alternative displaying of life and exp

[Sagefire135]

Most games ive played have stats like health and exp shown like "250/500 hp" or "500/2,000 exp till next level". i frequently ask owner if i can have the level cutoffs and hp formula because i like planning, and just plain knowing how things work. But generally nobody will give me the info i want. Now a player can easily look at their HP or exp before and after leveling a few times and calculate them again at any level. so i do exactly that. and i spread that info to people who also like knowing which tends to prompt the owner telling me to stop...

Now that i am looking into making my own game, i started thinking about this from the owners standpoint. Do i want players calculating that stuff in my game? it certainly doesnt hurt me if someone else knows but then again if i hide things my game woudl be different from most others. so i decided i would think of a new system that i could try.

instead of displaying "250/500 hp" or "500/2,000 exp" i decided to display "50% HP" or "25% exp" so you always know where you stand before a battle but you cant see the exact numbers behind them so you cant reasonably figure any formulas out. enemies would take health away from the actual number, but again it woudl display "demon attacks and you lose x% of your HP, y% remaining"

I wonder what a typical player would think of this? i know i woudl be a little annoyed, because my formula cracking just got much much harder. Are there any upsides or downsides to displaying things this way that anyone else can think of?

[Qwerty]

Well if the monster hit a low number and you have a very high HP, you would quickly get into health looking like 97.925% or something like that, but thats all I can see. I think people prefer the exact numbers rather than percentages.

[Sagefire135]

I thought about that, if a monster did less than 1% worth of damage it coudl just display:
monster did <1% damage (~100% left)
then when enough damage has been done it woudl display monster did <1% damage (~99% left)

[Nox]

I'd also say people prefer exact numbers
But I understand you try to protect your formulas, well...since they know the exact number from before combat, they can calculate those values at least roughly

---
I think the easiest solution to this would be floor rounding.. 0% HP looks bad, but I believe players understand that if something just scratches them, they might still have cca 100% HP

[Barrikor]

I like this idea, from the role-play point of view I think I'd prefer to see that I have 30% health, instead of 147/459 hp...

[toxin]

Or just have
Health:Critical
Health:Stable

Could do more with this to not show numbers. Not sure how to hide the EXP like this maybe not show it.

[Qwerty]

But what if you had something like this

Food Type 1 heals 10

Player health = 80% before eating food 1
Player health = 100% after eating food 1

The player doesn't know if their health equals something like 23/30 and they lose 3 points of health off their food, as it would only heal 7, then reach the limit. Some people don't like to waste these points...

[jannesiera]

If you use a "Health-system" just go the traditional way. It's not that % isn't used before. You can use % if the rest of the game alows it.

Though, you could also decide to have other indicators of health. Health is old and boring, though it still fits many games. But what role is it exactly that "Health" fullfills in your game? Are there other methods to become the same result?

Is health limitation? Is health a simulation? Is health an indicator of development? ...

[karnedge]

Well technically, you could still do the exact numbers internally like "275/550 hp" but display it to the user as 50%.

They never see the numbers but your game does so its percentages are always right. You can even round them off to the user. Internally, when they are fighting, the user would see that "a monster did 7% damage to you" but the game would know that it's really 38.5 hit points.

In other words, still do exact numbers just keep them internal then calculate all exact numbers into percentages and round them off. So even if a monster did less than 1%, you could display that "the monster did very little damage to you"

[Nox]

I was actually planning to have mostly open mechanics where player would see most of important values, mainly of his own units, not necessarily of enemies
Plus it is important that player at least roughly knows how his health is in combat....human knows if his body is somehow injured, so it would make sense.
And if you put % there, player can always calculate at least roughly the numbers because he knows his HP pool from before the combat

IMHO formula-wise it wouldn't help
RPG-wise...I don't know, I think mostly people wouldn't mind seeing exact number as they are used to them, almost every RPG game has this mechanism
...I know...why won't be different and better...but I think that practical pros outweight RPG pros.
Besides, 63% doesn't seem that more real than 346/550

Well technically, you could still do the exact numbers internally like "275/550 hp" but display it to the user as 50%.

They never see the numbers but your game does so its percentages are always right. You can even round them off to the user. Internally, when they are fighting, the user would see that "a monster did 7% damage to you" but the game would know that it's really 38.5 hit points.

In other words, still do exact numbers just keep them internal then calculate all exact numbers into percentages and round them off. So even if a monster did less than 1%, you could display that "the monster did very little damage to you"

I think the discussion is about displaying all the time, it is of course necessary for the system to keep exact data.

