Enemy HP bars

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

 don't think you know what I'm talking about, so let me give a basic example: -Boss with HP bar is nearing death: You plan your party to go all-out to spike down his last bit of HP. A good climax to a tough fight.

-Boss without HP bar is nearing death: You continue playing the same way you did the rest of the boss fight. Then, suddenly the boss dies.

Depends on the player. Me? I will go all out on a boss with or without an HP bar. I would only change moves with an HP bar on normal enemies in which I don't want to waste precious resources.

An HP bar wouldn't change the strategy mid-battle as much as giving the enemy different patterns would do... If you want to put HP bars just so people could change strategies mid-battle, that won't be enough. If you want people to change strategies mid-battle, the enemy should be changing strategies too once their HP hits certain levels.

 

[Tarsus]

You could also use that to ruin people's tactics by having a boss change forms once they "die", regaining all their HP. Anyone who has used up all their MP or whatever thinking they are near victory will have a bad day,

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

I hate those kind of bosses... 

 

[Kes]

So do I.  I feel that the dev has deliberately set the player up for failure.  Not amusing, not clever.

 

[Tarsus]

It's fairly common though, as is fighting multiple bosses in succession with little or no chances to heal between.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

Fighting multiple bosses with no chance to heal is fine sometimes, though I prefer being able to heal and/or save before each fight, but a boss reviving itself? It might look like the end result is the same, but it still feels different.

 

[Tsukihime]

You could also use that to ruin people's tactics by having a boss change forms once they "die", regaining all their HP. Anyone who has used up all their MP or whatever thinking they are near victory will have a bad day,

Had that recently (after 6:00).


Thought I was done and decided to use all my resources but...turns out there was a hidden final boss...

 

[Wavelength]

You could also use that to ruin people's tactics by having a boss change forms once they "die", regaining all their HP. Anyone who has used up all their MP or whatever thinking they are near victory will have a bad day,

I hate those kind of bosses... 

So do I.  I feel that the dev has deliberately set the player up for failure.  Not amusing, not clever.

I like to split the difference and have them change forms when they, say, get below half HP, making them more powerful without necessarily healing them, or giving them a large (but not full) heal one time.

One of my favorite twists that I've put on this concept is a Huge slime-type enemy that splits itself into two Large slimes (with full health, but half the maximum HP of the Huge one) when you knock it below 50% health, which can each split themselves into to two Medium ones, and finally Tiny ones (which don't split).  It makes the battle tougher than it would originally appear, but in a way that it quickly apparent (and, according to most testers, amusing) to the player.  Additionally, if you reduce the Huge slime to 25% or 12.5% of its maximum health (without first hitting 50%), you can skip one or two levels of division, and if you reduce it from over 50% to 0 in one shot, you can kill it outright before it even divides.

As a corollary, enemy HP bars are a really good thing to have when you present this kind of "enemy action/transform upon reaching a certain health level" mechanic.

 

[Kes]

Multiple bosses and the sorts of transformation that Wavelength describes are fine, and not the same as what Tarsus refers to.  The single enemy resurrecting and changing just feels like the dev has been cheating and was unable to think of a 'proper' way of handling this.

As a corollary, enemy HP bars are a really good thing to have when you present this kind of "enemy action/transform upon reaching a certain health level" mechanic.

And I absolutely agree with this.

 

[OM3GA-Z3RO]

In all seriousness, if you don't want your players to get annoyed then I suggest not putting an HP bar on a boss just to show you that when you beat it, it gets resurrected with full HP and in a new more powerful form, that is just cheating to your players and giving them a slap in the face after a hard long fight on the 1st boss.

Unless it is a Final boss because everyone expects that in all RPG game by now but in reality most RPG games you can't see the final bosses HP anyway.

 

[TheHonorableRyu]

Not providing enemy HP bars can create intensity and tension out of this unknown in boss battles, and encourage the player to focus more and rely on previous knowledge and experience in regular battles. But providing enemy HP bars can give players information that encourages strategic choices. I don't think there's a right or wrong answer here, it depends on the effect you're trying to achieve. 

 

However, I can think of at least two scenarios in which enemy HP bars (or at least a HP scan option) are necessary.

