Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

Tooltips

    • 185 posts
    October 14, 2019 3:16 PM PDT

    In looking at some of the streams, when a spell or ability is scrolled over im seeing the tooltips give mostly general infomation about what the ability does.

    Such as, "You slam into an opponent dealing physical damage", or "a high amout of threat" etc. Rather then giving specific numbers so you can judge for yourself just how/if you want to use this ability.

    I don't know if its just the stage of development and this information will become more complete as the game progresses, or if this is the philisophy of the developers (have seen it in other games) where they just don't feel the need to give the players that kind of depth of information.

    Really hoping its the former.

    • 521 posts
    October 14, 2019 9:21 PM PDT

    Personally I feel those descriptions need to remain ambigious, in fact I hope the damage numbers were seeing on screen during the live steams is just for testing purposes, else you feed the meta gamers and kill immersion.

    • 346 posts
    October 14, 2019 10:16 PM PDT

    Maybe, maybe not. I can say however that values are likely to be completely different as well as entire functionality may be altered through the many iterations of Alpha and Beta as we approach to the live product. Even in some cases, abilities will be removed. 

    • 2756 posts
    October 15, 2019 1:01 AM PDT

    There are two sides to this.

    On one, for immersion and for mystery (excitement) there should not be numbers.  Numbers turn it into rule-playing, not role-playing.  A game, not a world.  Yes, it is a game, but it should seem like a world as much as is possible.

    But also for immersion, players should see what their characters would know about their own trained skills, such as what attributes they are impacted by and some idea of how much.  The tooltips I've seen seem good in that regard.  They give info on what stats effect the skill.

    I've just been playing Titan Quest and you see a lot of technical info but ironically often have no clue about how things work in the game.  You can end up in the awful situation of choosing stat progression that after many days and multiple levels it turns out your character's skills are not impacted by.

    One example is a class that, at high level, can transmute their physical damage into elemental damage.  Physical damage is effected by strength and elemental damage by intelligence.  So, all the strength you had been putting into your character for 30 levels is suddenly pointless and wasted *or* you cannot make use of one of the best high level abilities available to the class.

    Pantheon needs to make clear how things work in enough detail to allow players to make meaningful informed choices where their character would know them, but it needs to keep details hidden that the character wouldn't know and so as not to give the player knowledge they don't need for immersion's sake.  The detail it gives should be in an immersive and general manner, like during skill training and tooltips should reflect what your character knows, not a load of technical game mechanics, but should be complete enough to be meaningful.

    What I would like to see: -

    Holy Strike
    You channel holy power through your main weapon.
    Does Main Weapon +100% Holy damage +25% Physical Crushing damage.
    Resisted by: Holy, Magic, Physical, Crushing.
    Prime attribute: Wisdom. Secondary: Strength.

    Your character's class training would tell you about what "Holy" means, like Holy damage is highly likely to be resisted by Holy creatures, is highly likely to effect Unholy creatures and does double damage to Undead.

    Because your character is likely to be able to tell when it is resisted or does extra damage, you should see that feedback in the UI: -

    Normal UI: "You Strike the Pious Avenger with Holy Power!"

    Combat Log: "You hit the Pious Avenger with your longsword for 84 Slashing damage"
    "Your Slash hurts the Pious Avenger"
    "Your Holy Strike blast has no effect on the Pious Avenger"
    "Your Holy Strike crushes the Pious Avenger"

    So you are seeing, in the combat log when you check after the fight, that the Pious Avenger is probably a Holy Creature and is managed to completely resist the Holy effect (though maybe it got through occasionally?), but the crushing effect of the Holy Strike did work and the normal longsword slash element worked fine.

    "You Strike the Zombie with Holy Power!"

    "You hit the Zombie with your longsword for 84 Slashing damage"
    "Your Slash hurts the Zombie"
    "Your Holy Strike devastates the Zombie"
    "Your Holy Strike crushes the Zombie"

    So you see that everything worked and the Holy part was 'devastating' ie. double damage.

