RiotNome

Richard Liu · @RiotNome

15th Jun 2014 from TwitLonger

Fellow Rioter @onidavin asks about the buff bar.

I know Davin mentioned he'd be OK with a private answer, but I do want to validate some of my assumptions with players, even if it's only on Twitter. The buff bar's a bit of a mess right now, and the entire Clarity team has done some exploration on potential ways to clean it up. Among the issues:
- We use the buff system for a lot of things--only one of those is buffs. Among them, we have buffs, stock counters, timers, auras, global-state indicators, easter eggs, and more. At some point we'll need to do a re-evaluation of what actually belongs there--and I'd argue that it's "combat-relevant, time-sensitive states." Goodbye easter eggs :(
- On the game design side, we tend to favor exceptionalism over consistency, which often results in buffs and tooltips tanking the decisions. UI is subservient to gameplay, so I don't know if we can do much here.
- What you see on your buff bar shouldn't necessarily be what others see when they select you. Corki missiles are one of these things; we currently store stock and Big One information on the buff bar when they should live on or near the skill icon itself. The same goes for countdowns like Annie's passive. However, other players need to be exposed to that information, so it should perhaps still show for them.
- There's some simple improvements like standardizing to countdowns, instead of count-ups. Simple reasoning here--consider Kassadin's Force Pulse, which requires 6 spellcasts to activate. A count-up paradigm goes from 0 (no icon) > 1 > 2 > 3 > 4 > 5 > X, where X is the active state. A count-down paradigm goes from 6 > 5 > 4 > 3 > 2 > 1 > X. What's the difference? The count-down provides more information--you always know how many spellcasts are left, whereas the count-up requires you to know the total number of casts necessary.

...And lots more! We want to make sure we get a good understanding of all the challenges a system faces before tackling it. Lots of work to be done :)

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