Damage Numbers

tim-cain ux-design game-design combat visual-feedback accessibility team-coordination

Abstract

Problem: Damage numbers — those little numbers that fly off characters when hit — are often treated as an insignificant feature, but how much design thought do they actually deserve?

Approach: Tim Cain shares his experience designing damage number systems across multiple games, from Fallout and Arcanum (which had none) through WildStar and The Outer Worlds (which had dedicated teams for them).

Findings: Damage numbers are a critical combat feedback channel that require coordinated effort from artists, UX designers, system designers, sound designers, and programmers. Font size, color, motion, and direction can each encode different information (damage amount, damage type, critical hits), and poor implementation leads to common readability errors still seen in major games today.

Key insight: What players perceive as a "tiny, inconsequential" feature often represents significant coordinated design work — and getting it wrong visibly degrades the combat experience.

The Question

A viewer named Zandatsu asked Tim about damage numbers — those floating numbers that appear when you hit characters in games. They noted that damage numbers feel like they're treated as insignificant, and wondered how all the little design choices get made: is it left to one person, or does a team reach consensus?

Tim agrees: damage numbers are often underestimated, but they deserve serious attention because combat is a huge part of RPGs, and damage numbers are a constant part of that experience.

Evolution Across Tim's Games

In Tim's earlier games — Fallout, Arcanum, and Temple of Elemental Evil — there were no floating damage numbers at all. Damage information was displayed in a console window, perhaps with a status effect under the health bar.

The first time Tim spent serious design time on damage numbers was on WildStar, and he revisited the problem for The Outer Worlds.

The Design System: Font Size, Color, Motion, Direction

The team developed a system using four visual channels to encode information:

Font Size → Damage Amount

Font size communicates how significant the hit was. There are two approaches:

  • Scale by raw number: Big damage gets big text, small damage gets small text
  • Scale by hit type: Critical hits always get large text, grazes get small text, regular hits get normal text

Each approach has trade-offs. If critical hits always use big fonts, a critical that rolls low damage (e.g., a "big 4") can look odd — but it still communicates that something special happened. Tim notes you can go either way.

Color + Motion → Damage Type

Color and motion together indicate the type of damage dealt. Using both channels simultaneously solves two problems: colorblind players can still read the motion cues, and the visual differentiation prevents numbers from running together.

Tim's specific examples:

  • Fire: Orange text that wafts upward above the target
  • Electricity: Yellow text that zigzags off to one side
  • Acid: Green text that drips downward, stretching slightly as it falls
  • Physical: White text that flies outward in the direction of the hit

The physical damage direction was particularly effective for burst attacks (like machine guns), where multiple numbers would spray off the target — "5, 8, 7, 8, 2, 6" — creating a visceral visual that conveyed the intensity of the attack.

A Common Mistake Games Still Make

Tim points out a readability error he still sees in modern games: when a hit deals multiple damage types (e.g., 12 physical + 4 acid), the numbers can appear right next to each other and look like a single number (124 instead of 12 and 4). Using distinct colors and motion patterns for each damage type causes the numbers to visually separate, solving this problem.

It Takes a Team

Designing damage numbers is not a one-person job. At minimum, you need:

  • FX Artist — visual design and animation
  • System Designer — combat mechanics and damage types
  • UX Designer — readability and information hierarchy
  • Sound Designer — audio feedback
  • Programmer — implementation

On both WildStar and The Outer Worlds, this became a dedicated strike team with its own producer to coordinate schedules and ensure all disciplines could work in sync. The artist and UX designer frequently sat together to quickly iterate on details — eliminating the communication overhead of waiting for weekly meetings.

Why Damage Numbers Matter

Damage numbers provide combat feedback right where the player is already looking — at the target. Unlike console logs that require glancing away, floating numbers let the player instantly understand:

  • How much damage they dealt or received
  • What type of damage it was
  • Whether it was a critical hit, regular hit, or graze
  • Whether they're being burst attacked

Tim considers damage numbers a "perfect encapsulation" of the broader principle: many features that players assume are tiny and inconsequential actually required significant time, thought, and multi-disciplinary coordination to get right.

Source: Tim Cain — "Damage Numbers"

References