Zelda: Breath of the Wild

King of Posters
#223

I never played Monster Hunter (well, I played a bit, it really bored me for some reason I couldn’t quite pin down, maybe this is one of the things). I agree if all the delay means is that healing forces you to waste more time, it doesn’t like like it has much value.

I don’t care much about how some game mechanic supposedly “makes me feel” if there is no substance behind that feeling, though. If healing was exactly equivalent to a larger health bar and a game just made me go through the motions, I would definitely complain about that (not really ever seen this in practice though, the basic healing systems of every game all have the same couple of interesting properties I mentioned). I quickly see through flimsy tricks and my actual feelings are based on the underlying reality of what’s going on. That’s one reason I can’t stand Ubisoft games which are stuffed full of hollow mechanics.

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#224

Consider the cleric in most poorly designed party based RPGs. Their purpose is to heal people, but they often have some limitation on their resources to do so, so eventually they run out and you have to rest at the inn to gain back their healing resource. Now, consider that there was no cleric and every class got that much more HP to make up for the deficit. Would your play-style change now that you had one less non-choice to make?

Now, obviously, you would feel confident approaching enemies that you avoided because of how much they damage they could output at once. So, suppose, to replace the cleric, you multiply everyone’s HP by 4 but you include a ‘massive damage’ rule where if they take “HP/4” damage in a single attack, that character is knocked out instantly. Would that not be the exact same game except that your resource management has been de-obfuscated into just hp management? I already play games with this assumption in mind, so to me the two hypothetical games are identical.

#225

That’s not even close to identical: your cleric can use his mana more on one character than the others, your cleric can die and have to be Phoenix Downed, the boss can perform an AoE damage burst that temporarily outpaces his ability to heal, the healing can be inefficient if the target didn’t take enough damage yet – and that’s assuming healing is the only thing he can do. You seem a bit dismissive of nuances and focused on this fairly broad-scale game flow. These little interactions between nuances are what keep games engaging though.

#226

it’s worth considering how healing worked in the original zelda, which was a “souls like difficult” game that still featured menu based healing

in that game, a healing potion basically was a one time extension to your health bar. there might be a rare time where you get caught up in the moment of combat and forget to pause and heal, but really it just functions like a “second chance” that you have to spend in game currency to use. the original zelda is entirely beatable without using this, but is still very difficult if you choose to use it.

this mechanic may not be objectionable if healing items were scarce or limited to a small amount per time in your inventory. but that doesn’t seem to be the vibe this game is going for. I don’t know. count me in the camp that it’s probably going to be a lousy mechanic. but I don’t think the mechanic is inherently lousy. BUT I also think the dark souls approach to healing is infinitely preferable.

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#227

I’d actually be interested in reading an article that compares healing systems in various action games. it’s not a topic that seems to be discussed much, but there are actually a huge variety of approaches present in various AAA games these days that all have different impacts and gameplay implications.

some examples:
bioshock (instant heal, bound to a face button (gross imo))
the last of us (happens in real time, requires a complete stop and significant dedication of time)
dark souls (delayed heal, requires partial stop/slowdown, small time commitment)
resident evil 4 (done from paused menu)
resident evil revelations 2 (done from real time menu without affecting mobility, requires small amount of time/fiddling)

some of these suck more than others but tbh I prefer them all to the “auto healing” of gears of war and halo. it even felt like a messy compromise in metal gear solid v, but since I tend to play those game so stealthily it was not really an issue. except in boss fights, where it was frustrating and annoying.

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#228

Hmm, I think you’re not giving Halo quite enough credit, it has some nuances including that the shield regen stops in its tracks if you take even a glancing blow, so you have to take complete cover. (I haven’t played any Gears.) And the fact that the Elites have regenerating shields with the exact same mechanics is kind of beautiful, whoever currently has the upper hand wants to flank-rush down the other to prevent their shield from regenning (and the AI does do this).

I like the Halos with a health-pack health level under the shield a lot more than those that don’t, though, since that makes minor mistakes (or perfection) feel more meaningful.

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#229

yeah, I’m wrongfully lumping halo in with the trope of “health regen”. I remember being annoyed with gears of war in particular for being the first game to rip that mechanic off wholesale, despite there being no narrative explanation, and ditching all the nuance of halo’s shield vs health dynamic.

anyway, funk dis: what if symphony of the night ditched all healing potions in exchange for a subweapon that healed you?

