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BALANCING HP REGEN
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Strak
1560
Strak
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CloseOkay, so I've got a bit of a problem, and I'm looking for perspective. In Thrall, healing items are limited, and healing skills are almost non-existent, with some minor exceptions, and even those exceptions cannot be spammed every turn. Reason for this is that in every turn based RPG I've ever played, having a heal spell that targets all allies and restores tons of HP is super broken, and having heal spells that restore hardly anything are not worth spending a turn on. See the "I hate white mages thread" for more details on why I don't like spammable healing spells.
So my solution? Stackable passive HP Regen. You can find armors that restore 1% of your max HP every turn, and equip up to 4 at a time on each party member. There are also passive skills you can unlock that provide additional brief HP Regen or minor instant healing when fulfilling certain conditions such as killing an enemy or evading an attack.
Now here's the main problem: enemy attacks are balanced to deal damage equal to around 10% of your max HP per hit. Get hit 10 times, you die, basically. But since HP Regen triggers every time someone takes an action, it gets way too powerful very quickly. I'm trying to find a balance, but I'm having trouble.
First solution I came up with, increase the damage enemies deal. That works. If you're heavily geared into Regen. But in the early game, you won't have a ton of that equipment, and you don't have many skills unlocked yet, so the balance is way off. And if you're focused on a different build, even later game balance is off.
Second solution, nerf the HP Regen. But then the question becomes, where does most of your healing come from? Since there aren't many skills that restore HP and restorative items can be hard to come by since items are randomized, you could end up in a desperate situation with no options to bail you out.
I think I need to reduce the HP Regen a bit, but I'm not sure how much. I'm noticing that the game is way too hard at early levels, but way too easy past about level 12. Does anyone have any tips on balancing games resource management?
I'm thinking I may be able to add a risk-reward element where HP Regen comes with heavily reduced defense, or something like that, but I don't really know if punishing the player is a good method of balancing a mechanic. Anyway, I'm a bit stuck. Would love some perspective, if you've got some to add.
So my solution? Stackable passive HP Regen. You can find armors that restore 1% of your max HP every turn, and equip up to 4 at a time on each party member. There are also passive skills you can unlock that provide additional brief HP Regen or minor instant healing when fulfilling certain conditions such as killing an enemy or evading an attack.
Now here's the main problem: enemy attacks are balanced to deal damage equal to around 10% of your max HP per hit. Get hit 10 times, you die, basically. But since HP Regen triggers every time someone takes an action, it gets way too powerful very quickly. I'm trying to find a balance, but I'm having trouble.
First solution I came up with, increase the damage enemies deal. That works. If you're heavily geared into Regen. But in the early game, you won't have a ton of that equipment, and you don't have many skills unlocked yet, so the balance is way off. And if you're focused on a different build, even later game balance is off.
Second solution, nerf the HP Regen. But then the question becomes, where does most of your healing come from? Since there aren't many skills that restore HP and restorative items can be hard to come by since items are randomized, you could end up in a desperate situation with no options to bail you out.
I think I need to reduce the HP Regen a bit, but I'm not sure how much. I'm noticing that the game is way too hard at early levels, but way too easy past about level 12. Does anyone have any tips on balancing games resource management?
I'm thinking I may be able to add a risk-reward element where HP Regen comes with heavily reduced defense, or something like that, but I don't really know if punishing the player is a good method of balancing a mechanic. Anyway, I'm a bit stuck. Would love some perspective, if you've got some to add.
I'm a big supporter of "Let people play how they want to play, even if it makes the game easier/harder for them" so I'm always going to push the "just give them the shit they want (within reason)" agenda.
That said, there's a few ways you can mitigate healing if you need to.
Limited consumables is already something you've looked at.
Cool-down healing spells - you can't cast them every round of battle, but when they're needed they're there to use.
Armour regen stacking to a specific percent (maybe 3/4 of damage dealt by enemies? idk, it's hard to regulate this because enemies may attack the same person every round and the may have less chance to heal at all).
Regen skills? This could be a bit easier to regulate since they'd wear off after a set amount of rounds, and you'd be using a resource to set it up (a turn that could be spent attacking is instead spent setting up a heal).
