Killed in a Smiling Accident.

Thought for the day.

Instead of health bars in a UI element, have the colour drain out of a player’s avatar from head to foot as they lose health.

Posted by Melmoth at 1:27 pm

11 Responses to “Thought for the day.”

1. Melmoth Says:
   August 18th, 2010 at 1:35 pm

   It seems to me that this would allow the healer to watch the field of play and actually enjoy what’s going on while healing.

   It keeps healing challenging because the healer has to watch the field of battle, but also allows them to watch the fight and use their peripheral vision to monitor group mates in their field of view, which combined with the fact that players might run out of line of sight, thus encourages good group communication and coordination.

   I don’t imagine you could do this in WoW raids as they stand, but LotRO raids might be feasible, and a new game could develop their combat system with the idea in mind, using systems such as non-targeted cone and PBAoE healing, as in AoC, to make healing an experience where the player is engaged in the game world as much as other classes, rather than standing still and playing health bar whack-a-mole before shifting to a different standing spot when the pool of fire/green goo/ice/dark matter appears near them.

   And if nothing else it will lead to a whole new area of MMO slang:

   “I’m down to my bum in health!”
   “I’ve got a foot’s worth of health left!”
   “Oh stop complaining, I don’t need to heal you, you haven’t lost more than your head so far.”

2. Caspian Says:
   August 18th, 2010 at 1:46 pm

   That would also work if the avatar were hung over (logging off in a tavern isn’t *always* a good idea…)

3. Jason Says:
   August 18th, 2010 at 3:30 pm

   This would be brilliant in a game with a very cartoon style, or more specifically a game that is a cartoon.

4. xbevisx Says:
   August 18th, 2010 at 4:48 pm

   I dont think it would have to be a cartoony game to do this.

   You could have it so only healers can see these shifts in colour, like a filter you can switch on and off.

   With fantasy games you could explain it away saying that a certain ability/training/magic enables the healer to visualise their friends “health auras/life signals”.

   The modern/sci-fi equivalent could be some kinda of headgearHUD/augment that does something similar.

5. Jason Says:
   August 18th, 2010 at 5:35 pm

   Of course you can do it for anything… but a cartoon practically begs for this as “the ink is draining right out of them”.

6. Klepsacovic Says:
   August 19th, 2010 at 1:32 am

   This wouldn’t work in WoW, but then again, WoW would have a much different style of damage and healing if health was displayed in a format other than plain green bars.

7. Hirvox Says:
   August 19th, 2010 at 7:04 am

   Dead Space actually does this by strapping the health bar into the main character’s back. Also, the Tron lines in Zone of the Enders mechas change color according to damage sustained.

   I doubt it’ll work in an MMO like WoW where the special effect inflation guarantees that you won’t even see your own character amidst all of that eye candy, let alone other players’ characters.

8. mbp Says:
   August 19th, 2010 at 12:33 pm

   Love it.

9. Tesh Says:
   August 19th, 2010 at 8:02 pm

   And if you’re color blind?

   Maybe have some sort of twinklie about the height of the depletion? Say, a +1 sparkly belt of “I’m dying over here!”?

10. Melmoth Says:
    August 19th, 2010 at 9:57 pm

    I’d imagine that you could have the ‘empty’ colour be configurable, as I’m sure colour blind people manage to deal with health bars doing the same sort of thing. Either that or have characters turn translucent as the colour drains out of them.

    I fear that with twinkling we’d be accused of attempting to Twilightify MMOs. Or is that sparkling? No, no, that was ponies wasn’t it?

    Lordy, imagine the Twighlight-vampire-sparkling-pony, if you dare.

11. Tesh Says:
    August 20th, 2010 at 7:19 pm

    Yeah, it need not be twinklies. Just something to help someone who might be colorblind. Color as indicator alone can be troublesome.