    "You Strike the Skeleton with Holy Power!"

    "You hit the Skeleton with your longsword for 84 Slashing damage"
    "The Skeleton is somewhat uneffected by the Slash"
    "Your Holy Strike devastates the Skeleton"
    "Your Holy Strike badly Crushes the Skeleton"

    In this example, the Skeleton is only taking 50% damage from a slash attack, the boney thing.  The Holy aspect does double damage.  The Crushing aspect does double damage (brittle bones). 

    "You Strike the Golem with Holy Power!"

    "You hit the Golem with your longsword for 84 Slashing damage"
    "Your Slash hurts the Golem"
    "Your Holy Strike blasts the Golem"
    "Your Holy Strike crush is absorbed by the Golem"

    The Orc takes normal Holy damage (not undead), but absorbs the additional physical crushing effect of the Holy Strike (it starts effecting it later in the fight. Turns out Golems can absorb a certain amount of Crushing damage before it takes effect).

    Some numbers are needed to quantify things in a meaningful way.  Your character would know that one sword is slightly better than another and the game tells you that by giving them a potential damage number.  Your character would know, when he makes an attack, how well he landed a blow and with what weapon, so it's fine the game gives an actual damage number.

    The character would know from the reaction of the monster that it wasn't as badly effected as it should have been - whether it dodged, blocked, mitigated, absorbed or whatever - but not exactly how much.  In some stuations he may not know at all and will be confused and bemused by the monster not dying.

    Maybe familiarisation or mastery or observation or some skill would give the character more info, but it shouldn't be just squirted into a combat log to be analysed by a third party tool and remove all immersion, mystery and challenge.

    I don't doubt we will see more detail and numbers than I suggest. I just hope it reflects only what the character would have a good chance of knowing and isn't enough to support third-party parsing/analysis tools and all the immersion/mystery/challenge removal that comes with that.


    This post was edited by disposalist at October 15, 2019 1:02 AM PDT
    • 520 posts
    October 15, 2019 2:50 AM PDT

    I'd assume that lack of values is caused by the games early stage, ut i hope there will be numeric values available. I get that some players don't like it - but usually there is possibility in options to show/hide them. There is large percentage of players thet just love these numbers. Besides - it's quite important tool for any dps class (especially for one that deal diffrent kinds of dmg - like wizard or summoner). It's like preventing tanks from checking def/mdef/hp values on the equipment.

    • 1281 posts
    October 15, 2019 12:27 PM PDT

    My feeling is this: EQ gave you to little information about spells and abilities. Vanguard gave you too much. Vanguard almost encouraged min/maxing.


    This post was edited by bigdogchris at October 15, 2019 12:27 PM PDT
    • 416 posts
    October 15, 2019 12:59 PM PDT

    disposalist said:

    There are two sides to this.

    On one, for immersion and for mystery (excitement) there should not be numbers.  Numbers turn it into rule-playing, not role-playing.  A game, not a world.  Yes, it is a game, but it should seem like a world as much as is possible.

    But also for immersion, players should see what their characters would know about their own trained skills, such as what attributes they are impacted by and some idea of how much.  The tooltips I've seen seem good in that regard.  They give info on what stats effect the skill.

    I've just been playing Titan Quest and you see a lot of technical info but ironically often have no clue about how things work in the game.  You can end up in the awful situation of choosing stat progression that after many days and multiple levels it turns out your character's skills are not impacted by.

    One example is a class that, at high level, can transmute their physical damage into elemental damage.  Physical damage is effected by strength and elemental damage by intelligence.  So, all the strength you had been putting into your character for 30 levels is suddenly pointless and wasted *or* you cannot make use of one of the best high level abilities available to the class.

    Pantheon needs to make clear how things work in enough detail to allow players to make meaningful informed choices where their character would know them, but it needs to keep details hidden that the character wouldn't know and so as not to give the player knowledge they don't need for immersion's sake.  The detail it gives should be in an immersive and general manner, like during skill training and tooltips should reflect what your character knows, not a load of technical game mechanics, but should be complete enough to be meaningful.

