Scaling of HP / speed bars on merc widgets


(DB Genome editor) #1

Probably not really a bug, but a strange design choice in my opinion…

On the merc info window that pops up when you mouse over one of the the merc widgets at the bottom of the menu screens, the bar representation of the HP and speed stats is shown with an offset. Effectively the bars are showing more or less (HP - 60) and (speed - 330). To me these offsets defy the purpose of having stats represented with bars, which is to be able to immediately see how a specific value compares to the range for that stat. Right now, you can’t get that info at a glance.

For instance, if you look at Aura by herself, her tiny HP bar covers about 15% of the max, suggesting that the maximum possible HP is somewhere above 500!

Similarly, if you look at Rhino alone, his speed bar covers roughly 1/4 of the range, so one could conclude that there is a merc out there which is 4 times faster.

Offsetting these values makes the variations between mercs more obvious, but destroys any reference you have to gauge those values. Since we’re not dealing with tiny variations, scaling everything from a proper 0 value (outlined bars in the pics above and below) would still show these variations while giving a proper visualization of how they relate to one another.


Also, something else I noticed while looking at this: why is the GL ability icon for Nader so huge compared to all other ability icons?


(Mustang) #2

Something else which I found confusing is take Fragger for example, the right side of his HP bar says 140 above it, and the bar goes ~60% of the way across, so does that mean he has ~80hp? (140 * ~0.6 = ~80)

I think you should make it easier to tell that 140 is his actual HP, and not the max across all mercs.

Some possible alternatives:


Also Unreal speed units are somewhat of an abstract concept, can’t we convert it into a more recognisable unit, e.g. MPH, m/s.
Failing that a value from 0-10 (fastest merc would obviously be a 10), or a percentage (again fastest merc would be 100%).