestions into something that can fulfill part of our ideas in the game?

Waiting for your response ^__^



For you guys talking about "healing" ^^ :

I agree with some of you: healing spells must be temporary buffs, not full-healing spells.

 

Kleshar: When I look at games nowadays especially MMORPGs the screen is cluttered with Windows, texts, numbers which all seem to be much more important than what is going on in the world.
I remember playing Ultima VII for the first time and there was nothing on the screen except for the fantastic landscape. And it did play really well without having an UI.

Sure there should be an inventory - but it will only show up if you open it. The same with a spellbook or the status of your character/the paperdoll or the skills section. A chat windows could also just pop up if you receive a message for you or if you want to type something in. And of course you could open your map and take a look where you are and you could also have markers on the map etc. So in general you would only see the grand landscape and what is going on like in real life. Nothing there to distract you, nothing to break the immersion, but you could open up some elements if you need them like status screen to distribute skill points or you inventory, map etc.).

Sure one needs some information and status-messages etc. But I believe that all of this can be done with audio-visual elements. If it worked with the older Ultimas like Ultima VII why shouldn't it work now? People nowadays seem so focused on some elements of the games that seem to be standard that they forget that it could be different and that it could work - maybe even better - without those standards. And that the game and immersion could profit from that.

Without names, bars, numbers etc. the game would become more realistic. I don't need to know what the monster is called that I fight because I will get to know it over time and when I meet it I will know "Oh that was this bad zombie, he was very hard to beat. Maybe I should evade him". I don't care if it is called "Brutemaker Bloodthirst the Overlord-Zombie", in fact it would only detract me from the game and the immersion. By the way how do you know the name of a monster? Especially if you encounter it for the first time?

Maybe the devs could make it all optional. If someone wants to have windows and bars and names he can activate them and if someone wants to have no UI at all it could be possible to deactive everything with the game still being playable.

 

For me:

- Health bars are not really needed; when I started playing games they were the exception rather than the norm anyway.

- Having visual cues that provide a player with enough information to dispense the health bars is a good idea whether health bars are present or not. At the very least it should allow players that want more immersion to turn off health bars without any meaningful handicap.

- Not having any kind of health bar might be bad for the game because players are too used to them.

- The moment when not having health bar or creature names can help the most in making the game more immersive is when the player is meeting new creatures.

Given that, my idea for this would be:

- Visual health cues available and good enough to, for the most part, fill the need of a health bar. Also, health bars can be turned off.

- Players only get a rough health bar for a given kind of mob after they have caused a certain amount of damage to that kind of mob (say, 500% of that mob's max health, or 5 kills if soloing). Players get a traditional, precise, health bar after quite a bit more experience with that mob (say, 20 to 50 kills). This way players eventually get a health bar, but players that can read the visual cues about the mob's health can gleam that information quite earlier, making it a useful skill to develop.

- For mob type names, players start knowing a few common ones, but for less known ones must both hear or read in game about the mob, as well as have a certain number of interactions (combat or otherwise) with that kind of mob, before the name will show. Before that, if the player attempts to see the name of the kind of mob, he sees a small description instead of the name (say, "small lizard-faced humanoid" instead of "Kobold"). Likewise for mob subtypes, players might see "skinny Kobold with feathered headgear" instead of "Kobold priest" until they have experience with the mob subtype and discover in-game it's name.

- For NPC names, the player needs to both hear the NPC name mentioned, and interact with it, before the name will show. Both can be done at the same time if the NPC introduces itself, but hearing a description of the NPC that includes it's name, and after that interacting with that NPC, could suffice without such an introduction.

 

@Lord Darthan Haj mentioned bestiary- would it be fun to have an actual bestiary? I tome you can purchase/find/craft that contains information about various creatures- instead of hovering your mouse, you would have to stop and open the book, flip to the section on the creature you are interested in, and read from it.

Granted, this would just end up on a website somewhere available to everyone, but hey same diff really.

 

@Lord Darthan

AFAIK Breath of Fire, on the SNES, also did it like this. Players wouldn't get the monster's HP value until they killed quite a few of them, and after that the HP bar for that kind of monster worked normally.

 

I think one way to do it would be show no health bar, or the npc name. But once you killed said monster a couple of times. you get know it abilities and then you should be able to see the health bar. and for NPC you should not see there name in tell you ask said Npc what his name is.

 

I like the idea of seeing monster healthbars after killing a certain number (or at least, having the option to see it - I think the UI should be customizable).

I definitely want to see the health of myself and my companions - I think @Kleshar is right on this, it's just too much to information to try to get across without bars. For those concerned about the UI becoming too cluttered, what about having all of the bars disappear when you're in a "safe area", or have been out of combat a certain amount of time? While in combat, I want to be able to tell what's going on, but obviously this info isn't needed outside of combat and having a full, uncluttered screen might be better. Or a simple, one-button toggle for showing health bars and other vital info.

 

I would actually prefer the health be more randomized. If that was so than seeing a health bar after killing a few would not make sense. However, some other clue (like flashing or something) could be done to similar affect.

 

You new arrivals are only a month behind or so, catch up

 

I agree Dhuran. If two people are in a battle and have taken a lot of damage the nerves will kick in...is this guy ever going to drop...do I need to run or will one more hit finish him...

