Well, I haven't said you need to hide everything. That works well with MUDs, but as you say, you need more animations for the characters to make the player realize you have made more or less damage to your enemy.

Let's see Breath of Fire II: the first time you fight an enemy, its bar health is empty. After you kill it, you will get its bar health displayed, but never actually telling you its maximun health points: each time you hit it the energy is decreased. That can help somewhat to get my idea.

And about playtesting: I released a pre-alpha version to my friends (didn't have still the battle sprites finished, worked much like any MUD). I put a huge dragon with stats much higher than the ones you may ever get inside a cave. And got complains from ALL of them because it was completely unkilleable. Even if they raised their statistics at the limit (you access a console by pressing TAB, which allows to modify almost every "number" in the game), the dragon still killed them. The dragon was a part of a quest (you needed to bring a gem to it). Why players think they can kill everything?

I know: if you are playing a RPG, you should be able to kill everything. But until now, I don't remember RPG allowing you to kill the citizen of a city, the shopkeeper or the maiden.

RB