Monster health

[jackel1994]

Probably has already been suggested but i didnt find it.

How about a bar of health for the enemies? like right above their heads, and also right under there health bar, is a number in % form of how much damage you contributed towards the monsters death. It would be easier to tell who your putting hits on to maximize your drops from a whole mob when grindign with 5 or 6 people.

[sly 3 4 me]

It has been suggested many times, along with the idea of the threshold indicator to show when you have the needed hits/damage to receive an item reward.

[Meiun]

I've never been a big fan of the Monster health bars or the concept or the game relying too much on gauges or numbers. It is suppose to be more of an action game, and that just takes away a lot of realism and excitement when everything is layed out and spelled out for you in my opinion. I'd much rather have visual or behavior queues as to when they are getting low rather than seeing their health bars straight up.

[jackel1994]

I've never been a big fan of the Monster health bars or the concept or the game relying too much on gauges or numbers. It is suppose to be more of an action game, and that just takes away a lot of realism and excitement when everything is layed out and spelled out for you in my opinion. I'd much rather have visual or behavior queues as to when they are getting low rather than seeing their health bars straight up.

Yea how about like blood then or make the monster start fading u know? I wana see my monster get his ass beat ha.

[Lucifer]

First off, I'd like to point you towards the search function on the top right of the screen. You seem to always question whether something has been suggested before, well, there's your solution. There's at least two topics on this concept on the very first page. Not that I care, really, just letting you know.

I just can't see Stick Online with health bars. There's that build up of excitement and sudden surprise in the current system that I find unique to this game, and I'd hate to see it go. I like Meiun's view of realism and straying away from a game of "gauges or numbers", and I'd love to see Stick Online take further steps in that direction. For example, giving weapons a min/max damage, or weapons doing different damage according to where they strike. A little randomization would go a long way in making the combat system more exciting, and less of a battle of numbers.

[Meiun]

Randomization to a certain extent can add some excitement, but that is also one thing that I like keeping at a minimum for Stick Online. I'd much rather have Stick Online be based more around skill than luck and statistics. There are so many MMO's out there that have such bland and stat/number based combat, that if they were to take it any further, they might as well just make the game cut to a text based theme when you start a fight and just fill your screen up with stuff like "YOU DEALT 104 DAMAGE". People seem to forget that actual gameplay is usually important towards making their games fun and enjoyable.

[ARTgames]

Maybe if monsters had different sprites if they were weaker. We would not know exact health but it would also see who been attacked. Just an idea.

Also just adding more number to the game don't make it not skill based. Take a look at counter strike or quake. You have your health, you ammo, your score, your ping, game time, (money in cs), objectives score, and when you point your mouse at a bad guy it says there health. It just matters what you need to do to change those number.

Now I'm also not asking for stick online to be the next exile. Theres a line to cut it off and it looks like you have made yours and i think its fine.

But its not that big o deal to have health on npc's so I'm ok eather way. The game does work fine now.

[JninjaJ]

i really dont care about most monsters having a health bar or being able to see how much damage you have done or being able to see your drop chance or whatever this is cause its not going to change the amount of damage you do the only thing i would like a health bar to be on is the SG cause its just annoying when you cant tell how close it is to death cause SG's take ages

[Lingus]

Randomization to a certain extent can add some excitement, but that is also one thing that I like keeping at a minimum for Stick Online. I'd much rather have Stick Online be based more around skill than luck and statistics. There are so many MMO's out there that have such bland and stat/number based combat, that if they were to take it any further, they might as well just make the game cut to a text based theme when you start a fight and just fill your screen up with stuff like "YOU DEALT 104 DAMAGE". People seem to forget that actual gameplay is usually important towards making their games fun and enjoyable.

A good way around that is, much like your idea of a "visual queue" for health, there would be a visual effect for damage dealt. The larger the damage, the bigger the effect. Some kind of spark or flash or something. Obviously it should relate to the weapon being used. But the idea of not knowing exactly how much damage you are going to deal definitely makes things more interesting. As it is, people are still focused on how much damage they do, they just have to work harder to figure it out. But once they have the number, now they know exactly how much damage they are doing, and approximately how many hits it will take to kill the monster. If damage were more random, maybe people would stop focusing on it as much. Because even if you know the stats and formula, you still don't know how much damage you are going to do when you swing the weapon.

