Damage displays

[Vanguard]

Why is it that most roguelikes don't tell you how much damage your attack did to your opponent?

I think that in order for your player to make sound decisions on which of their items and abilities they should use, they need to know exactly how powerful those items and abilities are.

I know that you typically get the "2d6" format to tell you how much damage magic missile does, and that's fine for abilities that flat out do a set amount of damage, but for things where your player's attributes, their opponent's defenses, special slaying weapons for specific enemy types, and other factors come into play, it's just not enough.

[Antsan]

Showing, how much damage you do to a certain enemy is mostly irrelevant for the player.

It's a lot easier to count, how often you need to hit a certain anemy with a certain weapon and extrapolate from there. Then the damage per hit is even more accurate, because you will connect it to the monster at hand directly, regardless of how many hitpoints it has - so you won't have to find that out.

[Etinarg]

Angband shows the monster health as a bar of 10 (12?) stars. You can roughly see how much of that your last attack took away.

I'd not hesitate to expand messages to "You hit the XYZ for AB points of damage", if this seems relevant for the game.

In my limited experience it seems that eastern games show damage numbers, while western games do not. Maybe a question of tradition or culture.

[Anvilfolk]

I used to play a RPI (Role-Play Intensive) MUD where no numbers were shown whatsoever. I know that they had numbers behind the system, but that wasn't what the game was about. Roguelikes are a different matter though...

I don't rightly know where I stand in this. The RPI guy in me says I shouldn't see numbers, but roguelikes are pretty much all about numbers. I don't mind Crawl the way it is, but perhaps it WOULD be easier to see your actual damage.

You can still try to guess. For example, weapons have a base damage that you can see through the inventory screen. They are also affected by one of your physical stats, but it gets rather blurry there. Will dexterity/strength increase both damage and chance to hit, or will they only affect the respective bonus?

It would be nice, but I don't really need it. Especially as enemy monsters have different HP depending on how far down the dungeon you are.

[Brigand]

Hitpoints are an abstraction of health anyways. If you allow players to see exact hp and exact damage, they can 'game' the system (meaning really power game and control their resources very tightly). I guess there's no reason you can't put those numbers in. Just ask yourself what kind of playstyle you are aiming for? Really, the reason for showing or not showing hitpoints/damage has more to do with player resource management than anything else.

a) The magic missile does 7 pts of damage. The goblin has 2 health left.  You have 10 health "Oh, I can finish him off with my weakest, cheap spell and save some mana for the next encounter! Theres no way he can kill me in 1 hit."

or


b) Your sword slices through the goblins armor. The goblin is injured.   "Crap, what do I do? Use a small spell, and save some resources, but potentially allow him to live, and maybe kill me with its next swing?? Or use a fireball spell?? Costs me more, but gives me a bigger safety margin."



(As a side note, I am kind of choosing a middle ground for my next project. In the past, I used health bars, which allows almost as much knowledge as getting the numbers (which the player also gets, if they choose to read it). I have switched over to a 'health bubble' - the color of the bubble gives a generalization of the health of the enemy, but only a vague one. Green = uninjured, yellow = somewhat hurt, red = about to die. After all, the player would be able to 'see' if the goblin was bleeding from 10 wounds, but he wouldn't know the exact physical extent of the damage. Just my $0.02)

[Krice]

I think it's a good idea and I'm going to use it in Kaduria. If you remember Dungeon Master, that's where it was done properly.

[Vanguard]

I used to play a RPI (Role-Play Intensive) MUD where no numbers were shown whatsoever. I know that they had numbers behind the system, but that wasn't what the game was about. Roguelikes are a different matter though...

I can understand this mindset for keeping all of the numbers "under the hood" so to speak, and out of the player's sight, but it doesn't make sense to me to go only halfway, where the player can see all of their own numbers for attributes, health, weapon and ability stats, but then to deny them knowledge of what the outcome of all of those things is.  It seems to me like the worst of both worlds - you don't get the "realistic" feel or the numerical feedback.

For example, I don't have a problem with the way Dwarf Fortress does it, because it provides approximate, if not completely precise feedback, and it's consistent about not giving you the exact numbers anywhere.

Hitpoints are an abstraction of health anyways. If you allow players to see exact hp and exact damage, they can 'game' the system (meaning really power game and control their resources very tightly). I guess there's no reason you can't put those numbers in. Just ask yourself what kind of playstyle you are aiming for? Really, the reason for showing or not showing hitpoints/damage has more to do with player resource management than anything else.

This is true, but I think one of the fun things about some roguelikes is that you're supposed to powergame them.  Roguelikes are one of the only genres where a talented and knowledgeable player can play as hard as they can, not limiting themselves in any way, and still be challenged or even beaten.  To me, that's part of the appeal.  In most genres I have to "show mercy" to the game for it to put up any kind of a fight.

[corremn]

You guys keep mentioning games that have good systems, having not played them or not I dont remember how they work, please elaborate dont just mention the game name.   

In graphical roguelikes I like to have a health bar above the enemies, like I do in sewerjacks.  It gives direct feedback to the player the kind of damage you are doing and how many more hits is expected to kill them.  Of course this also eliminates the need to read the endless lines of text generated by roguelikes in general and especially sewerjacks.

[Numeron]

I agree with the healthbar idea, I used it in my last 7drl, Domination, and I think its a great way to visualise how much damage you are doing and being dealt without having to estimate from the numbers directly. It sadly doesnt work with ascii though, and I do like to give the player some indication without having to eXamine their opponent all the time, so in that case perhaps showing the numbers is the way to go.

[Anvilfolk]

DCSS currently has the system Brigand said he'd use for his game. Essentially, it just shows you a colour code for the health of the enemy. I kind of like the system... it gives you an idea, without you getting full knowledge.

[Krice]

You guys keep mentioning games that have good systems, having not played them or not I dont remember how they work, please elaborate dont just mention the game name.

In Dungeon Master you saw how much damage you did to monster, but you didn't see how much HP it had left. I think that's a good compromise, because you can check the effects of different weapons, but can't plan tactics based on monster's remaining HP.

[Etinarg]

It didn't show damage for spells. And it took me ages to figure that the "animated knights" were immune to fire