Yeah, health bars on bosses only would really work. So you can make a choice of...
Should I revive myself and continue to fight the boss?
OR
Should I just lay dead, because my team mates got this, since he only has 1 hp left.

This would really help and not let us waste 40CE

I HAD TO WASTE 80CE when the Jelly king was near death! DARN! >=(

Overall, I really think health bars should be shown on bosses only! This would really prevent confusion and risk.

I want health bars on bosses.

There's no reason to spend 80 CE on JK. That's enough to run the entire tier over a second time, which is worth far more than those 3-4 Jelly Tokens.

Yes please.

By definition giving bosses health bars would add to the immersion. The problem is that you just don't like change or you feel obliged to be a teachers pet because you think three rings has all the best ideas. Why do you think they even have a suggestion forum and why do people always have to be negative about it? It is a game changing suggestion but it's not game breaking. They probably won't even implement it unless there's 3+ pages of people saying "Yes i want this". Having people say "No this is bad and you should feel bad" isn't going to make them not consider it.

For the record i agree with this idea.

I personally have been asking for this since my first boss fight due to the fact that I wanted to log off but kept telling myself no I started this, imma finish it. If Antibes played final fantasy crystal chronicles the health bar for those bosses would be perfect!!!

swear to god, although vanaduke has multiple phases, and doesn't heal, the exacts of his health is always guess work, the time my group did beat him, he looked no different then at the start of his final stage right before he fell over.
sometimes when the revives like 1k, it'd be more worth it if you knew he was like 2 hits from dying.
but anyway, bars would take a hugeeeee amount of work, since most knights hit all sorts of different damages, even jelly king would need a masssssive health bar, nonetheless vanaduke.
still it'd be so cool if there was one.

They wouldn't necessarily need to make a massive health bar. They could make it a scaled version. So it could be relatively small, but represent a substantial amount. So there'd still be some guesswork involved, but it would no longer be the guesswork of "Is he close to dead, or is he still very much thriving?"

And making it numbers would apparently piss a small number of people off. And if everyone can't be happy, why implement something?

I'm sure it wouldn't be a challenge to attach a small red glossed rectangle bar above jelly king/vanaduke and future bosses models. It wouldn't even matter if you can't see it on huge bosses as long as it's there and at some point you can check their health.

Make the HP bar similar to the players HP bars.
Separate the HP bar into different segments to indicate how much damage he needs to enter another form and how many forms he actually has.

I don't like it, it's cold and unreal. Maybe the boss could show some signs of debilitation to have an idea on how he's doing, but a number showing the exact amount of remaining life is just not fun.

It's like, so many people in these forums need to learn how to read. D: They should really stop going into the forums if they're not going to read the entire argument.

And Jelly King already shows signs of debilitation - he starts spinning madly when he's "near death." The problem with that, though, is that he heals himself. So he could be within 2 hits of death, or he could be nearing full health.

I like the idea of having one big red bar across the top of the screen, with a little icon of the boss next to it. Progressively getting darker shades of red might work for Jelly King, but I think Vanaduke would be difficult to see, considering the surroundings and his current appearance. Also, there are color blind users who may have problems with a color-based means of telling them what's up. A health bar that depletes is understood regardless of what color can be seen.

Also- one big bar for bosses would look a lot cleaner than a series of smaller boxes like we're given, and would definitely be easier to read.

And no one has said anything about making the players' health into percentage bars here. Which I wouldn't mind either, personally.

Oh no, a game being "unreal." Gasp. Let's not forget that Basil is a real person, and snipes exist irl, making this game super super realistic. Oh, and people regularly walk around with a set amount of health bars that they can monitor. And if they die, a friend can just walk over them and press attack to revive them! This is totally how real life works. Friend frozen to a place? HIT THEM WITH YOUR SWORD! That's really safe, and definitely wouldn't kill them.

But whatever, no one's going to read this anyway.

I'm all for the boss changing colors as he weakens, but don't use red.

For example with the jelly king. Have him green when he is at full health, his current color when he is mid health, and yellow when he is almost dead.

Colorblind people can tell the difference between green and yellow. It's much harder for them to tell the difference between green and red.

This gives us an indication of health that so many people want, while also maintaining a bit more. erm. realism. that some of the other people want, and being at least slightly noticeable to any users who have trouble with colorblindness.

Well I like the idea of an indicator for bosses health, but in my opinion it would be much more fitting for this game if you had a circle that got smaller as they came near to death. Also for those picky people out there on how much of a number cruncher this may make the game or not an added fix for this is that the bar or circle would not indicate the health to an exact and could very by around 20% so the bar could have very little left, but the boss could have lots more or less health.

But why would OOO add something that would prevent people from waisting lots of CE on a whim since selling CE makes them money.

So people don't get pissed off and stop playing the game?

Because the devs aren't complete jerkwads centered around getting as much money as they possibly can from an FTP game? If they really really wanted everyone's money they would have made it a PTP game instead. Also- you wouldn't necessarily ever have to purchase CE yourself, so it really wouldn't matter at that point.

I'm still keen on the idea of a health bar (so sue me, I grew up in the 90s with things like Mortal Kombat, Tekken, and a few RPGs that all use health bars, even on the enemies). Although this does bring in mind Legend of Dragoon where instead of flatout giving you the health bar of your enemies, it would use a little arrow above their heads. It would start as a blue arrow, change to yellow if they were at 74-26% health, and then change to red when they were most likely only a couple hits from death. Doing something like that would probably take less effort on the animator's part, but it might have to be tweaked a bit for color blind users.

I like the idea presented by AgentPaper (a reference to ROD?) because I think that would be less "cold and unreal" than the game currently is. I assume the reason that they decided not to do that (aside from it taking more effort) is because that might be a little "too realistic" and could potentially alienate some players who are expecting the bosses to act in a similar fashion to the lesser enemies (it's essentially keeping the design coherent - and while yes, a health bar for the boss would be incoherent with the design, it would be easier to implement). :P

My opinion is to give the JK model declining states of debilitation. Have chunks taken out of him, make the crown lopsided, etc.
Alternatively, the JK's inner core? Make it initially bigger, and have it shrink based on health.

@Techhead: "have [the jelly core] shrink based on health."
That sounds pretty easy. +1.

Regardless, I still think that players rezzing based on inaccurate guesses of remaining health is part of OOO's plan to get more money. It's just the way this stuff works.

I don't know why there's all this insistence on the wording "Percentage based" for a bar if you don't want to show the actual % on it. We've all seen blank healthbars before. We know what they are.

@Cheeserito: "Your idea is EXACTLY the same in principle, but different in appearance."
I don't know why you used caps to point out my idea is similar... I know it is, I'm not trying to steal credit or anything.
Also, it's not just a superficial change, reducing the precision of the healthbar would make it more palatable to those devs that want to keep hiding the math.

@FlashbackJon:
/agreed

I used caps to point out to you that you are suggesting the exact same thing, so I don't know why you have such beef with this freaking suggestion. =/

If you're not going to be a useful member of society, then GTFO.

@Cheese: What made you think I had beef with the suggestion?
Terabomber on boss HP bars: "Great idea, I want it, it's not happening." Money/Hiding numbers/Work etc. Take your pick.

AgentPaper:"(Visible injury suggestion)"
Cheeserito: "I like the idea presented by AgentPaper"
Techhead: "(Visible injury suggestion)"
Cheeserito: "I personally kind of don't want to see a dying Jelly King."

Get out.

@Deslare: if "Percentage based" needs to stick in front of "bar" so much, what other types of bases are there for bars?
(This last sentence not spoken in a hostile tone)

Won't work as well for vanaduke.