How Can You Spice Up A Healing System?

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Basic healing systems in games can get a little dull. But they don’t have to just add a number to a health bar and call it a day. Healing in a game can be risky, strategic, and opportunistic. It can be a vessel for game design dilemmas. If your player is looking for a new lease on life, what are they willing to give up? The answer may surprise you. Let’s talk about a lot of ways you can spice up a dull healing system.
Featuring:
Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2
Zelda Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom
Advance Wars
Othercide
Hollow Knight
Basically all of Fromsoft’s catalogue
Monster Hunter
Metroid Other M
Doom 2016 and Eternal
Ultrakill
F-Zero 99
A bunch of fighting games
FTL
Dave the Diver
Team Fortress 2
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[@DesignDoc]

Click this link 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.

[@brianT8721]

Do you think Red Dead Redemption/RDR2 has a normal healing system or a to big of one?

[@Meals-sh9fs]

May I suggest the concept of lifestealing? Moves like Giga Drain or Drain Punch in pokemon, for example. On another note, the original Postnight game has an armor set that gives lifesteal, and it's my favorite set. Bunch up a good few baddies and just charge forward!

[@arcan762]

coding is dead

[@jbca]

the tech job market is still shit. With the number of layoffs in recent years it’s hard enough to find a good role for folks with tons of experience; the days of it being easy for new folks to coast into a six figure job in short order are long past, and it’s unclear if they’ll ever come back. By all means pursue it if you’re interested or passionate, but if you’re just looking for a good paying job, it’s not the opportunity it once was. (Not that I have a better suggestion. Bleh. The world is hard)

[@theorangeheadedfella]

@@arcan762 said no one

[@egghead7215]

Ze healing is not as rewarding as the hurting

[@neverttheguy2670]

But consider this... With more healing, the hurting can be done for longer

[@Mikescool444]

@@neverttheguy2670 exactly, it’s ze calm before the storm. Ze reward is _receiving_ ze reward.

[@leithaziz2716]

Ha Ha! OCTOOBEER-FEEEEEST!

[@The_whales]

DOCTOR, ARE YOU SURE THIS WILL WORK!?

[@Ruskah0307]

v1: "Ze healing is ze hurting"

[@kennyholmes5196]

TF2 actually does have an example of "invisible" healing on the medic: The Crusader's Crossbow. Hit an enemy, it deals damage. Hit an ally, it heals damage. The further you hit from, the more you do. So be sure to land your shots when using it!

[@TARDISES]

And even then there is a tradeoff beyond just actually having to aim - it's burst healing instead of constant healing like mediguns, which means it's entirely possible for the intended heal target to be finished off before the bolt arrives.

[@leithaziz2716]

@@TARDISES Unfortunately the Crossbow is strong enough that using any of Medic's other secondaries is looked down on. It's that important of a weapon to "serious" Medic players.

[@SandmanURL]

The crossbow also has tradeoffs too (even with how good it is) You have to be able to aim the arrows to do burst healing whereas the normal medigun has auto aim. Also while it can heal faster than the medigun you can’t overheal with it so you have to constantly switch between your healing items.

[@blazernitrox6329]

@@SandmanURL doesn't the Crossbow also give you less Uber than healing that amount with the Medigun does, or am I thinking of something else?

[@SandmanURL]

@@blazernitrox6329 yeah crossbow heals charges Uber slower than mediguns

[@CalebWillden]

One thing I like about Hollow Knight's healing is after you've restored one health, there's a shorter time if you keep holding the button to reach your second or further restored health, deepening the feeling of risk-reward. If you've already gotten one, you're even closer to a second. It adds a new layer to learning boss attacks and patterns and what you can manage.

[@blazernitrox6329]

I _thought_ that was the case, but I'd never actually sat down and tested it

[@trajectoryunown]

If you stop before your health heals, it still uses up your SOUL. This forces you to see a hit coming and make the decision as to whether or not you have enough time to heal before getting hit. If you do, your HP remains the same but you lose the SOUL If you don't, you'll still lose the SOUL and might be able to get away without getting hit again. This leaves you in the exact same position either way. However, if you judge wrong and decide to drop the heal and _still_ get hit, then you've lost even more HP on top of your SOUL.