Jannesiera's post is very interesting...to have some other mechanism for health then x out of y...hmm...you really made me think now (and you manage to do it very often)

[Sagefire135]

i like the point jannesiera brings up too. in most games health is an indication of how much punishment your character can take. and in most games the battle system works around you having X hp and attacks lower it by y points. without much thought i cant think of something totally different to use hp for, but i CAN think of a different battle system which would use hp differently.

Rather than attacks taking away hp, hp coudl be a measure of exactly how many attacks you can receive. This would lower hp from tens of thousands (which is think is sorta unrealistic even for a game) to maybe 50 or so, instead of attacks dealing 1000 damage to your hp, attacks simpily deal 1 damage, so hp of 50 means you can take 50 hits period.

This would lead to problems with the conventional system of stats so that would need some changes too, agility type stats would be ok, but strength types couldnt add to damage anymore. strength could be used to open up different types of weapons and armour or it coudl be used to gauge how effective you are against someones defense.

the more i think about it, the more i like it.

[jannesiera]

Recently I was thinking of some sort of little ninja-fighting game. It appeard to me that HP in it's traditional form was unrealistic. Because, in real life, you can't fight when you're hit even once!

So the purpose of this game is trying to figure out the other player's moves and dodge / block his attacks. While you try to trap the other player so you can easily hit him. When one of your chars (you play with a team) is hit, he is defeated and can't fight anymore. Though, you get extra points when hitting a defeated char for the second time, which will kill him. You'll lose points when your own chars die, so be carefull if you want extra points!
An exeption on this system is when you, for example, can perform a headshot which will result in an instant kill.

I just gave you the basics of one of my game concepts. To show you how you can do things different.

[Nox]

Looks great
However balance it carefuly as...I think that if you would miss many times it might be not that fun anymore (I'm still thinking it there will be a chance to miss in my game at all), and with increased chance to hit the fight might be too short...well, I am sure (especially) you will find a way, you already mentioned trapping, so I'm not worried about you

Nice is that your system matches your theme beautifully, ninjas are light-armorer (unarmored) with deadly weaponry (and they look a bit squishy too , although they migth a bit compensate with power of will).

Wouldn't fit mine as I have more central europe fantasy middle age theme, so units are more resilient - and combined with their low numbers I was thinking about HP being the decisive element in determining winner/loser, no casualties might be inflicted, just comparing HP taken, so I don't see a way to implement any interesting mechanic.

But out of curiosity I was thinking about that (now, after your post) and about system where instead of HP the game would log every injury with its parametrs, but didn't really think it through. Maybe like 3 aspects of injuries - blood, organs and conciousness... and damage to different place with different weapon might have a different consequences...
fist to head: -conciousness
arrow to head: ---organs
hammer to chest: +bleeding, -organs
knife vs artery: ++bleeding
hammer vs artery: hm...probably almost nothing
etc
...hm, doesn't look so bad, maybe I can use something like this

[Scion]

One of the great problems i allways had with many of the traditional exponential HP schemes was the way a level 1 player would be severely injured after fighting 1 small cute rabbit but a high level player could stand around naked in the middle of a hoard of goblins drinking tea and not be noticible affected by their swords, spears, and poisond arrows.

[ckumarjha]

I personally don't like the display of exact numbers i prefer the % system or better yet display a % with a bar or something for a more graphical display.........

fist to head: -conciousness
arrow to head: ---organs
hammer to chest: +bleeding, -organs
knife vs artery: ++bleeding
hammer vs artery: hm...probably almost nothing

however i liked the above idea of Nox too

[RangerSheck]

One of the great problems i allways had with many of the traditional exponential HP schemes was the way a level 1 player would be severely injured after fighting 1 small cute rabbit but a high level player could stand around naked in the middle of a hoard of goblins drinking tea and not be noticible affected by their swords, spears, and poisond arrows.

I agree. In my game, max health is 100 no matter what "level" you are. Instead of getting more and more health, players get higher and higher skill levels. Skill levels determine how well they defend against attacks. Someone close to your level might hit you for around 20; someone lower level than you is only going to scratch you, and someone much higher skill level than you will hit for much more. Occasionally a player might ask why you never get more "hit points" (class RPG mindset; not that I think there's anything wrong with that, but I'm taking a different approach), but most of the time players recognize that they gain an advantage whenever their skills go up, and that adding more health would just be redundant.

[Sagefire135]

I sorta like that idea of always having the same HP and having other factors effect how much a hit affects it too. Its definantly somethign ill think about becasue the way i was thinking of making my game, if a person managed to level really really high, they coudl theoretically have a high HP (i was goin to do HP=level). having it at 100 for everyone woudl certainly solve the huge HP numbers problem. This would greatly screw up my ideas for how battles will work though (again )