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In the early generation of MMO's, the only information you had on a foe was his health. In Ultima origionally you knew if a foe's name, health and if he/she was agressive. In Everquest you had their name, health, agression and difficulty (/con). In Asherons call you had name, health, stats (including level) which translated to difficulty.
In modern MMO's we have:
Name
Health
Power/Stamina
Debuffs
Agression
Difficulty (Level)
Solo/Group/Raid (Calibur)
Attackability (WoW began the concept of non-attackable NPC's, which was picked up by other MMO's)
Somewhere along the line from the mystery and danger of discovering a foes difficulty and danger we're giving a plethora of information to make our assessment ahead of time. This is both good and bad, it allows us to formulate tactics on how to begin the engagment ahead of time, but takes out the suprise and danger of encountering a new foe for the first time. Unless a foe is a raid boss with hidden and powerful abilities which fall outside the norm for mobs, generall you can assess a foe at a glance by it's level and if it's solo or group.
Let us say for the sake of this discussion we're aiming for a game which does not provide every detail ahead of time and tries to restore some of the danger of approaching a new foe for the first time ignorant of most of it's information. What information would you feel is completely essencial to maintain a tactical enounter but not over-load the player with info and stats?
Name - of course, you want to know what an NPC is called or how will you identify it.
Health - knowing it's health will allow you to make tactical choices as to what skills/spells to employ.
But what about the rest? I'm just looking for people's opinions on the subject.
Arioc Murkwood
Environment Artist
Sad but true.
Comments
-Well imo it should have only name and health as you said, because if you add anything else you will ruin the element of surprise and danger, knowing your enemy's health you could decide if to attack or not, but if you know that mob is elite or boss you would never attack it (if not newbie in MMO's) so i'd say only HP and Name should do
Interesting that you bring this up, and it's actually one of the first few decent topics in this forum in a while. I'm actually on the fence about this one. It is obviously to our benefit to know our opponent, so I'd imagine that most people would be more in favor of more information. Of course, when we're on the other side of the coin, we'd demand less information. Honestly speaking, I don't know what I'd prefer. I do know that it would be a nasty shock to find someone's buffed to high hell but I can't tell it.
I did want to raise another point, and this is about wow. One thing you forgot is that with wow's static gear system, you can tell a lot about a player by the gear they're wearing. Anyone who has multiple raiding classes will know exactly what armor and weapons you have equipped, and can thus pre-judge your build and develop tactics around that. Yet another strike against the static loot system imo, but I guess it depends on your point of view. Guess I couldn't make it past one thread without displaying my wow hate. Sad, I know.
I'd say name, level (or a game's equivalent) and aggressiveness should be the main things we see. Things like attack type, vulnerability, and other stuff should be able to be determined by the enemy's visual appearance. For example, if I see a heavily-armored knight, I know he's going to attack with melee, have high "hitpoints", but he will be weak to armor-piercing weapons, such as my crossbow or heavy two-handed axe. Hell, even go back to things like Pokémon and figure out that "plant-type" creatures are vulnerable to fire, fire-type creatures are vulnerable to water, etc. The problem is that most creatures/enemies in MMOs today are not clearly distinguishable... it's fantasy, after all... so it's hard to tell.
[dreaming]
IMO they shouldn't even give out the names, check out the lore if you want to know the stories of that monster (which will also give out possible weaknesses and an idea of the difficulty level) :P
Also no health, instead make it able to identify the health of a monster... on the monster. Like, bleeding and fatigue.
[/dreaming]
Hardcore gaming dreams aside, I think we deserve to know aside from the health and name, the buffs/debuffs on the monster, especially if the game is kind of complex system regarding certain debuff immunities and or taking buffs away, and their remaining duration if applicable.
mob:
Name/Health
ps: but in a setting where if the lore says jelly A has fire/blunt weakness than a fire blunt does x+y more amount of damage
PVP:
Name only
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Dark Souls 2.
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I think they should remove all of the information by default and have skills that allow you to see your enemies weaknesses and buffs. However when you debuff an enemy you should see if it was placed on them.
You shouldn't know how/if an enemy is agressive until you enter into their aggro range. I am of the opinion that everything should be attackable, even in a game that has no pvp you should be able to attack all npc's and attacking them should bare consequences.
At minimum you should see:
Name: you need to know waht you are attacking, but no floating names over the head
Health: Don't need to know the exact values but something to track your progress when damaging it, also not floating over head.
Boss status: Simply state if it is a boss, if not then there is nothing, again not floating above the head.
Other things like exact hp, mana, weanesses, buffs and such should be revealed by some sort of skill.
My sig is just as logical as your posts are
I had considered displaying advanced information via a skill which offers vulnurabilities and the like. However information like this becomes public knowledge, people don't buy the skill they look to web sites, or people complain that the only way to survive in the game is to purchase that skill. (Unless it's a freebee given to everyone).