[@gunnarschlichting9886]

@@blazernitrox6329 It's because the startup parts (crouching down and the brief charge up before it starts draining Soul) is skipped. Easy way to tell is to watch your Soul, see how how long it takes to start draining when starting to heal vs the split second pause before continuing for 2/3.

[@thequagiestsire]

Mix that with how SOUL is also tied to your spells, probably the most important part of combat in the late game for their sheer firepower, and it makes sense it where you really have to commit to healing, as it not only puts you in place for a bit, but also worsens your offense significantly while you build the SOUL for it.

[@shumanbeans]

Same as in Dark Souls, I believe. HK was probably inspired by it

[@saaaaaaaaalt838]

I'd like to add that ultrakill gives you a full heal when you parry something. When you're low, it's the quickest way to get back up to full in a bind. That is assuming you aren't killed by the attack you're trying yo parry. It also has a "hard' damage system that reduces your max hp for a time after you get hit. Getting a higher style rank increases it's rate of decay. Both are pretty fitting to the game's philosophy.

[@desmondleguay1969]

Not to mention the "blood is fuel" aspect healing you incentivising get into the fight rather than running away

[@thunderdrae7749]

It's definitely an amazing system for a fast paced arena shooter, especially when paired with the normal blood is fuel system which makes it so you always have to do a backflip on the edge of death to get off of it.

[@noname-zt2zk]

I'm pretty sure that the reason why hakita did this was to incentivise the player into learning a hard mechanic

[@SirSpence99]

One thing worth taking notice of, in BOTW/TOTK, you actually can't be one shot. If you have full health, any hit will bring you down to a quarter health no matter how strong. Interestingly, this can mean getting more health can make the game harder as you need to get better food to make up for it.

[@rmsgrey]

There are a couple of ways you can still be KOed by a single attack from full health: - an attack that does enough overkill will still finish you even if you were at full health - some attacks have secondary damage. Fire attacks can create hazardous terrain that will hurt you if you're still there once your immediate invulnerability wears off; attacks with knockback can send you ragdolling down a cliff or flying into the air, taking fall/tumble damage that finishes you before you regain control of Link. And the healing economy flipflops - so long as you're relying on normal healing, yeah, more hearts means more food required to get back to (mostly) protected, but once you start cooking with hearty ingredients, the healing they provide is limited only by your max health - cooking a single hearty radish gives you a meal that will restore you to full health and give you some temporary health on top (though if you approach the true max health, that gets capped too). And, of course, if you can get your health up high enough, and have good enough armour, you can tank multiple hits before being in danger of KOs anyway...

[@accelleratiiincredibus446]

@@rmsgrey All elemental hits bypass 1 shot protection because they apply their elemental damage immediately after applying regular damage, essentially hitting you twice in quick succession. It's not the environmental fire that kills you in that instance, unless you just happened to get knocked to a quarter heart with the initial double hit and then got burned. Also worth noting is gloom damage, which takes away your max HP and therefor your 1 shot protection. I didn't know enough damage would bypass 1 shot protection though. I looked it up and it seems like you've got 20 HP (5 hearts) above max HP before the protection stops working. I honestly don't think I've ever dealt with that, since it takes into account armor when calculating the protection.

[@kay_faraday]

i remember being oneshot a bunch when i first got to the surface in TOTK.... i just wanted to check out that cool tower....

[@sertansensei]

THIS explains so much

[@ponocni1]

I would like also point out that in most older zelda games, nothing really hit so hard to be able to ik you even with all hearts. Most did few hearts at most, so it made sense for healing to be this limited. Botw/totk Link is made of paper.

