Improved state display 27/11/2015 - 16:30

The first states appeared at the same time as the Pandawa class. They included the Drunk, Carried, Carrier and Rooted states. These are both indicators and tools, and can be used to indicate a change operating on a character as well as to mark an entity.

More and more states now exist in game, which has raised the question of their visibility. Is this target invulnerable? Can it be healed? Can it be moved? So many questions that previously required tediously checking through the effects of the character in question, using up valuable time.

But this is no longer the way things work!
For build 2.32, we are introducing a system that will allow you to see the states affecting entities in a battle at a single glance. A small, permanently visible indicator above entities will show the state(s) affecting them.

However, in order to avoid an information overload, only certain states will be indicated. For example, the Drunk state is already shown visually via a change in the Pandawa’s appearance, so adding an indicator for this would be redundant. On the other hand, a visual indicator for the Telefrag state is more justifiable, since it isn’t accompanied by any change in appearance.

In order to improve combat readability, not every state is automatically visible for every character in combat. Some, for example, are only visible to the person who applied them, or to the allies of the person who applied them. This means the Telefrag state only shows up for the Xelor who triggered it, for whom this information is more relevant than for anyone else, given that they are the only entity who can really interact with this state. The information does, of course, remain available for everyone to see in the effects list for the character affected by that state.

Here is an example using the Telefrag state:
 
The Xelor applies the Telefrag state, which displays an icon above the target (only the Xelor can see it). Then the Xelor uses it up and the icon is removed.
 

Non-exhaustive list of states that will be visually indicated:

• The four elemental states of Huppermages
• Telefrag
• Portal
• Infected
• Unmovable, Rooted
• Invulnerable
• Pacifist
• Weakened
• Unhealable

Other states potentially merit a specific visual indication as well. At the moment, it’s all in the initial stages and we intend to work on this system in updates to come.

Though this modification seems minor at first, we feel its impact on combat readability is quite significant, and we will continue to think about other modifications that would also improve this aspect of combat.