Poll: Monster life number display

On normal monsters it's ok but I'd rather not see Bosses' HP as a number, it's way more fun seeing you slowly cut down his HP bar instead of lowering numbers.
If inplemented at all, it should be optional.

Displaying numbers will tend to make the player focus on the numbers rather than the environment. I personally enjoy the destroying monsters and 'sploding them into many pieces part of the game. Forcing me to see a HP total would detract from the game.

I imagine there are many gamers who would like to see the numbers (I know many WoW users with the mods that display constant DPS, etc.).

Having the option would give players the choice to choose which view is the most fun for them.


The only potential problem is if seeing HP gave a significant advantage which might cause players to view HP even though it is less fun so that they can keep up with other players (in the spirit of having fun by being as powerful as other players)

How about you make it dependable on the monsters level compared to your character level?
If the Monster is a few Levels above yourself you wont see its life number. Same goes for bosses and/or rare monsters. This would make you aware of the strenght of a monster (compared to your level) and you won´t force yourself into mathy thoughts about how many fireballs you´d have to fire to down the monster.
If thats no option, i´d rather have no numbers above a monster.

From the videos and such I've seen of this game it looks like there's a philosophy of providing the player with all the relevant information right there in the client instead of sending them scrambling someplace else looking for it.

I think that's a good decision and you should stick with it.

Information about a certain monster should only be given if the monster was fought before already. Make it interesting to find new mobs and to find out their weakness as more and more info about them. Perhaps it could also be possible to get more detailed infos the more often you fight them. I think fighting should be challenging and not just a precalculated amount of attacks to kill a certain monster. For example: if you use a fireball and the monster is not taking much damage it can reveal that there is a certain resistance, same would work with other kind of attacks and finally after beating it you could gain the info about how much HP it had. Maybe not right away in the first battle, but with some bosses it might be useless if you need more then one fight to gain the infos. On the other side if you never gonna fight them again, the infos might be rather useless except for giving those infos to others ;p

It is way too much of a personal preference to specifically go one way or another. Some people will want it for theory crafting and to take away the mystery of the "Bar o' health and the chucks I take out of it". Others like that mystery. For me it will depend a lot on how it is implemented. From what I played of rift I did really miss the numbers because as an engineer I at least wanted to compare various monsters to each other and compare my attacks to each other.

People have made good suggestions of making different levels have an effect on whether or not you can see it. This is like in WoW where you cannot see the level of someone >8Lvs above you.

Those sound like creative suggestions for later down the road. Not beta.

I dont think if cluttering the options page is an issue, just make an advance options page for those who would like to fine tune the UI. The more flexibility,"customizability" (is there such word?) the better, then every1 can make his/her UI look the way he/she wants. It can mean lots of additional work by the programmers though.

I think optional numbers are fine - in the low difficulty levels.

This is not an SF scenario where you can justify augmented reality visualizations, not if you go ruthless.

Alternatively you can make seeing opponent health a skill like any other.

Either no or only if you pick that as an option. Adding a health number in there feels forced and unneeded; not to mention it kinda breaks immersion.

Two things.
1) In options. I don't mind lots of options, sorry "simple is better" people :P
2) Only on bosses/high health monsters. As you say, on trash mobs it's pointless. But it will mark bosses as a greater challenge, and provide reassurance that you're actually doing damage during a long boss fight. Also, I can't tell you the number of times I've seen a self-healing elite/boss mob in Diablo II and had to wonder if my eyes were playing tricks on me when its health bar went up - numbers would avoid that.