[@leetri]

I love the healing in Dead Cells. When you take damage, 80% of it is stored as "recovery" that quickly begins to drain. During this time, your health is restored by 12% of the damage you deal, up to whatever your current recovery is. This creates very intense moments where you eat a massive hit that removes like 90% of your health so you have to rush in and fight like a gorilla on a meth bender to try to recover as much health as possible. There's also an upgradable health flask that you can refill between stages, but on higher difficulties there's fewer and fewer refills so you want to avoid using it if you can.

[@MagusDouken]

And the build alone can also determine how much you have to begin with. Survival comes with the most HP and has the most drain skills and parry tactics, while Tactics often places you as a wet noodle, but you want to be wiping them off the board before they even get close.

[@turbo8628]

"Fight like a gorilla on a meth bender" is a term i have never heard before, yet i know exactly what it means 😂

[@leithaziz2716]

Getting overheal through enough parries is one heck of a feeling.

[@Thunderclap117]

The devs actually took inspiration from Bloodborne for the health regen mechanic, which I'm surprised he didn't mention in the video. He did show footage of it happening though

[@sabikikasuko6636]

Holy shit that's such a cool concept, like Doom's glory kills but even more straightforward. Low on health? Just fight harder! Also putting so much healing enables the enemy to do so much more damage for the game to lean itself into those tense moments.

[@SpriteDuel]

Bravely Second also had a weird class where instead of healing you revert a target's HP back to a previous turn. So you you essentially "revert" somebody back to full health or negate a bosses healing.

[@theunderscore6859]

And it's the best class in the game, especially for Tiz. Exorcist with Dark Knight is a very deadly combo

[@dew-it8744]

I love the exrosist from BS. Such a cool concept and it sucks it wasn’t repeated in the BD2.

[@supremedevice1311]

oh interesting, tracer overwatch but applicable to enemies as well

[@cjs_v.j.6350]

Thats so goofy I love that

[@derrinerrow4369]

The Shadowrun games also do something similar to it with the heal spell, letting you undo the last instance of damage on an ally. It's great for undoing big single hits like a strong melee, explosion, or sniper/shotgun hit but barely heals if the last hit was from a DoT effect or a multi-hit attack like an SMG burst.

[@intothevoid1996]

The entire fire emblem series has multiple skills that only trigger if a character is below or above a certain health percentage. This sometimes even makes you heal with an item that normally is suboptimal or it even makes you explicitely try to hurt a unit. Its not a healing mechanic but it does influence when and how you heal and it did spring to mind for me immediately.

[@_Sinduss]

On the other hand healing with staves give exp but puts your healers at risk, requires you to expend rare items (physic), spend a turn using a vulnerable or is unreliable skills such as sol. Add permadeath and you have an exceptional risk reward system.

[@orgixvi3]

Also, healer units are at high risk at lower levels, because enemy units tend to target weaker/safer units first when possible.

[@Dodecahedroknight]

Using TF2 Medic for this video's thumbnail is possibly the most appropriate thumbnail choice in Design Doc history.

[@Whooterzoot]

Danke, Herr doctor

[@RF-Ataraxia]

It's tea time, doctor!

[@zzyxxyzz5442]

​@@RF-AtaraxiaJawohl!

[@sebtrainwoo]

Oktoberfeest!

[@TewbBelrog]

Everywun! Fweeee money!

[@AlienoidNovace]

One of my favourite things about Deltarune is how it handles healing, particularly reviving a downed party member. Usually RPGs will have dedicated items for reviving KO'd members which is... fine, I guess, but Deltarune allows you to use your regular healing items on someone knocked down to heal them instead (depending on how strong the attack was that knocked them out in the first place, anyway). It keeps regular healing items relevant but still doesn't make them as useful as the rarer, dedicated revival items. It's such a small and simple touch but it's so elegant in its execution (pun not intended).

[@stevethepocket]

It also keeps revive items from being so necessary that the game basically has to make them common, or running the risk of not being able to revive anyone because you decided to fill your limited inventory with healing items instead.

