Better Indicator of Death/Incap?

[arminius]

This was a minor annoyance to me when I play Paladins, but is starting to become a major issue for me now that I have wandered into the realm of Clericdom.

I wish there was a better indicator of when someone is dead or incapped. Sure, the name currently goes red if you are dead, but if the dead person speaks in voice chat, it is white.

Not surprisingly, dead people try to speak a lot, which means that their names are often consistently white. The name also stays white when the person releases and is speaking, so you can't even be sure if they are dead and in the quest or already released and in a tavern somewhere.

Now there are many times where this isn't a problem, because the landscape is simple and the battle is simple and usually over before one cares about sorting out what happened. But when the crud is really flying fast and furious, it is often difficult to tell whether a person is not healing because he is blocked, or not even in the room, or dead, or released, or maybe you are just missing your concentration checks.

This leads to either a.) wasting precious cures and heals on dead or released people or b.) what I ran into last night, which was assuming a guy was dead when he didn't heal but in fact he was behind a rock or just outside the room. As far as I could tell, the guy wasn't even incapped, but was a Barbarian with like 30 or 40 hp left, which as you know shows up as empty or close enough to it.

Now you could say that I should just pay better attention to the combat logs, then I'd know who was dead or blocked or if I was just missing concentration checks. However, the battles I'm talking about are where the health bars bounce up and down so furiously it is like your equalizer bars when you listen to Led Zeppelin IV. When it's battle like that, logs, shmogs.

Also, when it is battle that intense, simply saying "I'm dead" or "I'm not dead yet" tends to get lost amidst all the other battle sounds and people shouting.

All this could be helped with some better, clearer indicator of Deadness. Since we can't smell through the computer--yet--it will have to be something else. Maybe a little skull icon on the person's bar in the party list? And maybe a pair of closed "sleepy eyes" icon if the person is incapped? Or, just make the color remain red when a dead person speaks, with some other less misleading indicator of speaking. Just anything, anything other than a simple color change that gets overridden when a dead person speaks.

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[Mad_Bombardier]

I wish there was a better indicator of when someone is dead or incapped. Sure, the name currently goes red if you are dead, but if the dead person speaks in voice chat, it is white.

Yes, the problem exists and is very annoying. You see someone is incap, click on their name/F#/click on the avatar, and cast a healing spell. What you don't see is that they died because your target always has white name in party bars. You realize it only after you see the spell go off on yourself instead.

[arminius]

Yes, the problem exists and is very annoying. You see someone is incap, click on their name/F#/click on the avatar, and cast a healing spell. What you don't see is that they died because your target always has white name in party bars. You realize it only after you see the spell go off on yourself instead.

Ah, forgot about targetting changing the coloring too, I assumed it was just people who died but won't shut up. That makes it even more annoying, because it is almost definitional that the person who's status you are most interested in will be the one you have targetted.

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[Nott]

As a bard who is frequently the sole healer in the group, I fully agree... I've wasted way too much SP curing myself (when I was already full health!) because of this.

[Spectralist]

Ah, forgot about targetting changing the coloring too, I assumed it was just people who died but won't shut up. That makes it even more annoying, because it is almost definitional that the person who's status you are most interested in will be the one you have targetted.

Aye, this is really annoying. Please change it turbine! And while your at it, give Warforged a different color health bar, green or something.

[GuitarHero]

or your trying to UMD raise dead scrolls on them....

grrr, i hate UMDing raise dead scrolls in battle....

[tihocan]

I agree, what about doing something with the icon? (like having a dead version of each class icon)

[arminius]

I agree, what about doing something with the icon? (like having a dead version of each class icon)

That is good. Anything that has something existing that they could modify slightly or otherwise build on makes the fix that much easier (and therefore possible and quicker).

We've definitely seen that when it comes to building new races or monsters or other features--anything that can be built on a pre-existing structure gets priority.

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[parvo]

I've posted this issue before but devs hate me. In fact this thread is probably doomed to the wastebasket now that I've commented.

Just to clarify, the name stays green when the dead blab. It stays white when you have them selected. It's a major pain.

I concur.

[Lorien_the_First_One]

I can't tell you how many times I've tried to heal a head person. Sometimes that's just enough delay to put someone else at risk too.

[Twerpp]

a blood curdling scream from the PC when they die?