I agree. I am lost and confused at this change also. Why would you want to remove the damage numbers? It just makes no logical sense to me. Care to explain your reasoning people? I'd love to see it reverted back to how it was, but would like to know why you would take it away in the first place.

I really liked the damage numbers. As mentioned above, they made it MUCH easier to compare weapon effectiveness with other members of the party. This is important given the confusing and inconsistent nature of stat bars... in addition to being a good and valuable way to communicate information to me (like "does this damage bonus make a difference"), those numbers were our best way to spot bugs in weapons whose stat bars did not match actual attack power. I realize that tier scaling probably made the numbers confusing, but removing them is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

At the very least, so long as balancing is ongoing, I'd like to point out that it is very much in the interests of the devs to display the numbers again. That's a key part of how players have been able to spot and report recent stat bar display bugs, as well as to provide quantitative and meaningful feedback about item power changes. When you show less information, our feedback is reduced to vaguer and less helpful anecdotes.

But they arent completely arbitrary numbers. They let us know if say Gran Faust is doing more or less damage than a Cutter. In this instance, the Gran Faust should almost always do more damage than the cutter. But without numbers and just some head in rear slash marking, its impossible to differentiate between the two. This is a game breaking change. It will confuse, irritate, or anger most players. The players that wont care about this change, wouldnt care if it was switched back either. Saying they have no intention to change it back is speaking for them. Dont do that. Let them speak for themselves.

Let me point out again, mirokux, that they have yet to point out said sense. I have no clue weather its good sense or bad sense. All i do know is that it makes no sense.

I did a run with no combat numbers, and you can put me in the "unequivocally hate it" category.

Here's a list of things that are now nigh-impossible to determine in the middle of a game.

-Are five cutter hits better than two khorovod hits?
-How much did that level improve my weapon?
-How much more more damage than a normal combo does a charged swing do?
-Is a piercing gun crit better than a normal sword hit?
-Is it worth it to set enemies on fire? Does fire do much more damage than shock?
-Is this guy being healed too quickly or can we lay on the pressure and burn him down?

I almost thought this was a bug when I got on.

First problem I had with this is not knowing which mobs are being healed for how much and if I'm doing damage fast enough. With weapons like my fireotech alchemer it gets harder to tell how many hits I'm actually getting with the bouncing shots and when I'm getting hits at the same time as burning damage. It gets even harder to tell how much damage I am doing when there's a lot of action happening on screen.

Not having numbers doesn't make sense, Just because a mob is weaker to one type of damage a certain weapon deals doesn't mean I'm better off with using that weapon in all cases... it doesn't even mean I'm better off in most cases. It makes it harder to tell when I should be using which weapon. This is just going to mislead new players about how much damage their weapons actually do, so It doesn't help casuals either (who I'm guessing this was supposed to help). These flashes could make it look like a 2 star weapon was doing better against a mob with a 4 star weapon.

Change it back or make it a toggled option to see numbers that's on by default because you're still just going to confuse casuals and most newbs if you don't.

You either show monster HP bars, or make damage display numbers, you can't have neither!
If this change intends to stay, we will have to do some extensive wiki documentation about "weapons by flash size radius against these types of enemies at this depth".

I love the list Machallboyd gave!:

-Are five cutter hits better than two khorovod hits?
-How much that level improve my weapon?
-How much more more damage than a normal combo does a charged swing does.
-Is a piercing gun crit better than a normal sword hit?
-Is it worth it to set enemies on fire? Does fire do much more damage than shock?
-Is this guy being healed too quickly or can we lay on the pressure an burn him down?

I'd like to add:

- Is the bounce shots from my Alchemer based guns doing enough dmg to make up for the 6 shots my Antigua series gun does?
-Does the explosion from the Nitronome do more dmg then the shards from the Radiant Sun Shards bomb?
-Is the boost im getting from the Angelic armor series worth sacrificing defence i could be getting from another series of armor?

And I ABSOLUTLY hate the stupid star flashing thingy's. Just speaking for the Sentenza, as I got so irritated at playin one level I refused to play anymore, it's already hard to tell if ur sentenza is hitting with numbers flashing at you, since half the time the sentenza shots physicly strike the mobs yet do no dmg, but now its even harder then ever to tell if it's actually hitting. Same with the Magma driver I tried out for a bit, it was near impossible to tell if it did dmg, especially if it was hitting for little amounts of dmg, on mobs that moved fast such as the wolvers. This is not saying that it would be better to darken the current effect to make it stand out more, cuz it's just an all out bad idea in my opinion to begin with.