[@shumanbeans]

Wait, why I don't recall this mechanic? I can't remember what was I doing to bring party memebers back to life

[@digino24]

@@shumanbeans Downed members also just slowly regenerate to my knowledge.

[@HaphazardousSpace]

Minor correction but it is independant of the damage used to bring them down, when a party member's hp drops below 1 they will be downed at exactly negative half their max HP.

[@AlienoidNovace]

@@HaphazardousSpace Oh gotcha! Thanks for the correction.

[@LK-jm7jv]

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!

[@plantplayer303]

Also, if you just happened to be carrying something when you got caught in creatures's jaw, you can throw that thing to get yourself out if you react fast enough (of course if you don't get lethal bite from a lizard).

[@skeleton819]

I like Pokemon’s “rest” move. It restores your hp to full and takes away any negative stats, but you’re asleep for two turns. It can be risky if your opponent is doing heavy damage, because you could fall to where you started or just faint

[@tokofukawap4055]

Rest isn't risky at all lmfao it's a full hp heal and complete cleanse, there's even moves that let you spam rest while still attacking.

[@skeleton819]

@@tokofukawap4055well if you’re dire it can get risky because the enemy pokemon can do a lot of damage

[@elpatoempatado2404]

​@@tokofukawap4055 it is risky, at best you're giving the oponent a free turn to do anything. And at worst, three turns.

[@vyor8837]

​@@tokofukawap4055 there are reasons that Snorlax isn't OU anymore... and they are mostly related to how bad Rest is.

[@axelaction2290]

rest + anti sleep berry is a full health + status cleanse at the cost of an item, and recycle exists

[@arguelho]

Great video as usual. A request: please, show on screen the name of the games; especially the ones you're not talking about in depth. You've displayed a handful of games that I hadn't seen before and have no reference to look for.

[@FairwellNoob]

I mean he mentions all the games in the description. Simple trial and error will get you what you need

[@dogpilekid]

I would also like that, especially seeing the games list in the description say "a bunch of fighting games". Which ones?! I wanted to know! What was that one clip with the AOE zone heal and the archery? That looked cool!

[@jacksonfackler9160]

Nah, Enter the gungeon is shown but isn't listed@@FairwellNoob

[@skeletor8547]

​@@dogpilekidthe only mention of AOE healing was when he was talking about monster hunter. I hope that was the game you were looking for. That series is fantastic

[@alysondavy2485]

​​​@@dogpilekidThat's Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (2:25)

[@chenchestarze8207]

There's also something to be said about Healers who prevent damage before they heal you up properly. Stock Ubercharge is the classical example of this, but one lesser known one is Grace from Dragalia Lost. She was the premier Shadow Healer and is often touted as one of the strongest pillars of safe and consistent coop play, but she doesn't actually directly heal any of her teammates. Instead, her skill 1 converts up to 70% of her HP into a life shield for the rest of her teammates. In the context of Dragalia, being an action RPG that relies on moment-to-moment decision making, having such a powerful safety net, especially in multiplayer, was a god send. At any moment, your ally could eat shit in a matter of moments, dying way quicker than you can heal them or when your heal is off-cooldown, but with the life shield? They could afford to make more mistakes without ruining the run. Add on top of that sustain heals from a Healing Doublebuff wyrmprint and she could carry any ragtag pub team to victory. The main downside was that Grace herself would be at only 30% HP, meaning that if she wants to keep up the Shield at its best, she needs to time her HP stealing Force Strike and build up SP to her S2 to regen her health back before her teammates get into trouble again.

[@Brass319]

Scholar/Sage from FF14 are my personal favorite examples. It's a lot easier to outheal damage when you can temporarily reduce their damage taken to zero, or better yet, if they don't take it in the first place.

[@roselialex]

I miss Dragalia ; - ;

[@ninjakai03]

DRAGALIA MENTION HI CHENCHE

[@M0bileKeys]

I miss Dragalia Lost :( I remember when the meta was to stack Grace's Shields and Def buffs with Karina's Doublebuffs that turned defense boosts into attack boosts and Boosts to her first attack. Advanced Dragons and Agito fights melted to them, it took having the Angels and Primal Dragons remove doublebuffs to change the meta instead of just bringing Grace, Karina, and two other defense boosters to every fight even when off element.

