It doesn't matter to me. Health, shield and energy bars are important to me.
All I want to know is what the unit is and how much hp/mp/ep it has. I'm not bothered about looking at unit model which I've seen a million times before.

Keitzer

United States2509 Posts

July 19 2010 22:21 GMT

#42

On July 20 2010 07:17 Famehunter wrote:

Show nested quote +

Well how about this then:

[image loading]

This was taken from just a random youtube video. It could be much much worse. But if you insist I can add milions of pictures similar to this because it's basically what we get to see when we wanna watch some pro replays...

um.... what... how is that annoying you can clearly see all the units to "focus em down"?

its all preference, thread unnecessary ... your argument is invalid. (and by pref. i mean you can have normal: hold alt - selected: all selected who - or Always: always show)

no other options should be added/removed

Von

United States363 Posts

July 19 2010 22:23 GMT

#43

Health bars always on is very distracting in commentated matches. It not only covers up all the action so you can't see what's going on, it kills gorgeous graphics and 'realism' of the game.

For a spectator this gets in the way of the enjoyment of the sport. It's also really amateur looking to always leave them on.

The best commentators select the units that need the health bars shown during the match. and show them as they need to be shown.

.

yoden

United States64 Posts

July 19 2010 22:24 GMT

#44

Blizz should add an option to hide healthbars of units with 100% life... that's what I did in my game, and it reduces clutter while allowing the user to see all the important information.

Abraxas514

Canada475 Posts

July 19 2010 22:29 GMT

#45

If you've played WC3 or DOTA, you realize how important health bars are for 2 things:

1) Instantly seeing the rate that damage is being done to your army/taken by the opposing army
2) Being able to micro around the damaged units without loosing sight of #1.

You just get used to having the bars on your screen. It would be nice however, for transparency on the full HP bars, and some kind of coloring for enemy health bars.

HOLYCOWBATMAN

Canada51 Posts

July 19 2010 22:33 GMT

#46

On July 20 2010 06:51 -orb- wrote:
It's fine the way it is... I hope they don't change it.

Grats on making a custom game with 200/200 out of ghosts and putting all the ghosts on top of supply depots...

Really realistic scenario you got goin there

agree 100%

They are fine as they are. The ONLY time it is a little bit confusing is in ZvZ mass ling battles but even without them its confusing so.......

Watching a battle without health bars is almost not worth it, you have no indication of what is going on.

Uranium

United States1077 Posts

July 19 2010 22:33 GMT

#47

I play with always show healthbars on because I come from a DotA background and I am very micro centric.

However I wish there was a way to only show health bars on damaged units. Undamaged units' health bars would not show. This would convey exactly as much information as now but take up much less space most of the time. It also would show you immediately which of your units was under attack.

Abraxas514

Canada475 Posts

July 19 2010 22:38 GMT

#48

Is there an echo in here?

Thanks to the 2 guys above me for making clear why health bars are crucially important to a real-time strategy game

Famehunter

Canada586 Posts

July 19 2010 22:42 GMT

#49

On July 20 2010 07:33 Uranium wrote:
I play with always show healthbars on because I come from a DotA background and I am very micro centric.

However I wish there was a way to only show health bars on damaged units. Undamaged units' health bars would not show. This would convey exactly as much information as now but take up much less space most of the time. It also would show you immediately which of your units was under attack.

This.

I would prolly also inverse the health bars to dmg taken instead.
so the bigger the bar, the closer the unit is to death and so units with only a few bruises would not clutter too much of the screen as only a few squares of dmg would be showing up.

CharlieMurphy

United States22895 Posts

July 19 2010 22:46 GMT

#50

I enjoyed having the life bars on all the time in other games, but in this game there are so big and obtrusive that I always have them off. Tap alt when I need during battles, it's not that big of a deal but it'd be nice to have a slimmer mode of lifebars. Someone made a thread about it a long time ago and it was good.

