Please respect other members. Please do not post links or information about hacking/warez/cheats.
Read the rules of these forums as we rarely warn before banning. Lost or need RSS check the forum map.
I ran across the thread in the suggestions recommending removing the life bar from the wishlist forum, and got to thinking:
Do we have too much information about the monsters in the game?
In D1 there was virtually no information other than the name. You had no lifebar indicator, and no way of knoing anything other than what the monster was immune to.
What do you think the plusses and minuses of removing all this information about monsters would be?
Certainly in D2 it couldnt be done, because you would have no way of knowing when to and when not to avoid certain bosses and situations like that would arise but what if blizzard went entirely to a visual information system, particularly because bosses in D2 are just mobs that have a different color.
Meaning, we get the information from seeing the mob than reading about it. If a mob is an LE boss, perhaps it can have lightning shaders that pulsate on its body or eyes or whatever, and they can take out literal information.
Personally, I feel like this would do two things:
- Speed up the game, because you wouldn't be worrying about mousovering everything to find the super deadly FELE or ESFE or whatever boss.
- Add to the intensity of the game, because you wouldnt be certain if a monster had a particular property that might be dangerous, and you might not ever be sure when the monster will die.
I think the first point is largely positive. Speeding up the game can never hurt, forcing people to mouseover things just to check for the msle was more of a hassle than anything else imo, but it was a hassle that had to be done or else you would end up dead.
For the second point, it would undoubtedly make it more difficult, but I think it would be a welcome difficulty and uncertainty with the current state of affairs in D2 at least.
It would somewhat also mean that they would have to more or less remove the instadeeds monsters, but personally I'm all for that.
I don't think there's any going back from showing monster hps bars. Everyone's used to them, they're expected and demanded by players, etc. I can remember old video and arcade games where they did not have such things, and how odd and easier it felt when such bars became the standard. Instead of just battling endlessly, and then being surprised and delighted when the enemy finally fell, I could now know exactly how long they had to live?
You can argue for the realism of the health bar, since in a real fight the combatants (even when they're demons and ghouls) look worn down as they lose. They get slower, clumsier, panting for breath, etc. Those elements are not often in games, where characters and enemies fight at full capability until the last instant, so the life bar somewhat serves that purpose, of letting us know if we're winning or not.
Speaking of stats, I'm sure I'm not the only one who still misses the monster kill counter from D1. They had plans to bring that back in d2, as part of a lot of stats they were going to keep on the realms. Didn't make it into the final game, like so many other cool ideas.
There are alternatives to lifebars if they don't want players to know exactly how much life the monster has left, like shading the monster according to the stage of its health
I don't actually mind lifebars, the only complain I might possibly have is that they are a little mechanical and out of place, compared to the life and mana orbs
I think i should have the right to see if im doing damage and what kind of damage im doing to what im hitting. It gives u a better chance to plan on what skills to use on who and when.
Nobody is saying there weren't life bars in Diablo 2 Leugi. Please read the posts you are responding before you act in a condescending fashion. They were discussing possible merits of removing the life bars and returning to a system like original Diablo where you got no information about the monster until you had killed a set amount of them.
I personally still get a bit freaked out when I pick up Diablo after not playing it for a while. I love the feeling of "Oh God is my fireball hurting him? Why isn't he slowing down? Run!" that comes with it.
I'd like to see a potential shift where for smaller mobs it didn't give you a life bar or immunities until you'd killed enough that your character could logically know "this beast has this much life and resistance to my fireballs" for bosses they'd be large enough on screen that you could potentially have a system of visible wounds. A Barbarian whirls a boss and you see that he is hurt (he's not PI), a Witch Doctor throws a Fire Bomb at a boss and you see part of him catch on fire and then go out (he's not FI). It's probably not completely viable and wouldn't change much for normal monsters (after 5 fallen you'd know their life for each difficulty and then the lifebar system would be the same as in D2, but I feel it would be a cool feature for Bosses.
Admittedly, bosses are probably when we need to know their mods and immunities immediately, as old MSLE or a current FELE needs to have certain precautions taken to survive it but I'd like to see the system potentially be upgraded to make use of the fact that we will now have larger bosses and the ability to portray their demise visually in a more complex fashion than a simple bar.
Cheers
-Tai
P.S. sorry, my spellcheck is on the fritz somehow so if this is incomprehensible I apologize
I don't mind the lifebars that much, but for a game like diablo3 I don't think they are that usefull either.
The gameplay movie only showed the life of the targeted monster. And in this game you kill so fast and so many monsters at once with area effects, that you would not be interested in a single life bar anyway.
if you're playing a gorey game like diablo3, you'd be expecting a dying monster to be bloody and limping, but that'll just make the game laggy or something
so displaying the life bar would be a better alternative
Didn't you get more information about a monster type the more of them you killed? If I'm remembering this correctly, that was neat. If not, it's still neat.
Linear Mode