[@OctorokHero]

Ayaha and Otoha was another great healer. Rather than a direct healing skill, your attack skills healed as a side effect, so you needed to be able to land a string of skills in the right order so you could refresh their cooldowns as much as possible, as well as fuel your super form for even more.

[@Twisted_Logic]

Another thing about healing at properties in Advance Wars is that it costs money. In fact, it's proportionally identical to buying a new unit. In a game like Advance Wars economy and numbers are king, so you've gotta think hard about if you really *need* a slightly stronger unit or if it'll do better body blocking on the front lines.

[@gangsterguardsman4576]

Keeping experienced units alive was valuable tho cause they were tougher and more powerful

[@Twisted_Logic]

@@gangsterguardsman4576 Only in Days of Ruin. Older pre-GBA Wars titles also had veterency, though I was mostly only talking about the games released in the west

[@enlongjones2394]

Something I like about Ultrakill’s healing is that you don’t need to kill things to heal, but instead just need to deal damage close up. So it allows the healing system to work in one-on-one boss fights too. You can also heal by parrying attacks. Which is also quite risky; miss the timing and you get hit.

[@SoftlySplinter]

One note on Advanced Wars healing - you also get some money back if you heal over 10hp. So there's an extra tactical choice whether to sacrifice position now to get a more powerful unit built.

[@skiller5034]

not just some money- the exact amount that unit costs, compounded by the amount of health over 10. So 3 extra health will give 30% of that unit's cost.

[@alessandromazza4557]

I liked how in Lies of P when you run out of healing you can get one single healthpack back by being aggressive. Other games in the soulslike would have you running away from enemies or back to a checkpoint to refill all your health and items because you are afraid of losing your Souls/Blood Echoes/Runes/whatever, but Lies of P straight up encourages you to keep the aggro on the enemies to get a chance to keep going, while at the same time preventing you from just farming healing items by killing every weak enemy in a zone

[@devilo1234]

Maybe im misunderstanding, but dosent bloodborn, ds 3 and enden ring have the same? With enemies dropping Charges for your healing gear

[@Cloudd0]

@@devilo1234 It's way more sparce and kinda random, sometimes defeating a group leader in Elden Ring will give you back a flask but it's pretty rare, meanwhile Lies of P has it as a pretty core mechanic that you can also use during bosses

[@liamwinter5778]

I agree, Lies of P does it so well. And in a controlled way. Out of heals? Get aggressive. On your last flask? Better heal before you get to critical health so you can recharge faster. Which also means you need to get aggressive faster. This is added to the system of getting grey health (damage you took during blocking) back through attacking. Means, get aggressive. And the best part: this works against bosses, too. These are all key aspects of the game. It requires you to perfectly block a few attacks as they can't be dodged and you can't put your guard up too soon either. Also dodging often isn't the best choice, the invincibility frames are far more punishing than in FromSoft games and trying to dodge full combos will drain your stamina quickly while messing up makes you eat the whole thing. Get hit and you lose your grey health = you get nothing back. In Elden Ring you get heals back from strong opponents or packs - but not during a boss fight. If you're out of estus you're just on a dodging spree until you can get a hit in. It's tense but it feels very defensive and draining.

[@i8dacookies890]

You could have also mentioned that even the very typical practice of limiting health pickups to defeated enemies does a lot to keep the pace and risk up

[@greatestcait]

I remember in the DS game Contact, healing worked by eating food, except you could only eat so much before Terry got full and needed time to digest it. So you had to consider how full the food would make Terry, on top of how much it healed.

[@amimm7776]

And then ypu discover how to make the potion+ that just circumvents that lmao, contact is funny

[@SingularCherubim]

This reminds me of Nethack. In that game, healing isn't tied to eating, but you still need to eat. It is, however, possible to eat too much at once and choke to death on your own food.

