In the stream we see that during combat there are some active effects on the enemy mobs, you get a certain "square" icon under the enemy HP bar.
but it is not evident from both of the streams whether this effect is buff or debuff.
is it possible to make changes so it is possible to distinguish between buffs and debuffs by their location?
if the effect is under the HP bar, then it is a debuff put by players, if the effect is above the HP bar, then it is a buff for the mob.
simple and elegant.
what do you think?
I might be wrong about this, but I think you can only see the debuffs on the mobs. In the streams all those icons are debuffs aplied by the party. You can also see that when you have a friend targeted no icons show up, because again, it's only showing the debuffs.
I think this is a good thing, it puts more emphasis on watching what the mobs are doing and looking for visual queues, such as thorns, auras, shields, combat stances, animations and casting animations etc. isntead of simply having an icon that shows what buffs they have, or what they're currently doing.
Yeah, I know Jim or one of his stream comments said the damage shield for the Blaspheme was a visible icon, but I don't think it was.
Joppa was saying you could only tell when you started taking bad regular damage.
You shouldn't be able to see an icon for the buffs a monster has.
jpedrote said:I might be wrong about this, but I think you can only see the debuffs on the mobs. In the streams all those icons are debuffs aplied by the party. You can also see that when you have a friend targeted no icons show up, because again, it's only showing the debuffs.
I think this is a good thing, it puts more emphasis on watching what the mobs are doing and looking for visual queues, such as thorns, auras, shields, combat stances, animations and casting animations etc. isntead of simply having an icon that shows what buffs they have, or what they're currently doing.
I was noticing this too. The visuals need some improvement there, but the good thing is they work so its mostly to a cosmetic solution. The over presentation of how they are doing this is pretty good so far.
Ox
I like the postional buff/debuff idea - it makes it a bit easier to understand the game, allowing for more players and therefore a better game(less queue times and whatnot). In WoW you can always mouse-over an icon on the screen, which means its less of a maze for beginners. I just started ESO recently and its a complicated puzzle trying to figure out which animations and buffs/debuffs are currently applied as there is no explanation as to what icon/graphic means what. I get this makes it harder and you have to dedicate more, but I feel like there are better ways to achieve that then making dedication required just so you can understand what you're looking at.
I was expecting something akin to EQ. If the mob in question has a damage shield, you would get text that says, "You are burned!", or similar, upon landing a succesful hit. Sometimes you might notice them casting a buff on themselves, or neighboring mobs doing so, along with a text indicator if you're paying attention, such as "Goblin Warrior is surrounded by a dull aura".
That is adequate, I think.
I think less information can make for a better game. It's not to say that showing some effects on MOBs is all bad, but it's easy to overdue it.
Social interaction is impacted by a mechanic like seeing buffs and debuffs. In EQ as a slower, you had to call out when the mob was slowed. That helped the healer know that mob damage was going to be reduced and they could worry less about the initial spikey damage. Tanks would take some time to build agro, especially on raids, and then call for full out DPS once they had good agro. Mezers called out which mobs they were mezing. A well coordinated team communicated throughout the fight, especially in the hard fights. If too much information is added to the game, then it takes away from the social part and fights might be less interactive.
A lot of this information was also learned through adventuring. It was about fighitng different mobs and learning their abilities. Which mobs cast damage shields, which mobs healed themselves or mezed or blinded. The process of learning all that was is really enjoyable imo. - - Like wandering into Frontier Mountains and one of your group gets mezed by a Rockchanter Goblin and your groupmate attacks you ... you learn quickly to avoid the Rockchanters. It's all part of discovering the game.
disposalist said: ... You shouldn't be able to see an icon for the buffs a monster has.
While that's certainly an approach designers can take, it's ultimately very frustrating to players. Especially if there is any chance players would be able to debuff, remove, cancel, strip, or otherwise react, exploit, adjust, plan, or perceive such a buff, status, or effect.
So, sure, you can hide that, but it severely limits the possibilities. If you show all the icons that a player can react to, it allows the player to react. All good.
