Make Health Bars Visible

General Discussion
1

That’s a simple request : Make enemy health bars visible for everyone, and not only visible when you damage that specific enemy

This would improve so much the experience in soloQ and quickplay, by allowing players to make decisions on the go by themselves.
It would also make sustain damage characters, like Soldier, a little more relevant, because if you see an enemy with 30 HP running far from you, it’s easier to hit 2 bullets than to try and land an arrow or a Peacemaker shot.

For people playing in teams, casual or professional, it would allow anyone to make focus callouts on low targets, and not just people who damaged them. Even in soloQ it would be really good for shotcallers, without needing 6 people to talk at the same time

I feel like it would just improve the overall experience everyone can have. It would definitely change some things, as everyone would be aware of your HP. But it would be beneficient for everyone, it’s for the greater good

Blizzard gave that to Sombra, because she kinda needed it. But a lot of characters could use it, and everyone could benefit from it

To people saying it would increase visual clutter : no lol. It does not increase when you happen to damage 5 enemies, it won’t increase if you see all enemy health bars at once. Health bars are not even that visible (which is still a problem imo)
Also, we could make it so health bars are hidden as long as they are full HP

Thank you everyone for coming to my TED Talk

If you have an argument against this idea that is not about “visual clutter”, “it’s what makes Overwatch unique”, or “the game is fine as it is”, I would be glad to hear it, so we can all improve our opinion on that !

4 Likes
2

Hard pass… idk why but I hate this idea.

3

Okay, another idea: aiming at someone could make their health bar visible?

6 Likes
4

Thank you for sharing your very well thought opinion with us ! I will definitely take that in account to improve my own

That’s an interesting idea. I think it wouldn’t change things much at a casual lvl, but will kinda “force” people to just aim at enemies without shooting, just to make their health bars visible ? It would be weird to encourage. And it wouldn’t do much for the game overall I believe.

I understand that you’re trying to find a compromise, but I don’t see why we would need a compromise in the first place. Maybe I’ll think about (or read) an element that would make this idea hard to introduce, or decrease the overall experience. At that point, I’ll definitely look for a compromise

5

When the devs balance the game for casuals is when it truly dies.

6

I see no reason why there can’t be Options for multiple different ways.

3 Likes
7

Ultimate balance should be centered around high end-

However

You have to keep on mind balance changes that allow both the high end, and casual player based to thrive.

At the end of the day- 9/10 players are of “average” or lower skill

And probably always will be

But if you make a play experience that is unfun for them, you stand to alienate and lose 9/10 of your player base.

That’s a bad thing.

If showing health bars would have no appreciable impact on the high end, but allow general player based to coordinate better and improve their experience?

There’d be zero reason not to other than “cuz reazunz!”

But that’s all on an if.

3 Likes
8

This change would change nothing though. If you shoot 1 damage at someone their health bar appears. I don’t see the problem in the way it already works.

9

No, they will not give you the ability to see where exactly an enemy is behind cover.

10

It would allow your team mates to see that you’ve tickled someone, or critically injured them and deserve their focus to secure the elimination.

It’d function as a mild “call out” - helping players make better decisions on who to focus, without the explicit need of voice comms.

Not necessarily a bad thing.

1 Like
11

Yeah it already doesn’t work like that. Health bars are basically the width of the character. When you have damaged them, you don’t see them around or behind cover. Health bars become visible when you see the character model. They are also hidden by every props and environment stuff. It doesn’t need to change

12

I managed to find proof in 20s of searching.

Just 1 random example, pause at 0:25 and you will see that the health bar is visible, is higher, and thicker than the character. When Junkrat goes behind the ledge cover.

13

Oh yeah that’s true, I didn’t think about height. But it’s really rare to have height impact this visibility in overwatch. It basically does that with stairs, maybe slopes ?
Also, you don’t hide in behind those.
I don’t think it would bring issues, because of those reasons, but I’ll definitely have to keep that in mind.

That’s a good argument, thank you

Edit: also, Overwatch has a very weird and inaccurate… spatiality ? I’m not sure if that’s a correct word, but basically your camera does not really match with your head hitbox for every character. You already have to be careful with it by guessing how far up and how wide your hitbox goes

14

The reason I was confident that I would find the proof in the first video I searched is because I notice it often. The health bar is thicker than a lot of characters and you’re able to see when they’re standing next to a corner if you’ve damaged them. Otherwise you wouldn’t know if they moved and with perma health you would see that they’re there even without damaging them. If they made health bars smaller that would cause a lot of confusion.

15

Yes I can see that, but I believe it’s a small difference that could (should, at this moment in time) be played around anyway, just like your character hitbox.
But I understand the issue you see. The addition I talked about is not perfect it seems

Also, it wouldn’t be visible for undamaged enemies anyway. I almost forgot about that, even tho I’m the one who specified it

18

I think they should have three options:

  • Default
  • Always on
  • Smart - Always on unless enemies are in close proximity, then default.
2 Likes
19

This would make Overwatch more casual thou

20

Casual players likely make up the majority… the average person isn’t going to be anything more than casual… So by your logic, making the game fun for the largest group of people will kill the game?

What?

21

I like this idea because it immensely helps the solo player experience. Not everyone wants to call basic things out. I’m sure we can make a way for it not to visible clutter so we don’t have to deal with too many cooks in the kitchen sometimes when everyone is in mic.