Canon
How Can You Spice Up A Healing System?
How Can You Spice Up A Healing System?
#Spice #Healing #System
“Design Doc”
Click this link and use my code DESIGNDOC to get 25% off your first payment for boot.dev. That’s 25% your first month or your first year, depending on the subscription you choose.
Basic healing systems in games can get a little dull. But they don’t have to just…
source
To see the full content, share this page by clicking one of the buttons below |
Click this link https://sponsr.is/DesignDoc and use my code DESIGNDOC to get 25% off your first payment for boot.dev. That’s 25% your first month or your first year, depending on the subscription you choose.
The healing system in Paladins is pretty interesting. It's a hero shooter with a good number of characters in the support role. It's not how the individual characters go about healing that's interesting, but the system itself.
Each character's weapon shots apply a debuff called anti-heal, but abilities do not. The effect lasts 1.5 seconds, being refreshed each time damage is applied by a primary weapon. Characters affected by anti-heal lose a percentage of the healing applied to them. Matches start at 25% anti-heal, which goes up by 5% every 50 seconds, maxing out at 90%.
At the beginning of a match, a support can get away with totally ignoring the anti-heal mechanic. As it scales up though, players need to chose whether to heal a teammate for 90% less now, or wait for them to hopefully cleanse anti-heal. They need to be able to gauge whether the teammate is likely to live, not take enough damage to kill them, and also avoid having anti-heal reapplied, restarting that 1.5 second countdown.
I think death road to Canada has a pretty cool healing system, since inorder to heal you need to have enough first aid kits and be in the car, and having a character with a higher medical level will allow you to use up less health kits per heal, even managing to use non at all at a high enough level.
Sometimes, a game with no health/healing system is super cool. for instance, rain world! in rain world almost everything can kill you, from spears to long falls to bites from other creatures. But, there's a chance (mainly on that last one, being bit) that it doesn't kill you, instead it puts you in a downed state where said creature is carrying you around. If a separate creature (creature B)comes by and tries to fight creature A, you'll most likely be dropped and given a window to get away. Its unforgiving, but very fun! I recommend you try it!
I think it’s really fascinating to see how healing can affect the design of combat within games. Like how dark souls healing leads to generally less spongy enemies, but with the caveat that any encounter could do you in. Or take Ultrakill, where enemies tend to be on the spongier side, but since enemies pack a punch and healing is always available it leads to the combat never making that sponginess clear because you’re always worried about something else. A good healing system can really elevate a game, while a bad one can make others a chore.
One thing to keep in mind however should be that making your healing-system "spicy" should not come at the cost of making it annoying.
In Xenoblade all your characters automatically regenerate health within a few seconds of being out of combat and with no extra costs attached. The only real healing abilities are used to keep you alive during combat and even those only have a simple cooldown as a limiter. That might be a rather basic and boring healing system but it takes away the hassle of managing items or constantly backtracking to rest-spots, therefore allowing players to focus more on actually progressing trough and enjoying the game.
On the other side I have just recently finished Tales of Arise. In that game you don't have out of combat healing and all healing/buffing/debuffing spells use up a resource called CP. Once you are out of CP you cannot heal unless you reach a healing light before a boss fight or return to a rest-spot or an inn. There also are a lot less quick-travel points in that game compared to xenoblade. They really made me manage my items to push through until the next boss or checkpoint. Also had to skip some secret areas in order to not run out of CP, forcing me to return and do the entire area I just explored all over again. While I see the appeal and that such a design makes for more meaningful decisions and items I really just found it to be a massive inconvenience most of the time.
Even basic healing systems can work well when the game is well-balanced. Games like Darkest Dungeon and even some traditional RPGs make it pretty difficult to keep up with incoming damage, and it's using a character turn to do that healing instead of killing the opponent. In this case, the healing is damage mitigation, not an easy undo button. You have to be discerning about using heals and bringing a healer, vs just focusing on eliminating the source of damage.
I've also played games where healing reduces your max health until you rest it off. So you can heal as much as you like on a mission, but it's a very bad idea to spam it.
There is, of course, any game with a "bonfire" mechanic, "you can choose to get a full recovery, restoring all of your resources, but doing so also restores all the enemies you fought in reaching this location."
2:18 The last thing needed in persona 4 was a complex healing system. The game already fucks you over in combat.
I actually really like how healing works in Payday 2
Medic bags and First aid kits both have different uses and playstyles, but both are limited resources
And on higher difficulties you really have to think about how you use them and if you should invest in upgrading them while sacrificing other useful skills and perks
If you play Baptiste in Overwatch you have to "weave" heals and damage, and the correct rhythm changes depending on which is needed more.
Do it right and it feels like you're the heart of the team, keeping the fight going with a kickass drum solo.
The healing properties of non-freezing water in super mario 64 specifically are weird
I think aggressive healing systems are the best for action games. They do not have to be the only way to heal like the examples you put out, but they could be complimentary to the main ways of healing.
One example of that, is Thymesia, an interesting take on bloodborne style games. You do have your usual renewable but limited healing resource. But at the same time the game has talents that reward your skilled play, and one of those rewards is getting healed.
