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Lots of comentated replays I watch theese days have the unit lifebars toggled on all the time.
![[image loading]](http://i25.tinypic.com/i6ide8.png)
With a small army it's no big deal but when they get to 200/200 and start duking it out, everything on the screen becomes a big ball of green/yellow/red little squares, hiding the units behind it.
You can barely tell which units you are looking at much less which player's they are.
I know lots of players like playing with the lifebars on all the time but I must not be the only one who hates this.
I'd much rather they only show up when a unit actually takes dammage as oposed to being there all the time.
Hope blizzard does a little work on this and allow more flexibility for this feature. 
Ex: A toggle to only show healthbars on dammaged units and a dammage taken bar instead of a full hp bar (undamaged units dont clutter the screen while dieing units have a full red bar).
...Wonder if someone could actually make an add-on to make this work, I doubt, but I'd be eternally grateful.
Healthbars definately need more options.
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Is "show selected unit's health bars" not good for you? I like it that way, toggling alt to see all.
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I believe Blizzard has addressed the possibilty for more health bar options.
EDIT: That picture is biased.
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There's in an option in settings to disable this, I don't see why you are complaining about something that can be turned off or changed.
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They don't bother me at all. I rather have them, then not in most cases. But thank you for making a thread about you being displeased about something very important.
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Hm, topic_id=128667 mentions this.
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Healthbars have plenty of options. You can set it to always, selected, never, or hold alt. Personally, I play with them always on, and they don't bother me at all. And your picture is unfair; how often are you really going to have a 200/200 of units with energy bars?
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You can turn them off. If it bothers you so much then do it, don't complain about them here.
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I used to not have this on but its actually a must have for micro and even telling how much energy your OCs/Nexuses have. I'd like the alt button to PERMANENTLY turn it on. Who the hell wants it to turn on for a second? Toggle function ftw.
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tHey just need to make the damn things smaller.
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When dealing with 7 roaches vs 5 stalker fights, always-on health bars is very helpful.
Also when you are harassing workers.
Also when you have a 200 food army, why do you even care if they are there or not, it's not like you are going to micro the weak ones to the back or anything.
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One of the biggest reasons lots of commentators use that setting is that there is a small but very vocal group of viewers - mostly coming from Warcraft 3 where health bars make a lot of sense - who demands it.
Health bars can be useful in some situations (like if a nexus is being attacked or a mothership), or to quickly show how damaged units are after a fight, but having them permanently enabled is indeed a huge pain.
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When playing I always have health bars on, but I agree that they are extremely annoying in commentated replays. The observer should have enough spare time/attention to toggle them on and off when necessary with option.
I remember watching the HDH invitational between white-ra and TLO and there was one particular battle with about 30 zealots on each side and it just turned into a mass of health bars.
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I HATE IT !!!!!! when its not on.
What fun is there in watching the units battle it out and having no idea whats going on until a side has died?
This is not BW where units streamed into each other and each imporant battle would have waves and waves of 12 units pounding each other and you can clearly see whos winning by which direction the battle is going.
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On July 20 2010 05:56 D10 wrote:
I HATE IT !!!!!! when its not on.
What fun is there in watching the units battle it out and having no idea whats going on until a side has died?
This is not BW where units streamed into each other and each imporant battle would have waves and waves of 12 units pounding each other and you can clearly see whos winning by which direction the battle is going.
The commentators can just select the important units or toggle the health bars in smaller battles.
I can't stand it when there are health bars on the whole game.
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On July 20 2010 05:53 VirtualAlex wrote:
Also when you have a 200 food army, why do you even care if they are there or not, it's not like you are going to micro the weak ones to the back or anything.
But you'd at least get to see what the units fighting actually are as oposed to a battle of green/yellow/red dots.
Why cant they make something like a dammage taken bar instead.
all your units show no healthbar and as soon as they take dmg then you see it. that would make watching comentated replays so much more enjoyeable.
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What they need to do is have "alt" toggle between always on and never. Currently, you have to press and hold "alt" to see healthbars, which is totally annoying.
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On July 20 2010 05:59 LazyScout wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2010 05:56 D10 wrote:
I HATE IT !!!!!! when its not on.
