Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

The UI of Preventative Healing effects

    • 612 posts
    August 11, 2022 8:17 PM PDT

    In the latest stream on Aug 11th 2022 we were given some info on spells that add some damage prevention effects. The examples:

    Wizard: Spell Reflection - Erect a ward around your target for 3 sec, causing the next offensive spell cast on them to be reflected back on the caster.

    Shaman: Wind Ward - Envelop and ally in ancestral winds, absorbing the next 1 sources of Physical damage for 9 min. Numer of attacks absorbed inscreases with Conjuration skill.

    Shaman: Second Sight - Gift target ally with Second Sight, cleansing them of Blind effects. If target is not Blind, Second Sight enables them to dodge the next source of incoming Physical damage for 5 sec. Players may only receive the Dodge effect of Second Sight once every 90 Sec.

    They also re-iterated that the Cleric's healing Style is a focus on Prevention of Damage (Druids Style is Direct Healing, Shaman's Style is Heal over Time). This tells us that Clerics will have even more ways to prevent incoming damage with similar kinds of effects. Shields that absorb x amount of damage. Similar 100% Dodge, Block, or absorb effects could be quite normal casts for Clerics.


    So how does the UI play into this?

    One of the trickiest parts of playing a Healer is in gauging when and how much healing your group mates will require at any given moment. Most Healers will tell you that it can be quite chaotic trying to manage long cast time big heals vs fast casting small heals vs Shield spells, etc... when you cannot clearly see when these kinds of effects are active and when damage is going to be prevented and when they are not.

    Hopefully the UI can/will be designed in such a way to allow healers to visually see when these types of damage prevention buffs are active on their group/raid members and even stack counts or Shield size; ie How much it can still absorb before the shield is gone, and duration. Preferably this will display in a way that the Healer can see in a glance.

    Some games that deal with 'Shield' buffs will add the Shield amount to the HP bar in some way so that the players can see how much the Shield has left as it gets chipped away by damage. The Shield amount would overlay the Health bar in a different color/texture so that you knew that this shield amount would get used first. The players could then see it go down as the target got hit and the shield value was lowered with each hit.

    It would also help if there were clear and seperate symbols on the bar for your group mates and your Beneficial target that show clearly these Reflect, Dodge, Block, Absorb etc... effects and their stack counts. Each type of effect could have their own special Icon that appears, some with duration countdowns + stack counts.

    If a little Dodge Icon displayed above the HP bar with a 2 on it the Healer would know "This player has 2 dodge counters and will auto-dodge the next 2 physical attacks". If a little Spell-Reflect Icon is displayed with a 1 on it and a countdown of 3 -> 2 -> 1, the Healer would know "This player will reflect the next 1 spell effect**" and will also be able to judge when this effect is going to expire based on the countdown.

    Healers should also be able to see any 'exahustion debuffs' that prevent these kinds of effects. We know that the Dodge effect from Second Sight can only work once every 90 seconds. This means that a debuff should be present and seeable (with countdown) to warn the Shaman that they cannot re-apply Second Sight dodge effect until that debuff is gone.

    These UI elements need to be there so that the Healers can then make more informed decisions on which Heals may be needed and when to re-apply these kinds of Preventative effects.


    Perhaps any Dev's can give us some feedback on what kind of UI elements they already have planned for these kinds of effects.

    Obviously I am also curious what other ideas the community might have in regard to how the UI can help Healers manage these kinds of effects along with their normal Healing abilities.


    ** Will enemy Ability cast bars show us if the ability being cast is a 'Physical Effect' that will be absorbed or Dodged by Physical Prevention effects, or if the Ability being cast is considered a 'Spell effect' which can only be Reflected or Absorbed by Spell Prevention effects. Or will players be forced to memorize every enemy Ability name and if that is a Physical attack that can be dodged or a Spell attack that can be reflected?

    • 2756 posts
    August 12, 2022 3:23 AM PDT

    I'm not sure how much is just for testing and how much is intended as final game info, but I believe we've seen, in pre-alpha footage, group members showing buffs alongside their portraits.