Torture

Canada221 Posts

July 19 2010 23:08 GMT

#51

A whole lot of the comments in this thread missed the key point the OP was making... COMMENTATED REPLAYS!
Not his own personal matches. So saying stupid crap like "you can turn them off stop bitching hurr de durrr" just shows you didn't read the OP at all and are just blindly commenting. Heres to hoping for one of those new hammers to kick some butt in here.

Quoted because people still don't seem to have read the OP.

In game, yes they're helpful. In commentated matches they distract from the action. Sure there's a case for showing them but why not just select the important units for the viewers.

Roggay

Switzerland6320 Posts

July 19 2010 23:19 GMT

#52

I think health bars can be a important thing also on 200/200 fights, in particular when stim is involved. But I guess it is a personnal opinion.

Dance.jhu

United States292 Posts

July 19 2010 23:21 GMT

#53

I like the alt toggle idea very much.

metasonic

United States115 Posts

July 19 2010 23:22 GMT

#54

On July 20 2010 07:29 Abraxas514 wrote:
If you've played WC3 or DOTA, you realize how important health bars are for 2 things:

1) Instantly seeing the rate that damage is being done to your army/taken by the opposing army
2) Being able to micro around the damaged units without loosing sight of #1.

You just get used to having the bars on your screen. It would be nice however, for transparency on the full HP bars, and some kind of coloring for enemy health bars.

Yes, coming from those games, I can't stand not having health bars on for exactly this reason.

Also, does anyone else think that it's EASIER to see what's going on with health bars? Especially with something like lings on creep, it's easier to get a sense of how many units there are by the number of health bars rather than trying to figure out what's actually in those blobs of color.

Brazen[six]

Canada203 Posts

July 19 2010 23:35 GMT

#55

Keeping with the OP... I don't mind is so much in VODs but you're right that it can sometimes interfere with the action when it's large numbers like this. The small micro battles are great to see just how close things are and how the players are playing. I suppose some multi tasking ont he commentators parts could go a long way with cutting down on some of this... but it's not really enough for me to stop watching them or boycot any specific caster.

eu.xen

Germany352 Posts

July 19 2010 23:39 GMT

#56

I like the way with the alt key, only problem is, there are shortcuts like alt + t binded to some useless UI stuff, and when I e.g. need to transfuse a unit almost dying and have alt still pressed (to know it's almost dying) and press t to transfuse, it won't heal the unit, but do something else........ that is so broken and should be fixed.
I mean, if you have a key to activate that, it is obvious people will do other actions while pressing it, so there shouldn't be any conflicting binds present

Tsagacity

United States2124 Posts

July 20 2010 00:05 GMT

#57

On July 20 2010 06:30 tipakee wrote:

Show nested quote +

I know i have a low post count but i would like to point out that you play how you practice. I use Vods and replays as a tool to improve my play so i don't think you should use differing settings for games or replays, thus healthbars should remain on.

A key difference between your practice games and VODs is that a lot of them are shown in significantly lower quality, especially with live streams.

HubertFelix

France631 Posts

July 20 2010 00:41 GMT

#58

It's quite a mess if you're not used to, but it really gives important informations (even in commented replays).

It's quite off topic, but you should really give it a try for ~1 week of ladder games. I was like you at the beginning of the beta and now it's just to natural I couldn't even obs a game without it.

Thoreezhea1

United States532 Posts

July 20 2010 00:46 GMT

#59

i find "always on" healthbars extremely useful in microing... and alt is one more button to push if one wants to see status and micro

Synwave

United States2803 Posts

July 20 2010 01:49 GMT

#60

Seriously, where are the temp bans or warnings for all these people completely derailing this thread and talking about their own personal settings while they play.

This thread is about commented replays/vods. Its been said by me, by others, quoted by others a number of times on every page and people are still completely derailing by not having read the OP or responding to it in anyway.

Moderate this shit please. There was even a moderator in here mentioning that its about VODS