Im not accusing of anything, but it feels to me like there was too many complaints about damage balancing, ppl saying "I only get a 10 dmg boost from armor of the fallen in Tier 3" or "this gun only does this much dmg when this gun does that much dmg" that you guys decided to "hide" the damage done. If this was the reason, it neither balances the game, nor does it make anyone happy, if anything we are more frustrated over not knowing what sort of dmg we are even doing. Like I said though, not accusing of changing for this reason, it just makes us feel like it. (Us as in most of the players that were online when this convo was brought up)

Suggestions to make it better:

Right now we cant tell if one weapons better then another if their both doing "yellow star" damage. Im assuming even though both weapons may be doing "Yellow star" damage, it does not mean they are both weapons are doing the EXACT same amount of damage. They could even be doing 50 dmg difference in Tier 3 (If it works the same way as the different colored number system used too. Since I had several weapons that could do "white dmg" yet range in dmg quantity, or even the "Big Damage" numbers, yet still range in highly different numbers)

I suggest making the damage marker stand out more, take away some of its opacity, and range the damage marker in size. A bigger "yellow star" does more dmg then a medium "yellow star". Though personally I think the stars are sorta lame and childish...

Also, you could change it to being multiple little stars instead of one big star. A few grey stars indicate little damage is being done, those stars can range from couple stars equaling very-little damage, or a small handfull of grey stars equaling little-moderate damage, indicating that the weapon is weak to this type of creature. Then you could have yellow or white stars pop up from low-moderate damage to high-moderate damage. Yet again, the more yellow or white stars that pop up the more damage is indicated done, also indicating that this weapon is normal damage range to this type of creature. And finally you could have Red or any other brightly colored stars, that are a little bigger in size overall, but indicated that moderate-high damage is being done or high-high damage is being done, indicating that this weapons is highly effective to this type of monster. Yet again, more stars of that color = more damage done and you still have your 3 damage ranges in addition to indicating within those ranges of damage variations.

That way for example: you could have a Sentenza and a magma driver versus a Wolver. We'll say for this example they both do Yellow star damage range (low-moderate and high-moderate damage). Since the sentenza hits more times, yet at a weaker rate, 3-4 yellow stars will pop up each hit. The Magma driver hitting at a higher amount of damage, yet for less times, would pop up 9-10 yellow Stars, being a much stronger animation. This example assumes that the weapon are both normal damage range to the mob, and the mob is neither resistant or weak to the weapons mentioned.

I really dont like bashing on things without giving a reasonable suggestion to fixing the problem, so there is my suggestion. You dont necessarily have to use all stars for this suggestion, it could be something like dots = weak, stars = normal, exclamation points = high or any sort of symbols you want to use. I just used stars as an example of whats being used now. I think this way would be more effective then just one animation per all dmg in the same category, since it gives a numbered definition to how strong something is. People like to know if as much information as possible when finding a good weapon/armor setup, and taking away our numbers takes away alot of our abilities to judge power and effectiveness.

PVP is a good example of a system that dosent use numbers, but still demonsrates how much damage we are doing. When you make a shot, or swing a sword at a player that connects, life bars drop off of them. The more lifebars that drop, the more damage you know you did. It would be kinda neat though to have a more defined damage system for PVP, such as some sort of animation for doing low, medium, or high damage in addition to the life bars falling. For example if a player has no Elemental defense, and you hit them with an elemental based weapon, it should not only drop alot of health bars (like it does) but should have some sort of indication that that player is weak to the current weapon you are using. Right now alot of ppl just blindly fire/swing away without paying much attention to if their weapon is hurting some players more then other's. It could definitely bring more depth into the arena.

Overall though, I'd much rather see the numbers return, but if they are gone for good, it would be nice to have a system that Indicates power of the weapon in one form or another.

(sorry if this is a little sloppy, im very tired, and sorta bummed out over the damage system. I re-read over it, but feel I still missed some mistakes. I'll edit it better tomorrow :D)

This update is insulting. It's not helpful, it doesn't improve the gameplay, it doesn't do anything except be annoying. It's stupid. It's a good thing you guys waited until now to patch this in, because I definitely wouldn't have bought energy with the game like this.

But if there's anything I've learned about the suggestion board, it's that the devs don't read it. Oh well.

I logged in after the patch, and the first thing I notice is that I'm not seeing any damage numbers. I thought they'd been made optional, so I looked in the options and couldn't find a way to re-enable them. I then decided someone must've commented out the wrong line and it was thus a bug, so I reported it as such.
Then I read the change log and my jaw just dropped, removing current functionality was the ONLY patch note? I've been thinking about this ever since the patch, but I can't think of a single good thing to say about dropping numbers. If you wanted to make hit effects more flashy, yeah, okay, do that whole star thing in the background, but show me the number anyway! It also got me to thinking about the "damage" and "speed" bars we're shown, I mean they're a fine idea, you can get a general idea of how much damage this gun is going to do in relation to this, but the absolute numbers are impossible to know. Someone on here said that there would be several stats to display to give you a good idea, but... Did anyone think about having both? What if it'd show me the bar when I'm just looking through the list, but when I right click the item and click "view stats", I'd get a full listing of the stats? There you have a simple and clean way to show some general stats, but can still satisfy those of us who want to know what kind of weapon we're actually getting.

