Damage Popups

[Eschaton]

Depends on the game, but there's only I problem I can think of: the player would have no way to know if he's dealing little damage because the weapon he's using is ineffective or because the enemy has a billion HP.

So, if you remove damage popups, you need to give the player some other kind of feedback about how effective his attacks are being (just different sounds could be OK, as long as the player has a way to know what they mean).

If this is not a factor in your game, I believe HP bars could be enough.

Sounds like it would work for me because enemies aren't going to have more than a thousand HP, and a properly built character should be chopping that up pretty quickly.

 

[Helladen]

Damage popups are very important. I wouldn't play a game without them.

 

[Eschaton]

Damage popups are very important. I wouldn't play a game without them.

Is that a joke?

Then again, the millisecond there's a "whoosh" that leads me to a random battle screen, I'm done playing, too.

 

[Helladen]

Then again, the millisecond there's a "whoosh" that leads me to a random battle screen, I'm done playing, too.

We aren't kids anymore. Our requirements in games are much more than they used to be. Damage popups allow me to know exactly the amount of damage I dealt, which allows me to learn the pros and cons of abilities. The transitioning screen of battles is necessary when going between one art type to another (even if the map changes), that would be dumb to change.

 

[kerbonklin]

I like seeing visible damage. IT GIVES ME STRENGTH!

 

[Cozzer]

 It's true that damage popups are... pleasant for the player. They help you feel like you are hurting the enemy.

So I'll add to my previous comment that, even if damage type is not a problem, you have to make sure there's a lot of feedback when you hit an enemy. Not only for strategic purposes, but for "I like this game and I want to keep playing it" purposes too. Enemy sprites flashing, sounds, knockback... the more the better.

(And if there's not a serious interface bloat problem, I'd leave the popups anyway)

 

[kerbonklin]

Oh yeah, and people looooooove to see huge critical-hit numbers.

Like when i'm playing OD on Dota2 and i'm hitting like a truck, but normal damage doesn't have a popup. But then I buy a Crysalis/Daedalus for the critical chance+damage and I see these big red number popups, it's like AWWWWWWWW YEEEEEAH

 

[Zoltor]

Oh yeah, and people looooooove to see huge critical-hit numbers.

Like when i'm playing OD on Dota2 and i'm hitting like a truck, but normal damage doesn't have a popup. But then I buy a Crysalis/Daedalus for the critical chance+damage and I see these big red number popups, it's like AWWWWWWWW YEEEEEAH

Yea seeing how much dmg you "really" could do is always fun(like breaking 2 million dmg in Disgaea is insane), as is overkill dmg in general(I hate when it only shows the dmg =to the amount of damage needed to kill the enemy), so yea not only does it add strategy to the game, but it can also add quite a lot of enjoyment on its own.

 

[Eschaton]

Hmm... valid points, all.

Too bad all my formulas yield numbers with giant decimals at the end.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

you can always turn them to integers

 

[Cozzer]

Or you can multply every number by ten, until decimals aren't there anymore.

Why are there decimals? o.o

 

[Eschaton]

And have gigantic, unmanageable damage output?

No.

 

[Arkecia]

Didn't you say you'd show the number in the HP bar on the first page of this topic? Then I'd say go for it as long as you can read the amount of health the enemy has as a number value then things that pop aren't needed for little more than flair.

I'd make an HP bar and a percentage of HP left, so when you attack let's say the HP goes from 100% to 47.9%. It would certainly be different for an RPG Maker game, as long as you find a way to do it. It allows decimals too, which are awesome.

 

[Cozzer]

Huh... either you approximate your decimal at a certain point of the damage algorithm (and you can use the approximated value for the popup), or the output will be gigantic and unmanageable no matter if there's a decimal point in it somewhere or not.

 

[Necromus]

Damage popups are useful information, not clutter.

Sure you can do it without, but thats definitely something I wouldn't want to miss anymore.

 

[passmoreNOPE]

Hello, sorry I haven't made an introductory post yet, but this topic just caught my eye!

In addition to damage number popups giving some useful information, they also convey another important element of RPGs: Growth!

You start the game doing small numbers of damage, and end it doing large numbers of damage. That's something you just can't get from relative HP bars. So even if the enemies get stronger and take about the same number of hits throughout the game, the hits YOU'RE doing are clearly harder, so your mind let's it go. That's one thing I have against games like Oblivion where you fight the same few enemies over the course of the game and don't have any numbers to convey your growth in strength.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

another thing is that with Damage Popups, the player see instantly what the damage value was... if the only way to determine it is to check the current HP value and compare it with the old one, you're just giving the player the burden to remember the last HP value + to do the math...

 

[Eschaton]

another thing is that with Damage Popups, the player see instantly what the damage value was... if the only way to determine it is to check the current HP value and compare it with the old one, you're just giving the player the burden to remember the last HP value + to do the math...

...enemy health meters...

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

I mean if there is no damage pop-up, if the want to know the EXACT damage, they will need to compute it themselves...

 

[amerk]

For a very fast battle format, where most standard fights last within about 30 seconds and boss fights somewhere between 2 and 5 minutes, I can see forgoing popups and just using the bar. Those games typically incorporate a fast moving ATB, and generally don't require much strategy, since the player doesn't have time to think about their attacks to decide the order of skills to use. These are typically good for games where spamming the attack button is okay, and quickly getting a magic/skill attack can provide an extra buff. Generally, the amount of damage is pretty significant, and you see the HP rolling downwards fairly fast, that popups are practically useless since they're immediately erased by the next bout of attacks.

I've played a couple of games like this.

However, for slower turn-based rpgs that are absent of an ATB and generally require you to strategize your moves, popups serve a better purpose, since they help you identify which attack has the most damage output, rather than relying solely on a slow moving HP bar, where it's hard to decide how much of the HP bar was removed from one attack to another, to determine your best moves.