That would help soooo much for melee.
awesome if this is legit
Sorry, but you must be some kind of masochist to like that. The screen not ONLY gets so cluttered with all types of special effects all the time, but you also have to deal with the erratic movements of your team-mates, camera shaking, disorienting CCs and your own erratic turning so you can use your built-in X-ray vision to see where everyone is and how their health bar is doing across eight layers of wall. The health bars would work the same as the rest of the fixed UI in the screen: an anchor to give you information that is ALWAYS available there (assuming you don’t turn it off, I mean).
It’s not fun; it’s confusing. It doesn’t let people do their intended role effectively. Plus, even if you DID have the health bars ‘cluttering’ your UI, this isn’t an MMO: you will STILL need to turn around and see where the heck they are. As long as it’s an option nobody will be harmed by this and anyone accusing you of not paying attention to the health bars will be as silly as the people who accuse you of not healing effectively because they were eight rooms away.
Alrighty. My POV still holds for me. Your opinion is fair and likely shared by a general majority (guessing), but I think its the wrong approach for Battleborn, both in feel and aesthetics. The reasonin’ for all of that, as well as what I feel would be a better idea, is in my other posts.
Talk to you again in 2 months? 
#Facepalm
Spinning around like an idiot every 10 seconds because you’re support and your team is spread out is … a pain. And jarring. And … not my fault, but the only thing I can do is run back to spawn so everyone’s in front, or keep on keepin’ on with my twirly twirly. Capture and Meltdown have much different team dynamics than Incursion. Its not always a 5-man cleanup.
I vote for toggle-able health bars. No need to be able to target through that interface or F1 -> F5 — this isn’t WoW. I’d just rather have the info than do the twirly twirly dance!
Hey, didn’tt Borderlands have health bars of your ally on screen?
Oh, wait. Yeah it did.
Just let me know I gotta go and save that ally’s butt a bit easier than having to spin like an idiot in real life trying to catch a fly.
It wouldn’t be considered a buff if it’s a universal thing.
That’s when it is called quality of life.
Even non-support characters get a use out of it.
Itd be great for pugs who are terrible at paying attention to each other learn. It’ll teach them to start paying attention more.
They still also have to watch what’s going on in front of them AND follow the map to wherever their ally is.
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Now that I read more of the thread, I think it’s important to make a distinction here. Although I’m in favor of health bars, you’re right - I’m only in favor of health bars over the current system of nothing, which leaves me the choices of either spinning around scanning for healthbars constantly or letting people die.
If there were better visual queues, I would prefer that. I’ve played the healer in MMOs - staring at red bars for long periods of time gets super boring. If I knew that I’d be alerted some way when I needed to heal someone whose health bar wasn’t already on my screen, I’d have no problem with that. I just hate the twirly dance. Continually trying to locate health bars is nearly as boring as watching them in an MMO.
The best fix is something that allows us to play the game naturally the most amount of time without missing a dying teammate.
You’re not always going to be able to get to a teammate in time, nor will you always want to leave your current position, but if you’re the healer, you need to have the info to make that decision, and I don’t think that detracts from the inherent difficulty / skill / attention budget of being a support class. You still need to pay attention - you just wouldn’t have to spin around like an idiot or ignore remote teammates as is currently the tradeoff.
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Boom
+1
FYI I’m usually looking at the mini map more than the regular view to compensate for the lack of peripheral view in first person.
Maybe add ticks to the mini map when allies are below half health?
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I definitely would like to see them, but then I main support characters.
How I would see this implemented would be dependent on position, so if their in your field of view then no representation beyond the norm.
However if they pass out of the field of view, to the left or right, then they are represented on that side of the screen, giving you a directional view of the character and their status.
This is a team game after all, let me keep tabs on my team easily.
3 Likes
It’s something the team has started on as I’ve seen them in development, but currently isn’t a top priority for the next patch. Trust me I want them badly too, but there is more to their implementation besides displaying their widgets. I believe we’ll see them eventually, but I don’t have an ETA at the moment.
8 Likes
Ah, you have given me some hope good sir! Listed health bars (or even changes to the existing health bars to make them more visible) would be a huge quality of life improvement for me (I like to garner popularity by playing a healer!).
I know you guys have a long todo list but I’m so, so glad it’s on there.
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You are not suppose to heal/support every member as a healer/support. Your first priority is the tank or the player performing the best. Once that player is ok then the other team members can get helped. Players should know to port to base and get back into the battle field whenever their health drops
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Thanks for the response! Huge fan and have bought all taunts and skins. Also merch online as well season pass. Glad to see its being worked on. @scottv
I’m interested whether this is how other play the game? It’s certainly what I’d do if I’m playing Miko and I have Montana in front of me. Marquis can go pet his owls; he’s my focus. But it’s not, for instance, how I play Alani, when I myself am regularly popping onto the front lines in order to gain Osmosis. It would be great if I could see whether I need to duck back and heal Gal with my 1/2 stack cause she’s about to die, or whether I can finish off that minion.
Supporting a tank if you’re trying to win via tank makes sense regardless of whether I can see what my team’s health is. But not all of my teams pick a ‘tank’. Sometimes it’s important that a combination of weaker characters are kept alive to do something a bit more subtle.
Most teams select a ‘team’ healer, even though it’s obvious any healer worth their salt will prioritise particular teammates over others. But a good healer is also aware of their team, and is able to interact with them all. Modifying the health bars would greatly assist in this.
Excellent point. On reflection this is why I grew to hate Destiny PvP. You spend at least 90% of the game staring at the radar because it is soooo necessary.
That’s how I used to play with Miko and Reyna when I solo queue. It is hard to find equally skilled members when playing with random players so you have to prioritize. If the tank is good, I kept my attention to him. If there was no tank or if the tank was awful then I focused on the player with best performance. The longer you keep that player alive the better it is for the team. Healing/supporting a player that just keep dying or not doing much is a waste when the better member needs it. Once that player is ok then the rest of the team can get the help.
The approach is different when you play with a premade group of friends where all the members are about equal level of skill.
It would certainly change the way one interacts with the HUD. I know this isn’t to everyone’s taste but it has worked well in other games, Borderlands 2 for example. Right now, my experience is that I spend a lot of time turning around trying to spot which team member is where and what there health status is. This is particularly frustrating on Overgrowth because the colour of those bars blurs exactly into the background.
Right now the situation (at least for me and the others I’ve discussed this with) is frustration. Perhaps if the issue is distraction, there could be an option to disable it in the HUD?
Making the health bars more visible above characters would also be a great step forward. Or if the majority desire is that there shouldn’t be any change, perhaps an ability to call out for health (a la the tf2 medic situation) would improve the relation between healer and teammates but in a way more integrated to your view of the battle.
Yes, I see that - it is frustrating to be constantly kept away from priority. Unfortunately it’s in my advantage to keep even weak players alive and well, otherwise they just feed (and I like to be supportive).