Buff quantity limits were eventually put into EQ1. It was.. hm, I forget exactly, but something like 20 or 30 buffs. It was intensely frustrating, especially for new players who were trying to get an invis or water breathing, and their buff bar was full. I've seen players drown because they didn't know they could cancel positive effects on themselves to make room for a water breathing buff. So hopefully, VR is taking things like this into account.
Either by having very high caps that include multi-group situations, and/or multiple players applying the same buffs & debuffs on both allies and enemies. It remains a constant thorn in EQ1 on TLP servers and has been for many many many years.
While the FAQ mentions class/group synergistic status effects, there's been no demonstration of that thus far, so hopefully they can demo that soon.
disposalist said:Yeah, I know Jim or one of his stream comments said the damage shield for the Blaspheme was a visible icon, but I don't think it was.
Joppa was saying you could only tell when you started taking bad regular damage.
You shouldn't be able to see an icon for the buffs a monster has.
No he beat arrond the bush a bit about defining if the buff was up but later one of them identified it as a "screaming face". Reach the stream and you can see it.
So Yes.. at this point we CAN see at least when THAT buff is on the mob.
As for the OP's idea of over/under... I would actually prefer they too all of them l, buffs and debuffs and moved them elsewhere. Talk about a TOTALLY cluttered so reed alreaxy, looked like they were fighting an out of control Word Document most of the time. Seems to me why would they waste any time to make good graphics, only to plaster words and icons all over it.
Maybe if they gave the option to move the name tags under the mob... down by his feet instead of over his face or head. I very much disliked this in the streams.
vjek said:disposalist said: ... You shouldn't be able to see an icon for the buffs a monster has.While that's certainly an approach designers can take, it's ultimately very frustrating to players. Especially if there is any chance players would be able to debuff, remove, cancel, strip, or otherwise react, exploit, adjust, plan, or perceive such a buff, status, or effect.
So, sure, you can hide that, but it severely limits the possibilities. If you show all the icons that a player can react to, it allows the player to react. All good.
There are ways to give clues and cues to that info without pushing UI indicators in people's faces. I'd much rather learn a monster's strengths and weaknesses without it being handed me on a plate by putting a glowing icon above the monster's head.
If every now-and-again then combat text says "The monster grows hot" and the next 30 seconds every time I hit it it says "You take fire damage" and I can't work out it can summon a fire shield and then look out for that "monster grow hot" message, then I'm not going to do well in any kind of challenging RPG.
I don't want the equivalent of a "THIS MONSTER HAS A FIRE SHIELD STOP HITTING IT" icon to be thrust in front of my eyes.
As for group members' buffs, sure, you should see those - that's different. The info is freely available - you could just ask - but of course that would be tedious, so, yeah, icons. But I don't think it should be the same for monsters any more than you should know their resistance scores, mana pool, health points, etc.
The dot/debuff line looked pretty clear to me, I'd just like to have them sorted with yours first and maybe a bit bigger, so you can differenciate your dots from another's dots/debuffs.
And I agree on "showing ennemies buffs" should not be a thing. It's what kill the element of surprise, the reaction to an animation/glow/particle, and just make "oh, this icon is up so I just spam my decurse".
Long ago, Wow showed no buffs from ennemies, even in PVP. But the UI received thoses information and with proper add-ons, people ended up tracking ennemy player's buffs AND cooldown timer during PVP session, resulting in a no surprise environment. They decided to get rid of that officialy and showed everyone's buffs and debuffs and frankly it sucked.
Zorkon said:disposalist said:Yeah, I know Jim or one of his stream comments said the damage shield for the Blaspheme was a visible icon, but I don't think it was.
Joppa was saying you could only tell when you started taking bad regular damage.
You shouldn't be able to see an icon for the buffs a monster has.
No he beat arrond the bush a bit about defining if the buff was up but later one of them identified it as a "screaming face". Reach the stream and you can see it.
So Yes.. at this point we CAN see at least when THAT buff is on the mob.