    For the above examples, the Spell Reflection and Second Sight 'buffs' would show perhaps with a diminishing outline for the seconds it is in effect on the group member you cast it upon, the Wind Ward would show with a number indicating absorbtions remaining.

    I'm in two (or more) minds how much these indicators are 'necessary' though. I tend to think the more you have, the more 'gamey' it feels and you should only know what your character would know. The more UI elements, the more you are interacting with a UI and not fighting with an encounter.

    Would your character 'know' whether they 'landed' on the target successfully? Would your character 'know' when the target has taken 1, 2, 3, 4 etc blows removing charges of an absorbtion spell?

    We are talking about magic, of course, so it could be argued that, yes, that's the way spells 'work' if we like - that the caster is 'aware' of their spell's ongoing interaction with the target - but it could just as easily be argued the other way, so the question isn't really *would* they work this way, but *should* they? Does it improve the game to have all that information? Does it stretch the bounds of suspension of disbelief too far for a caster to be so precisely aware of the progress of possibly dozens of spell-character interactions simultaneously? Does keeping track of multiple buff icons and progress bars represent the challenge of 'magic awareness' well?

    What level of uncertainty is exciting and what level is frustrating? What level of frustration is satisfying to overcome and what level is needless?

    It's yet another tricky balancing act for VR to do. I'm of the opinion that less is more - that players shouldn't know more than their characters would and that mystery and uncertainly is more 'fun' ultimately than certainty and calculation. That gaining an almost natural instinctive understanding of your character's abilities is more immersive and satisfying than being handed the mechanical and numerical facts of the world.

    As I say, it's a balance and I understand the OP's concern, so I'm not saying there should be no info, but that I hope VR carefully lean toward minimal meaningful info and adjust in the other direction if necessary, rather than hand players everything, which is very hard to take back.


    This post was edited by disposalist at August 12, 2022 3:26 AM PDT
    • 888 posts
    August 12, 2022 9:34 AM PDT

    GoofyWarriorGuy said:

    Healers should also be able to see any 'exahustion debuffs' that prevent these kinds of effects. We know that the Dodge effect from Second Sight can only work once every 90 seconds. This means that a debuff should be present and seeable (with countdown) to warn the Shaman that they cannot re-apply Second Sight dodge effect until that debuff is gone.

    If it's a single target ability, when we target that player, the ability icon should show a countdown timer (or whatever scrolling clock is used to show cool downs), but it should be in a specific color that means 'ability available but some effects of it are still on cool down'.

     

    disposalist said:

    Would your character 'know' whether they 'landed' on the target successfully? Would your character 'know' when the target has taken 1, 2, 3, 4 etc blows removing charges of an absorbtion spell?

    [...]

    What level of uncertainty is exciting and what level is frustrating? What level of frustration is satisfying to overcome and what level is needless?

    Healers have to know or players will die and blame the healer. Not knowing isn't fun and will lead to frustration. That, or healers will feel compelled to overheal just in case.

    • 1921 posts
    August 13, 2022 7:55 AM PDT

    IMO:

    Having these types of things which are seconds and not minutes, or single digits, or duty cycles that are absurdly small, and not double digits, plus LAS, plus high latency, is a perfect recipe for:

    - never ending CSR burden, customer annoyance, complaints and general negative/punitive response to gimmick style gameplay.

    I mean, under ideal circumstances, when you start to demand that customers time abilities and that timing is a significant amount of your base RTT?  You're just asking for trouble.

    When you design and test an MMO with local LAN latency, you're going to have a very VERY bad time.  Been done, not good.  Similarly, when you don't consider Orlando <-> Anchorage, or L.A <-> NY, or god forbid, within NA + outside NA amounts of RTT in your design of abilities, timing, and duty cycle, all you're going to do is anger your customers by getting closer and closer to the line of guaranteed failure.

    After seeing games try to treat MMOs like FPSs, or use things like 'Action' MMO to justify trusting the client to give the exploitable illusion of responsiveness for over 15 years, it's a bad idea.
    What would I set for initial design & testing limits?  Reactive abilities should all be at least 100 times the max observed target demographic RTT.  What does that mean, to start?

