Saw this pop up, and it rings true for me at least. I like some numbers in my games, and not just the washed-out kind where they might as well just use a color instead.
And like he says, it’s fine in games like DOOM 2016. Doomguy needs no numbers, his numbers are “Shotgun” and “More”.
The only numbers I dislike in games are the kind that fly off things when you attack them. That shit is visually annoying and I hate every game that uses it without an option to turn it off outside of old turn-based JRPGs. So I totally understand that.
They’re not meaningless, per se, but most of the time you also have a gauge indicating health and it’s far less distracting than a ton of numbers flying off obscuring the action.
Not to mention, sometimes they actively take away from the art direction. You can have a game that’s clearly going for semi-realism and yet keeps damage numbers flying off like it’s a comic strip, which doesn’t fit whatsoever.
The strangest, funniest mixture are the games built off comic licenses that employ a semi-realistic style with damage numbers, when a better combination would be stylized so it would all fit better artistically.