Please avoid the scaled hitpoint bars.
Source
Or zoomed in:
Scaled hitpoint bars!
I realize we don’t know for sure what’s coming yet, but I’ve seen this as part of some HUD exploration previews and this example really irked me, so I wanted to talk about it already.
But what is wrong with scaling the hitpoint bars, isn’t this nice? - you may ask.
Sure, it seems nice! It was my own reaction too, and I’ve seen positive responses from people who saw this at first sight.
But think a little further than first sight, and you may realize how incredibly inconsistent and misleading this HUD with scaled bars is going to be.
Problem 1: inconsistencies with other targets
The current HUD is used for both the player and their enemies. We both get the exact same way of reading hitpoints whether it is for our own ships:
or the hitpoints of other entities:
This is nice consistent, and thus intuitive.
Given that in EVE we cannot know the exact hull/armor/shield values of enemy ships as players have the full freedom to fit their ship however they want and these fits are still secret while fighting, it is not possible to apply the new ‘scaled’ hud style to our enemies. Only to our own ship.
So even if this is implemented, we would get used to seeing scaled hull/armor/shield values for our own ships, but at the same time we still play seeing equalized 1:1:1 hull/armor/shield values for our enemies, which of course is not how their defences are.
In this new HUD design there will be a mismatch between the representation of our own hitpoints and those of our targets.
It is going to be inconsistent and unintuitive by design.
Problem 2: inconsistencies with incoming damage types
In EVE we have hitpoints and we have effective hitpoints.
Effective hitpoints are scaled by resistances to each damage type for each type of hitpoints you have. Effective hitpoints are not an exact value but are an approximation based on the expected incoming damage, and usually shown for the profile of omni damage. However if the incoming damage is for example mjolnir missiles, rounds of null ammo or a disintegrator, this can have a huge impact on how your effective hitpoints are calculated.
I do not know which one of the two this HUD will use, but I can think of two solutions that keep things simple:
- to scale by amount of hitpoints in each layer
- to scale by amount of effective hitpoints in each layer, against omni damage
Both of them have their issues.
The first option does not take resistances into account, so even if shield seems larger than armor your ship could be able to take far more damage in the armor layer if it had much higher armor resistances, so this is a bad misleading option that lies to your face.
The second option does take resistances into account, which then means that the edges between the HP bars are going to shuffle around a lot whenever you turn your hardeners on and off, heat them or when your reactive armor hardener adjusts values. But more importantly, it still only is calculated against omni damage and will therefore be misleading against anyone shooting into the resist hole of your main tank layer, which they probably will want to do. This makes it a bad misleading option that lies to your face, and also annoyingly keeps shifting the scales.
A third and last option is to somehow scale the bar with EHP against the profile of incoming damage but that’s going to be such a complicated mess that I wouldn’t recommend that either. And even then it’s not an accurate representation of your hitpoints either against those ships who have yet to engage you, and would be lying to you.
Instead I like things to be simple, consistent and clear.
The current HUD doesn’t pretend to be showing things it cannot accurately know.
Instead the current HUD just shows you your exact armor, shield and hull percentages. Simple and clear.
Next,
Problem 3: redundant information
I’ve shared my preference for clear simple consistent minimal designs before, and would like there to be no redundant information where we are shown the same thing on my screen that I already know.
In this case I have chosen the fit for my ship. I already know that my main tank is armor, hull or shield or a mix.
I will not undock in a ship being surprised that it has far more armor than I expected, or if I do it’s because I can tell by all the module icons next to the HUD hitpoints that I have picked the wrong fit of that hull.
In other words, we do not need to see this again on our screen. This is redundant information, especially bothering when it is used in a place where I wish to see a focus on useful information instead, like how much damage I took and how much of my shield is still left that I’m still recharging at a good rate or not.
Talking about seeing how much damage I took…
Problem 4: lower readability because of smaller and inconsistent range of motion
With our current HUD I can easily see how much of my armor or my shield is gone. I can at a glance tell if I still have half my armor, or if I still have a third of my shield left and that my passive shield regeneration is working well or that it has been broken.
Why?
Because these points are currently always at the same place, the same consistent angle. Because my shield, my armor and my hull values all make use of the full range of motion of the hitpoint bar, because they’re not all sharing the same semi-circle, but all have their own.
The new example HUD does not do this, so we’re left to guess how much of our shield is gone relative to our full shield value, because the hitpoint bar of every ship fit is going to be different. And those edges may be switching around too if you turn on hardeners, if FC scales by EHP instead of HP.
It’s inconsistent and less readable.
To conclude…
I think it is interesting to see that FC is looking into new ways to represent our hitpoint values.
Of this example I do like that the range of hitpoint values is a bit longer than before covering nearly three quarters of a circle instead of half of it, by making use of the previously dead space which was only used for + and - of velocity.
However I really hope that the use of scaled hitpoint bars stays just an explorative example and not a true thing.
Because that would be a downgrade in visibility and intuitive design.
The only space where it’s dark enough is Pooch, probably.