    It means that if your target/expected RTT is 250ms, then no ability can have a reactive window of less than 25 seconds.  That's your never-to-be-crossed minimum threshold, for initial design and testing.
    Then, AFTER you've managed to get that working, you can set the implementation goal to be less than that. But getting lower than 50 times the mean/median/modal RTT average is dangerous territory.

    The expectation that someone playing in Honolulu would be able to time a 3-second reflection window with a 1.5 second GCD on a server hosted in Chicago is pretty much guaranteeing failure, unless the stars align perfectly.  Forcing your customers to rely on an unreliable network (AKA The Internet) is terrible, terrible design followed by purely sadistic and punitive imiplementation, when you can objetively do better.

    You're completely correct, GoofyWarriorGuy, and complex (and/or low latency) mechanics require elegant delivery, via the UI, of the real time delivery & execution of those mechanics.  That means UI elements and communication that all classes will be relying on with such small ability/effect windows, and dancing on and over the line of human respnse time + RTT + GCD.

    Personally, I was hoping for a more social, team, and group focus on the design of the skills, abilities, and various related loops rather than sprinting to the trope of treating latency like it doesn't exist.  Once again, Visionary Realms is consistent and I'm disappointed. :)  But they'll fix it in Pre-Alpha, Alpha, or Beta, right?  Sure, if suddenly imperfect human nature and hubris disappear from the human equation. hehehe.

    • 10 posts
    August 13, 2022 10:13 AM PDT
    All I would point out in this is that while I personally love minimalistic UI with limited information, it's not super viable. Most likely if the UI is missing key pieces of information, you will just have MODS that provide that information and become "required" for serious play.

    Unless you can prevent that, you need a UI that doesn't punish people who play the game without seeking add-ons and mods.
    • 2756 posts
    August 14, 2022 2:16 AM PDT

    vjek said:

    IMO:

    Having these types of things which are seconds and not minutes, or single digits, or duty cycles that are absurdly small, and not double digits, plus LAS, plus high latency, is a perfect recipe for:

    - never ending CSR burden, customer annoyance, complaints and general negative/punitive response to gimmick style gameplay.

    I mean, under ideal circumstances, when you start to demand that customers time abilities and that timing is a significant amount of your base RTT?  You're just asking for trouble.

    When you design and test an MMO with local LAN latency, you're going to have a very VERY bad time.  Been done, not good.  Similarly, when you don't consider Orlando <-> Anchorage, or L.A <-> NY, or god forbid, within NA + outside NA amounts of RTT in your design of abilities, timing, and duty cycle, all you're going to do is anger your customers by getting closer and closer to the line of guaranteed failure.

    After seeing games try to treat MMOs like FPSs, or use things like 'Action' MMO to justify trusting the client to give the exploitable illusion of responsiveness for over 15 years, it's a bad idea.
    What would I set for initial design & testing limits?  Reactive abilities should all be at least 100 times the max observed target demographic RTT.  What does that mean, to start?

    It means that if your target/expected RTT is 250ms, then no ability can have a reactive window of less than 25 seconds.  That's your never-to-be-crossed minimum threshold, for initial design and testing.
    Then, AFTER you've managed to get that working, you can set the implementation goal to be less than that. But getting lower than 50 times the mean/median/modal RTT average is dangerous territory.

    The expectation that someone playing in Honolulu would be able to time a 3-second reflection window with a 1.5 second GCD on a server hosted in Chicago is pretty much guaranteeing failure, unless the stars align perfectly.  Forcing your customers to rely on an unreliable network (AKA The Internet) is terrible, terrible design followed by purely sadistic and punitive imiplementation, when you can objetively do better.

    You're completely correct, GoofyWarriorGuy, and complex (and/or low latency) mechanics require elegant delivery, via the UI, of the real time delivery & execution of those mechanics.  That means UI elements and communication that all classes will be relying on with such small ability/effect windows, and dancing on and over the line of human respnse time + RTT + GCD.

