Why do we show monster average HP but not player damage?

[njvack]

I'm actually curious, not trolling. Since the player is continually upgrading damage dealt at the same time as monsters are getting stronger, it's really hard to know what the HP listing for a monster is supposed to tell us.

I guess if you start one-shotting ogres, you can say "I can do at least about 27 damage now"? But that seems a rather indirect way to get at that information...

This is almost an Advice question, but I'm more interested in dev intent: how are players intended to use that number?

[duvessa]

To compare with other monsters.

[Shtopit]

Monsters could have a x-v information like "with your weapon, you can expect to inflict about 27 damage per turn". This information would account for AC, EV, SH and other defensive stats I don't know about. There could also be a fast button that shows you expected damage inflicted to all monsters in sight by a weapon/spell/ability/evokable of your choice.

[Sprucery]

Monsters could have a x-v information like "with your weapon, you can expect to inflict about 27 damage per turn". This information would account for AC, EV, SH and other defensive stats I don't know about. There could also be a fast button that shows you expected damage inflicted to all monsters in sight by a weapon/spell/ability/evokable of your choice.

Sure, but that's a lot of work and very complicated. Just simply showing how much damage the character deals with each attack would be very simple to implement and give the player a lot of valuable information.

[VeryAngryFelid]

To compare with other monsters.

Yes, players are assumed to take notes of high fast they typically kill monsters with 40 max HP to estimate how fast they are likely to kill a new monster with 20 max HP (with similar AC/EV of course). I am not saying it is bad (and thanks to devs for adding it!), yet displaying the damage directly might make it even more user-friendly because it would allow to avoid doing all the math and note-taking, especially after taking a break in specific game for a day or two (Battle for Wesnoth is great in this regard by the way, you can see odds of your win right before attack).

[tasonir]

I'm in favor of any sort of displaying what the player's damage is likely to be, whether it's a "you can hit for up to 100 damage" even when your likely average is more like 30, or if it tries to take into account monsters defenses as in "You will likely hit for 10 damage on average". But I think most experienced players here know that those numbers are going to be very misleading (and it's not very clear how to actually do this) because of how much variation in crawl damage there is, so if was king for a day, I'd stick with the simple showing damage numbers after you hit something. "You hit the yak! (10)" It can't be misleading, it's exactly what you did, and then it's up to the player to realize how much it varies. I think they'll pick up on it pretty fast. Plus, from a code perspective, the number has already been calculated and it's very easy to simply print it.

Feel like I'm starting to repeat myself since we had another thread on this yesterday in which I said basically the same thing, but hey. Do it!

[Shtopit]

I like the idea of "you slash the kobold (30)! You burn the kobold (15)!", instead of "You slash the kobold!!!"
There is an indicator with the exclamation marks right now, but it's rather opaque and I don't know how it works (absolute value? health percentage? does it change with level?).

I also would love to see how much damage the brands inflict, compared to normal weapons or slay-enhanced versions.

[Sprucery]

If you hit something and the message ends with !, that means you did 7-17 damage. !!: 18-35. !!!: 36-71. !!!!: 72-143. !!!!!: 144-287. !!!!!!: 288+; and so on. Yikes!

[Shard1697]

The question is, if a choice has been made to not show the amount of damage, why show exclamation points which can be used to roughly determine the amount of damage, but only for a spoiled player?

I have played hellcrawl, which shows damage numbers, and do not think anything is lost by having that information. The proof is in the pudding, I am firmly on the side of showing damage numbers.

[Hellmonk]

I'm in favor of any sort of displaying what the player's damage is likely to be, whether it's a "you can hit for up to 100 damage" even when your likely average is more like 30, or if it tries to take into account monsters defenses as in "You will likely hit for 10 damage on average". But I think most experienced players here know that those numbers are going to be very misleading (and it's not very clear how to actually do this) because of how much variation in crawl damage there is, so if was king for a day, I'd stick with the simple showing damage numbers after you hit something. "You hit the yak! (10)" It can't be misleading, it's exactly what you did, and then it's up to the player to realize how much it varies. I think they'll pick up on it pretty fast. Plus, from a code perspective, the number has already been calculated and it's very easy to simply print it.

Feel like I'm starting to repeat myself since we had another thread on this yesterday in which I said basically the same thing, but hey. Do it!

Not quite as simple as it sounds, sadly. You really want to display damage for everything if you're going to do it at all because players might want to do damage with conjuration spells, clouds, wands, god abilities, allies, etc. in addition to melee and ranged weapon attacks. The messages for these things are all over the place, so you either have to modify every relevant message individually (the hacky option and therefore the hellcrawl approach) or refactor a bunch of stuff first so that all the messages can reuse the same code (the elegant option but probably a huge pain in the ass). Even for just melee and ranged attacks, some weapon brands and monster attack flavors have separate messages. It's a good idea imo but I can understand why nobody's rushing to create a pull request.

[VeryAngryFelid]

I am not sure it is that important to have consistency for damage numbers. We can start small, with numbers for melee/ranged and see how it goes. Displaying numbers has 2 advantages:
1) You see when you deal too low damage to a monster with high AC which you are fighting for the first time and who can kill you in that first fight (orb of fire, for example, so you realize you need to quaff might and alike).
2) You see which brand deals more damage typically (+0 of electro or +4 of freezing? Optimal weapon depends on its base damage: the former for dagger, the latter for triple sword) or which weapon. For instance, without displaying those numbers it's really hard to say how much that electro brand helps.

Displaying damage for spells makes less sense because different spells use different types of formula (compare Airstrike to Iron Shot, for example) and not as easily replaced (you cannot just learn a new spell and use it instead of your old one like you can with weapons) so point 2 is not that useful unless you already have many different spells.

[Moanerette]

You see which brand deals more damage typically (+0 of electro or +4 of freezing? Optimal weapon depends on its base damage: the former for dagger, the latter for triple sword) or which weapon. For instance, without displaying those numbers it's really hard to say how much that electro brand helps.

Melee-ing with elemental staves is also very subject to this opacity. I know there is a formula involving Evocations and the relevant elemental magic skill, but that's little help in practice.