Boards›Dev Corner

Damage Text Changes

RiotRiot Greenily·6/18/2019, 5:03:01 PM·1 votes·134,396 views

https://ddragon.leagueoflegends.com/cdn/9.12.1/img/champion/Karma.png Hi everyone! I’m Riot Greenily, a UX designer working on League of Legends. I’ve worked on things such as Nexus Blitz, the new stat panel, the stat runes, and more. I wanted to share a small, but highly visible, update to the game experience that will be on PBE today and ship during the 9.13 patch.

We're changing the appearance of the damage text you see when dealing physical, magic, and true damage, as well as their crit styles. You can see how they will look below:

https://i.imgur.com/h0E22xl.gif Physical Damage and Crits

https://i.imgur.com/VotgZBF.gif Magic Damage and Crits

Here are our goals with the changes:

  1. CONSISTENCY We’ve changed the damage text color in order to shift towards consistency throughout the League experience. Damage and crit text has been standardized from four colors into three unique colors. This means you should be able to tell at a glance what type of damage is being done, even if it’s a crit. The crit icon has also been updated to match the style you see in the stats panel. As we work on future in-game updates, we want to make sure our system of stats and colors makes sense. The colors of physical and magic damage text should now feel more related to AD and AP stat colors respectively.

  2. READABILITY We also want to hit clarity and readability of the damage text. This iteration of colors should make damage type differentiation more clear. If you commonly pay attention to damage text, we hope this helps you. If you don’t, this shouldn’t affect your experience negatively.

  3. SATISFACTION We’re testing some changes to the animation style of crit texts to make the initial hit really pop and seem impactful. With the change of both color and animations, we hope crits will feel more satisfying.

In terms of feedback: We'd love if you could share your feedback with us—especially after you've played with this change for a few days. Even if you don't normally pay attention to combat text, the changes could feel a little jarring, but we hope it's positive overall.

With that in mind, please give us your thoughts on the readability of the text specifically. Eg: Does the color of the text get lost to you in game? If you’re colorblind, do you feel that this is an improvement from the old text colors?

Thanks for your patience as we go forth with this change. Your feedback is appreciated in making the game better!

85 Comments

Nico di Angelo6/18/2019, 5:39:08 PM26 votes

I honestly think using the same colours for mana expenditure and magic damage goes against the second goal.

Seiferoth6/18/2019, 5:12:34 PM22 votes

I'm stupid, do you have a live comparison picture too?

Hotarµ6/18/2019, 5:11:29 PM15 votes

Looks great, I feel like those numbers and the presentation is really smooth overall. Very satisfied.

Good work!

[slayer-pantheon-thumbs]

Water Stealer6/18/2019, 11:44:29 PM11 votes

ehhhhhhhhhh... make it like the cursor and let us toggle it and there won't be a problem.

ModThe Djinn6/18/2019, 7:29:49 PM9 votes

Out of curiosity, does this mean we'll see the in-game colors associated with AP ratios changed from green to a shade of blue? It's always been weird to me that AP values in itemization do NOT match the common damage type of AP (green in tooltips, purple in game), while AD values in itemization DO match the common damage type of AD (orange in tooltips, orange in game).

Wizard Poro6/18/2019, 6:45:18 PM6 votes

I hate it. I hate it so much. First off, the stated reason of 'clarity' is bullshit, since the current colors are already distinct. Secondly, the purple color for magic damage is MUCH better. You already removed the purple team from SR, did you really have to remove the last bastion of purple in the game? I literally play mass-AoE magic-damage champions to make the world more purple with tons of purple numbers everywhere, and now I will have lost a huge source of joy just because something that didn't need any kind of updating got 'updated' and I can't do anything about it other than vainly hope that this insignificant plea will change anything. Please, PLEASE keep the purple. I need more purple in my life.

Zimnex6/18/2019, 5:14:34 PM6 votes

Dude this looks dope you guys did wellTwistedFate

BloodMoonKindred6/18/2019, 6:23:20 PM5 votes

Would it be possible to have an option for Colorblind Mode to change the blue text to yellow?

ΛΞΓΣ6/18/2019, 8:40:19 PM4 votes

but blue is for mana ....

Countermagik6/18/2019, 5:36:02 PM4 votes

I'm not sure if the blue shouldn't be darker, since i think it might be easy to missread it as true damage.

Celio Hogane HD6/18/2019, 8:59:59 PM3 votes

RIP purple, again.

still miss the purple minions.

Pyrosan6/18/2019, 5:37:04 PM3 votes

I like it, easy on the eyes. [slayer-pantheon-thumbs]

The Chillin6/18/2019, 5:38:51 PM3 votes

10/10 any improvement is welcomed

Off ßrand6/18/2019, 6:18:52 PM3 votes

One request, please change health bar colors to flash solid red like they used to instead of orange/yellow it used to be so much more satisfying

Falanah6/18/2019, 6:30:44 PM3 votes

The black lining around the text makes it a lot easier for me to read, being colourblind! The only issue I have is that blue text on green and grey make it hard to read for me. Colour combinations of Grey and Green, Blue and Green and Blue and Grey are hard to read for those with colourblindness. If designing for those with colourblindness bold contrast of colour can make it a lot easier. I would recommend for as an alternative to the blue text maybe a bold yellow instead? A brighter colour on top of the dark colours of the background would contrast better and be easier to see. Even with tritanopia (the colourblindess affecting purple and yellow) having a warm tone on top of the cool toned background would help it stand out, instead of a cool tone on top of the cool tones.