What fun is there in watching the units battle it out and having no idea whats going on until a side has died?
This is not BW where units streamed into each other and each imporant battle would have waves and waves of 12 units pounding each other and you can clearly see whos winning by which direction the battle is going. The commentators can just select the important units or toggle the health bars in smaller battles. I can't stand it when there are health bars on the whole game.
Also if theres health bars on the whole game I can see which buildings are producing what and how close it is from completition without the commentators even selecting it.
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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.
Now regarding the actual thread I agree, I can't stand when commentators leave the bars on the entire time, its visually distracting and doesn't really add to anything. This isn't warcraft 3 where one or two units dying was a massive deal. I don't feel the need to know the life of all 10 roaches and 20 zerglings in a given engagement and as the game progresses it ends up with a screen full of twitching life bars.
It annoys me so much Ive taken to not watching commented replays that have the bars turned on constantly. If its a match I really want to see I will take the time to find a commentator that turned them off and watch them instead.
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On July 20 2010 06:06 woolly wrote:
What they need to do is have "alt" toggle between always on and never. Currently, you have to press and hold "alt" to see healthbars, which is totally annoying.
thats actually quite a good idea and they should implement this imo =/
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Technically i like them to be on there very useful essentially late game,but ive found off i acually play better when they completely off,its easyer to micro and tell thing apart...
Always on is just a disgusting mess,its not their fault however,more the game,in which unlike sc1 everything is just stuck with glue to eachother....i rally do hate that part of sc2,armies dont look like armies instead big round balls...oh and the map pool doesnt exactly help,its just chokes upon more chokes ,why couldnt blizz take a page from sc1 pool where all the map had a big open terrain in the middle.....
Generallly it makes things less of a mess, and if find it really helps,still lifebars are very important,infact the higher you go in ranks the more precise the play becomes....i blame it all on sc2...thank god for alt....
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I think they should have an option in the menu to be below units like in sc1.
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is awesome32274 Posts
On July 20 2010 05:44 GreEny K wrote:
There's in an option in settings to disable this, I don't see why you are complaining about something that can be turned off or changed.
Because he can't change vods?
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I have an issue atm that i cant really see what units i have selected, i didnt have this problem in phase 1. Anyone know if anything changed?
I would enjoy ALT to be a toggle instead of a "hold down"
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When always show health bars is selected holding alt removes all health bars visibility. There are less times when health bars are a distraction then there are times when they are useful. So Always is the better option for me.
I just wish here was a separate option for all production/duration bars to be always on regardless of the health bar choice or state. It is the main reason I always have them on.
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I always have it turned on because it helps with rapid decision making on whether you should engage or not, or which probe to target with your zergling because of low health/shields. That said, I would prefer if they removed it because its graphically unappealing and grants an advantage over people who don't take full used of it. When your commentating a match, I would suggest turning it off as the information isn't really THAT important (on a match wide scale) to spectators, and if some spectacular micro is going on then the commentator can just select the units involved.
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I play with health bars on because of the advantage they give you in a battle, also i have never encountered a situation where having the health bars turned off was advantages. Losing additional units or forcing yourself to perform additional actions per minute just because something doesn't look pretty is a pretty sorry excuse.
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On July 20 2010 06:13 Synwave wrote:
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. Apparently this is going to need a lot of reiteration in this thread, because it feels like tons of people are still missing this.
The OP is not talking about playing with the bars always on, he is talking about watching commentated replays/VODs with the bars always on.
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Commentators probably have them on because they play with them on...
/thread
Unless you want to talk about them when you are playing.
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health bars are preference.
I started off playing with no health bars, and switched to only show health bars when units are selected. Again I decided to change and show health bars at all times. I didn't like it at first, but now I love it as its easier to micro away the low hp unit. I've never had a problem like that picture above as I never allow my opponent to mass an army size that becomes annoying.
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On July 20 2010 06:24 Tsagacity wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2010 06:13 Synwave wrote:
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. Apparently this is going to need a lot of reiteration in this thread, because it feels like tons of people are still missing this. The OP is not talking about playing with the bars always on, he is talking about watching commentated replays/VODs with the bars always on.
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.
