A Land Far Away

This might not be possible, for being a low-level thing on the engine, but ...

I think it would be nice if the party portraits on the right hand edge of the screen didn't give hit point numbers on mouseover. Just that red bar, giving already a better-than-ICly-would idea of percentages, would be good. Or giving percentages (negatives being 0%) or the verbal "barely injured" instead of exact hp, if that's technically easier than removing the mouseover.

This would remove the obvious metagaming where hp tells you the levels of your party members. More importantly if bleeding characters didn't broadcast the number of negatives they are at, you wouldn't know how many turns there's left till your buddy dies. This would muchly reduce meta caused by the bleeding system, whereby you now know how much time you have to save your friend, and you also know the AI will be OoCly stupid and ignore your friend in the meantime. So you can take your sweet time. This is certainly not the game as intended.

silly idea, in a real time environment it can be hugely important for the healers to know how beaten up you are, and most any pnp session the players know the status of hp per party member too.

it certainly will not add anything to the RP.

I view the HP display as a simulation and simplification of the situational awareness that a character would actually have of their surroundings, but for which we don't have a better way to represent to the player.

Blindhamsterman wrote: it certainly will not add anything to the RP.

Leaving your party member to bleed in the middle of hostiles for 5 turns, since he fell only at -2hp, is sorta bad RP.

((edited to remove non-constructive argumentation.))

Leaving your party member to bleed in the middle of hostiles for 5 turns, since he fell only at -2hp, is sorta bad RP.

I agree, but thats a different issue. in the groups ive played with, when someone goes down another party member goes straight to healing.

Blindhamsterman wrote:

Leaving your party member to bleed in the middle of hostiles for 5 turns, since he fell only at -2hp, is sorta bad RP.

I agree, but thats a different issue. in the groups ive played with, when someone goes down another party member goes straight to healing.

Well, good for you. But there's no need to make it that much easier to avoid metagaming by not giving the information that even the best of us finds very hard to resist using. And this is precisely the main issue that got me to think of this.

Has metagaming of "oh well I probably have 18-24 seconds left to help buddy" ever been reliably observed in the field? Pathing through a bunch of AoO'ing monsters can eat that time pretty quickly is my personal experience, even if initiating a healing type activity the second you notice someone is downed.

Leaving someone to bleed is also sometimes an IC choice... not one I've observed in my NWN2 playing stint, but "dragging feet... translating to a mountain of loot" if playing with someone that maybe there's a secret (hopefully IC) grudge against, that could happen too.

Huh. I didnt even know that you can see how low someone is...

there are merith to taking down the numbers in the bar however the only conceren is this. we dont pause to allow emoting whats your phisical condision.
and though our toon could convy some info with words we lack (to some degree)
the ability to type and kill stuff at the same time.
its a reas time game, silly things like how much hp a member of the party has could get you killed just cause you had no chance to emote...
*screams to the top of his lungs as the greataxe nearly cuts him in half, stumbles to a knee holding his shield up as he crys* Help me!
I usualy assume things of that nature would have happend but instead its just read
3/78. and thats it. i'd say out of all the meta concerens that one is the least of our worries in a real time game.

Brokenbone wrote: Leaving someone to bleed is also sometimes an IC choice...

Yes, doubly so if on the balance is risking your own neck charging across the battlefield to heal, quite possibly taking AoOs for it.

The point is, when you see your companion fall, whether you take the risk or not depends on whether it's -1hp or -6hp. I know I cannot help this info affecting my trigger finger in the hectic RT combat. But it is obvious metagaming. I've seen this realibly enough at Exodus, and have observed it at alfa as well. Really there's no harm removing the meta information of exact hitpoints, especially when they are negative - if it's technically easily done. Is there?

That red bar suddenly draining to empty, and portrait saying "dying", is obviously better than "-2/55" for

*screams to the top of his lungs as the greataxe nearly cuts him in half, stumbles to a knee holding his shield up as he crys* Help me!

Do we have any reliable reports of this sort of metagaming happening in game?

It's a lot of development to undertake on a theory, and would be something that would be difficult to produce-- there's a lot of situational awareness to provide at a glance here, and we need any interface we produce to be something that can be managed under high levels of stress quickly. Unless the described metagaming was too widespread to handle with counseling and/or discipline, it probably won't be very high priority.

again.. maybe its metagaming... but maybe a person can look at someone and see if the neck is slit and there is not time and action must be taken now
or if its a blow to the head that would bleed out slowly. (or whatever)
You can't really tell for certain that you can't know how close a person is to dying.
But... as far as im concerened... never even knew its possible to see it so...
what do I know.

Zelknolf wrote:Do we have any reliable reports of this sort of metagaming happening in game?

There's no sure way to tell what info a player bases game choices on, except first hand accounts. So only thing I'm sure of is I've used it in the past. And I've witness a few accounts as DM that to the external observer sure looked like it. Anyways, it's not a life-or-death matter (har! ). I was thinking more along the lines of "if this is an easy improvement to make happen, why not."

Assessing wounds beyond "he's unconscious and looks to be bleeding to death soon" is an action slow enough to not fairly do in combat, I'd say. (Heal check)

The SRD seems to provide knowledge of a creatures state as dying v. dead as usually (exceptions are listed-- it's a DC 15 check to tell that one paralyzed by a lich's touch isn't quite dead yet, for instance) given, with action consumed on treatment.

For scope of work-- it would probably mean rewriting the GUI; altering the NWN2-provided UIs is a significant investment, which usually involves difficult debugging with help pulled in from the heavy hitters of the NWN2 custom content community (And I do my best not to overtax the relationship), so things like this tend to be reserved for things I think are necessary for ALFA to continue to expand on its current path (cross-server tell GUI) or things to cut out awkward and buggy methods of operation (foreign languages).

It's certainly possible to do some minor metagaming based on knowledge of exact hit points, though if we're all agreed that it's not a terribly-significant wound to our system, it's probably best to just let this one be.



And tisk tisk, t-ice, metagaming in non-approved methods. I waggle my finger at you as would a scolding teacher who found a paper airplane.

Grouping in party with other players without calculating their levels according to their HP is like not staring at tits when a woman bends over to pick something, everyone do it - if they want or not , it's something most people would automatically do.


Basically, i think ICE's idea is a good one, we would like to assume characters are not numbers and a bar without numbers is a good way to reflect how wounded is someone. From one side, when you examine someone when not in party you'll see "Injured" but if you party with him then you'll suddenly see 30/50 HP???

If you shouldn't see numbers above players , then it should not change if your in party or not.

I don't think there's any question as to whether or not the numbers contain potential for metagaming-- they do. And I suppose in the case of max hit points used to calculate levels (perhaps I missed something, but I think you're the first to bring up that angle, Rorax, which is certainly more pervasive, and also unlikely to ever be able to be answered with discipline or counseling), they're pretty dang accurate, combined with some basic knowledge of how old the character is.

Right now the question is how much work it would be to rewrite the party list GUI (quite a bit) and what we gain from doing it (hard to say-- we'd certainly make this sort of metagaming less accurate, but I'm not sure by how much; even without being in party, I'll admit that I note how much people benefit from healing-- prerequisite to being a good healer-- and that reflex calculates their approximate level and likely class selections, something I'm not convinced is unique to me; there's also a degree to which a character's age and the activity of a player let everyone know levels, along with observing abilities, attack bonus, etc.). That question of work v. benefit is what makes the decision to take on the development or not a tricky question, and one that leans toward letting it be for now.