You COULD change your regular parry for an easier block that you can just hold to easily mitigate damage… Or you could exchange it for an even more unforgiving parry that not only damages your enemy, but it can boost your damage and return health to you every time you land it. It's risky, since it's easier to actually take damage by using it, but at the same time you can get that risk refunded.
There's also a few weapons you can use that can life leech on top of dealing damage when landed. And some other talent tree attack variants that are more aggressive and risky, that let you get more health back from attacking non stop and dealing critical blows.
0:48 I wouldn't excatly call reviving in Perona 4 "risk free".
5:11 I am, though XD. Also, I disagree. The combat is very simple and annoying. It encourages you to treat your weapons like an elixir in a RPG, meaning: don't ever use them unless you are fighting a boss. I've never fought less in a Zelda game than in the Switch titles.
In Xenoblade Chronicles 2, there are weapon types that are classified as "Healers", and they do tend to give Drivers (the fighters you can play as) Arts that involve healing, but most of those Arts involve spawning HP Potions you, or your AI teammates, have to physically pick up. The Arts that directly heal the team do provide more instant healing, but they also don't inflict damage, so they're not nearly as good most of the time.
Additionally, there's an Aux Core set named "Arts Heal", that heals the user for a small amount whenever they use an Art. This can be very handy, however it does involve two issues – how quickly can you use Arts, and do you have a spare Aux Core slot for it? For the second question, Blades can have 1-3 Aux Core slots, and you might want to equip a damage boosting Aux Core instead, like Affinity MAX Atk or Crit Up, which means foregoing healing. For the first question, each Driver has unique attacking animations, which can be faster or slower than other fighters using the same weapon; additionally, Arts have a recharge period, and how long it is depends on the Art, so if you're using slow Arts, Art Heal won't be as effective.
I love the healing system in Risk of Rain series. You constantly take damage and have to heal often – and the game has multitude of ways for it, each very unique in terms of trade-offs. Shields that regenerate quickly but you have to not take damage for a while. Usual regeneration that takes a lot of time (and time is VERY important in RoR). Shrooms that heals you fast but you have to stand still. Even medkits that heal you – but only after you take damage, so you're encouraged to take smaller hits to get more HP out of it.
A modded map for starcraft called temple siege had a medic hero
They were able to spawn terran medics, and oddly enough the built in point system for scoring was used for experience gain in the custom map settings so killing these spawned medics would net you high experience while also stopping any biological heroes from healing up.
Additionally a lot of the mechanics had to triggered in a round about way, every hero had their health start at 20% and going to the "Healing" zone around the main base would simply set them back to 20% maximum, but if you spent a level up point you could increase it to 4% per point. Note each hero had different maximums so some squishier heroes didn't benefit as much.
Lastly the above mentioned medic hero who's final ability could set their allies to 100% after a brief delay.
In class-based team shooters healing tends to be separated from the actual fighting in that you can't do both at the same time; Medic from TF2 and most if not allhealers in Overwatch being prime examples. The Roblox game Phighting instead weaves the healing into the fighting with its two healers, Medkit and Vine Staff.
Medkit's revolver fires bullets that deal damage or heal based on who they're aimed at, but he can do both if he lands a headshot on an enemy. Doing that with his first ability, which quickly fires every bullet he has, is a quick way to both deal decent damage and give much needed healing to those who need it. If someone needs backup Medkit's second ability lets him teleport to them which damages and heals based on how many enemies were hit, and his third ability creates a quick healing AoE that also launches enemies into the air. It's very beneficial to stay near a frontlining player who's getting hounded by multiple enemies, but in a game where maps are very small and every kit is tuned towards offense, almost everyone's going to be frontlining.
Vine Staff, on the other hand, throws widespread regenerating sprouts around from her first ability, but they're weak, and she only has a few. If she wants to gain more and strengthen them, she needs to engage using her other abiltiies. Her staff creates petals that upgrade the sprouts as they deal damage, creating healing pulses and eventually creating rooting explosions. Her second ability gives a single ally a lifesteal buff that also grants more seeds if they deal lots of damage, and her third ability sends out rooting branches that grant seeds on hit and explode the sprouts early. Both of them accomplish what Phighting set out to do with its healers with aplomb, and the game is much better as a whole for it.
Come on !? No mention of the amazing healing classes in Xenoblade Chronicles 3 !!!?
Lifesteal will never fail to be my favorite healing system. Far more fun than backing into a corner and waiting for a cooldown, or pausing the game and maxing out your HP instantly
Evenicle is one of the JRPGs where outside of inns, healing is scarce. The second series, however, expanded on it by making the mc the sole healer, and healing magic regulated to a separate MP bar.
I've been playing a lot of Slay the Spire lately, and their healing system is tied to their upgrade system. If you want to improve your deck to survive long enough to finish the act, you have to forego healing to get them. But if you're low on health, you can't upgrade. You have to heal. Which means you have a weaker overall deck going in to future encounters. The tradeoff makes healing a more weighty decision.