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On July 20 2010 06:00 Famehunter wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2010 05:53 VirtualAlex wrote:
Also when you have a 200 food army, why do you even care if they are there or not, it's not like you are going to micro the weak ones to the back or anything. But you'd at least get to see what the units fighting actually are as oposed to a battle of green/yellow/red dots. Why cant they make something like a dammage taken bar instead. all your units show no healthbar and as soon as they take dmg then you see it. that would make watching comentated replays so much more enjoyeable.
That's a really really good idea.
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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
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On July 20 2010 06:06 woolly wrote:
What they need to do is have "alt" toggle between always on and never. Currently, you have to press and hold "alt" to see healthbars, which is totally annoying.
A thousand times THIS.
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On July 20 2010 06:19 DeCoup wrote:
When always show health bars is selected holding alt removes all health bars visibility.
This. Really, commentators just need to make sure to turn off the health bars when they become too much of a distraction in really big fights. Most of the time, it's nice to have the health bars there.
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Who's ever going to have that many ghosts? 
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it'd be great to see an option for 50% transparent health bars
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KEK, what kinda picture is that... so biased....
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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
Well how about this then:
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...
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They do have a toggle.
Just hit the "H" key with no units selected. Now they're on. Hit it again. Now they're off.
Not that it matters anymore with beta down.
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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.
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On July 20 2010 07:17 Famehunter wrote:Show nested quote +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 Well how about this then: 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
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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.
.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I like the alt toggle idea very much.
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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.
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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.
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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
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On July 20 2010 06:30 tipakee wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2010 06:24 Tsagacity wrote:On July 20 2010 06:13 Synwave wrote:
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. Apparently this is going to need a lot of reiteration in this thread, because it feels like tons of people are still missing this. The OP is not talking about playing with the bars always on, he is talking about watching commentated replays/VODs with the bars always on. 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.
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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.
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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
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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
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On July 20 2010 05:52 Slayer91 wrote:
I used to not have this on but its actually a must have for micro and even telling how much energy your OCs/Nexuses have. I'd like the alt button to PERMANENTLY turn it on. Who the hell wants it to turn on for a second? Toggle function ftw.
excellent point, I agree
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I totally agree with the OP and I'm surprised at the amount of people who did not fully read his post.
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I prefer to see the health bars in a commentary game because it gives us more information and I have got used to it. So often when I am watching someone will say something like why didnt he FF there or why no guardian shield but I can see he doesnt have the energy with bars on. I have them on when I play so it doesnt feel cluttered to me.
That said Day9 manages to have them turned off and yet still select the right units at the right time to show us what we need to know.
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Most of you people are completely missing the point about commentated replays....
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What I'd like to see is full health units have no bar, lower health units have a bar. However I do agree that in commentated replays there isn't a huge reason to have the health bars always on.
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This is a fantastic idea. If a unit is at full health --> nothing to worry about --> don't need a series of green rectangles all over your screen to let u know all is A-Ok when ur army is just chilling, or that your creep tumors are in tip-top shape lol.
Also, an interesting option would be for smaller health bars (more of a small dot over each unit), that isn't actually a bar but just changes colour as the unit loses health. This is not ideal for intense early game micro where a couple of HP can make a big difference, but in large mid-late game confrontations i wouldn't mind just seeing a less visually obstructive general picture of the health of units.
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On July 21 2010 14:13 Reason.SC2 wrote:
that isn't actually a bar but just changes colour as the unit loses health.
So, this already happens, and for example when playing DOTA since the size of the healthbar had nothing to do with the amount of health on the hero (leshrac had a huge bar, tiny for example had a tiny one) the color was all that mattered. There are just the throwback "boxes" in the healthbar that are pretty annoying, just to give SC2 a more oldschool feel.
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On July 20 2010 05:53 VirtualAlex wrote:
When dealing with 7 roaches vs 5 stalker fights, always-on health bars is very helpful.
Also when you are harassing workers.
Also when you have a 200 food army, why do you even care if they are there or not, it's not like you are going to micro the weak ones to the back or anything.
You realize you just said "in these specific situations, having health bars ALWAYS is very helpful." Wouldn't it make more sense to just hold alt in those situations?
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EPT