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#230

Yeah, Igavania healing systems are pretty much trash unfortunately. Yeah like just go with JRPG world map style healing in your action game, why the hell not

Another thing about Halo: because there is always the shield, the game can be very stingy with how many health packs it gives you. You can’t get savelocked. That contrasts with for example HL2, where I detect a fear from the designers that the player might get stuck before a gauntlet with 6HP, and to avoid that problem they scatter healthpacks everywhere.

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#231

I tried to specify poorly designed and didn’t name any specific games because I wanted to just construct an example of what I mean. I agree that a well designed game will overcome the boredom inherent to the most basic form of the cleric. Imagine, for instance, that you are playing a crappy dnd licensed game. In pre 3rd edition D&D clerics did have the deserved reputation of ‘boring to play, but necessary for healing so that combat encounters aren’t totally deadly’. You can still see a lot of this in Baldur’s Gate 1 and Icewind Dale 1. In fact, to quote a strategy guide

The idea here is to come up with a good healer. He should not be designed to fight but should be able to in emergencies. When it comes to spells, he should only learn healing spells at first. His primary job is to stand behind the warriors and heal them should they get hurt.

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#232

well

monster hunter healing is a lot more nuanced than you’re giving it credit for! i mean, running 20 feet away to heal is literally the noob move

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#233

If it’s effective (and a quick look at every single youtube video I’ve checked suggests it is) than why is it a noob move?

#234

HL2 spawns at least some medkits based on current health level - possibly only ones from smashed crates. This also applies to the smaller health drop from some Combine. I’m pretty sure there’s numerous static medkits, tho, and all health chargers are static (but rarer). I need to read more on this. Obviously this kind of thing went into the design of Left 4 Dead.

The original SOTN required you to equip consumables to one of your hands (the Saturn version adds a ‘third hand’ which only holds such items) and use them in real-time, but the menu system means they’re still practically instantaneous (and all other forms of healing besides save points become curiosities). Circle of the Moon and onward had in-menu item use, right?

Maybe Zelda could copy the digestion system from Contact. You can stuff your face in the menu, but can only eat so much and then have to wait. Maybe add in a food synergy/nausea system so the player won’t just gobble whatever they feel like, and have a reason to seek out different kinds of foods…

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#235

It’s slow to run away. Later monsters punish you for it with charges or ranged attacks. It’s better (and safer) to do it right after a monster whiffs an attack with a long ending animation. That way there’s no chance of an attack during it, and you stay in the fray to apply more DPS. The game is super grindy; you want to spend as little time as possible on each monster.

Monster Hunter also has risk-reward health. When you get hit, part of the damage you took shows as red on the health bar. This red part will slowly heal you as it turns green. If you get hit while this is happening, you lose whatever red was remaining (and gain new red based on the new attack). So if you were good, you could avoid getting hit after a big attack and preclude the need to chug a health potion at all.

I don’t think it’s perfect system. But I also don’t see much difference between it and Dark Souls. The same “run 20 feet away and heal” works there too. Perhaps you could expand on that?

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#236

you are right. man, my vidyagame memories are getting foggy.

I was thinking of the gba igavanias when I made that point.

symphony of the night’s system is almost worse though…

#237

It’s a Zelda-relevant point though, later entries in a series can color and sometimes override our memory of the earlier ones, particularly when it comes to details like this.

Symphony of the Night has quite a bit of unnecessary clunkiness like this. Likewise, Super Metroid. That doesn’t necessarily prevent them from being the two best Metrovanias, but it’s unfortunate. Metroid Fusion and Aria of Sorrow just go down a lot smoother.

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#238

sort of the same thing in reverse with halo’s health system…

#239

This reminds me of the evolution of Souls soul-item multi-use. In DkS1, you have to painstakingly wait for the animations one by one; it’s barely worth my time to use the small ones. In DkS2, they introduced a multi-item-use menu, even though nobody ever wanted to consume more than one Purple Moss Clump. Finally in DkS3 they simply allowed the merchants to buy them from you at full value.

This kind of design problem is often not so easy to solve elegantly. Productivity software companies have professional UX designers that spend all day thinking about problems like this.

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#240

they actually slowed down the soul item use animation from Demon’s to Dark and increased the cooldown, for no good goddamn reason

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#241

Adding gravitas and making it the equivalent of the Red Dead Redemption skinning animation?

That’s all I got

#242

All of the animations where slowed down from Demon’s tho