Damage Numbers/Combat Text

[Squid Boss]

Curious on what others/Dev's think about this and going forward in Ember.

I for one don't much see the need for displaying numbers visually on screen or perhaps even at all. At times it feels more like clutter depending on rate of fire. More so if we are trying to eliminate the MMO tag and major identifiers. If we shoot a target for 1 or 100 or 1000 damage it doesn't really matter so long as each shot is still the same percentage of the total health pool?

Do we need a visual or even text based display of damage in Ember if we are going to try and stay as horizontal as possible?

 

[Vladplaya]

I hate that stuff, it's just clutter to me. However some people love to see how much damage they do, which also can be useful when checking out new weapon or attacking a new monster.

So, yes for have damage numbers, but also having an option to turn them off, would be wonderful.

 

[EvilKitten]

In fact in spite of the fact that I am regularly accused of being a fanatical min/maxer, I actually feel that we shouldn't have visible numbers for anything. I am a bigger fan of simply using UI elements (progression bars etc) to indicate what something will do without actually giving you hard numbers. Mass Effect 3's weapon display comes to mind where the different gun stats were shown as bars rather than numbers. You could easily see what effect a mod would have and just as easily compare different setups without actually knowing that gun X does 666 damage per round.

 

[Squid Boss]

I hate that stuff, it's just clutter to me. However some people love to see how much damage they do, which also can be useful when checking out new weapon or attacking a new monster.

So, yes for have damage numbers, but also having an option to turn them off, would be wonderful.

Yes, but keeping in mind we don't want swings in damage; say you deal 100 and maximum power increase is 10%. Do you need that display?

On/off would work as well.

 

[MattHunX]

If they're going to have numbers, then every and I mean EVERY change modifications make to a weapon or to the frame should be represented on the item cards and in the floating texts.

I do like the idea of no actual numbers, though. Things would be more simplified. Perhaps it would make for faster inventory management, modding and other stuff related to stats.

 

[NitroMidgets]

Man, when you used the mini gun as a Dread in FF you often ended up continuing to shoot through a cloud of damage numbers. You could barely see what you were shooting and there were times when you just used the numbers as an indicator that you were even still aiming at the enemy. I'd rather be able to see their health bar dropping then the damage numbers popping up.

 

[phoenix]

for high RoF you could accumulate all the damage

instead of showing
50
50 50
50 50 50
50 50 50 50
50 50 50 50 50
....

You get
50
100
150
200
250
...
or
1x50
2x50
3x50
4x50
5x50
...

Split enemy HP bar into 3 section
Red for health left, yellow for damage dealt to that enemy and transparent black for empty health.
Lets say you have an enemy with 100 HP someone else dealt 20 damage and you dealt 50 damage so the enemy stile has 30 left.

[██████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████] 30 50
The numbers next to the Health bar tell the player how much is left and how much damage you dealt in total.

 

[Daynen]

for high RoF you could accumulate all the damage

instead of showing
50
50 50
50 50 50
50 50 50 50
50 50 50 50 50
....

You get
50
100
150
200
250
...
or
1x50
2x50
3x50
4x50
5x50
...

Split enemy HP bar into 3 section
Red for health left, yellow for damage dealt to that enemy and transparent black for empty health.
Lets say you have an enemy with 100 HP someone else dealt 20 damage and you dealt 50 damage so the enemy stile has 30 left.

[██████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████] 30 50
The numbers next to the Health bar tell the player how much is left and how much damage you dealt in total.

League of Legends recently reduced it's "floating clutter" by having a single damage number pop up over a target representing only the viewing player's damage and displaying as a climbing total, rather than the "sprinkler" effect I'm sure we're all familiar with. I don't predict these numbers will change drastically over the course of the game, given that progression will be largely horizontal and not vertical, but if we must have them, this method will vastly reduce screen clogging and communicate much more useful information.

 

[Omnires]

I don't like seeing the number pop up every time I hit something or something hits me. There can be like a chat log that records all the battle data that doesn't get in the way. In games where it is an option I also turn off the flowing HP bar for enemies, although in sometimes I just move the bar to corner of the screen if that is an option. Sometimes all that stuff can break the feel of a game by making you aware that you are playing a game.