I have to pose the question: Who in your team is the one who is forcing these changes? I can't think of a single sane game designer thinking this would've been a good idea. Is the boss' son going around telling him to change this and that, or is one of the managers some hateful person who just wants to see the company burn and die? Does someone in the team hold a grudge against gamers?
WHAT is driving these changes?

I've been thinking about it... and here is my opinionated conclusion.

I tried to tell myself that this change is good to push the "casual" nature of the game. But frankly, I can't even find the word "casual" anywhere on the site (google.com search "site:spiralknights.com casual" zero hits). So that leads me to believe that casual isn't the intent of the game developers.

So, if it's not casual, it doesn't necessarily mean it's "hardcore" but it does lead one to assume there is some real skill required. Min/Maxing is going to be something that may not only be viable, but may actually be necessary in certain encounters such as Vanaduke. I honestly thought he was overtuned yesterday, and now I'm thinking he's more in line with the developers plan than not. I mean, seriously, he's hard to kill and really only a couple weapons/armor setups even reliably work. He's not casual at all.

Now my conclusion is that this game is more hardcore than casual as well as more skill based than not.

That's fine! It's a little odd for how little content there is and the setup of levels with cute themes and next to no documentation. But ok, I get it now...

Ignore the above for a moment... What would the purpose be to removing damage numbers and putting in arbitrary colors/flashes? I can only think they wanted to dumb it down a little to make it a little less hardcore and push a carefree, just hit things and have fun, style. "Nahh, don't worry about numbers, they aren't important.. just slash away with your buddies!".

But, that doesn't jive with the rest of the direction the game is going. It's more hardcore than casual. The changes are making the game less hardcore friendly without making it casual friendly.

To the dev's (my suggestion as this is the suggestions forum)..

Answer this, please.. Who is your target audience? Hardcore? Casual? Because I can't put my finger on it.

Please, please please! Make small changes. Stop redefining the experience with each daily patch. If armor needs a change, TWEAK it. That doesn't mean redesigning it, that means alter the stats 5% until it gets inline with your expectations. It really feels like a bull is loose in the china shop right now.

Maybe you guys don't think that removing damage numbers is a big deal, but with the skill and min/maxing required to defeat bosses (namely Vanaduke), they are required. How do you know if the sword you're using will deliver enough dps to down him when compared to another? The only indication we had was damage numbers.

I love the game, I really do. I've even payed for CE already. I'd like to continue, but I fear I'm going to get frustrated and leave if these broad changes keep happening day after day. Especially only a week or so before launch.

TL;DR: Can't tell if the game is for hardcore or casual play. Please stop making huge changes.

[Sorry for the confusing rambling and tangents.. It's early and I'm typing while trying to wake up at work]

This is terrible and unfun. I AM COLORBLIND; it's difficult to me to tell the difference between colors even at the best of times, when I have time to study and compare them, at an appropriate distance away from each other. Expecting everyone to be able to discern between colors on the fly like this and be able to get the appropriate information from them is a bad thing. Not only are you using color cues, but you're using color cues in a bright, colorful game with tons of different colors surrounding enemies. It's near impossible for me to tell what's happening with my damage now.

Anyone able to fix this, PLEASE read this post, and make it better for colorblind people again. Or anybody else, PLEASE somehow make the developers see this post. Having a disability like this is bad enough without everyone making it worse on us all the time.

Thank you.

Colors are a nice addition to the damage text, but don't take it away. This makes it much harder to measure how much damage we're actually doing. Keep the colors, but put the text back.

Not going to write a wall of text, but simply put, this was a horrible update.

I didn't support this game just to receive these kinds of updates. :/

I don't know about you guys, but this right here is going to be the deciding point of whether I invest a single penny into this game. This is a gross example of the community clearly not wanting this change. If OOO follows through with the change and says, "Deal with it.", then it's proof they are catering to some elusive 10 year old audience who use mommy's credit card, and NOT the people who are actually playing and trying to improve this game right now. In which case, this game will turn into utter trash, and it won't be worth the investment.

All of you: Tell your friends and guildmates who disagree about this change to POST IT HERE, even if all they want to post is "This change sucks." I'd hate OOO to use the "Oh, well, only 40 people posted, so that's not enough to constitute the speaking majority" excuse.

Guess I'm the only dude in here that likes the damage flashes? I don't pay much attention to damage numbers, I just hit the mob and avoid being hit, until it's dead. I think it makes the game flow better to not have numerical values floating around the enemies, especially when there's a ton of enemies being hit.

But I do concede it makes equipment comparison night impossible. Maybe we could have a combat log in the chatlog and have the numbers in there?