Thankyou for giving me even less reason to pay attention to them I find myself hardly looking at them now. They really do suck. Others may like them, I think they're awful, May as well just remove them altogether at this rate.
Apparently pointing-out the bleeding obvious is a 'personal attack'.
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With the old system I was looking for 6 digits vs 5 digits.
WIth this system I have to spot M vs K, so I have to read a character on the end of the string.
If it's in the thousands and 2 decimal places then it uses more space. 46123 becomes 46.12K which is an extra character, so it adds clutter.
Is it always 2 decimal places? If it varies, then that makes it harder again to parse the last character of a variable length string when you start reading it from the left.
And it uses the wrong letter for kilo, it should be lower case k.
Tonight I will look to see if there is a setting to switch it back to the old way. If there isn't, then my feedback would be to please make it configurable.
I'd like to put it to the Devs how they can genuinely believe that removing vital information and making it less easy to understand is in any way progressive in the game’s life or an improvement to the player experience.
Let’s be clear… the game was originally designed in an extremely elegant and intelligent way, it was so well made and so well-designed that it has been attracting and retaining players for 10 years which says a lot about the way it was put together, and despite the efforts to ‘rework’ it and delete bits of it, we still have the basic skeleton there which was given to us at the start. We were given all sorts of information at our fingertips which we need in order to have a quality game experience and people have always appreciated that.
The people who originally created and designed this system, including the damage floater displays, did not do this as a mistake, they were intelligent and thoughtful and skillful and experts, and did an amazing job at creating something extraordinary which works perfectly from a players perspective. They put a lot of care and thought and expertise into it and everything made perfect sense down to the smallest detail and it worked great. It’s often said that the combat system design (which includes floater displays) is one of the best in gaming. So I fail to understand why it is now being torn apart and modified. Things were put where they were throughout the game for very specific reasons, the designers did it with thought and skill, but now the people in charge apparently think they know better. (Do they? Why do they? Can we have some feedback on why it was changed?) The players came to rely on these aspects as part of their daily experience which lasted in many cases years for them, myself included, so why are they now being altered? Is it genuinely being done to improve the quality of life for the players and if so, how is it doing that? Why is it so hard to give an answer?
I have asked repeatedly in the assigned forum section I was pointed to by Percemer for some kind of reasoning as to why we have less information on our damage floaters now than we did before, just some basic explanation on why it’s been changed, if they are rounded-up or down, and also if the exact numbers are still going to be accessible for those who use ACT etc, but no-one has bothered to directly reply to my question. It shows a decided lack of interest and more importantly respect. It has always been an issue for years that there was little or no communication between the company and the players, as far as I'm aware it's always been the #1 issue which upsets players and makes them angry. Is it ever going to change?
And this is just from memory, I can keep going if needed.... Not familiar with anyone who really relies on those floaters.
QoL improvement by reducing visual noise.
ACT uses the log, not related to visual things at all.
PS there were good things in the old design, some things became outdated, some were broken with too many reworks.
So it's not all horror, but it's definitely not some timeless genius and best thing since sliced bread and can't be improved upon
This thread is because it went live in that state... but at least now it is live we can explore it in its released state, and provide feedback here, in the player feedback forum.
"Why it's vital? Whoever needs to know exactly uses the logs anyway. "
Then why have floaters there in the first place? Who wants to trawl through meters of tiny text in chat logs after a fight for half and hour and try to work out how much damage was done when they only need to look at the floaters at the time and use their brain fast at the time it's happening. If you're trawling through logs to find out what's going on you're a number-cruncher and an egg-head and it's not really connected to normal gameplay for most people. The floaters are there for a reason, and that reason is to have a fast and ACCURATE representation of what is going on at any given moment right in front of you, and now that purpose has been diminished.
"Elegant, Intelligent, skillful, thoughtful and masterful, that it needed updates and reworks every 3 months to not make players suicidal. Lets remind ourselves about the original refinement system, broken heroic encounters times, negative AH prices, loot rolls, original queue system where everyone timed the queue since there were no other option, no shared inventory, disappearing mails, entire professions system that was scraped and removed, most of the player skills worked in "surprising fashion" with more exceptions than any logic - like infinite looped buffs, super self buffed - self interacting DoTs, bosses that can be pushed, dungeons that can be just skipped to finish, it was so bad that players had to organize in custom channels just to find non-exploiting groups. Queues were so broken one could finish ToS in couple of minutes, and that's what everyone did. Scaling was "interesting", Progression died in mod4-5, when most players left the game and need the "dreadful" mod6 rework which overshot and made another part of the players to leave...
And this is just from memory, I can keep going if needed.... "
I was talking about the graphical design connected to the floaters and similar things, please don't gaslight and make it all about so many other aspects of the game like queuing, Auction House, scaling and whatever else etc. This thread is about a specific visual graphical thing and the way the game is designed visually to aid players while they play and give them the info they need at a glance, not all that other stuff.
"Not familiar with anyone who really relies on those floaters.
QoL improvement by reducing visual noise. "
So you're obviously insulated in your own 'elite' bubble and don't know how most people play the game or why those floaters were put there in the first place.
And yes, the stupid 'visual noise' argument is responsible for continually deleting important info we had and now lost, including food items shown in the buff bar (which everyone wants back) and the master boons, all dumbing-down the game and giving us less of a quality experience than we had to start with, but they're now considering putting the master boons back again, it seems to depend on who is working there at the time as to what 'visual noise' is and what they think should be taken out, put back, taken out, put back.