Low-healing items that give a regen buff for a few rounds is another way to go about it. That way you can give them more consumables but they give less healing, but more over-time healing.
A mix of all these things is the best way to do it, so that the players aren't relying on just one strategy. Low regen on armour, with skills that can also do low regen (at cost of MP/turn), with items for a quick bigger heal if absolutely necessary.
other ideas:
- Field effects that give regen over time (per round instead of per turn)
- skills to affect damage taken so healing isn't as fully necessary
- giving small HP heals from other healing items (5% HP heal on antidotes, for example)
- up to % Max health (once the character hits 75% health the regen stops)
- stance that allows healing but drops defense or has another negative effect
- Defending gives a % per x round buff (so if you defend in battle you get a state that gives you a small heal for the next 2-3 rounds)
- bigger armour regen uses MP to fuel it
- required effects to boost regen (say, if you defend you get 2x regen or a status effect that buffs low regen amounts)
- use a resource to increase regen amounts that are plentiful early game, but become rarer later on.
- early game armour has higher regen but as you move further into the game you get lower regen but much higher defense (less damage taken = less regen needed).
That said, there's a few ways you can mitigate healing if you need to.
Limited consumables is already something you've looked at.
Cool-down healing spells - you can't cast them every round of battle, but when they're needed they're there to use.
Armour regen stacking to a specific percent (maybe 3/4 of damage dealt by enemies? idk, it's hard to regulate this because enemies may attack the same person every round and the may have less chance to heal at all).
Regen skills? This could be a bit easier to regulate since they'd wear off after a set amount of rounds, and you'd be using a resource to set it up (a turn that could be spent attacking is instead spent setting up a heal).
Low-healing items that give a regen buff for a few rounds is another way to go about it. That way you can give them more consumables but they give less healing, but more over-time healing.
A mix of all these things is the best way to do it, so that the players aren't relying on just one strategy. Low regen on armour, with skills that can also do low regen (at cost of MP/turn), with items for a quick bigger heal if absolutely necessary.
other ideas:
- Field effects that give regen over time (per round instead of per turn)
- skills to affect damage taken so healing isn't as fully necessary
- giving small HP heals from other healing items (5% HP heal on antidotes, for example)
- up to % Max health (once the character hits 75% health the regen stops)
- stance that allows healing but drops defense or has another negative effect
- Defending gives a % per x round buff (so if you defend in battle you get a state that gives you a small heal for the next 2-3 rounds)
- bigger armour regen uses MP to fuel it
- required effects to boost regen (say, if you defend you get 2x regen or a status effect that buffs low regen amounts)
- use a resource to increase regen amounts that are plentiful early game, but become rarer later on.
- early game armour has higher regen but as you move further into the game you get lower regen but much higher defense (less damage taken = less regen needed).
Strak
1560
Great advice, all of that! I'm using most of your initial suggestions already, all instant healing spells have cooldowns, items are limited, etc, but there are some suggestions here that I really hadn't thought of that are very good!
Stat healing items giving a very small HP restoration effect is actually brilliant. You find tons of those, and they're already quite limited in their usefulness, so having a slight health gain would kill two birds with one stone. Make them more useful and give the player more early game healing items.
That said, I also just double checked my stat allocations for enemies based on the levels I described, and realized that the stat progression is way too slow. Enemies aren't gaining ATK stats per level nearly as much as players are gaining DEF stats, so that goes quite a ways towards explaining the reverse difficulty curve. Either way, I still need to work on balancing, and I do think the Regen is a bit OP, so the more feedback the better.
Stat healing items giving a very small HP restoration effect is actually brilliant. You find tons of those, and they're already quite limited in their usefulness, so having a slight health gain would kill two birds with one stone. Make them more useful and give the player more early game healing items.
That said, I also just double checked my stat allocations for enemies based on the levels I described, and realized that the stat progression is way too slow. Enemies aren't gaining ATK stats per level nearly as much as players are gaining DEF stats, so that goes quite a ways towards explaining the reverse difficulty curve. Either way, I still need to work on balancing, and I do think the Regen is a bit OP, so the more feedback the better.
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1