    What I would like to see: -

    Holy Strike
    You channel holy power through your main weapon.
    Does Main Weapon +100% Holy damage +25% Physical Crushing damage.
    Resisted by: Holy, Magic, Physical, Crushing.
    Prime attribute: Wisdom. Secondary: Strength.

    Your character's class training would tell you about what "Holy" means, like Holy damage is highly likely to be resisted by Holy creatures, is highly likely to effect Unholy creatures and does double damage to Undead.

    Because your character is likely to be able to tell when it is resisted or does extra damage, you should see that feedback in the UI: -

    Normal UI: "You Strike the Pious Avenger with Holy Power!"

    Combat Log: "You hit the Pious Avenger with your longsword for 84 Slashing damage"
    "Your Slash hurts the Pious Avenger"
    "Your Holy Strike blast has no effect on the Pious Avenger"
    "Your Holy Strike crushes the Pious Avenger"

    So you are seeing, in the combat log when you check after the fight, that the Pious Avenger is probably a Holy Creature and is managed to completely resist the Holy effect (though maybe it got through occasionally?), but the crushing effect of the Holy Strike did work and the normal longsword slash element worked fine.

    "You Strike the Zombie with Holy Power!"

    "You hit the Zombie with your longsword for 84 Slashing damage"
    "Your Slash hurts the Zombie"
    "Your Holy Strike devastates the Zombie"
    "Your Holy Strike crushes the Zombie"

    So you see that everything worked and the Holy part was 'devastating' ie. double damage.

    "You Strike the Skeleton with Holy Power!"

    "You hit the Skeleton with your longsword for 84 Slashing damage"
    "The Skeleton is somewhat uneffected by the Slash"
    "Your Holy Strike devastates the Skeleton"
    "Your Holy Strike badly Crushes the Skeleton"

    In this example, the Skeleton is only taking 50% damage from a slash attack, the boney thing.  The Holy aspect does double damage.  The Crushing aspect does double damage (brittle bones). 

    "You Strike the Golem with Holy Power!"

    "You hit the Golem with your longsword for 84 Slashing damage"
    "Your Slash hurts the Golem"
    "Your Holy Strike blasts the Golem"
    "Your Holy Strike crush is absorbed by the Golem"

    The Orc takes normal Holy damage (not undead), but absorbs the additional physical crushing effect of the Holy Strike (it starts effecting it later in the fight. Turns out Golems can absorb a certain amount of Crushing damage before it takes effect).

    Some numbers are needed to quantify things in a meaningful way.  Your character would know that one sword is slightly better than another and the game tells you that by giving them a potential damage number.  Your character would know, when he makes an attack, how well he landed a blow and with what weapon, so it's fine the game gives an actual damage number.

    The character would know from the reaction of the monster that it wasn't as badly effected as it should have been - whether it dodged, blocked, mitigated, absorbed or whatever - but not exactly how much.  In some stuations he may not know at all and will be confused and bemused by the monster not dying.

    Maybe familiarisation or mastery or observation or some skill would give the character more info, but it shouldn't be just squirted into a combat log to be analysed by a third party tool and remove all immersion, mystery and challenge.

    I don't doubt we will see more detail and numbers than I suggest. I just hope it reflects only what the character would have a good chance of knowing and isn't enough to support third-party parsing/analysis tools and all the immersion/mystery/challenge removal that comes with that.

    I'm hoping to see information relayed in this fashion as well.

    • 2752 posts
    October 15, 2019 3:46 PM PDT

    HemlockReaper said:

    Personally I feel those descriptions need to remain ambigious, in fact I hope the damage numbers were seeing on screen during the live steams is just for testing purposes, else you feed the meta gamers and kill immersion.

    Obfuscating the math/mechanics of combat won't stop the min/max efforts, just ever so slightly slow it down while people break it down. What it really does is make things for the layperson an unintelligble mess to figure out without resorting to looking online for some sort of guidance. 