Nah, you couldn't. The comments from the randoms watching were wrong. That screaming face was Brad and Jim's taunts (Angering Blow). You could even see them use the taunt (the same icon was in Jim Lee's toolbar position 1 and you could see it go on cooldown) as the taunt "screaming face" debuff appeared. Jim Lee kept breaking off combat straight after him or Brad taunting, lol.
It appeared during all fights as did all the rest of the icons we saw when fighting the Blaspheme, I believe. There wasn't anything appearing with the Blaspheme that hadn't appeared before.
So his damage shield had no indicator, which is good. I couldn't even see the damage in the combat log, though, which is not so good. You need more of an idea of what's going on, after all, if it's a damage shield it would be very clear to your hero that when you hit it, it really hurts.
Either way, I didn't like the huge floaty debuff indicators either - would much prefer them down in the 'target' part of the interface.
Think it would be an interesting way to give some class uniqueness if certain classes can see the buffs the mob has on while most classes can't. Would give increased value to that particular class or set of classes. Seems to me the higher intellect caster classes would possess the knowledge to recognize spells, while maybe the melee tanks can recognize battle abilities. Could alternatively tie it in to the perception system.
disposalist said:Nah, you couldn't. The comments from the randoms watching were wrong. That screaming face was Brad and Jim's taunts (Angering Blow). You could even see them use the taunt (the same icon was in Jim Lee's toolbar position 1 and you could see it go on cooldown) as the taunt "screaming face" debuff appeared. Jim Lee kept breaking off combat straight after him or Brad taunting, lol.
It appeared during all fights as did all the rest of the icons we saw when fighting the Blaspheme, I believe. There wasn't anything appearing with the Blaspheme that hadn't appeared before.
So his damage shield had no indicator, which is good. I couldn't even see the damage in the combat log, though, which is not so good. You need more of an idea of what's going on, after all, if it's a damage shield it would be very clear to your hero that when you hit it, it really hurts.
Either way, I didn't like the huge floaty debuff indicators either - would much prefer them down in the 'target' part of the interface.
I agree that you shouldn't be able to see the buffs your enemy has, at least in an icon form, but NPC having visual effects like auras to indicate they have "something" going on is really important, for example when the wraith gains the reflect shield buff, it could have a visual indicator of magical spikes or a full body magical shield that apears and disapears to indicate they have a reflecting spell going on.
As for the floaty debuffs, I'm completly with you on that, I hate them, it clutters the screen so much and takes away the focus from the world and the NPC models. I made an alternative in Photoshop and I much preffer this type of UI, with small icons above the target frame on the corners, and no floating green health bars or red arrows above the models. I would also remove the red/blue circles bellow the models, no need for them if you highlight the current target nameplate with a different colour.
Before - https://imgur.com/qupx4vk
After - https://imgur.com/8LCHnnm
Mathir said:Think it would be an interesting way to give some class uniqueness if certain classes can see the buffs the mob has on while most classes can't. Would give increased value to that particular class or set of classes. Seems to me the higher intellect caster classes would possess the knowledge to recognize spells, while maybe the melee tanks can recognize battle abilities. Could alternatively tie it in to the perception system.
I would like to see this, just like WoW detect magic from mages, it's a spell they cast on the mob and everyone can see their magical effects.
SoWplz said: I was going to post this same topic last night but I passed, glad you did though! My concern is on bosses when they have 20+ debuffs. How will this look? Will there be a cap on rebuffs for mobs? Maybe they will shrink down as more are put on target. /shrug I do like the idea of icon position to weither is it buff or debuff.
I agree with the buff/debuff. I prefer a combination of 1) moveable UI buff/debuff window with choice to show/hide and 2) have some buffs/debuffs that are not displayed - Will encourage players to be aware and think about what is happening.
Mathir said:Think it would be an interesting way to give some class uniqueness if certain classes can see the buffs the mob has on while most classes can't. Would give increased value to that particular class or set of classes. Seems to me the higher intellect caster classes would possess the knowledge to recognize spells, while maybe the melee tanks can recognize battle abilities. Could alternatively tie it in to the perception system.
This isn't a bad idea. It's also a pretty good example of, say, AA perks that aren't really game changing/necessary, but still add a certain flavor to the given class.
