View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0008015 | Valley 1 | Suggestion - Balancing Issues | May 22, 2012 9:58 am | Jul 17, 2012 12:21 am | |
| Reporter | frelor | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Status | feedback | Resolution | open | ||
| Product Version | 1.026 | ||||
| Summary | 0008015: Suggestion for making healing less of a chore | ||||
| Description | http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,10758.0.html Like discussed in the thread above, once you reach a warp gate you have to go through a lot of steps just to get back to your village. There you can heal at the stone and then you have to go all the way back to the location you came from to continue with whatever you were doing. So basically all you do is run from point A to B, heal and run back. There is absolutely no difficulty doing this and it is no fun. It would be great if you would heal upon entering a warp gate. This would make the gameplay more fluent and it would cut out busywork. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
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Or I suppose I could take out the ability to heal in town. But having to run back to town to top up constantly really isn't the desired flow. Nor is being full on health all throughout the world. |
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I wouldn't want the healing to go off in the warp gate, but healing up to full whenever you're on the overmap isn't unreasonable. Providing a (small) bonus the longer people go without healing (i.e. the longer they remain in a region) might help alleviate that it's currently more beneficial to heal at every warp gate; alternatively, have the healing draw from a pool of hp that slowly refills over time, and when there's no hp in the pool, you can't heal. (Alternatively, have the pool refill on mission completions and finding stash / gem vein rooms.) |
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Nah, I really don't think you should be able to auto-heal when entering a warpgate. It would really kill a lot of the challenge. |
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Being able to heal out in the wild short of killing trash mobs strikes me as killing the challenge, yes. Having players run back to town for healing is also something that is undesirable behavior, though; it was something we struggled with in beta, and that I thought we had pretty much resolved. But it may simply be that if you can heal in town that some people will always feel compelled, and so there simply should be no quick-healing mechanism like the guardian stones at all. On the other hand, it might be that frelor has a point; since the warp gates never show up in missions, they wouldn't impact that. We'd have to take away warp gates near to overlords, though, because that could really mess with things in multiplayer. Actually, even just running back to town and coming back via the warp gates in MP could mess with the overlords in the same fashion. So to a large degree that would seem to argue in favor of simply removing the healing from the guardian stones in general. |
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Well I'm not so sure about taking away the guardian's healing... For a inexperienced, under-equipped or unlucky player this. feature is the only thing that stopping them from repeatedly dying and unable to get anywhere. If you do decide to change it, I strongly feel that some other, new way to heal take it's place. I can't really think of any suggestions to that effect though. |
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Removing healing from the guardian stones might work - it would need to be replaced with something, though, to avoid health grinding as you go somewhere safe and kill (relatively) weak stuff to get your health back. The problem seems to be more that there's no cost to healing, so I'd suggest a usable healing item, preferably split into different grades (so the weakest heals 10% of Max HP, the standard 25% and the major 50%, for instance) and set up so that you can only use them in "safe" locations (likely when you're in an area with no enemies, using the same check that allows the Planning button to appear) and with a time limit (say, 1 healing item used per 5 minutes - effectively, a cooldown linked between all healing items the same as spells) so that higher grade healing items are still better than multiple lower level items. As to appearance, I'd suggest that all but the weakest grade healing items should probably only appear in stash rooms, to add another more reason to go after stashes. I'd suggest they all have roughly equal chances based on region, though the major item could be more common in one region to differentiate the region stashes a little more. (The standard and weakest item should be ubiquitous, though, since they're likely going to be used a lot.) Additionally, the healing item cooldowns and amount healed could be tied to strategic difficulty, since then it forces you to plan around health loss more carefully since you'll need to space things you do that tend to cost you a lot of health with things that don't cost you as much, since a "spike" of health loss will mean you'll be fighting at less-than-full-health for a while. |