     

    Show me the numbers. Show me the damage/healing and ability percentages/durations/cooldowns along with stat influences (not threat however). 

    • 1618 posts
    October 15, 2019 3:55 PM PDT

    Iksar said:

    HemlockReaper said:

    Personally I feel those descriptions need to remain ambigious, in fact I hope the damage numbers were seeing on screen during the live steams is just for testing purposes, else you feed the meta gamers and kill immersion.

    Obfuscating the math/mechanics of combat won't stop the min/max efforts, just ever so slightly slow it down while people break it down. What it really does is make things for the layperson an unintelligble mess to figure out without resorting to looking online for some sort of guidance. 

     

    Show me the numbers. Show me the damage/healing and ability percentages/durations/cooldowns along with stat influences (not threat however). 

    I never understand why threat is people's holy grail. You want to see all the numbers, except threat. That seems illogical and arbitrary to me. 

    But, many people seem to take that view.

    • 1714 posts
    October 15, 2019 6:26 PM PDT

    There's no reason to not know the base damage, cost, cast/activation time, refresh time of abilities. It's pretty annoying to look at a tooltip and see "strikes your enemy with a blast of fire". Thanks, the spell is called fireball. EQ had tooltips that said crap like "strikes several creatures near your target". Several? Seriously? It's not going to break immersion or lead to some power gaming meta to know that the spell can hit 5 mobs. 

    • 724 posts
    October 15, 2019 11:36 PM PDT

    Just playing FF14 again, I think that game has a pretty good approach to tooltips. They do not show you exact damage (or healing) numbers, instead they have a "potency" attribute. The potency modified by your stats determines how strong the ability hits. This way, there's not too much (or worse, inaccurate) info shown in the tooltips, but you can still gauge and compare the potential strength of each ability.

    • 216 posts
    October 16, 2019 2:25 AM PDT

    I'd like to have detailed tooltips especially with how the stats are meant to effect different functions of abilities in pantheon.


    Fire ball
    Cast a ball of fire at your offensive target.
    Cast time: 2 seconds
    Cost: 13 mana
    Deals: 16-18 fire damage

    Modifying stats: INT 20%, STA 10%
    20% of total INT is added as minimum and maximum fire damage.
    10% of total STA reduces mana cost


    So if I had 20 INT and 10 STA  the tooltip would update to the following.

    Fire ball
    Cast a ball of fire at your offensive target.
    Cast time: 2 seconds
    Cost: 12 mana
    Deals: 20-22 fire damage

    Modifying stats: INT 20%, STA 10%
    20% of total INT is added as minimum and maximum fire damage.
    10% of total STA reduces mana cost

     

    I don't see the problem with being transparent with your tooltips, it allows the casual and hardcore players alike to make informed decisions without having to go looking for information else where.
    And if we are going to have complex modifiers attached to many skills players should know what stats are doing what to the ability in question.

    • 368 posts
    October 16, 2019 7:45 AM PDT

    I would prefer raw stats, damage, effect numbers are obfuscated as much as possible. If its there, I am going to spend a lot of time concerning myself with it. If it is not there, I will spend alot more time focusing on gameplay and not stat crunching.

    • 1399 posts
    October 16, 2019 7:53 AM PDT

    I think VR will need to find a middle ground between what they have now, and what some of you are asking (and I'm confident they will what is there now is just to get things rolling). Too much of what some of you are asking will just be overwhelming to the average player that don't really care if it's going to hit 3 or 5 mobs, they just want to know if it's single mob or not. They don't care how much the INT modifer is, just that INT will boost it

    The greater majority of players are not min/maxers, they are silent lurkers hanging in the background not on these sites, not putting in an opinion, and they are going to be overwhelmed by a bunch of numbers so they will ignore all of it. Personally i will wait for the Elitist Jerks to come up with the numbers and use those. What I'm speaking of here is the likes of my wife, my daughter, my retired mother in law, my three housewife friends. All that love the games, all that would take one look at those numbers and gasp "I'm not reading all that gibberish!!!"