 

If someone is badly wounded, you see it. If someone is in good health, you also see it. No one just drop dead (apart from having a heart attack, but monsters having a heart attacks... well, on secon thought it's kinda intriguing). So all this blah-blah-blah about "not knowing how far I am from killing my foe" is nonsense.

Possible solutions:
1. Heath bars or something like that. You may turn it off if you don't like em. You can optionally turn off HB for enemies / friends / neutrals. Cheap. Quick. Effective.
2. Appearance and animation changes according to relative hit points. Will significantly increase animation cost. Doesn't breaks immersion. And when done well, looks cool.

Finita. No, really, there's no other ways out.

 

Yes. They definitely should be visible. To both your questions.
1. Ultima base story line is I'm stepping into NB. I have a decent background in fantasy/mythical creatures, so I would know what a harpy is.
2. Until games can accurately portray a creatures damage and actions the health bar should remain. You don't need to be a doctor to see how well/bad an enemy is doing. Just look at the wounds, is the creature starting to stagger, are the attacks slowing/weaker? These are all indications of a creatures condition that are not portrayed in games. No matter what it's health the creature attacks with the same speed and verocity which in real life it wouldn't do, that's why health bars are there.

 

I like third person view, and think it'd be to difficult to see the damage on whatever it be I am fighting. So It'd leave a lot of guessing on my part without a health bar, definitely make it more interesting in battle. Now with first person view I can see my target up close better, so I could see it being a bit more fun without health bars. Especially if they add great visuals, maybe a good sword swing good sever an arm?
Like I said though, I like third person view. So I'd prefer health bars. It'd also help me keep track of my group, assuming I make friends.

 

Just remember that this is a perfect target of third party programs, just having a record of a given mob's listed HP and counting from your combat log how much damage has done, this wouldn't have to interface with SOTA at all, which would make it both difficult to detect and easier to program. Unless of course, SOTA doesn't even HAVE a combat log. Which I somehow doubt.

 

They probably have an internal one, but likely will not expose that. Having a user-readable combat log is exactly against their "no min-max" design goal. Clearly they want to show your actions are having an effect, be it positive or negative. So for now I think they'll continue to use HP bars but they've toyed with not even showing any floating / rising damage counters. It is shown in the demo so we'll see what they end up doing.

 

Even an internal combat log can be read by an outside program that is made to watch for such things. I post this not to start a fight about what can and cannot be done, but just to point out a basic adage:

Anything that exists but is denied to consumers or limited becomes valuable as a result, anything valuable will be sought after.

As a secondary point, reading these forums has re-emphasised a very important concept to me. It doesn't matter if I have a perfect vision of the game, or even if all of my friends agree with it. No matter how perfectly any game embodies MY vision, there will be someone two computers over who thinks it sucks, because he does not and will not share my vision. Nor will I share his. There is no one perfect way.

The ability of the game to flex to it's users demands is the ONLY way to make a game that can satisfy most, or even very many, of it's players.

The UI is a perfect example. Many people, including RG, want a minimal UI. I've never been bothered by UI's, as long as I could control them. Minimal, multi-window, transparencies, secondary screens... whatever. I do care about getting access to the knowledge, the powers, and the equipment I need, whatever it is. There are many, however, who would look at how I play and hate it. No helping that, they just will.

The only solution is to have the elements be optional, with the ability to turn things on and off. Want health bars, select the option. Want to see your status and buffs/debuffs, select that option. Letting players get this kind of information IF they want it is kinda like the entire "Open PvP full loot" issue. Ultimately, the players who really really don't want the solution forced on them will just stop playing. Letting everyone get the experience they want, if doable, is always best.

 

Oh, I'm sure some people will try to figure this out on their own. Be it parsing whatever client-side log files they can find, capturing network traffic, etc., if there's a way they'll find it. Some people have formally requested that these be exposed as log files that can be read by pre-existing combat log parsers. I don't have any thoughts on it one way or another since it's not my thing. Just pointing out what they've said was their goal as they have not responded to any of those combat log requests. All I know is that Richard constantly repeats his anti-min-max design goal in literally every interview he does. So, I wouldn't hold out hope for it, that's all. But hey, if someone figures it out, good for them.

 

But once someone figures it out, and they will, they will post the addon engine. Then someone else will figure out what he thinks is a better way, and HE will post an addon engine. Then they will both release a 1.1 version with less bugs. Then 20 other people will post their versions...

The way teh interwebs work, if ANY of the millions of people who interact with this game can do it, a few months later ALL of them will be able to do it.

 

Simpliest solution is to pass relative data to client. Say,
> You see a bear (72%HP)
> Your blow slightly damages a bear (-3%)
> You see a bear (69%HP)
> Your blow badly hurts a bear (-17%)
> You see a bear (52%HP)
Now figure out exact numbers out of such a log. You cant, but it's still enough to define target's health and strength of blows.

 

So you have to wonder if they're going to actively try and hide it as much as possible or not care one way or another. I don't think they'll bother initially and if it happens, they'll likely take a wait and see approach. If it becomes detrimental, then they might do something. Having said that though, one could argue that this random skill deck combat system is designed to stop min-maxing (and macroing). But people are creative and will find a way.