No Hitpoint Bar for Monsters

Guess we really don't need any indicator, if you die, guess it was hard lol.

 

I would suggest no indicator at all. Maybe there will be some in game literature (such as a beastiary) that you can read up on to see how powerful certain creatures are.. or you can just learn the hard way: death. But.. I say, let's keep it immersive.

 

Yea, I was just asking. I'd prefer nothing but a player based Bestiary or as you suggested, a book you find in game and read some info.

 

That sounds perfect to me. I have a feeling RG is thinking along those lines as well.

 

I do not really care for a HP bar floating above the mobs. I do however like the old school style of having an Ultima type gump to pull to the side. But if that is not available I would opt for just a typical value being displayed toward the bottom and/or top of the screen as seen in many other MMO style games. Showing a displayed color with HP remaining without a number displayed. You know your foe is reaching its end when it starts to run in fear as you chase it down to deal the final blow.

 

Not really that big of a fan of just *this* change alone? I do LOVE the idea of reducing UI clutter, and reducing the need for mods and other UI enhancements. I don?t want to constantly manage buffs/debuffs and all that like we have to do in other games. It creates tunnel vision and is a chore to constantly clean up UIs. Don?t even get me started on DPS meters and the like.

But I have to admit, I?m not sure why just removing the HP Bar would be ?enough? for those interested in this kind of immersion. Assuming I can see stats on the character, items, and output in general, all removing the HP bar does, is in effect, remove the view of these stats at the point where it?s most useful (killing stuff).

Sure, the visual cues will be cool, and fun, and would be great to see in game, but if the point is full immersion, then we?d need to remove the view of these stats everywhere. Why? Because in the end, even though we don?t see that HP bar go down, we still know our relative power everywhere else. So if we can see it everywhere else, see that we?ve gained +X of a stat, know what that means (or can calculate it) without ever facing a mob, all we?ve really done is to remove the satisfaction we get from seeing that HP bar go down more quickly than it has in the past. And if we build in specific triggers (at X% damage a mob loses an arm and thus does less damage to us), then we lose the ability to build our playstyle around getting to those trigger points. If I?m low on HP myself, have to manage some sort of resource that determines damage options, then I?ll damn sure want to do just the bare minimum to get that mob to stop hitting me so hard. If I don?t have any idea how close I am to that mob losing its arm or whatever, my ability to be skillful goes out the window and I?m just mashing buttons.

Also, for this to work well for the general gaming population, we?d need those visual cues to be so blatant that everyone will just ?know? that once a mob gets down to X% of health, it runs away?why remove the view of how close you are to that threshold? If we know that when X% HP is gone, the mob will lose an arm or a leg, or look dazed or what have you, you haven?t actually achieved anything by removing the bar, you?ve just changed your perception of it. To me that?s just boring combat that lacks some depth and would necessitate all skills to be more or less the same (otherwise why use a less powerful skill when the more powerful one is better?)

To me, this kind of change needs either to be optional, or to re-envision entirely how we see and feel character progression as if we ONLY remove the ?end result? of all of this kind of stat progression, what are we really doing at all?

My two cents.

 

@BigTime - I think the goal of SOTA is to not have DPS and have encounters be more organic. Having no HP meter means you only have a vague clue of how much longer it might take to down the creature. I don't think we want it obvious when a creature is going to run, and that might be a different threshold from creature to creature.

I think the point is to not make combat something predictive. I think the only thing that should be obvious is whether you are doing damage or not. Other than that I would like each encounter to be different including health and threshold for fleeing. If I am in my 40th fight against a goblin I would like it to be just as interesting as the first time. By hiding the health bar, randomizing things like health and moral, etc you get a good distance into that unpredictable combat to keep things interesting.

 

The point of having fights be interesting, I get. Randomization is good, Non predictability is good. Organic fights/outcomes are fantastic. What I don't want is it to lose the thought process behind good choices in attacks and resource management. That to me, means you need an in-game indicator of battle progress. Both against multiple mobs and against single mobs.

The argument 'well the graphical cues will be your HP Bar to pay attention to' doesn't hold up when deciding what tactics you want to (or should be) using. I don't want the game to always be 'use the biggest damage skill every single time'...that'll be boring. Besides, if we have some sort of resource to manage that determines damage output, I personally would want to ensure i'm not blowing everything I have on Mob 1 when three are coming at me. Knowing their relative HP will be a learning process, and that I like, but i'm a fan of min/maxing within fights themselves so i'm not just dumping everything into a mob willy nilly.

To me, I still see something as simple as an HP bar tied to the overarching concept of gear, scaling and why we even hunt for gear in the first place. If my goal is to progress my character and get 'better' gear, then I surely need a way to distinguish one item from the next (stats) and the final outcome of getting higher stats is that mob HP bar going down faster and in bigger chunks. And in the end, if the stats will be crunched and parsed like we see in any other MMO (because we all know they will), why remove something as core to that process as an HP bar?