    Now if Pantheon is going to be made with only the Elitist in mind, then yes, by all means clutter the crap out of it.


    This post was edited by Zorkon at October 16, 2019 7:54 AM PDT
    • 2419 posts
    October 16, 2019 8:25 AM PDT

    Everything in this game runs off numbers.  To say that those numbers should be hidden from the players does a huge disservice to those players. Some like to see the numbers.  I demand that I see all the numbers because, for one thing, it keeps the developers honest. I cannot count the number of times that players found, through analysis of these numbers, that skills were underpowered, overpowered or otherwise unbalanced, that abilities were broken or things just did not do what they were supposed to do. 

    If you want to play the game wholly ignorant of the numbers, fine, be that luddite if you want, but do not dictate to me that how I want the information of this game presented to me is somehow wrong.  Like everything else, put in a toggle. Don't want to see numbers?  Flip the toggle and be blissfully unaware that your gear is garbage, that your spells aren't the damage they should, that bonuses are applied properly.

    • 368 posts
    October 16, 2019 8:51 AM PDT

    Vandraad said:

    Everything in this game runs off numbers.  To say that those numbers should be hidden from the players does a huge disservice to those players. Some like to see the numbers.  I demand that I see all the numbers because, for one thing, it keeps the developers honest. I cannot count the number of times that players found, through analysis of these numbers, that skills were underpowered, overpowered or otherwise unbalanced, that abilities were broken or things just did not do what they were supposed to do. 

    If you want to play the game wholly ignorant of the numbers, fine, be that luddite if you want, but do not dictate to me that how I want the information of this game presented to me is somehow wrong.  Like everything else, put in a toggle. Don't want to see numbers?  Flip the toggle and be blissfully unaware that your gear is garbage, that your spells aren't the damage they should, that bonuses are applied properly.

    I've got to be honest, this type of attitude right here is why MMO's are what they are today. Making demands, literally, that the game be dumbed down, demystified and cater to min/maxers who are more concerned with each others epeen measurements than with engaging gameplay. We might as well throw a glowing exclamation above everything that is "worthwhile" in the game while we're at it just to ensure that people are discouraged from taking non efficient gaming paths.

     

     

    • 1428 posts
    October 16, 2019 8:59 AM PDT

    there's pros and cons to having and not having detailed tooltips.  most of the pros have been discussed with having details.

    playing devils advocate here i'd like to express pros for not having tooltips if i was a developer:

    1.  propriety information that other game developers or publishers want to take.(this is really only a thing in eastern mmos as there aren't many copyright laws.  i think it's plagiarism in a nutshell)

    2.  creates an experimental environment for players. (meaning number crunching, min maxing, gear optimization is ambigous)  players won't harass other players as much for having a strange build.

    3.  class balancing can be done without pressure from players whether class is under or overpowered.(this one is important.  the wow community is a good reason for this point.  they end up overbuffing classes because devs were pressured into it when the numbers show otherwise.  a great example is the hunter class.  it use to be a high skill class with aa reset with ability cast making a huge difference in dps.-wow classic up to wotlk.  another term would be animation canceling.)  

    i personally don't play with numbers popping all over my screen.  it's uneccessary information that distracts me from pvp.  simple things like did the target resist/partial resist or immune my cc/damage is something i would like.  to be clear, i'm okay with either or an option to choose.

    for communication purposes- playing devils advocate here.


    This post was edited by NoJuiceViscosity at October 16, 2019 9:01 AM PDT
    • 2419 posts
    October 16, 2019 9:10 AM PDT

    arazons said:

    I've got to be honest, this type of attitude right here is why MMO's are what they are today. Making demands, literally, that the game be dumbed down, demystified and cater to min/maxers who are more concerned with each others epeen measurements than with engaging gameplay. We might as well throw a glowing exclamation above everything that is "worthwhile" in the game while we're at it just to ensure that people are discouraged from taking non efficient gaming paths.