 

One is if the game is an SRPG or action RPG where some of the action (and hence the damage popups) can take place off screen.

 

The other is if the damage popups are practically illegible. Like in FFXIII, many attacks cause multiple hits that spit out damage popups like a lidless blender. Moves regularly hit concurrently; meanwhile the camera and battlers often move or spin around like nuts, especially when the action gets heated, outside of the control of the player. It's hard to tally how much damage you're dealing at times when you can't even count how many damage popups you've caused, or what damage popups belong to what attack on what target. In this case HP bars made battles reasonably easy to track where they could have an incomprehensible whirligig. 

 

 

[Tsukihime]

Not providing enemy HP bars can create intensity and tension out of this unknown in boss battles, and encourage the player to focus more and rely on previous knowledge and experience in regular battles. But providing enemy HP bars can give players information that encourages strategic choices. I don't think there's a right or wrong answer here, it depends on the effect you're trying to achieve.

Absolutely agree.


When I'm down to 5% HP and the boss has a 50% chance of defeating me the next shot, I always have to make a tough choice


1: use that potion that I've been saving the entire game


2: attack, hoping it will finish it off


If I knew the boss has 1 HP left and I have 100% hit-rate, it would save me so much stress.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

I don't think there's a right or wrong answer here, it depends on the effect you're trying to achieve.

Exactly. Both choices bring about different possible strategies, so it would depend on which kinds of strategies you actually want the player to be able to use.


Though personally, I think shifting strategies mid-game is more doable when HP bars are showing. Like I could play defensively when the HP is still huge, then as it drops, I begin using a more offensive strategy to finish it off. If I don't see the HP bar and there's no other way to determine how much HP is possibly left, then I'd probably stick to a single strategy for the whole fight, which is mostly, heal when necessary while continuing to attack.

 

[Eschaton]

Bouncing numbers and life bars do the same thing: they indicate to the player how effective their tactics are. They indicate how efficiently the player is killing the enemy. This information is valuable in that it encourages the player to try new things in order to perfect their strategy.

Howeve, bouncing numbers fail compared to life bars because they only indicate how much damage you do without context. As said before, not having an indication of how much boss there is left to kill, the player is left in the dark as to how effective their overall strategy is.

Having both is redundant; seeing a huge chunk of the boss's disappear in one turn or round is just as effective at indicating to the player that their tactics were effective. This is the reason why I would abandon bouncing numbers entirely in favor of life bars exclusively as the means of tracking damage. Having both calls for scripts thy could slow down your game and invite comparability issues.

 

[Harmill]

Your damage numbers gain context by your experience. The more you fight, the more you know and expect the damage range of your party members. In the 1st dungeon, you might learn that your Warrior is dealing 30-40 damage per hit, the Mage's Fire spell can hit for 40-50, etc. If your enemies die in one or two hits, you know the damage you're doing is pretty good. You don't need a Health Bar to tell you that. Then the boss comes. If your Warrior starts dealing 20-30 damage, you can assume the boss has high DEF. If the Mage's Fire spell starts hitting for 60-75, maybe the boss is weak against Fire (although personally, I like it when a game outright tells you that you've hit a weakness). The Health Bar is not necessary to tell you how EFFECTIVE your attacks or strategy are -- you use your existing knowledge of what you EXPECT your characters to do. The Health Bar is telling you how close you are to killing the Boss.

As for removing damage popups in favour of the Health Bar... that's removing a huge attraction to the RPG for me. A large part of my enjoyment in RPG gameplay is seeing my stats and damage increase as the game progresses, and feeling like I'm getting stronger. Remove damage popups, and you've removed that sense of progression. In that sense, I see damage popups more valuable than a Health Bar. I bring this up mostly because I don't think I'm alone in this sentiment. People enjoy getting stronger and even more so when they have the proper feedback that tells them so. Health Bars are too static (% based) to provide this sense of progression. Actually, this is why I loved Kingdom Hearts' Health Bars so much... because they weren't a static size and actually were longer based on the enemy's max HP.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

Having both calls for scripts thy could slow down your game and invite comparability issues.