    Personally, I was hoping for a more social, team, and group focus on the design of the skills, abilities, and various related loops rather than sprinting to the trope of treating latency like it doesn't exist.  Once again, Visionary Realms is consistent and I'm disappointed. :)  But they'll fix it in Pre-Alpha, Alpha, or Beta, right?  Sure, if suddenly imperfect human nature and hubris disappear from the human equation. hehehe.

    As ever @vjek, good points taken to quite a technical extreme with a final portion of doom and gloom hehe.

    Personally, playing MMOs from the UK to the US over the years, including over a telephone line when playing classic Everquest, I rarely felt issues of 'lag' to be a problem. Complete failures like disconnections, yes - regular latency or latency variation, not really.

    I was a high level cleric that did raids and that required timings of 'a few seconds' for covering your slot in a Complete Heal cycle or reacting to random burst damage. Don't remember lag being a big issue.

    In more modern games I only notice latency in FPSs and even in those it can be compensated for and remain playable when playing on, say, East Coast servers with 100ms latency.

    Also, that is hardly ever an issue since having servers all over the world is not much of a difficulty any more. It's a customer service issue - eg. is a company willing to pay for an Asia-Pacific server (or whatever is considered a 'small' customer base) - not really something that should trump good game design.

    If hosting a couple of extra servers means game designers can make more intuative, natural and immersive interfaces, I really hope they choose to host a couple of extra servers.

    For the examples above, yes, the 3 second limit on Spell Reflection may well limit its meaningfulness. You might find it hard to react in time to an enemy starting a particular spell you want to block. You might find it frustrating to try and block an instant cast spell only for the enemy to cast it just after your reflection spell ends. So you might end up just throwing it in when you have spare mana and just hope it is useful a percentage of the time.

    A 5 or 6 second limit might make it more meaningful as players would have a decent chance of blocking a particular spell - of actually using it tactically and reactively - but, since completely blocking a spell is quite powerful, if you better guarantee that reaction window, then you should perhaps add the possibility of partial success, thus the meaningfulness of the spell is increased and it is made less frustrating, but its effectiveness is still balanced.

    But the OP was about the UI. Yes, latency has an impact and reaction windows also and the UI could be changed to help mitigate those negatives, but I feel that if latency is an issue, putting in an unimmersive, gamey UI element isn't the way to 'fix' it, it's a big ugly band aid.

    TL;DR: Yes, those reaction windows might need to be a little bigger and tweaking that would be much better than overly gamifying the UI. I too would prefer VR steer away from too much 'action' combat, but what is 'too much' is subjective and things like reaction windows *can* be tweaked or even abandoned in favour of "until the next spell" limitations with other balancing factors pretty easily.

    • 2752 posts
    August 15, 2022 10:21 AM PDT

    I don't think those windows need to be bigger at all, 3 seconds is a very long time to be able to react to something. A friend of mine in Australia playing on US servers generally gets no more than ~300ms latency ( averages in the 200ms range) which is a ~0.3 second "disadvantage" at the worse end of things.

     

    But yes, good UI design and options are nice. Not entirely sure how much of this needs to be clearly conveyed by the UI vs things that could or should be covered by teamwork/communication. 

    • 55 posts
    August 17, 2022 5:30 AM PDT

    Iksar said:

    I don't think those windows need to be bigger at all, 3 seconds is a very long time to be able to react to something. A friend of mine in Australia playing on US servers generally gets no more than ~300ms latency ( averages in the 200ms range) which is a ~0.3 second "disadvantage" at the worse end of things.

     

    But yes, good UI design and options are nice. Not entirely sure how much of this needs to be clearly conveyed by the UI vs things that could or should be covered by teamwork/communication. 

    .3 second latency is a lot longer than it sounds. If you start casting, then notice you need to change it's .3 to notice, .3 sec to cancel action, .3 sec to start new action, .3 seconds to see if you timed it right. Now we're up to 1.2 seconds. Add in reflex time, and how attentive the healer is and 3 seconds gets eaten up pretty quick. Not everyone is a 14 year old that spends hours playing first person shooters.

