I hate Damage number popups

[mondblut]

NPC health bars are almost as bad. The proper way to do it is to change the apperance of the NPC: make his armor look damaged, show bleeding, limping, dismembered limbs (all this requires more work, of course).

Cool. Now do Black Pudding or Gelatinous Cube.

Damage numbers and health bars are also signs of annoying bullet sponge mechanics; if NPCs were not bullet sponges there would be less "need" for damage numbers and health bars, since the NPC would die much quicker.

Health bars are crap because they don't really tell how many hps we still need to take down before the enemy croaks. Is that 1 out of 10 or 100 out of 1000?

 

[mondblut]

Aethra Chronicles had descriptive text ("you deal a staggering blow").

I remember reading some MUD combat log that looked like this:

Joe *crushes* enemyname!
Pete CRIPPLES enemyname!
Mike *EVISCERATES* enemyname!
...

It was 20 pages long. Much evisceration...

 

[mondblut]

Give me a proper damage window and allow me to look down to focus briefly on it as well as to let me go back and review the battle to see where things went right and wrong:

Playing a game where hit points are measured in hundreds of thousands - that's where things went wrong for you.

 

[Beastro]

Give me a proper damage window and allow me to look down to focus briefly on it as well as to let me go back and review the battle to see where things went right and wrong:

Playing a game where hit points are measured in hundreds of thousands - that's where things went wrong for you.

Oh, I agree.

Only relevent photo I could find dedicating a minute to locating one~

 

[Iucounu]

NPC health bars are almost as bad. The proper way to do it is to change the apperance of the NPC: make his armor look damaged, show bleeding, limping, dismembered limbs (all this requires more work, of course).

Cool. Now do Black Pudding or Gelatinous Cube.

What are those, game characters? If you are fighting a jelly enemy, then maybe damage can be shown in different ways --shrinking, deformation, discoloring, smoke? Bleeding might still work.

Damage numbers and health bars are also signs of annoying bullet sponge mechanics; if NPCs were not bullet sponges there would be less "need" for damage numbers and health bars, since the NPC would die much quicker.

Health bars are crap because they don't really tell how many hps we still need to take down before the enemy croaks. Is that 1 out of 10 or 100 out of 1000?

That's less of a concern to me, usually the rate of healthbar decline shows how much damage you deal. Slow decline: bullet sponge enemy. Fast decline: no NPC health bar necessary in the first place.

 

[Kabas]

Reposting because relevant.

Starting as a weakling with small numbers and then later watching your screen explode with huge numbers can be fun.

In normal RPGs things will quickly get boring after reaching this point though.

 

[JarlFrank]

I rather like the idea the player or mob looks injured, loses limbs, etc though.

Yes.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Reposting because relevant.

Starting as a weakling with small numbers and then later watching your screen explode with huge numbers can be fun.

In normal RPGs things will quickly get boring after reaching this point though.

WTF IS GOING ON IN THAT SHOT!?!???

 

[Kabas]

WTF IS GOING ON IN THAT SHOT!?!???

1st answer: Hakos Baelz has an ult that reduces delay between attacks to 0 seconds on every weapon. Produces funny results with some weapons.

2nd answer: Abyss

3rd answer: This is how most survivor clones look near the end of a run if you built your character properly.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I thought the MC, based on ?his? smile just had a huge orgasm at the slutty barber & lap dance joint. Shaved & Laid!

 

[Juju Zombie]

I'm making a CRPG, and I've been putting off adding damage number popups for the longest time. My design philosophy is that if Fallout 1+2 didn't do it, then it's not necessary. But my ideals are threatened by the fact that literally every CRPG from the last 20 years worth a damn has had damage number popups.

It is hard to explain my frustration with them, who the hell tracks those numbers anyway? If you want to show that you got a critical hit or that an ability you just used is powerful there are other ways than throwing big digits in my face. What is this, a math class? It's like I'm reading a comic book fight scene with WHACK and POW appearing above the character's heads. Someone please tell me what to think

If your’re making a CRPG that is more realistic and serious in tone, don’t add the floating damage numbers.

If you’re making a more arcadey, humorous CRPG, add them.

 

[Yosharian]

I'm making a CRPG, and I've been putting off adding damage number popups for the longest time. My design philosophy is that if Fallout 1+2 didn't do it, then it's not necessary. But my ideals are threatened by the fact that literally every CRPG from the last 20 years worth a damn has had damage number popups.

It is hard to explain my frustration with them, who the hell tracks those numbers anyway? If you want to show that you got a critical hit or that an ability you just used is powerful there are other ways than throwing big digits in my face. What is this, a math class? It's like I'm reading a comic book fight scene with WHACK and POW appearing above the character's heads. Someone please tell me what to think

I can't stand them either, but here's the thing, if you're playing a fairly mechanically-complex game, then it can be quite useful to have feedback on what's happening.

Back when the gaming industry was run by gamers, we had these things called COMBAT LOGS to give us this info.

Since everyone got rid of those in their games now, there isn't any other way to determine how effective a particular weapon is versus another one, or test builds etc.

But I agree that they're horrible for immersion. I also don't like those floating health bars above enemies that everyone uses in their Skyrim modlists these days, fucking gross.

Really the solution is, have them, and allow them to be turned off. Easy.

 

[S.torch]

I don't think I'm following the argument here. Numbers on the enemies break immersion but a battle log taking a big corner of the screen does not? You don't have to add numbers popups, you can just add a health bar for enemies like Skyrim does too. But I think most players would prefer to know directly what damage they're dealing rather than reading the esoteric math box. When I'm playing an CRPG I rarely if ever look at the battle log for anything.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I don't really see how damage numbers are any worse for immersion than the rest of the UI. Do you also hate outlines to indicate if something is targeted/allied/whatever? How about the mouse cursor being on the screen? Why not hate the combat log too, and have IMMERSIVE hudless gameplay where you have no idea what the fuck is going on and just watch thing hit eachother and clap like a seal?

Games are about gameplay. Needing to dig through 5 pages of combat logs to find out how to distribute your attacks/spells/etc. on the second round is needless tedium. If your game is so simple you never need to think about who is attacking what with which spells/weapons/abilities then it's entirely too dull.

 

[Yosharian]

I don't really see how damage numbers are any worse for immersion than the rest of the UI. Do you also hate outlines to indicate if something is targeted/allied/whatever? How about the mouse cursor being on the screen? Why not hate the combat log too, and have IMMERSIVE hudless gameplay where you have no idea what the fuck is going on and just watch thing hit eachother and clap like a seal?

Games are about gameplay. Needing to dig through 5 pages of combat logs to find out how to distribute your attacks/spells/etc. on the second round is needless tedium. If your game is so simple you never need to think about who is attacking what with which spells/weapons/abilities then it's entirely too dull.

Well this is quite a take