Revising damage feedback

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Zefz
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Revising damage feedback

Post by Zefz »

You know about the "Godlike!", "Hurtful", "Average", "Fumble!", etc. feedback you get when hitting enemies? I have heard reports of inconsistency where a Fumble attack would instant-kill something for example. In addition some people have reported that this type of feedback is kinda difficult to interpret.

So I "came up" with this variant:
Instead of giving feedback on how much damage you deal, the text describes how damaged your foe is. That way players get a feedback if their hard work is having some effect. This is how I've currently made it:

Code: Select all

% OF LIFE       FEEDBACK
100%            Uninjured
99%             Scratched
90%             Bruised
75%             Hurt
60%             Injured
40%             Badly Wounded
25%             Mortally Wounded
10%             Near Death
5%              Almost Dead!


This means if you hit a monster and you down him from Uninjured to Mortally Wounded, you can be pretty sure that 1 more hit from the same weapon will kill it. A Scratched feedback however means you better change your tactics!

Waddya think?
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Shade
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Post by Shade »

Why not just display a small energy bar below/above any enemy you attack? That would be the easiest way to tell not only how much energy an enemy has, but also whether it regenerates and whether your weapon deals crap for damage against it, or whether it's actually decent.
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octagon
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Post by octagon »

This idea is good, as well as Clonk's one. I think it would be best if you could switch from the current system to Zefz' and Clonk's system via an option in the Game setup screen.
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Zefz
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Post by Zefz »

I think a lot of small life bars would be quickly irritating or confusing (Grub Bug room!). Also, we don't want the player to know exactly how much life the target has left (even in percentage).

Only that it is injured or badly injured for example. I know that experienced players or dev's that look at this table can translate the damage values to actual percentages, but we still want the player a bit puzzled on what the status is of all the enemies.

Not to mention making tiny life bars would take a lot more work and is more difficult to implement (maybe even requiring new graphics and all). I have already implemented the system mentioned above... that took only 10 minutes or so.
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penguinflyer2222
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Post by penguinflyer2222 »

Yeah I agree with Zefz.
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Shade
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Post by Shade »

Then if you repeatedly stab an enemy with a knife or a cinquedea or something and the screen is spammed with "Scratched, Scratched, Scratched, Scratched, Scratched, Scratched, Scratched, Bruised, Bruised, Bruised, Bruised, Bruised, Bruised, Bruised, Bruised, Bruised, Bruised, Bruised, Bruised...", don't you think that is much more irritating than a few small life bars?

Even so, I imagined it that for each player, only whatever enemy got attacked last by them shows their life bar, and it would also fade again after a few seconds or something if you quit attacking it.

Of course, I'd prefer the old system that didn't tell you anything about the enemy's status at all, but if you're going to implement a system like this, you should take the time to make it intuitive, user-friendly and, most importantly, so that players don't find it annoying after a while. I'd imagine that if the screen gets spammed with words everytime you attack something, it'd get annoying pretty quickly.
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penguinflyer2222
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Post by penguinflyer2222 »

Yeah, I was thinking about that too. I guess you could implement a timeout system or something for that.
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Post by Agent of Dread »

Do it like Oblivion did - just have the last attacked enemy's little bar showing up. Like Clonk said, I think. AODDRT?
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Zefz
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Post by Zefz »

There already is a cooldown for the floating text.

And you can always disable the floating text through the game options (classic style) if one finds it annoying.

I think people should try out the system in practice before judging it :) I myself find it worked pretty good with my style of playing and choice of modules/tactics/weapons.
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octagon
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Post by octagon »

I'm pretty sure I'll like it.
But I would really prefer it if you could choose it as an option... "Damage infotexts: Target Health | Attack Damage | Nothing". Or similarly.
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Post by bgbirdsey »

The thing is that currently there are 2 different schemes for determining damage feedback:
  • One of them determines how well your attack went. If you only did 10% of your max damage, then you "fumble"d. If you did as much damage as the highest damage weapon in the game, you get "godlike".
  • The other one determines how much damage you do relative to the object you are attacking. If it is just a tiny fraction of their hit points, you get "ticklish". If it kills or overkills them you are supposed to get something like "devastating".
The problem seems to be the balance between the two systems. The result of the second system should override the first system, so you should not get "fumble" for one shot killing a grub bug.

I think the confusing thing is that it is sometimes hard to determine who is hitting whom, and the "fumble" might be from the grub bug biting someone? If not it should be fixed.

Also, it might be useful to only give feedback for hits by and to players instead of whatever test is being used now.
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Post by Zefz »

Yes. The player doesn't need to know how much damage the monsters dealt to him (he can see that well enough on his health bars!).

Also, one could give different colours for the text to further enhance the difference between who is getting hurt. Green text when allies get damaged and red when a enemy gets hurt.
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Post by bgbirdsey »

I am working on a little patch right now. I forgot that you made an entire system for describing values!

I changed the lowest damage name to "Meh...", and added true fumble detection. A fumble is a low % of max weapon damage *before* adding in resistances.

Maybe there should be a special message if you get a decent hit on something with high resistance? The defense ping is supposed to be that feedback, though, but I think it only spawns when there is zero damage.
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Post by Zefz »

The defence ping only spawns when your weapon was completely blocked either by damage threshold or by a parry.

The Grub Mom should for example spawn a defence ping when you attack it from anywhere but her eye. This doesn't seem to work correctly at the moment (you can damage her from behind!).
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Post by bgbirdsey »

Yeah. I was thinking about making the ping spawn at different volumes and transparencies, depending on how much the particle was defended?
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