Raph is no longer taunting us (Metaplace)

[SnakeCharmer]

Nipples are SERIOUS business.

[El Gallo]

There weren't originally supposed to be unhealable pools, either. :P I love how we're still discussing HAM all these years later...!

OK, so let's take a step back. Health and mana are indeed not broken. But they aren't entirely suitable for a sci-fi game either. After all, in a sci-fi game, you are hopefully having a variety of activities, some based on brawn and some based on intelligence, and some based on agility, and so on. Spending mana for a thief move, or rage for a mage ability, would be equally silly. Especially when we have abilities we want to have that range from hacking to breaking doors to walking balance beams (yeah, none of these showed up. But that's what you want the system for).

Obviously you change the names.  You have health, focus (for mental activities) and stamina (for physical ones).  (You could sub-divide the last into agility and endurance if you want to separate dexterity-based physical actions from strength-based ones, I'll use the 3-bar example for the rest of this post, but everything works just as well for 4).  That's all okey-dokey.  A red bar, a blue bar and a yellow bar.  Been done.  Familiar to players.  Proven to work.

I get damaged, red bar goes down.  I diagnose my buddy's injury, my blue bar goes down.  I jump up over a wall, yellow bar goes down.  I need to manage my blue and yellow bars when deciding what to do. 

Given the classless system, we couldn't really hide any of them. This is also the single biggest weakness of the HAM system -- not that pools were attackable or spendable (which is again, just a mana drain sort of effect, or a "weaken your shields when you fire" sort of effect) but rather that there's just too many numbers involved.

This is the stop where I get off the bus.  Health, stamina and mana bars aren't complicated and there aren't too many numbers.  Hell, they use pretty much that exact system in EQ.  If you can figure out how to install the game, you can handle 3 bars.  Diablo2 has 3 bars ffs.  So does EQ.

The problems were (a) reducing any pool to zero killed/incapped you and (b) each character could really only do damage to one of the three pools.  That's what made it different from Generic_Health/Mana/Stamina System_01 and, not coincidentally, that's what made it suck.

Mana- and stamina-draining special abilities (and defenses against same) are great, especially when you have to make choices between them both offensively and defensively.  What's not great is the fact that I can only hurt mana and my friend can only hurt stamina, so the system makes it basically worthless for us to cooperate.  What's also not great is the fact that getting shot in the face with a rifle is only damaging because I can't solve quadratic equations as quickly. 

If I were doing it today, given all the critiques, I probably would have maintained the idea of three manas, but split off the health on top of them. I believe one of the combat revisions proposed this. The health bar would be the only one you would show all the time. The mana bars would still be there, but be invisible most of the time. I bet you could cue people with a bar that shows only when you are using your special -- say you "load up" a mind-based ability, like sniping. THEN a focus meter shows up on your screen. And damage to your focus or your strength could be indicated ojnly as it happened, or only when you are at critical level, or something. Then a lot of the confusion might die off.

Your players aren't that stupid.  Again, Diablo 2 has 3 bars.  You don't need to hide the information from us (and, if we can, we'll just use mods to get that information back if at all possible).  But yeah, this sounds like the 4-bar idea I mentioned above, the health bar, which keeps you alive, and focus/stamina/agility bars to pull off special moves.  Very simple.  Very non-innovative.  Very workable.  Very much not what we got.

And that's before we get to wounds. Wounds being separate on all three bars (think concussion, broken limb, blood loss) is almost certainly overkill.

I don't think wounds are overly complex.  They may be more annoying than fun (and therefore not a good idea), but they are easily understandable.  It's just a debuff and you need to go to a hospital to get it removed.

[Signe]

I bet most of your nipples are silly.  It's not like you do anything with them.  Even my nipples are silly.  Hopefully, Raph's nipples will make him a bit of dosh.

[Nonentity]

This thread clearly has way too much SWG talk, and needs to focus more on nipples, or the discussion of the game company itself in which this thread is titled.

But 'nipples' are silly, and nobody actually seems to want to talk about the company, so lets instead talk about this picture.



Go.

[Slyfeind]

Ya know...you can make your combat system as complex as you want, as long as you ease the player into it. ;)

And um, apparently Christian married Satan at the end of Moulin Rouge, and Jesus presided over the ceremony.