[ARTgames]

If damage were more random, maybe people would stop focusing on it as much. Because even if you know the stats and formula, you still don't know how much damage you are going to do when you swing the weapon.

I rather stay away from random. It would suck if you do a good counter to some one and hit them and do little damage. Because random is not skill its luck.

Plus if your using simple software based random (like game makers Linear congruential generator) is just another thing you can work out in formulas.

How you make the game more skill based is to simply(well its not really simple) make a game with good controls, fast pace, and balanced. There always going to be people who are going to do statistical analysis for fun. Just make the game so people can play how they want and they are still balanced.

As i said keep the game how it is. It works fine.

[Lingus]

If damage were more random, maybe people would stop focusing on it as much. Because even if you know the stats and formula, you still don't know how much damage you are going to do when you swing the weapon.

I rather stay away from random. It would suck if you do a good counter to some one and hit them and do little damage. Because random is not skill its luck.

Plus if your using simple software based random (like game makers Linear congruential generator) is just another thing you can work out in formulas.

The range would not be that high though. I'm talking about the difference between 10 and 15 damage. If you consider that both parties in a fight have this same randomization happening on their damage, it's not going to cause either party to lose or win the fight. It just adds a bit of uncertainty to the game. There's already a small random element in SO due to latency. Sometimes you may or may not even hit the person. Which, btw, implementing a random "miss" is something I am adamantly against.

Plus if your using simple software based random (like game makers Linear congruential generator) is just another thing you can work out in formulas.

What do you mean by that? Random numbers are always worked out by formula.

[ARTgames]

If damage were more random, maybe people would stop focusing on it as much. Because even if you know the stats and formula, you still don't know how much damage you are going to do when you swing the weapon.

I rather stay away from random. It would suck if you do a good counter to some one and hit them and do little damage. Because random is not skill its luck.

Plus if your using simple software based random (like game makers Linear congruential generator) is just another thing you can work out in formulas.

The range would not be that high though. I'm talking about the difference between 10 and 15 damage. If you consider that both parties in a fight have this same randomization happening on their damage, it's not going to cause either party to lose or win the fight. It just adds a bit of uncertainty to the game. There's already a small random element in SO due to latency. Sometimes you may or may not even hit the person. Which, btw, implementing a random "miss" is something I am adamantly against.

I see what your saying and i think its a fair point. But i think this should be decided by the community. I do kinda like the idea but i see why some one might not.

Plus if your using simple software based random (like game makers Linear congruential generator) is just another thing you can work out in formulas.

What do you mean by that? Random numbers are always worked out by formula.

Well it depends. There are diffrent levels. You can have an algorithm with good entropy taking data in from a lot of sources deemed random. Or you can hardware based random which is basically a tool that measure's something what is considered random today.

In game maker case it just takes a number and does some basic moving around with it to make it seem random.

[Lingus]

Plus if your using simple software based random (like game makers Linear congruential generator) is just another thing you can work out in formulas.

What do you mean by that? Random numbers are always worked out by formula.

Well it depends. There are diffrent levels. You can have an algorithm with good entropy taking data in from a lot of sources deemed random. Or you can hardware based random which is basically a tool that measure's something what is considered random today.

In game maker case it just takes a number and does some basic moving around with it to make it seem random.

Oh okay, yea I see what you're saying. Random number generation is really not "random". But it's random enough that it doesn't matter. A better word to use here, and is really the point, would be to say the damage would be "variable". The method of randomization is really not that important, at least not in my opinion.

[ARTgames]

Plus if your using simple software based random (like game makers Linear congruential generator) is just another thing you can work out in formulas.

What do you mean by that? Random numbers are always worked out by formula.

Well it depends. There are diffrent levels. You can have an algorithm with good entropy taking data in from a lot of sources deemed random. Or you can hardware based random which is basically a tool that measure's something what is considered random today.

In game maker case it just takes a number and does some basic moving around with it to make it seem random.

Oh okay, yea I see what you're saying. Random number generation is really not "random". But it's random enough that it doesn't matter. A better word to use here, and is really the point, would be to say the damage would be "variable". The method of randomization is really not that important, at least not in my opinion.

Fine thats ok.