What should be done about the health bar?
Neoken
Bruges, Belgium Join Date: 2004-03-20 Member: 27447Members, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Silver, Subnautica Playtester
Bruges, Belgium Join Date: 2004-03-20 Member: 27447Members, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Silver, Subnautica Playtester
I'd like to see how much support there is for this change.
Discuss the health bar here. http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/141990/health-bars-on-enemies/p1
Discuss the health bar here. http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/141990/health-bars-on-enemies/p1
Comments
Just keep your crosshair below the red bar and it's hard to miss.
If they could just remove the tracking assist part of it I could learn to live with the health bar (though it does make me an extremely passive Lerk/Fade/Onos compared to before)
If kept, I think the health information shouldn't last much longer than damage numbers currently do. We should only receive a continuous stream of health information about a target if we're repeatedly landing hits before the expiry timer completes. The health information should cease if a target leaves our field of view, and the expiry timer should be short otherwise. If you need to establish different expiry timers for aliens vs. marines due to the way they play, that's fair. An example would be increasing the time before the information disappears for melee hits (because the smallest possible interval between successful melee hits is much larger than the smallest possible interval between non-melee hits). You've done this in the recent patch, but I think 5 seconds is way too long.
To prevent the other problems, the information should be tied to player models (possibly through a colored overlay on top of the models themselves) or kept in a different spot on the hud (like a meter or simple "Target: 100%" readout somewhere else on the screen).
It would still change the gameplay re: alien bluffing and low-health engagements, but the effect would be less dramatic.
Wont matter when "remove it" ends up with 5x the votes of the highest "keep it" option.
This may be true, but it's still good to be able to recognize if a poll has some potential bias, regardless of the direction it swings.
Is that bias strong enough that adding together both "keep it" options and comparing the result against "remove it" won't give a fair representation of the general opinion? The question here is will significantly more people vote for the option because it is split.
"Don't care" is a throwaway that goes for both sides btw. Usually you ignore it entirely unless it turns out that a majority of people really don't care.
Yeah, I don't know if significantly more people will vote for the option because it is split, or if the inverse is true. The poll may not give a fair representation, but it's hard to say. I bet we could find studies on how poll question formulation biases results, to better inform ourselves on how they may impact the results, if we really were interested in the psychology behind polling.
I wouldn't really call this fair representation, If you wanted a more fair representation of the general opinion then it would have to be surveyed in-game where new players and casual players are more likely to respond.
Even if it was in-game, you'd be likely to get more negative bias to it because people who take issue with it are the most likely to respond to the poll, and newer/casual players may not even notice the difference or understand what the poll is asking. For in-game I think you would really need 3 options and one hidden option. "I like it" "I don't like it" "No opinion", and "Refused to answer" (which would be selected by default and recorded if they never chose any of the other options).
There's also ways to look at it more abstractly, to try to get a better read on something like this. I think that is part of what Overwatch does with the "rate this game" functionality. By not asking about a specific feature or change, they are able to get a consistent read on if changes make a huge difference to the general experience or not.
I do see why this post was modded, but I think it's getting a little out of hand recently.
This message is worrying me. Would you kindly clarify your attitude to player beliefs and feedback @remi?
I am concerned that you are not interested in feedback for this feature and intend for it to stay regardless of the community attitude towards it. Given the community backlash in response to the debacle over mods, I am concerned that one could draw parallels to this scenario such as the issues with communication (or lack of).
I'm pretty sure that response was to the second question and not the first one. As in, "The question here is will significantly more people vote for the option because it is split."
As a commander however, these new bars are a send from whatever god(s) you believe in.
You are actually able to instruct your team much more efficient which marine or lifeform to kill. Its awesome. I want it, and I see it as balanced as both comms have this.
So personally, I would LOVE for a toggle of each. So disabling it for in field does not disable for comm and vice versa.
Correct. I was discussing the subject of bias in polls, and how the question formation may impact how people vote.
Ex. Fade flies in with 250 hp, for the marine shooting at it it shows up at full hp with armor to show how much hp a fade has.
My first thought was to limit it to two options "keep" and "remove", but I'm pretty sure if I did that I'd get remarks on how there should be a third option like the one I ended up providing. Because if you say you like the idea of a certain feature, but that it needs more work, than that's still quite significantly different than plainly saying you like a feature. That's valuable information. And in the end, you can just tally up the results of the first two options anyway if you'd like.
You could argument that the question being posed is biased though, since it implies something needs to be done. But then again, making the poll in the first place already implies the same thing anyway, as people don't make polls about stuff that is universally agreed upon.
I do appreciate you all for giving the poll this serious thought at least.
Does the current incarnation of healthbars create problems? the feedback seems to state yes... so fix the concerns.. if it still causes concern, figure out what and try fixing... if at any point something crops up that is fundamentally an issue with no easy fix (like atmospheric lighting did, no easy fix, take it down) then removing it should definitely be considered.
All I see so far is people finding a flaw in the idea and saying the whole idea should be scrapped.
But it's only displaying that vital info about the thing you're shooting once you've already started shooting it, it's not like you can see their health bar next to their icon on your minimap, so it shouldn't affect the way things go too much imo.
What I don't like is how not lore-friendly it is for aliens, while for marines it could be part of their helmet hud I guess, for aliens it's literally saying, hello it's a video game, very immersion breaking, either give alien health bar a very different styling (maybe a circle ?) or be completely removed for aliens.
HP bars have absolutely dramatic effects on "micro" strategy in NS2. Now I always know when I should be chasing an onos and when not to. Now I know that the marine I just parasited is 1 bite from death so instead of going a different direction to avoid him I will just kill him. Now I always know if the skulk attacking me is low enough to die from a rifle butt or if I need to switch to pistol. There are plenty of examples I can give, The point is HP bars reduce the amount of knowledge, perception, and skill that is required to be good in this game.
There is no way to tweak an HP bar to ensure it is not giving the enemy more information than they are supposed to have. The very nature of being an HP bar is naturally too much information for an enemy to be given in an FPS game. In my opinion these should be removed.
EDIT:
I agree with this though, HP bars are good for the comms. It makes since for the comm to have that kind of information that he can manually relay back to his team since he is playing an RTS game. This is a QoL change for comms where as it's a strategy change on the field.