Enemy Ability Identification

[Ælfwine]

Why is it that when you hover over an enemy you it doesn't tell you what the ability is they are attempting to use or what it does? All it shows you is an icon, meaning you have to look it up somewhere outside the game to know what it is.

[Lamppost in Winter]

This has been kind of a pet peeve of mine as well. I'd also like to be able to see what their abilities do in the Bestiary; the names alone aren't very informative. Same deal with status effects in combat tooltips; you kind of have to dig through the combat log to get an idea of what their status effects are doing.

[Wormerine]

By the third playthrough you will know.

 

But yeah, the least they could do is enable us to view enemy skills in bestiary for the reference. Doing it in-game would be preferable but might require a serious UI rewrite.

Edited December 30, 2018 by Wormerine

[xzar_monty]

Why is it that when you hover over an enemy you it doesn't tell you what the ability is they are attempting to use or what it does? All it shows you is an icon, meaning you have to look it up somewhere outside the game to know what it is.

 

My answer, from an RPG perspective, would be: because you are not automatically able to identify everything happening around you.

 

As a GM, I would allow players to make some relevant checks (provided that they have the skills, otherwise it'd be an intelligence check) in situations like this. I don't know whether anything of this sort has been implemented into Deadfire. I agree that if you never have any chance of identifying stuff like this, there is a problem.

[protopersona]

 

Why is it that when you hover over an enemy you it doesn't tell you what the ability is they are attempting to use or what it does? All it shows you is an icon, meaning you have to look it up somewhere outside the game to know what it is.

 

My answer, from an RPG perspective, would be: because you are not automatically able to identify everything happening around you.

 

As a GM, I would allow players to make some relevant checks (provided that they have the skills, otherwise it'd be an intelligence check) in situations like this. I don't know whether anything of this sort has been implemented into Deadfire. I agree that if you never have any chance of identifying stuff like this, there is a problem.

 

I can understand this logic, but if the game devs wanted to take this route why give an ability icon instead of a generic casting icon? For experienced players just seeing the icon is enough to instantly know what's being cast. So why not give new players the tools to properly react to the enemy tactics as well?