    How is the dissemination of actual numbers 'dumbing down' the game?  Giving the playerbase absolutely nothing but vague word salad dumbs things down.  Oh, you don't need to worry your pretty little head about numbers, maths and equations..just go out and be happy!  Oh, and you conveniently missed the part where I said to put in a toggle so that those who want to see everything can see it and those who do not, won't.

    • 368 posts
    October 16, 2019 9:17 AM PDT

    Oh no, I saw it but I felt after your first paragraph that it didnt really matter at that point. Your attitude regarding players who would choose not to view the numbers as inferior players sporting garbage put me off a bit. What makes your "demands" more valid than someone who opposes your view points "demands"?

    You just prove my point regarding elitist min/maxing.

    I get that it could be a toggle and I would actually be fine with that. 

    We can agree to disagree here. 


    This post was edited by arazons at October 16, 2019 9:19 AM PDT
    • 1428 posts
    October 16, 2019 9:55 AM PDT

    elitist min/maxers aren't such a bad thing XD  they tend to be that way with conversations too.  there's good valid thought albeit direct and abrasive.

    let the min maxers do the math so i can concentrate on pvping >=D

  • October 16, 2019 9:55 AM PDT
    Language is so much more fun and immersive than some number. "You Barely scratch Aradune's zombie" vs "you EVISCERATED Aradune's ghost!!!" Is much better than some helium filled rainbow colored number.
    • 368 posts
    October 16, 2019 10:02 AM PDT

    stellarmind said:

    elitist min/maxers aren't such a bad thing XD  they tend to be that way with conversations too.  there's good valid thought albeit direct and abrasive.

    let the min maxers do the math so i can concentrate on pvping >=D

     

    Yea, I have nothing really against min/maxing. Ive done it before over the years in various MMO's. I was just hoping Pantheon would be less conducive to it though by not catering to the folks that sit there and stat crunch the entire time and demand this or that.

    • 1428 posts
    October 16, 2019 10:05 AM PDT

    FlushingToiletScreamingShower said: Language is so much more fun and immersive than some number. "You Barely scratch Aradune's zombie" vs "you EVISCERATED Aradune's ghost!!!" Is much better than some helium filled rainbow colored number.

    it's a personal flavour.  min/maxers find numbers fun O.o  some people like chocolate chip mint.  others love strawberry banana sundae ^.^

    essentially if you're going to help me kill another pvper, by all means give me the information :D

    • 1428 posts
    October 16, 2019 10:30 AM PDT

    arazons said:

     Yea, I have nothing really against min/maxing. Ive done it before over the years in various MMO's. I was just hoping Pantheon would be less conducive to it though by not catering to the folks that sit there and stat crunch the entire time and demand this or that.

    i think of it like this:  having diverse points of views is overall healthy for the community of the game.  rofl not to get political, but every voice matters(attempting not to tear up).  anyways, listening and understanding is more palatable than agree to disagree(essentially the same meaning).  guess that phrase has left a pretty sour taste in my mind, but i get what you are saying.  sometimes i wish there were better ways to communicate other than language, but that might have costly drawbacks.

     

    demands are fine if the intention is fine.

    there really isn't any ill will from vandraad i think.  probably just wants to make sure the devs are properly balancing the numbers.  as a side note he did say to protect the players and keep devs honest*


    This post was edited by NoJuiceViscosity at October 16, 2019 10:33 AM PDT
    • 1618 posts
    October 16, 2019 11:06 AM PDT

    People need to understand that there are several playstyles. None are right or wrong in general. Some are just wrong/right for a specific individual.

    Toggles work best in enabling each playstyle to do their way.

    Toggle details on gives min/makers happiness.

    Toggle details off gives others the immersion they want.

    What needs to stop is each of the sides demonizing each other. There is no reason the game can't support other methods, allowing each player to decide how they want to play.

    If you don't like min/maxers, simply don't play with them. You don't like more relaxed folk, don't play with them. The community will be large enough that you can ofhers to play with that match your style.

    The interface can and should be made to support many play styles.


    This post was edited by Beefcake at October 16, 2019 11:06 AM PDT