Not really... Ah well, the beauty of being a scripter that makes his own scripts. XD

 

[Eschaton]

Frickin iPhone and it's accursed autocorrect!

Good on you, -adiktuzmiko

Harmill, when I say "indicator of effectiveness," I mean that a low level character (or poor choice of attack) will only take a tiny chunk out of the health bar, while a high level character or an effective Attack will take a huge chunk. And that's all the player really needs to know; "am I doing a little damage or a lot?" It worked for Pokemon.

 

[TheHonorableRyu]

Though personally, I think shifting strategies mid-game is more doable when HP bars are showing. Like I could play defensively when the HP is still huge, then as it drops, I begin using a more offensive strategy to finish it off. If I don't see the HP bar and there's no other way to determine how much HP is possibly left, then I'd probably stick to a single strategy for the whole fight, which is mostly, heal when necessary while continuing to attack.

You mentioned this earlier, but without or without HP bars, I think one can promote mid-game strategy shifting through creative enemy attack patterns. Personally, I think that strategies that come from knowing or not knowing enemy HP should play second fiddle to strategies that come from enemy attack patterns. I'm a big fan of boss battles where bosses have different "stances" (altering its weakness/resistances, what kind of skills it will use and on what targets, or even creating field effects, etc.), multiple parts with different roles/functions, or the ability to summon allies mid-battle, etc.

Also, even when there's not a visible HP bar, the player does know that the remaining HP is dropping lower and lower. The player can watch closely how much damage they've dealt and take an "educated guess" (based on the difficulty of previous bosses, the difficulty of the most recent regular enemies, losses on the same boss battle, whether the boss seems like a more powerful foe than others) as to how much HP they think the boss has left. This can create a tense psychological situation where, as the player is running low on MP or items, they might decide to risk an all-out attack in the hopes that it will be enough to take out the boss. These kinds of risks also involve degrees of confidence, where the player has to think, "Okay, if this maneuver fails to take out the boss, what is the likelihood I'll be able to able to regroup and still maybe pull off the win?" If they figure that the odds of survival should the assault fail are basically zero, they might decide to risk it, or they might decide to scale back the attack a little, saving some MP or turns that they would have used for damaging spells so that they could heal. It can get pretty dramatic, especially when the last save point was outside the dungeon. (I recently had this kind of experience while fighting Hein in Final Fantasy 3.)

Visible HP bars largely mitigates this kind of tension, but replaces it with the kind of decision-making that comes from knowing how much HP is left. Again, it all depends on the effect you're trying to achieve!

 

[Eschaton]

Also, even when there's not a visible HP bar, the player does know that the remaining HP is dropping lower and lower. The player can watch closely how much damage they've dealt and take an "educated guess" (based on the difficulty of previous bosses, the difficulty of the most recent regular enemies, losses on the same boss battle, whether the boss seems like a more powerful foe than others) as to how much HP they think the boss has left. This can create a tense psychological situation where, as the player is running low on MP or items, they might decide to risk an all-out attack in the hopes that it will be enough to take out the boss. These kinds of risks also involve degrees of confidence, where the player has to think, "Okay, if this maneuver fails to take out the boss, what is the likelihood I'll be able to able to regroup and still maybe pull off the win?" If they figure that the odds of survival should the assault fail are basically zero, they might decide to risk it, or they might decide to scale back the attack a little, saving some MP or turns that they would have used for damaging spells so that they could heal. It can get pretty dramatic, especially when the last save point was outside the dungeon. (I recently had this kind of experience while fighting Hein in Final Fantasy 3.)

Visible HP bars largely mitigates this kind of tension, but replaces it with the kind of decision-making that comes from knowing how much HP is left. Again, it all depends on the effect you're trying to achieve!

I agree.

I also design based on my experiences and preferences.  I like to espouse fast combat that teaches players to trust their gut during combat or learn from poor decisions.  This elevates RPG combat from an abstraction to something that "feels more real."  Of course, real combat doesn't have any indicator of damage other than how effective the target is after receiving damage.  Fast combat doesn't need bouncing numbers in my opinion, which leaves a visible health bar as a logical alternative.