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Healing items were something we did earlier in beta, and they were an unmitigated disaster no matter how we tried it. I definitely don't want to go back down that route. The general structure of the game at the moment is supposed to be: 1. Fully-healed character goes out into the wilds and explores around until it is too dangerous to proceed based on their current kill rates. 2. Character returns to town to heal and ideally do other things as well. 3. Back to item 1. I don't think we're actually that far off that now, as if you are in a mission you're abandoning the mission to go back to town. But perhaps if there was some sort of healing station somewhere in the first chunk of each region or something, that might help. |
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Do neutral Iliari stones still spawn in the wild (outside of the tutorial)? That was a nice-ish bonus to find one, where you could get healing without running all the way back, but was rare enough that you couldn't count on it. As for healing when you get to the world map, yea, I can see that, or at least when you step on the tile that contains your home settlement. |
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May I suggest a "cooldown" on healing? The stones could have a certain limit of healing points that if you keep using too much it will eventually run out and you will have to wait a bit, therefore disencouraging short healing all the time (maybe the quicker you use the healing stone again, the more health points it spends... ) maybe spend consciousness shards or other resources (good way to spend all the unused stuff you get) to refill it in case the player REALLY needs it. |
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If you want characters to remain somewhere until they feel it's unsafe (instead of leaving "just in case"), it's more a matter of providing some incentive to stay. I'd suggest a consciousness shard drop multiplier based of the number of kills and number of chunks entered since you were last on the overmap (since missions don't need a preventative measure, only exploration). It might be worth applying a similar multiplier to health drops as well (though probably at a different rate) so trash mob farming is not quite so bad off compared to the instant free heal. Alternatively, the multiplier could be based off the proportion of health you have remaining, so that as your health gets lower you have more reason to stay (until you eventually reach the point where you decide to not let greed kill you and go back and heal.) |
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Maybe there could be a scroll/mission type like the wind shelter mission, wherein you can place a Ilari stone? |
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I like the way things are in the sense that the extra effort to go and heal up is an incentive for me not to do it all the time. I like the randomness involved in warping to the first chunk: you may still need to traverse a lot of land sometimes (and sometimes not), which adds an element of risk (and time) to going to heal. I think this is good. There are 3 things that I think can be improved right away about the current experience: 1. Moving onto the settlement tile should heal you right on the map -- entering the settlement is an unnecessary extra step. 2. Clicking on the first chunk that has a warp gate in the tile is tedious. It's the default case -- I normally want to warp there. So there should be a warp gate from within the warp zone that automatically takes me to that first available chunk. 3. Remembering where I came from is a pain. If you change the visited font color to show me where I just was, it'd be a lot easier. Another idea to consider is ditching the healing stone, and placing single-use full health healing drops in strategic locations. You could have these at the end of missions and at the bottom of cave levels, and maybe at the top of buildings (if buildings get hard enough). A single (possibly hidden) room within lieutenant towers and overlord keeps could also have this, as would a surface chunk after one that has a boss (usually deep into the tile). This system would be much more hardcore and tense. You basically only get health when you should absolutely need it e.g. when you've defeated bosses to get to the bottom of a cave level. |
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I would be happy with a spell that provided a small amount of healing with a moderately long cool down. Sometimes I just need that little extra to feel confident enough to dive into the dark, or face that Octopus around the corner. I also wouldn't mind a spell that let me lob off a chunk of my health and keep it in my pocket for later. That would add a strategic element where I have to decide if it's safe enough for me to create a reserve and then rebuild my health. This would probably require alteration to Ilari stone healing so that a player couldn't store a bunch of health and then immediately heal (though that could be resolved by emptying out stored health if you heal at a stone) |