 

[Demigan]

I hate that stuff, it's just clutter to me. However some people love to see how much damage they do, which also can be useful when checking out new weapon or attacking a new monster.

So, yes for have damage numbers, but also having an option to turn them off, would be wonderful.

Yes for numbers...
Put them in a separate chat tab where you can see a log of your damage, what weapon/ability did the damage and perhaps other stat crap you want to look up. No reason to break immersion while in combat. Damage numbers are good in games that don't have a lot of real-life immersion like Borderlands or WoW. And Ember seems more aimed at having a realistic tone.

 

[Vladplaya]

And Ember seems more aimed at having a realistic tone.

We haven't seen anything about the game other than just couple very colorful drawings. Still I highly doubt it will be any more realistic than Borderlands or WoW. It probably will be same old sci fi fantasy stuff that we see everywhere, because it is much easier to make than actual sci fi.

 

[Cadbane]

I don't like seeing the number pop up every time I hit something or something hits me. There can be like a chat log that records all the battle data that doesn't get in the way. In games where it is an option I also turn off the flowing HP bar for enemies, although in sometimes I just move the bar to corner of the screen if that is an option. Sometimes all that stuff can break the feel of a game by making you aware that you are playing a game.

I love the idea of logging any statistic you can. I would prefer a detailed log on say a data pad you could pull up when not in battle. Your frame sensors would record shots fired, hits, misses, damage by you, by others, etc.... the game has to process all this anyway. Make it available in a clean crisp format for a player to review. Firefall had a decent mod for this.
Having access to this information can be useful in so many ways. Weapon testing, your skill progression, weapon your most effective with, etc.
Keeping the clutter off the screen would be ideal, a toggle for it for those whom like to see it or not would be nice.

Think of the data pad as your personal log. You could keep notes, catalog creatures as you encounter them. Map things. It could keep track of resources used, items you make. Catalog of guns, buildings, vehicles you discover.

I guess it could be a record of your journeys through Ember. Sorry to get off track.

 

[Squid Boss]

Combat logs off the center focus of the screen are better. Number clutter unless static on the enemy and quickly dissolving can be damaging to sight of the target. I see the value of the number crunching but question its true value until we see what the climb is and how various weapons work. If anything it'd be a valuable tool in the hands of players identifying what is perhaps over-tuned or under-tuned and we'll be able to bring it to the attention of the Developers so it can be adjusted to keep things on that subtle wave of a horizon we would like to keep.

 

[Omnires]

I love the idea of logging any statistic you can. I would prefer a detailed log on say a data pad you could pull up when not in battle. Your frame sensors would record shots fired, hits, misses, damage by you, by others, etc.... the game has to process all this anyway. Make it available in a clean crisp format for a player to review. Firefall had a decent mod for this.
Having access to this information can be useful in so many ways. Weapon testing, your skill progression, weapon your most effective with, etc.
Keeping the clutter off the screen would be ideal, a toggle for it for those whom like to see it or not would be nice.

Think of the data pad as your personal log. You could keep notes, catalog creatures as you encounter them. Map things. It could keep track of resources used, items you make. Catalog of guns, buildings, vehicles you discover.

I guess it could be a record of your journeys through Ember. Sorry to get off track.

For something like this they can take a page from some FPS games in how they go into a lot of detail on the player stat screen. Some games don't just tell you things favorite weapons and K/D/A, that also tell you what enemies kill you the most, what range you often get killed at, what range you often kill enemy at with each weapon, when on the body you often get hit at, where on the body most of your attack hit, the amount of time you use each weapon in relationship to the number of kills you get with to get your average kill time ratio, and so on. I can totally see a whole screen just full of combat data that player can choose to open and look at.

Although I would also say the game doesn't share this data with other players (outside of maybe favorite weapon and ability) as it becomes a way for some players to try an one up each other in some convoluted and misguided way to try and judge a player's worth or skill though those stats, giving some people a reason to cheat to try and keep those stats high. Personally, I don't care about the stats in those shooters because I know people can have odd days and that some people do let others play on their account (for example, you have friends and family over for a visit who might want to play the game for fun or as way to bond with you). Numbers don't tell you the skill level of nor the worth of a person.