Bar 1=middle bubble, Bar 2=right bubble, Bar 3=left bubble ... makes no sense to me

Just what the title says. I know this threw me off when starting with roll20, and it has been a hurdle for others who are beginners as well.

Why can't we fix this to work more intuitively?

I do think making this change could upset a lot of currently running games though, and hope that it can be made to only take effect on newly made games. But as it is now, it really is NOT intuitive.

Amen to this. When I first started using roll20 I thought it was just something I wasn't getting...

Yeah, it's annoyed my ocd since forever... >_<

The Devs have previously stated that the logic behind the order is so that the first bar is centered if it is the only bar. (Note: I am not commenting on if the suggestion will be considered or not.)

I've always had to explain this oddness to new people. I think people can put up with the "off center" issue much more easily than the "why isn't this in the right order" issue. Nothing stops them from just using bar 2 if they want a center bubble only. Works perfectly in fact, and still "makes sense," especially to new people.

Yea its always bugged me and my group, almost a year playing on here and time to time they adjust the wrong stat..
Why not change it to a per campaign setting? A bubble order selection on the settings..add it to the "Token Bar Colors + Display Settings" option.

That way everyones happy..default is how it is now, or option 2 is by bar order.

Quintus said:

I think people can put up with the "off center" issue much more easily than the "why isn't this in the right order" issue.

I've found most people (EDIT: among the 50 or so people I've DM'd for on Roll20) can "put up" with either issue after, at most, 5 seconds of learning how it works or, at worst, annoyance for that equivalent duration. After 5 seconds I think almost everyone can understand it and put up with it, even if it's not to their particular liking.

Edited to add: I do understand if some people are annoyed by this for longer than 5 seconds, example: William says it has been bugging him for a year. Okay. Evidently this bothers some people more than what I've seen among the players when I've been DM'ing. For people I've DM'd, maybe 5% of the people asked about this, and in every case the person was satisfied and moved on after hearing how it is set up as 2, 1, 3.

I think that quote makes my meaning less clear.

It is much easier to presume left-to-right = 1, 2, 3. There is virtually no learning curve involved, no misinterpretation, and no reason to suspect things should work differently. Nearly everyone can understand how it works immediately.

If you make the order left-to-right = 3, 1, 2, then you need time to adjust your thinking and explain to yourself why this is "out of order" from the norm. It may seem slight, but the simplicity of using 1,2,3 over 3,1,2, is about as plain as can be.

If you really think this is a bad idea, and want to critique it, then please do. But let's not quibble that this is something that bothers people exactly because it isn't "normal." It deserves to be one less issue for new people to have to deal with to make roll20 an attractive gaming option.

We can all "put up" with a lot more than we do. But we probably work best when we can get things to make sense most easily, and not make more mental work for ourselves then necessary over mundane things.

I hear you. I agree there is a learning curve. Of 3 to 5 seconds. After that, you've learned it, right?

It's not that I haven't "figured it out," it's that it shouldn't have to be a hurdle for new people. Why even build that hurdle in the first place if it can be avoided entirely?

I would like for them to be in order, left to right as well.

Quintus said:

Why even build that hurdle in the first place if it can be avoided entirely?

The answer to that is, because the Devs wanted "Bar 1" to be the middle circle, so that it is centered for people who only use 1, rather than appearing at the top-left off-center for people who only use 1.

Gold said:

I hear you. I agree there is a learning curve. Of 3 to 5 seconds. After that, you've learned it, right?

Oh yea, its not the learning curve of it, or like we are going "Oh my god there it is again! the bubbles!". Meant bothered us more in the aspect of in the heat of battle, without thinking they edit the wrong one. Since for us bar3 is 'ammo" so I tell them "take 3 off your 3rd bar" and they quick type in bubble 3. without thinking.
Its just small inconvenience, not game breaking or anything that gets lengthy discussions anymore...I guess "bothers us" is a bit worded wrong. More of a "Crap wrong one" once or twice every other game or so.
I myself would prefer being able to set them in my campaign to 1,2,3 or 3,1,2.

You want the top bar bubble to be straight up?

Offset the bars moving right from middle around the circle of the token, the same way the settings and marker button are. It'll even make a ton more sense when correlating bubbles with bars, because then they'll be in a slightly descending order as well, and it will be more aesthetically synchronous with the settings and marker buttons.

GM can set the colors of the 3 bars & the color matches the corresponding circle.

EXAMPLE,
Don't say "Take 3 off your 3rd bar"
Do say "Take 3 off your Red bar".

That should eliminate any possibility of confusion for the Player, as long as the GM has it straight.

By default the colors are:

Bar 1 = GREEN = centered circle
Bar 2 = BLUE = right circle
Bar 3 = RED = left circle

The GM can edit those colors to any colors, in the Settings.

Yeah, I'm one of those that "learned it," and then still forgets it every once in a while while hurriedly editing.

And honestly Gold, I don't see anybody making this an end of the world (or virtual tabletop) issue, just mentioning it as one more speedbump on the road to clarity.

Eventually the devs will revisit the design and when they do, well, it's valuable user input that some of us are offput by the design decision...