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I think you could seed the odd healing Ilari elsewhere and not mess with the current flow - I'm thinking Metroid here. Although I am conscious that part of the difference here is that you don't actually RISK any health travelling over the world map (or much, backtracking to get health in general) which is what, in traditional Metroidvanias, requires them to be spaced throughout the world, rather than just in one spot. So perhaps the current system is fine, or perhaps indeed it's a pretty trivial-but-time-consuming boundary in players' paths, rather than one which actually presents a challenge and/or interesting strategic choice. (To elaborate on that last point: the fact that you have to face enemies to reach a health point in Metroidvanias - both whilst backtracking and then again on your return journey - presents a situation where you're conscious of not dropping TOO low in the first place, if backtracking to heal is your intent. You're naturally inclined in those circumstances to try to heal in the field. Or, if it's been a while since your last save/health point, you figure there must be one coming up soon and resolve to plough on. That strikes me as more interesting than, "Oh, I'm low on health - do I risk it all or face the tedium of returning to camp?") Anyway, just some thoughts with not much actual conclusion! |
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Diablo 3 allows you to heal in town and it takes 10 seconds to teleport to town from anywhere another 5 seconds to ran to the healer. Usually this is too of a nuisance to use, but sometimes it's a lifesaver. I see nothing wrong with this system. |
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I think most of the tedium of healing comes from having to travel from the region's first warp gate to the world map, entering town, touching the Ilari stone, leaving town, going back to the first warp gate, and warping back to where you first were. What if warp gates could take you straight back to town? This would make healing a lot faster, yet would keep the current system's feature of encouraging players to think "Well, I'm back at square one. Do I want to go back to where I was, or go somewhere else?" Note that players wouldn't be able to warp back just as quickly: they'd have to go back to the initial region of the area, find its warp gate, and warp back to where they last were. Were this the case, some kind of an indicator of where I last was would be helpful. If I enter (say) a desert region, adventure in it for an hour, and then warp back to town, I could easily forget just which desert region I had last been in. A slightly different solution would be to have warp gates simply take players back to the world map, like elusion scrolls - placing their character over the region they'd just left, thus letting them clearly see where they just were. But this way, players would still have to hike back to town, enter it, heal, and leave town; I'd prefer to just warp back to town, and have a world map indication of where I last was. All of that having been said, I'd really like it if specifically the rooms before lieutenants and overlords had some kind of a full-healing effect. I think most players who understand how the game works would have little desire to face either of these without being at full health. Even if the warp gates before them took you straight to town, there's still the matter of backtracking to those rooms - which would be tedious enough in single-player, but could really break the flow in multiplayer - where some players would probably have enough health to face it immediately, while others would prefer to backtrack first; by the time they returned, the lieutenant/overlord may have been defeated already. |
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I agree with adding more healing methods. Some thoughts I had: - Random, uncommon Ilari stones seeded that don't heal for free, instead costing consciousness shards to heal. Let's say 1 consciousness shard per health point, up to a max of 500, and/or Region Level*20 shards to heal to full. - "Town Portal" like mechanism mentioned earlier. When used, it creates a temporary Warp Gate directly to your continent's settlement. I'm thinking rare chance to spawn with or even inside a regular Warp Gate. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| May 22, 2012 9:58 am | frelor | New Issue | |
| May 22, 2012 10:03 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0024567 | |
| May 22, 2012 10:03 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
| May 22, 2012 10:03 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | new => feedback |
| May 22, 2012 10:34 am | BenMiff | Note Added: 0024568 | |
| May 22, 2012 11:19 am | GauHelldragon | Note Added: 0024579 | |
| May 22, 2012 11:23 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0024580 | |
| May 22, 2012 12:51 pm | GauHelldragon | Note Added: 0024590 | |
| May 22, 2012 12:51 pm | BenMiff | Note Added: 0024591 | |
| May 22, 2012 12:55 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0024596 | |
| May 22, 2012 1:14 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0024599 | |
| May 22, 2012 1:16 pm | Corvo | Note Added: 0024600 | |
| May 22, 2012 1:49 pm | BenMiff | Note Added: 0024603 | |
| May 22, 2012 6:30 pm | GauHelldragon | Note Added: 0024633 | |
| May 22, 2012 11:20 pm | Bluddy | Note Added: 0024664 | |
| May 22, 2012 11:21 pm | Bluddy | Note Edited: 0024664 | |
| May 23, 2012 12:10 am | SerinityFyre | Note Added: 0024668 | |
| May 23, 2012 4:39 am | zebramatt | Note Added: 0024675 | |
| May 23, 2012 4:40 am | zebramatt | Note Edited: 0024675 | |
| May 25, 2012 11:47 pm | SerinityFyre | Relationship added | related to 0008151 |
| Jul 5, 2012 9:13 pm | Andrew Savinykh | Note Added: 0026355 | |
| Jul 5, 2012 9:45 pm | Pyrrhic | Relationship added | related to 0008751 |
| Jul 5, 2012 10:21 pm | Pyrrhic | Note Added: 0026358 | |
| Jul 5, 2012 10:36 pm | Pyrrhic | Note Edited: 0026358 | |
| Jul 5, 2012 10:44 pm | Pyrrhic | Note Edited: 0026358 | |
| Jul 17, 2012 12:21 am | Matthew Carras | Note Added: 0026808 |