    • 2756 posts
    August 18, 2022 3:10 AM PDT

    Depending on nomenclature used, a 300ms latency is a 600ms ping, round-trip. Most games show lantency as it looks better, but it's not the reality.

    As Silvermink says, when it comes to 'reactions', if you're Asia Pacific to the US, you have original computer generated action taking 300ms to get to you and your response taking 300ms, so that's 600ms if you're instant, which you're not.

    Human reaction time averages around 275ms, but that's in testing to an isolated on/off stimulus, not complicated by having many other things going on in a very busy UI. On top of that, in an MMORPG, your 'reaction' also includes strategic choices before responding.

    Let's say there are no cooldowns or cancellations needed (but of course, that could often be a factor).

    So *if* the complicated UI-human reaction time is, say, 600ms and you only spend 500ms deciding on the strategy of your responce, you actually have 1300ms 'slack' to react.

    I would say reaction time in such situations and time needed to decide your response is probably more, and that 3 seconds is almost always going to be used up with such regularity you either have to rush your decision or anticipate your response. Either way, it results in what should be a meaningful addition to tactical combat becoming a random hit/miss thing you throw in if you have spare mana.

    As I said earlier, though, this can all be 'dialled in' and tweaked later and I'd much rather they tweak the reaction windows or even redesign the abilities to be less 'action combat' than they do unimmersive things to the UI to mitigate negatives that could be solved completely.

    • 2752 posts
    August 18, 2022 10:11 AM PDT

    disposalist said:

    Depending on nomenclature used, a 300ms latency is a 600ms ping, round-trip. Most games show lantency as it looks better, but it's not the reality.

    As Silvermink says, when it comes to 'reactions', if you're Asia Pacific to the US, you have original computer generated action taking 300ms to get to you and your response taking 300ms, so that's 600ms if you're instant, which you're not.

    Human reaction time averages around 275ms, but that's in testing to an isolated on/off stimulus, not complicated by having many other things going on in a very busy UI. On top of that, in an MMORPG, your 'reaction' also includes strategic choices before responding.

    Let's say there are no cooldowns or cancellations needed (but of course, that could often be a factor).

    So *if* the complicated UI-human reaction time is, say, 600ms and you only spend 500ms deciding on the strategy of your responce, you actually have 1300ms 'slack' to react.

    I would say reaction time in such situations and time needed to decide your response is probably more, and that 3 seconds is almost always going to be used up with such regularity you either have to rush your decision or anticipate your response. Either way, it results in what should be a meaningful addition to tactical combat becoming a random hit/miss thing you throw in if you have spare mana.

    As I said earlier, though, this can all be 'dialled in' and tweaked later and I'd much rather they tweak the reaction windows or even redesign the abilities to be less 'action combat' than they do unimmersive things to the UI to mitigate negatives that could be solved completely.

    In which case I think the answer is more having servers in different parts of the world to accomodate those regions. Not slowing things down to be trivial for people in the same country as servers. 

    • 2756 posts
    August 19, 2022 2:20 AM PDT

    Iksar said:

    disposalist said:

    ...

    As I said earlier, though, this can all be 'dialled in' and tweaked later and I'd much rather they tweak the reaction windows or even redesign the abilities to be less 'action combat' than they do unimmersive things to the UI to mitigate negatives that could be solved completely.

    In which case I think the answer is more having servers in different parts of the world to accomodate those regions. Not slowing things down to be trivial for people in the same country as servers. 

    Ah, yes, that's the best answer, but I mentioned that earlier so I didn't re-mention it, but now I'm re-re-mentioning it in order to agree hehe.

    disposalist said:

    Also, that is hardly ever an issue since having servers all over the world is not much of a difficulty any more. It's a customer service issue - eg. is a company willing to pay for an Asia-Pacific server (or whatever is considered a 'small' customer base) - not really something that should trump good game design.

    If hosting a couple of extra servers means game designers can make more intuative, natural and immersive interfaces, I really hope they choose to host a couple of extra servers.