[Gameplay] Include more information on Player Status

[Zillvr]

Through the lives(or deaths if that's how you prefer to perceive things) that I've accumulated jumping from server to server, playing with as many different people as time and availability allows, I've thought about something that could or would most probably help with the multiplayer experience in the future and that is to include more information on player status information box (Pressing Tab in-game by default.)

 

Sometimes, asking how is everyone else's doing (hunger/heath/sanity) takes a while even if you do have some third party application in the background to be able to verbally talk to each other (skype/mumble/teamspeak) let alone trying to type it out. So this is what I've thought of, and probably most of you already have, is that when we open the player status by holding down tab we should be able to see other players' actual in-game statuses. Their hunger/heath/sanity would appear as numerical values beside their player icon with corresponding colors for what they represent. In the mock-up image I made below, yellow is for hunger, red is for health, and orange is for sanity. This way, your allies can check whether you need food or any form of healing and act accordingly to help without having to ask "Are you going to be ok?" this would be very useful when deciding which of you should eat the last meatball to ensure the survival of the entire group in the long run.

 

 

Other information that could be also be put into the player status: is displaying whether a player is freezing/burning/a ghost represented by different character specific icon. e.g. If player is freezing/burning, the icon changes from the default icon, to a icon where he/she is freezing/burning with unique facial expressions for each status. And if the player is a ghost, the character icon turns into a ghost version of the character.

 

This would be very helpful on co-op servers but on pvp servers this may be counter productive. That being said, this feature can be toggled on/off when creating a server be it co-op or pvp.

 

Gist: The player status should also include each players' hunger/health/sanity information and also display whether they are freezing/burning or a ghost. 

 

Klei probably already has plans about doing something like this and maybe even in an entirely different way, but it wouldn't hurt to give ideas on what I, as a player hope to see at the end of beta. Cheers!

 

Note: I've done a fair bit of research whether somebody has suggested the same thing in [Don't Starve Together - BETA] Suggestions and Feedback using search terms such as: player status, ally status, information. No results that seemed close to what I had in mind. If this has somehow been already suggested, I'm sorry. Forgive my tendency for every run-on sentence I unconsciously made. To mods, feel free to move/delete/close this topic as you see fit. Thank you for reading!

[rezecib]

Meanwhile, you can encourage them to use Status Announcements. But it looks like there might be some similar stuff being added official in the next patch

[Zillvr]

@rezecib Awesome work there rez, I can't believe I didn't notice that thread. Thank you for sharing the mod! And as I see it, Seth has replied to it. I just have to wait for the upcoming patches.

 

Thanks rez!