Discussion: Vadi's mods

[GiFTeD]

Hello. I just finally got brought up to speed on various things I'd seen in games previously, and thought I'd have a look for something I always thought would be great.

Luckily, Vadi, had already developed such a mod, and posted it in multiple flavors as requested by players (seen here http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=39386 , now disabled)

What is it? A mod to display an HP amount above a target's head, rather than just the life bar itself.

Why is it disabled? s2 thinks this is somehow an unfair advantage.

An unfair advantage, or does HoN have a poorly designed interface to begin with? In my opinion, it does. Mods are meant to let players change the interface to be better, without having developers "waste" (it's not actual waste, but it can be done by others independent of the company) their time on doing such a thing.

As seen, there was a lot of praise for such mods, because it should be a default option to enable in the first place. The fact that you get to see a life bar on a target, and see it's actual hp value when selected, means that this mod is doing nothing more than moving the information from the bottom right (this is a terrible design piece btw, I can't think of a single game where I actually had time to look completely off the screen, into the bottom right, to look at an HP amount while battling).

How is this an unfair advantage in anyway, when the data is on the screen already? It's only misplaced by original design, and his mods move to fix it. So then, I ask, will game developers follow in his footsteps and make it an option available to everyone? Then there'd be no disadvantage, everyone would be equal.

The mere fact of saying it has an advantage, and disabling it, is funny. There's mods that call people missing from lanes automatically. This is far, far more advantageous. There's mods that alert when runes are about to spawn. All the data is presented to you anyway, this is just alerting you in the same way. Why are these mods not disabled, as they provide the same function? They give ppl an awareness advantage that can easily win games over the long run.

If you can't agree to reenable it completely, you should atleast enable the function to display the HP of a unit, be it creep or player, to display it's remaining health while selected. It's displayed in the bottom right, you should be able to just see it in the middle of the screen, where you can actually see it. Although, you should be able to see all creep/hero life without selecting them in my opinion, and I'm sure everyones' opinion on this forum.

Please tell me your opinions, fellow players.

[Penance]

What's with people bringing out this "poorly designed interface" bullshit? Not even going to read the rest of your crap argument because of how you started it.
Stop it.
There's reasons why things are like they are and it's because of gameplay. Make the interface do everything for you and what do you? A very, very boring game. People have asked for all kinds of things but due to gameplay reasons they don't get them. Make your own game that is aimed at people ages 6 and up with an IQ of 40. Competitive and even casual gameplay warrants more than that.

[Jager]

My opinion is it was disabled to prevent pubbies from waiting to ks even more then they do now. They'd start counting to know if they'd get the kill.

I don't see it being useful for any other reason, you can get a fair enough judgement by the health bar already. If it wasn't going to help in higher level play, I assume S2 disabled it so new players/pubs didn't further develop bad habits.

[Azpitt]

FYI a mod that saves you time from typing mia isnt that much of an advantage. A mod that says "ability X will kill this person so use it" is.

But then again, i heard thinking is hard.

EDIT: Penance, you always can say what i want to more articulately :D

[grohn]

This was disabled not because S2 didn't like the concept, but they didn't want people to be forced to use mods to be on a level playing field.
More than likely, they will implement themselves before the final game is released.


What's with people bringing out this "poorly designed interface" bullshit? Not even going to read the rest of your crap argument because of how you started it.
Stop it.
There's reasons why things are like they are and it's because of gameplay. Make the interface do everything for you and what do you? A very, very boring game. People have asked for all kinds of things but due to gameplay reasons they don't get them. Make your own game that is aimed at people ages 6 and up with an IQ of 40. Competitive and even casual gameplay warrants more than that.
How the **** does this make the interface do everything for you? The HP information is plainly available, just unnecessarily inconvenient to get. You need to click your target, and then take your eye off the screen to look at the poorly placed indicator in the bottom right corner.

The interface shouldn't PLAY the game for you, but it should do what it is supposed to do, DISPLAY information as intuitively and conveniently as possible.

[Penance]

How the **** does this make the interface do everything for you? The HP information is plainly available, just unnecessarily inconvenient to get. You need to click your target, and then take your eye off the screen to look at the poorly placed indicator in the bottom right corner.

The interface shouldn't PLAY the game for you, but it should do what it is supposed to do, DISPLAY information as intuitively and conveniently as possible.

Awe someone put up some asterisks for me. :)
HP is plainly available, just like damage, armor, etc. Does this mean we should have it show the actual damage being done by your attacks and abilities against the selected target? No. Means you should either learn some quick math or hope that they die. Same thing goes with having the actual HP number over someones head. You can know about how close they are to being dead but you have to do something more than just look at a hero to be able to tell if you can kill them. Start putting numbers up over everyone's head and you might as well let the game play for you.

Interface does what it's supposed to do. The game is modeled after the same interface that Warcraft and Starcraft had. Making it display what YOU feel is convenient changes gameplay which is moving the game away from what it is. That's NOT what we want to happen. Make an entirely new game if you want that, it's not what HoN is supposed to be.

I will be deeply saddened if S2 starts adding and putting interface modifications in such as this, the AOE rings for non targeted spells, etc. Big difference between having a user friendly interface and an interface that does everything for you. Interface is pretty user friendly except for certain things like micro'ing.

[NiGHTsC]

Interface can't do everything for you, cause you'll always plenty of things to do by your own.

Maybe I just played too much WoW, a game with best interface so far

In my option, of course.

[Trysaeder]

If they put in noob friendly mana bars, I see no argument against rangefinders and hp values.

Oh look it's tiny on low health, let's gank him.
2 seconds later: avatoss combo kills him.
**** should've checked if he had mana or not.

Oh look it's pebbles on low health and full mana. Maybe we should play carefully.

Where's the difference?

You don't see anyone complaining about mana bars except me, and I gave up a long time ago. Everyone benefits from mana bars, some less than others, but nonetheless it makes the game a lot smoother.

But people do complain about others having larger viewing areas because they are too stupid to go to the console and raise the max camera distance each time they play. If S2 introduced it there would be some diehards arguing against it for a few days, but then everyone would forget about it and enjoy the new viewing areas. Sure more threads will pop up day to day, but people are idiots and opposed to change.

If every bit of information was available to the player, the game has just opened up the skill roof. Every player would have to play perfectly to win against an enemy of their own skill level.

IMO hp values should remain hidden, and mana bars can stay, but rangefinders make the entire game a lot easier.

I was one of the first beta testers for LoL, and one thing that made it noob friendly was that hero health bars were split up into hundreds. For every hundred health you had, your hp bar would split. If a hero had 900 hp, his bar would slow [][][][][][][][][], if he had 1500, the bars would just be compressed more. Another thing that made the game easier for people was the rangefinders. Adapting from dota to lol was pretty lame with the different range scale, but the rangefinders made targeting skills alright.

The interface should be made to be more convenient, but not so much that retards could play the game.

[Ignorance]

I want a mod that can let me see twice as far as people not modding. Unfortunately, that gives me a huge advantage in terms of gameplay, so it's not allowed. There are limitations placed into the interface just like there are in the game mechanics. It isn't "poorly designed." Some limitations are better being put in one way than another. Would you prefer a camera lock around your hero? or more fog of war? I didn't think so. If I know the effective hp for magic/physical/true damage, I can just walk up to people and kill them. Even if I know their raw hp easily, it can make the game considerably easier and less strategic. I no longer need to know how much hp/armor values a hero has in total and that removes a big part of the game.

[Vadi]

S2 caters to the DotA elite, not the common player.