"ACT uses the log, not related to visual things at all. "
Not everyone uses ACT, I'm one of them, so not everyone understands how it works. This is why we were asking the question.
"PS there were good things in the old design, some things became outdated, some were broken with too many reworks.
So it's not all horror, but it's definitely not some timeless genius and best thing since sliced bread and can't be improved upon"
Many people do in fact think it was created in an extremely genius way and is in fact timeless, born-out by the way it has lasted so long. And many people are massive fans of the original Devs and the work they did in creating and designing this amazing game in such a unique manner. So you're welcome to your opinion, but we will never be agreeing on that.
The most anyone has pushed back is requesting SI abbreviations.
I'm not sure what type of delusional that is, but you want to go ad-hominem, cool. First show me where I've requested something to be dumbed down. Or whispered to some Dev, or "warmed my way into some special position" or anything.
Come on, you have an angry wall of text of delusions and "wisdom" here. It's like reading an adult tantrum but with less sense or intelligence. I must be responsible for global warming, chem-trails, and part of the illuminati that control the world. BTW I need a new human suit, it's not easy for us lizard people.
So, show me at least one post regarding the last 6 mods, except that one about the floaters where I've suggested how to keep all the digits... by splitting the large component and fade it away faster. (Closer to how it works before the current changes) 1. The floaters there to make the player think they do something. They are for engagement. Don't believe me? There is a stream where the previous Executive producer talks about it. Search for it.
2. Again talking about me? Lets make it clear then, when there are a lot of hits, the floaters are not accurate to begin with. The damage collapses and they show a sum of different hits, and do not differentiate correct CA, Crit, Deflect, and so on. Lets think about this a moment, think a moment more. re-read the accurate part, and now think a bit more. Oh so you were talking about the great design that every other game had? Like guild wars, WoW, and so on..
Or you talk about the specific skillful, masterful, genius design that wouldn't let you know if a hit was both critical and had CA because it would show only one icon at a time.
The one that didn't have a deflect icon until recently,
Or the awesome design that covers the screen so much you can't see telegraphs in trials, and people recommended to remove them to learn the mechanics more easily.
So how it gave the accurate info at a glance if it's missing half the hit states, sums up damage numbers of multiple hits, covers the screen unless you zoomed out, and so unique that no other game had them... yeah... sure... You know, that person part of your post getting old fast. Are you representing the entire player base? Just so I know.
Or you are claiming that the everyone playing like you do?
btw, I was accurate in what I've wrote floaters are to get a rough idea what happens, you want accurate use the logs.
Floaters never were accurate enough. Now who is gaslighting? Show me were I've posted anything about removing information... go on... or dumbing down..
You asked why, that's the resoning.. you want to complain, I'm not the address... But when you do complain and write nonsense about a half broken system as:
"did not do this as a mistake, they were intelligent and thoughtful and skillful and experts, and did an amazing job at creating something extraordinary which works perfectly from a players perspective. They put a lot of care and thought and expertise into it and everything made perfect sense down to the smallest detail and it worked great"
Then well.... don't be surprised when people doubt your judgment.. And you got an answer, and you complain that you got one?
So who is gaslighting now again? Read my paragraph about the original game.
Those pink nostalgia glasses are so fun, until someone opened a mod3 pirate server, and people got a hard reminder that the game wasn't all roses and sunshine at mod3.
btw, since when are you playing the game? I couldn't not notice the hashtags in your account and the forum date...
But it doesn't provide any explanation on what was wrong with it for 10 years and why anyone had an issue with it, ie; what exactly was the issue, enough that it warranted changing. So there is really no justification given other than they apparently wanted to get their fingers into it and tweak it for the sake of it.
Your tone is disgusting.
When the text floaters are coming up so rapidly, in very specific situations, removing a couple of digits and replacing them with a k or m is not going to change the fact they are all overlaying each other. That would require a different approach in placement or size or translucency, number length would not make one bit of difference so this change will not address that anyway. They will still display in the same way when they come up so fast all on top of each other. There was already an option to turn them on and off in settings anyway if someone is so overwhelmed by seeing too many numbers.
But I disagree they don't need to explain to players, they are not kings and queens sitting in a golden turret overlooking the dirty peasants and throwing them crumbs when they feel like it, they work for the players and it's the players who provide the reason for existence of the game and company and it's always been that way. They change something which has been in the game for a decade and people are used to, they should be explaining exactly why they're doing it.
"btw, I was accurate in what I've wrote floaters are to get a rough idea what happens, you want accurate use the logs"
Not that it should matter, but seeing you're trying to point-score by insinuating I am so new I can't possibly know wtf I'm talking about, I've been playing since Mod 2, before Icewind Dale was released. So the same year the game came out brand new. I no longer use my original account which obviously includes the forum account attached to it.
"The pot calling the kettle black"
Yes. Yes it is my opinion. We all have them, just like that thing you sit on. We all have them. And mine is no less valid than yours. Which is why I am putting it in the forum here. In the feedback section. You know, where people give feedback.
2. You tested in one hit, and waited... now do a multiple with a dot, fast, and tell me if the floaters combine multiple damage into one floater or not....