It's interesting you feel that health might not be one which is essencial. Given that we've lumped players, monsters and NPC's into one catagory here. Identifying a creatures weakness based on it's visual appearance is a big plus in my book. And perhaps it is unfair to now inform a player that a creature has been designed by the designer to be aimed at a group encounter rather then a solo encounter. If anything is allows the player to feel a sense of accomplishment when he/she can solo a group mob once they've advanced high enough.
Let us say for the sake of argument Name is locked in. I need to know the NPC's name because having to hail every npc and ask their name is fun once.. twice.. but then looses it's novelty.
Health - Let us say I'm a fighter, I'm meleeing this foe and cannot see his health. My life has gotten lower and I now need to choose to use a health kit or use my big attack. I know the next swing might kill me if he's not near death. Health on a foe lets you make tactical choices during combat.
Arioc Murkwood
Environment Artist
Sad but true.
Ideally nothing when you start out and you learn their information as you play.
A level 1 character should have absoultely no knowledge on NPC. You can learn mob info and NPC behaviors through various activities such as fighting, talking, examining, questing, etc.
So should creature identification be a "skill" freebee given to new players and exposing information on the target as you "target" npc's over time and it's value goes up? Does this only encourage people to grind targeting people to gain information on their foes?
Arioc Murkwood
Environment Artist
Sad but true.
There are many ways to do it.
Just to name a few... You gain divine knowledge as you are closer to your deities... You fight mobs and gather their information... As your Intelligence goes up you get more insights on your foes... You find items you can use to diagnose NPC (e.g stethoscope, wand of probing)... Your discover the lost lore and civilization of certain races in your quests...
There are unlimited ways. Just use your imagination.
I'd like a name, but only when I select the target (unless the game doesn't do targeting like that) so that I know what I'm interacting with. Then I'd like the NPC's posture to denote it's "health". If it's limping then something's wrong with it, if it's hunched over and moving slowly it might mean something wrong with it. I'd like the posture of what I'm fighting as well as it's behavior to dictate it's physical condition rather then a concrete number. As for enemy weakness, that could be dealt with visually by the armor they wear and what they are made of. They could be elemental, ghostly, supernatural... and so on and so forth and each would carry their own bonuses and penalties.
No required quests! And if I decide I want to be an assassin-cartographer-dancer-pastry chef who lives only to stalk and kill interior decorators, then that's who I want to be, even if it takes me four years to max all the skills and everyone else thinks I'm freaking nuts. -Madimorga-
Another option is to have many 'foes' evolve/adapt to prevailing attack methods. If they are consistently attacked with fire perhaps they start to develop spells/potions/slimy hides/etc
This would of course suggest that it might be possible to wipe out a species (from different areas) and I applaud that mechanic as well. I also like the possible over population of lesser hunted creatures. Perhaps they even get to a tipping point and start attacking settlements or breed mutation.
In other words a more vibrant, less static creature environment.
In UO and AC, additional information can be obtained using various skills. I like that approach. People that wish to use points to get the extra info can do so. People who do not want the extra info can put the points elsewhere.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
There's no single answer, as different solutions make sense for different games.
Enemy Health is absolutely critical in a game with significant progression.
Name isn't critical, but it's damn convenient to have a name for creatures, especially in a multiplayer game where monsters will end up being discussed by players.
Difficulty (level, raid/group/solo type, aggro behavior) is also high on the importance list for most games, unless the visual language is particularly strong (such as if humanoid-sized mobs are always soloable, double-human-sized mobs are always group mobs, and anything bigger involves a raid.) Aggro behavior is only important if it varies - if everything attacks you, it's not important to tell the player "this mob will attack you" because you already know that.
If a game involves reacting to buffs or debuffs, displaying those things is necessary. The extent to which this information is presented varies depending on the type of combat being created.
Enemy stamina/mana is similar - it's only important if gameplay revolves around the manipulation or reaction to these factors in combat. If an enemy gradually gains mana the whole fight and explodes when it reaches 100% mana, then it's rather useful.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
First of all, thank you everyone for contributing to this discussion. The MMORPG.com forums have devolved so much from the creative MMO discussions of several years ago into mostly trolling and opinion bashing. It's encouraging to see that civil discussions can still happen here.
Onward... you bring up very good points Axehilt. A game like EQ2 focuses the combat of raid mobs on buffs/debuffs (to a ridiculous extent) which shifts the issue of health from the main tank to just cleansing debuffs. This brings to light another topic, how important to a one on one fight with a NPC should debuffs be? Critical? Offering only small dps boosts?
I am becoming more and more a fan of displaying just name health and caliber now. Although I like the idea of the creatures size implying the number of players needed to take it down. Even if the definition of a group mob is not just multiplying the creatures health and dps by 10, perhaps just making it more difficult then a smaller version of the same creature. Thus size = difficulty and allows people to guesstimate. Granted that means a bad-ass hero wizard who can kick your butt would need to be ten stories tall.
Something as small as a flourish or icon beside the name of the NPC might just imply it's caliber. Even Vanguard used a simple system of circles by the name, though they had more then 3 tiers.
Arioc Murkwood
Environment Artist
Sad but true.
Everything cept Stats and Gear