[geldonyetich]

That was the alternate happy ending on the George Lucas remastered edition of Episode 1.

[Nyght]

And um, apparently Christian married Satan at the end of Moulin Rouge, and Jesus presided over the ceremony.

The greatest thing you'll ever learn....

[Thelurker]

I love how we're still discussing HAM all these years later...!

Yeah, about that. You bring up UO every so often as a positive point to your portfolio. Anything that comes after that is fair game then, positive or negative.

It is easy to mention the good, and then cry foul on the bad. Good old internet.

[Signe]

Ham and nipples, mmm mmm good.

[Venkman]

3 bars is not complex. 3 bars where each template as their own unique 3rd bar isn't complex either. It's how the players first learn the information and then later are expected to parse it that really drives usability. SWG didn't use levels as indicators, but it certainly had them. What players were shown at what amounted to "level 1" was both daunting and non-intuitive, for all the reasons mentioned. The system should have been presented sequentially.

[hal]

Nipples are serious business. I just had to add that. Of course the aforementioned nipples are attached to way to large surreal and unnatural boobs. But you allready knew that.

[Slyfeind]

Yeah, about that. You bring up UO every so often as a positive point to your portfolio. Anything that comes after that is fair game then, positive or negative. It is easy to mention the good, and then cry foul on the bad. Good old internet.

Yeah, about that. The rest of us are talking about nipples now. Good old Internet.

[Signe]

Nipples are like little faucets for tiny children.  If you don't have any tiny children or if you're a man, your little faucets are broken.  If the little faucets in your tiny sinks were broken, you'd throw them away!  Therefore, nipples are silly for men and women who don't have tiny children to make their little faucets work.  I mean tiny nipples. You know what I mean.

[shiznitz]

Ham and nipples, mmm mmm good.

My nipples taste like ham.

[Akkori]

How long do you think it will take for Raph to re-think his choice of company name? LOL

[Sky]

3 bars was too simplistic. I say we should try for 12 bars. Then when people gripe about it, they'd have the 12 bar blues.

[Nonentity]

3 bars was too simplistic. I say we should try for 12 bars. Then when people gripe about it, they'd have the 12 bar blues.

I see what you did there.

[stray]

Weiland needs to come up with his own damn album covers:

[Strazos]

Perhaps it was a sort of tribute?

[stray]

No, not really.

[Nonentity]

I know what the 12 bar blues are, I was just being dumb.

But hey, imagine that for a second:



Raph, don't steal my idea.

[Sky]

Firstly, it was my idea.
Secondly, you forgot the nipple bar.
Thirdly, Scott Weiland? Oh fuck no. Muddy Waters just rolled in the grave. (also: good call by Stray)

[Nonentity]

Firstly, it was my idea.
Secondly, you forgot the nipple bar.
Thirdly, Scott Weiland? Oh fuck no. Muddy Waters just rolled in the grave. (also: good call by Stray)

Fine, fine. You get design credit, I get implementation credit.

You should have written up the nipple bar in the design docs. We'll put it on the HAM bar, because a nipple is like HAM on your chest.

[Sky]

mmm....ham chest....

[Signe]

[Nonentity]

Don't mess with me. I know that HAM comes from pigs. Or Star Wars Galaxies.

Is that a Galaxy bunny?

[Signe]

It's a little hare on your chest.   

[Nonentity]

...

Get out.

You're not allowed to participate in the 12 bar discussion anymore.

[Ironwood]

It's a little hare on your chest.   

Oh, Jesus.

[Raph]

Whee. This thread is funny.

[geldonyetich]

Sorry, I've been away too long.  Soon I shall take offense to a minor thing and suck all the fun out of the thread like a ham vampire's fanged nipple.

All games should have a candy bar.

Also, the implementation model still has more terrain showing than healer gets to see during a raid.

[Slyfeind]

Holy crap that game looks AWESOME! If we've gleaned anything from this discussion, it's that jazz is fueled by tiberium.

[El Gallo]

pure awesome

Voted 5, manbabies, etc.

[Raph]

Actually, that game looks just about exactly like a high level raider's HUD in WoW.

[Venkman]

Just in case anyone thought Raph was just being sarcastic  :-D