I’m going to start by saying that I’m talking about the default appearance and position right now and as such please try to stay away from comments like “you can move/change it in the .ini files”.
While the HUD is coming along nicely with each iteration of it I feel as if the HP display has been somewhat neglected. The bar itself is a good idea, the number if obviously a good idea (if not a must have) but at the moment they are way to small in regards to the other elements. Most of the times you always get a “feel” for how much HP you have depending on the situtation your in or just came back from but more often than not I find myself quickly looking to the HP bar just to make sure.
The size is fine for allies and enemies because it’s much closer to the center of the screen and as such you don’t really have to shift focus in order to gain that particular information.
Yes, there is a hint to this with the more-blood-on-the-screen-the-more-hurt-i-am kind of thing but since this can be turned off, and I personally find that method annoying so…
I’ve been thinking about this more and more over the last couple of days and these are probably the ideas that I had that would make the most sense in DB’s particular case.
So when you’re below X% health, these are few things that I think would improve it:
- Have the HP number and bar pulsate in size
- Have a background behind the HP number and bar flash red back and forth (why is the “low” value blue instead of red anyway?)
- Add a small shake to the entire HP “container” every X seconds
- Scale up the entire HP “container”, make the background red when your health is below X, then return it to it’s default state
- The idea of the four above points is that even though you might not see the exact number or percent you clearly get a indicator of being at a significantly low health.
- Add a cardiogram/animated icon thing that changes and shows your “distresslevel” closer to the enter of the screen. I’m thinking roughly at the same position as your own personal killfeed. The more hurt you are, the redder and more haywire it goes. If your health go back up to X% it simply fades away.
- This is more or less just an alternative to the current “bloody screen” effect and most definately the least practical one since it could be very obtrusive. In terms of size I’d say ever so slighty bigger than the “Detected” message.
Some examples of the points above. (Private, only those with the link can see it)
There are obviously hundreds more ways of doing it but these are in my eyes the ones most applicable to it’s current state.
Maybe even adding a very short three-beep-long audio queue of sorts when below X% health (Not my personal favourite but it might be able to cut through the chaos)
So again, what are the plans regarding this over at SD?
As a side note, I also feel as if this could be one of the reasons a lot of new players get frustrated and drop the game quite quickly after trying it. If they feel they get smashed almost instantly, it might actually be because the HP display is not clear enough, leading them going into fights which less than 50% HP. Definately not the most crucial reason, but still a plausible reason.