As for those saying we should be able to see buffs on mobs, I can't disagree more. Part of what I miss the most about EQ is the unknowables. Still today, if you go onto the P99 forums and search around, people still debate the math and mechanics of certain content and mobs. I love that.
I'd rather it be a gamble, when it comes to debuffing. Do you take the chance and save a little bit of mana? Or do you spend the mana on a debuff just in case the mob in question is buffed to all hell? That's part of the fun, to me.
Tralyan said:Mathir said:Think it would be an interesting way to give some class uniqueness if certain classes can see the buffs the mob has on while most classes can't. Would give increased value to that particular class or set of classes. Seems to me the higher intellect caster classes would possess the knowledge to recognize spells, while maybe the melee tanks can recognize battle abilities. Could alternatively tie it in to the perception system.
This isn't a bad idea. It's also a pretty good example of, say, AA perks that aren't really game changing/necessary, but still add a certain flavor to the given class.
As for those saying we should be able to see buffs on mobs, I can't disagree more. Part of what I miss the most about EQ is the unknowables. Still today, if you go onto the P99 forums and search around, people still debate the math and mechanics of certain content and mobs. I love that.
I'd rather it be a gamble, when it comes to debuffing. Do you take the chance and save a little bit of mana? Or do you spend the mana on a debuff just in case the mob in question is buffed to all hell? That's part of the fun, to me.
This was a great idea. I had to set my issues with graphics cues aside and think about game play. The unknown and the ability to handle mobs in a group needed communication. Granted in the old days we were typing as fast as we could and trying not to do a corpse run but it was a piece I had forgot about. I do miss that. The question is how to implement that? Class based limits or even race depending on the class abilities?
Ox
disposalist said:There are ways to give clues and cues to that info without pushing UI indicators in people's faces. I'd much rather learn a monster's strengths and weaknesses without it being handed me on a plate by putting a glowing icon above the monster's head.
If every now-and-again then combat text says "The monster grows hot" and the next 30 seconds every time I hit it it says "You take fire damage" and I can't work out it can summon a fire shield and then look out for that "monster grow hot" message, then I'm not going to do well in any kind of challenging RPG.
I don't want the equivalent of a "THIS MONSTER HAS A FIRE SHIELD STOP HITTING IT" icon to be thrust in front of my eyes.
As for group members' buffs, sure, you should see those - that's different. The info is freely available - you could just ask - but of course that would be tedious, so, yeah, icons. But I don't think it should be the same for monsters any more than you should know their resistance scores, mana pool, health points, etc.
This kind of attitude is interesting to me, since what many of you are saying is that you only want the game to give you information in a specific way and are upset if they choose to give you the same information in a easier to see and/or easier to react to way. I understand that one of the Tenants of this game is to go back to when games were Hard to play and avoid too much "Hand Holding" as it's been called, but this does not mean that we need to artificially make the game harder by making information difficult to see and react to.
Personally I believe that if the game gives you information about something at all, then it should try to do it in the most efficient and/or user friendly way it can. So if the text window says "Monster grows hot" as a way to tell the player "This target now has a buff which will cause me to burn if I hit it" then it is passing along information. So this information is now available to the player and thus should be shown in the best way for that player to use this information. The game should be hard because the gameplay is hard. It should not be hard because you need to be able to speed read text spam to get up to date information about the fight you are in.
If the game ONLY gave you this information in the text log and NOT in a user friendly way (such as an icon on your target frame or something like that), then players (especially the hard core raiders) will find an alternate way to make this information more accessible. Even if that meant they needed to create an external application that could read the text log as it is being written that would show them a nice fancy buff icon on their second monitor (perhaps even playing an audio warning). Even if the game didn't actually give you a warning text like "Mob grows Hot" they would still be able to glean the info the very first time you get hurt by the burning damage. This is how damage/threat meters came into being. In EQ1 we used to have external damage meter programs that would read the combat log file as it was being saved in real time that would calculate dps and potential threat. In this specific example of a damage shield that hurts the player who hits the target, there is actually NO way for the game to hide this from the player without removing the players own health bar completely, because even if there was no text message saying "you get burned for x dmg" the game client would still see your HP's going down. Thus info is being relayed to the player.