CampYourLane6/18/2019, 9:38:58 PM3 votes

i saw these on pbe, and i absolutely love them, good job! [slayer-pantheon-thumbs]

L Rayquaza6/18/2019, 8:25:36 PM2 votes

I'm gonna guess from lack of note about it True Damage is going to stay white?

SupremeVoid6/18/2019, 5:35:58 PM2 votes

I think the shadow on both ad/ap crit is too big or the shadow cast distance is too far. Looks a bit out of place.

The ap crit version looks very bland. Ad version has a subtle color shift inside

Yasamashi6/19/2019, 3:06:45 AM2 votes

What about mixed damage? Is it going to be divided in two different instances? Think of Amumu's passive and his kit, are both left as they are on live (mixed colour between true damage and other damage type in a unique number) or are you dividing the numbers so that his W would display a gradual increase on magic damage AND true damage? Hope you understood what I meant, thanks in advance!

kYw6/19/2019, 5:27:18 AM2 votes

I just fail to see why the color of Magic Damage has to change. What's the goal here? Or in other words, what would we lose if you did these changes in the exact same way but with shades of purple instead of shades of blue? You probably have a reason for it, but searching through the post and comments I don't see any explanation for that. So in sum, good job on the standardization and nicer feedback, but why is purple a bad thing?

DMT Sarevok6/19/2019, 10:04:40 AM2 votes

The reality is that this game needs a deep detail of customization just like Overwatch and other games, let us choose in the options colors for everything (mana, health, hp bars, combat dmg text and so on). I have a very rare form of colorblindness and i almost can't see differences between enemy and ally minions... I'm available to be a test case for this and future development in matters of colors.

Mokuto Bunshi6/19/2019, 8:12:25 PM2 votes

Awesome, eventually we can get to the space dragon in the room. Death recap!

Azanoz6/27/2019, 12:25:15 AM2 votes

Can I get an option to change it?

YayYayYayYayYay6/18/2019, 10:56:17 PM2 votes

The blue for magic damage seems inconsistent for me. Blue is more associated with Mana, while Purple is more associated with Magic Damage. A good example is the effect on Lich Bane that was changed recently to Purple. If you guys decided to choose purple to indicate Magic Effect, why is magic damage blue then. If someone has Lich Bane triggered and sees a purple color, it'd be consistence and nice compared to purple Lich Bane and blue damage

Caenen6/18/2019, 10:27:23 PM1 votes

Good evening!

Any thoughts on making the 'cosmetic crit' icon (things that aren't improved by crit damage, such as Anivia E, Vayne E, Morde Q or Gnar R enhanced damages) similar but distinct from the normal crit icon?

Xt06/18/2019, 10:27:25 PM1 votes

Physical crits are represented by red to orange gradient. Can magical crits be gradients as well, instead of just solid blue?

Perhaps, something like this?

Vespero8/12/2019, 11:15:08 PM1 votes

I'm colorblind and can't tell the difference between Magic Damage and True Damage under the new system. Both just look white to me. I did some experimenting in the Training Tool and found that I could tell the difference when Colorblind Mode is disabled, but that (of course) causes other problems.

In taking screenshots, I found I CAN tell a difference, but it's so incredibly slight as to be meaningless in the course of actual gameplay.

Here's a screenshot with all three damage types visible: https://photos.app.goo.gl/ascYP2c5hb5QctHy8

26 is clearly physical damage (my AA) 12 is magic damage (from Lux's passive, I believe) The obscured number is true damage, because I was running Cheap Shot.

These last two colors are way too similar. Colorblindness greatly affects a person's ability to recognize and distinguish colors, even ones which don't directly include the problematic colors (Red and Green for me), so even though pale blue is not white, I can't see it well enough to tell it apart from white.

In fact, copying the 1 from the screenshot onto a white background, I can't read it at my normal distance from the screen (and I have no vision problems aside from colorblindness). Even with the number not moving, I'd say it looks like a serif "I" and not a "1." https://photos.app.goo.gl/nd713F6x8yK9xV2w7

Again, it's only in colorblind mode that this is an issue, the standard color-scheme has a darker blue that doesn't cause problems.

LorrainewhJK12/8/2019, 2:05:50 PM1 votes

How do you turn this on so i can see the blue text with damage

Vespero1/28/2020, 10:14:36 PM1 votes

It's been 6 months and Magic and True Damage are still almost indistinguishable on Colorblind Mode. Please, just make Magic Damage the same color as it is on non-Colorblind Mode!

Joshua125r 26/28/2019, 6:32:15 AM1 votes

If there is a toggle im fine with this but if we are forced to use this that's gonna be stupid. I can't tell crits from normal attacks and I like how the purple pops better currently instead of blue.