Health bar

[hoxu]

Quick suggestion:

I'd like to see a health bar on monsters (how many percent of hp they have left) and/or some kind of animation when they get hit / you miss 'em. This way the *annoying* status messages ("You chop vicious chicken") could be removed. Those eat my precious processor time !

[Pathor]

Isn't this two suggestions lumped into one? Kind of hard to know what to vote when one likes one of the suggestions and dislikes the other.

Anyway, I kind of like the way that you don't know if something is hurt until you probe it, that would be ruined with a hp-bar. Spellcasters often don't see the monster they are casting spells on, so for them this wouldn't work, they would still need the messages to see if the spell has any effect and to see that long-lasting spells are still in progress (like ball lightning). But maybe the client doesn't have to show hit after hit on the same monster/kind of monster. Just update the text and flash it (first draw it in black and then fade it up to gray) ?

If a spell kills ten monsters, perhaps the text could say that instead of ten lines of "You killed zombie with burning hands". Ie:
"You killed zombie with burning hands" -> gets updated to:
"You killed two zombies with burning hands" and so on up to:
"You killed ten zombies with burning hands".
If two, three messages are repeated (ie You killed zombie, you killed skeleton, you killed zombie), I don't know if earlier lines should be updated in the same way or there should be many lines like today.
The order of events gets lost if one updates earlier lines and I don't know if/when that may be important. Perhaps the client could have an expanded view where the messages are kept without change, if/when one wants to know the exact order of messages (after a PK, perhaps?) ?

Anyway, I do like the idea of an visual effect on the monster when it is hit. In the simplest case, perhaps just flashing its color, until someone's made some better animations?

[hoxu]

Isn't this two suggestions lumped into one? Kind of hard to know what to vote when one likes one of the suggestions and dislikes the other.

Anyway, I kind of like the way that you don't know if something is hurt until you probe it, that would be ruined with a hp-bar.

I think gros (or someone else) suggested that the probe spell could show such health bar for a while. I think it'd be cool.

Spellcasters often don't see the monster they are casting spells on, so for them this wouldn't work, they would still need the messages to see if the spell has any effect and to see that long-lasting spells are still in progress (like ball lightning). But maybe the client doesn't have to show hit after hit on the same monster/kind of monster. Just update the text and flash it (first draw it in black and then fade it up to gray) ?

I agree, spells would be a problem with this kind of system.. Although, should you be able to know what kind of damage your spell does to a monster that you can't even see?

[Guest]

I agree, spells would be a problem with this kind of system.. Although, should you be able to know what kind of damage your spell does to a monster that you can't even see?

I think one should separate "can't see because of the client's, 2D, from above view" and "can't see because LOS, because of blindness, etc". From a RPG perspective, the character has a lot more information than the player has. Noises can be heared, things can be peered at through a door, the character can see a lot longer than the client can show to the player, etc. There might also be some kind of link between the spell and the caster, allowing the caster to feel if the spell does some damage (at least the xp meter gives me a good feeling when my ball lightnings fries the dragons ) . So I don't know where to draw the line.

[dark.schneider]

I dont' agree on monster health bars allsays visible, but I agree that a probe spell should make them appear and last for some time (before fading away).
What I *really* will like, because it will gretly improve party play, is that other players should *allways* have a health bar visible or only visible for party memebrs. Int his while while figthing one can show his companion state (that look to me quite normal because party memebrs will implicitily talk each other during combat to comunicate each other health state).
Again this wil GREATLY improve party play.

[achost]

What I *really* will like, because it will gretly improve party play, is that other players should *allways* have a health bar visible or only visible for party memebrs.

Good idea.