Now you may say "External programs are cheating", and you may be right. But that doesn't stop the fact that if info is being given, players are going to find a way to make easier to see and useful.
So let me go back to my point and say it again: If the information is going to be available, then it should be available in a user friendly way for the player.
Now I agree that the choice of 'Where' you would like that info to be displayed should be configurable in the UI. If you don't want it to appear on nameplates but rather in a "Target Buffs/Debuffs" window or bar, then you should be able to change it and/or toggle it. Players should be able to control the how much of the 'Clutter' they see, and where they see it. But suggesting that the game itself should try to make it as difficult as possible to see said information is just going over the top imo. As I said before, the game should be difficult (aka Hardcore) because the gameplay is difficult, and not because the UI is designed to make information hard to see.
Just my thoughts on the subject.
Again, on different topics, not because people will code and use 3rd party wheelchairs, the whole game should be dumbed down to this standard.
Not everyone will use thoses, and they remain enough of a layer to be marginal while just paying attention to the chatlog is easier.
MauvaisOeil said:while just paying attention to the chatlog is easier.
Maybe if you are playing an old school MUD. Personally I don't spend most of my MMO time reading the chatlog. Yes it's nice to see what's there every now and then, but if I just wanted to stare at the chatlog while playing, I could go back to text based MUDs.
I tend to agree with those who would like an indicator, but not nessicarily an obvious icon under a target window.
I really like the idea of mobs just having auras to signify their buffs...but on mobs with more than 2 or 3 buffs, this could get overwhelming.
Maybe if certain classes of buffs were color coded, such as: red for buffs that increase damage output, blue for protective buffs, green for health-related, etc. You wouldn't need to know exactly which buff was there in order to know that you want to dispell it. The chatlog could be useful to get more specifics: A ratkin's magical sheild negates part of your damage, You take 10 damage from Fire Goblin's Flameshield, etc.
GoofyWarriorGuy said:MauvaisOeil said:while just paying attention to the chatlog is easier.
Maybe if you are playing an old school MUD. Personally I don't spend most of my MMO time reading the chatlog. Yes it's nice to see what's there every now and then, but if I just wanted to stare at the chatlog while playing, I could go back to text based MUDs.
That's not b&s, gw2 or wildstar with thousands of telegraph to react to. As you said : you don't look at your chatlog during combat, but don't make a personnal state a generalization everyone should align to.
GoofyWarriorGuy said:disposalist said:There are ways to give clues and cues to that info without pushing UI indicators in people's faces. I'd much rather learn a monster's strengths and weaknesses without it being handed me on a plate by putting a glowing icon above the monster's head.
If every now-and-again then combat text says "The monster grows hot" and the next 30 seconds every time I hit it it says "You take fire damage" and I can't work out it can summon a fire shield and then look out for that "monster grow hot" message, then I'm not going to do well in any kind of challenging RPG.
I don't want the equivalent of a "THIS MONSTER HAS A FIRE SHIELD STOP HITTING IT" icon to be thrust in front of my eyes.
As for group members' buffs, sure, you should see those - that's different. The info is freely available - you could just ask - but of course that would be tedious, so, yeah, icons. But I don't think it should be the same for monsters any more than you should know their resistance scores, mana pool, health points, etc.
This kind of attitude is interesting to me, since what many of you are saying is that you only want the game to give you information in a specific way and are upset if they choose to give you the same information in a easier to see and/or easier to react to way. I understand that one of the Tenants of this game is to go back to when games were Hard to play and avoid too much "Hand Holding" as it's been called, but this does not mean that we need to artificially make the game harder by making information difficult to see and react to.
Personally I believe that if the game gives you information about something at all, then it should try to do it in the most efficient and/or user friendly way it can. So if the text window says "Monster grows hot" as a way to tell the player "This target now has a buff which will cause me to burn if I hit it" then it is passing along information. So this information is now available to the player and thus should be shown in the best way for that player to use this information. The game should be hard because the gameplay is hard. It should not be hard because you need to be able to speed read text spam to get up to date information about the fight you are in.
