War needs visual combat damage!!!

rungard · February 2007

remove hp bars and replace with blood!

you shouldnt be able to click on someone and know their health.

heres how to do it easy:

3 overlay textures:

>80% no texture

50-79% bloody face texture overlay

20-49% bloody armor texture overlay

1-19% intense bloody red body texture overlay

the blood textures dont need to be massive resolution either. Just something to get a general idea of health state.

This alone will increase gameplay by 10000%

Elda · February 2007

Not possible. It's sounds funny, but Mythic wants to get a T rating, and with your plan it wont work

rungard · February 2007

its still doable, your allowed to have some blood.

we can easily skirt the rating by giving goblins and orcs green blood, chaos humans black blood, dark elves purple blood.

this way red blood is "minimized" to only the order side.

we can minimize the blood further by giving special animations for damage taken.

50-79% light panting with small hunch.

20-49% heavy panting with large hunch.

1-19% heavy panting, large hunch, using weapon as a crutch when not swinging it, while holding other arm against abdomen.

Areel · February 2007

It only sounds cool in theory. In practice, players want as accurate of information as possible. And they're already used to being able to see HP numbers in these games. They'd complain, and complain loudly.

cupertino · February 2007

would not suit the cartoon graphics

rungard · February 2007

well i happen to think that most players would like to see things graphically. Some would complain for sure, but i also think that it would be more fun for all concerned to have to estimate a players health rather than looking at a number.

looking at a number requires no skill, estimating requires more skill and experience. This will give the game more depth for very little cost.

personally i dont see war's graphics as cartoony. They are actually quite detailed if you look closely.

Gorthuk · February 2007

Originally posted by rungard

its still doable, your allowed to have some blood.
we can easily skirt the rating by giving goblins and orcs green blood, chaos humans black blood, dark elves purple blood.
this way red blood is "minimized" to only the order side.

Lore-wise: Greenskins: Blackish/reddish blood... more leaning towards Black.

Chaos: Any colours possible, even other substances, but it is likely that Chaos will have red blood at the beginning "before being gifted".

Elves: Red

Dwarfs: Red

Humans: Red.

So it's rather minimized at the Order-side, destruction is debatable.

But with an aim to T-rating and how RPG's have worked for a long while, I don't see it happening immediately.

About the cartoony look: Watch the Chaos/ Imperial screenshots and then say it's cartoony. The only thing 'being close' to cartoony is an Orc, but that's only because people recognise WoW's Orc in it. (I do not want to debate or discuss about that, as you might know my opinion from my previous posts.)

iCeh · February 2007

Not sure about this, being colourblind it sounds like a huge disadvantage for me... but then i'm not going to stop killing something, or someone until they're dead.

Areel · February 2007

WAR does indeed have a "stylized" appearance to it, and some may think of it as "cartoony." I like it, no matter what you want to call it. I hate games that attempt "realism" for graphics. EQ2 looks terrible, both characters and environment. And the new Vanguard, while beautiful, was poorly designed. Sure, trees and rocks look great in Vanguard, but they look like they were just dropped into the game and aren't a part of a living world. And characters, while very detailed, look creepy and out of place.

cupertino · February 2007

When i said cartoony i ment that in a good way, as a WoW player I prefer stylised gfx for the simple reason I want to play a game not a poor translation of real-life, VG and EQ2 makes my eyes bleed because it looks awful IMHO, I will never play those games for that 1 very shallow but key reason.

I dont consider WoW graphics cartoony either, just look at the undead race, the new naga based dungeons etc.

What I would like to be put into a game is some kind of cripple effect, take x amount of dmg and you swing ya sword a bit slow, limp/walk slower, miss more etc... but as a side effect you hit a bit harder (ya prob a little pissed right now) or you take an extra hit before deing etc.

iCeh · February 2007

Originally posted by Areel

WAR does indeed have a "stylized" appearance to it, and some may think of it as "cartoony." I like it, no matter what you want to call it. I hate games that attempt "realism" for graphics. EQ2 looks terrible, both characters and environment. And the new Vanguard, while beautiful, was poorly designed. Sure, trees and rocks look great in Vanguard, but they look like they were just dropped into the game and aren't a part of a living world. And characters, while very detailed, look creepy and out of place.

I agree there! I'm sick of developers going for "realism" over gameplay. I hate seeing reviews that say "it looks stunning!", instead of being stunned by gameplay, they're basing their opinion of a game on how it looks... When I see a developer putting those kind of quotes on their websites, it annoys me as you know they haven't actually played the game, rather they've just looked at screenshots and a bit of video footage. Tell us how the game plays, not how it looks ffs! I have eyes!

rungard · February 2007

for my money i would rather have more graphical functionality than more polygons.

Wow has shown that you dont need bleeding edge graphics to be a great game..

WAR should show that theres more to the graphics than polygons.

-battle damage overlays..blood/dents/scratches/ charr

-battle damage animations.. limping, crutching, holding abdomen

-graphics based monster con system..

- player based con system (already in the works!)

define the next generation by keeping players eyes glued on the action not on the UI.

xrebel · February 2007

I love these ideas (though I still would like the numerical display

)

but perhaps this might be the biggest problem: Bandwidth usage/Lag

Wouldn't it put a lot more strain on the servers if all character models you can visually see must be updated constantly with "blood" graphics and dents/scrapes? Right now we get sent information like "type of armor, weapon, etc" and I imagine if a character is in combat a dev could program it to stop transmitting armor data being as you can't swap it out in combat. But if you're in a zone with 79 players going head-to-head and all are getting various stages of "bloodyness" it seems this would require some pretty large bandwidth commitments for decent updates

But like I said, I'm no programmer... maybe I'm overthinking this

I still think it would be pretty sweet.

rungard · February 2007

i dont believe so. If you are sent the data that your target has 50% hp, your client will display what 50% hp looks like.

the data from the server doesnt actually change, but your client will have to process a little bit more information since now instead of showing the amount in a bar, it shows a texture instead.

the battle damage would only have 4 levels to ensure that there wasnt too much information to process.

80%+ no texture

50-79% light texture

20-49% medium texture+ light animation

1-19% heavy texture + heavy animation

remember that your client is quite capable of doing this on the fly already. You can see other players emotes, when they draw their weapons, when they cast their spells, if they are using items...

This is the exact same thing but applied to the characters body.

xrebel · February 2007

Originally posted by rungard

i dont believe so. If you are sent the data that your target has 50% hp, your client will display what 50% hp looks like.
the data from the server doesnt actually change, but your client will have to process a little bit more information since now instead of showing the amount in a bar, it shows a texture instead.
the battle damage would only have 4 levels to ensure that there wasnt too much information to process.
80%+ no texture
50-79% light texture
20-49% medium texture+ light animation
1-19% heavy texture + heavy animation
remember that your client is quite capable of doing this on the fly already. You can see other players emotes, when they draw their weapons, when they cast their spells, if they are using items...
This is the exact same thing but applied to the characters body.

Rungard,

Good point, as normal I was way overthinking it...and now feel a bit stupid for posting it

Need... more...coffee....

I do like this idea in combination with normal numerical displays... perhaps add an option to turn one or the other off to attempt to please everyone

teh.imp · February 2007

I like the plan and what I have seen in games like Red Orchestra and Merciless it looks cool... but those are `realistic´ FPS games. Don´t think it will look good in the cartoony setting of WAR (where cartoony is a plus).

And if they are really aiming for a T rating, I don't think they will put it in the game.

rungard · February 2007

i declare war on the T rating.

teh.imp · February 2007

Good idea.

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War needs visual combat damage!!!

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