If the game ONLY gave you this information in the text log and NOT in a user friendly way (such as an icon on your target frame or something like that), then players (especially the hard core raiders) will find an alternate way to make this information more accessible. Even if that meant they needed to create an external application that could read the text log as it is being written that would show them a nice fancy buff icon on their second monitor (perhaps even playing an audio warning). Even if the game didn't actually give you a warning text like "Mob grows Hot" they would still be able to glean the info the very first time you get hurt by the burning damage. This is how damage/threat meters came into being. In EQ1 we used to have external damage meter programs that would read the combat log file as it was being saved in real time that would calculate dps and potential threat. In this specific example of a damage shield that hurts the player who hits the target, there is actually NO way for the game to hide this from the player without removing the players own health bar completely, because even if there was no text message saying "you get burned for x dmg" the game client would still see your HP's going down. Thus info is being relayed to the player.
Now you may say "External programs are cheating", and you may be right. But that doesn't stop the fact that if info is being given, players are going to find a way to make easier to see and useful.
So let me go back to my point and say it again: If the information is going to be available, then it should be available in a user friendly way for the player.
Now I agree that the choice of 'Where' you would like that info to be displayed should be configurable in the UI. If you don't want it to appear on nameplates but rather in a "Target Buffs/Debuffs" window or bar, then you should be able to change it and/or toggle it. Players should be able to control the how much of the 'Clutter' they see, and where they see it. But suggesting that the game itself should try to make it as difficult as possible to see said information is just going over the top imo. As I said before, the game should be difficult (aka Hardcore) because the gameplay is difficult, and not because the UI is designed to make information hard to see.
Just my thoughts on the subject.
I somewhat agree, but things should not be user friendly at the expense of immersion and challenge and, in modern role-playing games, they so often have been and are (which is why many old-school folks react badly to their inclusion). I don't think 'avoiding hand-holding' jumps straight to 'artificially hard' and also it's not always about that.
For me (and most, I think) a flashing icon hovering over a monsters head is unnecessarily unimmersive. It's not a matter of making it difficult or hard to see, it's a matter of avoiding stuff that makes things weird or easy.
From a strictly immersive and role-playing viewpoint, we shouldn't really know what our party has cast on a monster, or even know which of our own spells have not been resisted, but there is a line where, yes, immersion defeats function and the icons for party de-buffs on a monster are an analog for the party communicating what they've done and for our own adventurers' instinctive appreciation of the situation. A debuff indicator saves a lot of party members shouting back and forth "I cast disease on it" "It worked" "it ran out". The spam every combat would be awful, hence the icon is preferable.
Even for those, though, I would much prefer them by my target indicator, not floating above every monster in my characters view...
But, for magicks (or especially 'natural' effects) the monster applies to itself, how would we even know they are in effect? Should we know? Does it improve the tactics and challenge of the encounter and what does it do for the immersion of the situation?
My personal preference aside, I don't think it can be argued that it isn't more immersive and 'cool' to have 'realistic' cues. That can be text, sure "The dragon begins to shimmer in a haze of heat". It can be sound, too - a bass rumble and steam hissing. These days graphic fidelity can handle things like a heat haze and flickering embers too.
But a glowing icon suddenly pinging on over the dragons head like a lightbulb?
Yeah, it's a game, not a simulator, but seriously, it's not just my personal preference: the icon somewhat trivialises the cognitive process of realising danger and reacting. It somewhat ruins the immersion. Only somewhat, but since it's unnecessary, why have it?
Sure, someone can maybe read the logs and make a 3rd party tool to do the same thing because the 'info is there', but that's up to them. I can't, however, un-damage my immersion or add the coolness, mystery and challenge back in if VR decide to add floating icons all over the place.
Yeah I suppose they could make floating monster buff icons optional - that would avoid my immersion issues. As long they still add the subtle audio-visual and text cues even though the buff icons are there... Hmm...