[@ybabflow]

slay the spire has a really good tradeoff healing system either at rest sites you can heal or upgrade. Also almost every place that you can heal there is another option that will make you more powerful in the future.

[@N12015]

And those upgrades matter. We're talking about 50% more effective cards, maybe even a discount, and those are notable. That being said, I've died way too many times from both being overly safe and too reckless.

[@RealityMasterRogue]

plus, there are guaranteed healing spots that don't cost anything. That combined with the choices makes them even more impactful. "Do i heal up for this next fight, given that I will heal again after? or do I upgrade a card for future benefit?"

[@leithaziz2716]

I usually always go for the healing, but the card upgrades are worth it with the right synergy.

[@natekite7532]

Slay the Spire really plays into the classic roguelike mindset of "HP as a resource." Elites give the best rewards, but you'll take a lot of damage in doing so. HP is a resource you can "spend" on elites for a power boost. So a campfire is a tough decision. Upgrading improves your deck, but what if you heal and take on an elite fight instead? That could get you a relic which might be even better. Or maybe get greedy and both upgrade and take the elite? Or do you play it safe, heal, and take an easier path? (That usually isn't the right play but sometimes it's your only option.) StS really is a masterclass in roguelike design.

[@natekite7532]

​@@leithaziz2716I highly recommend upgrading as much as you can! By building a strong deck, you'll save far more HP than you get from resting, and you can tackle bosses and elites more effectively.

[@TheatreStyle]

I'm reminded of the way Vampire: The Masquerade, Bloodlines, handled healing; as a vampire you have a health bar and a "blood" bar which serves as a kind of mana bar. As long as you have enough blood in reserve any damage you take will regenerate slowly over time, and the more blood you have the more quickly it regenerates. But in an emergency you can choose to burn a significant percentage of your blood reserve in order to heal quickly, and this is especially necessary if you're in a fight and taking "aggravated damage" (i.e., forms of damage that are especially deadly to vampires and is slow to regenerate naturally). But unlike in most games, using up all your spell-casting resources (blood) doesn't just limit your combat options like it would a generic wizard, it also places you in a precarious position. You could become blood-starved and either lose control in battle - or in the middle of a crowded city street surrounded by onlookers. And even if you succeed you still need to make up the extra blood that you sacrificed earlier, either by spending your limited cash on consumable blood-bags, or stalking a victim to feed upon and opening yourself up to further risks of being caught in the act.

[@Dinker27]

Changeling the Dreaming kinda operates like this with glamor; you need glamor to keep your pc from from fading into oblivion. You need it as magic as well, but being in a place with glamor for too long or leaning too much into the fae side for too long makes you crazy. Eh..kinda. 😅

[@godminnette2]

I love systems where you get passive benefits based on how much of a resource you have - giving another downside to spending it. Same for benefits that only occur at lower HP for similar reasons.

[@danbagon924]

In some of the Xenoblade games, pure healer teammates generally end up being unnecessary, so it was interesting to see how the others games fixed that issue. In Xenoblade 1, Sharla had a ton of healing options, but lacked a lot of combat synergy and only had a few damaging arts, so every fight she was in took longer, thus necessitating her healing. It's entirely possible to clear groups of enemies with teams with no healing at all just from outputting damage, and Shulk's "light heal" or Riki's "you can do it" were often all you needed for longer fights. In Xenoblade 2, the pure healer blades were often the weakest as well, creating a similar problem to 1 where fights would just go on longer. Many of the best blades either focused on evasion or self healing through damage, or just having the ability to driver combo lock enemies easily. Xenoblade 3 fixed this by making healers have unique chain attack benefits and being the only ones able to revive without wasting an accessory slot. That plus their generally useful talent arts required putting down supportive or regenerative AoE fields to build up. Healers were also diversified in the ways they would buff your party from followup attacks, extra damage, or defensive buffs, so running two of the same healer class was generally discouraged. But more interestingly in my opinion was Xenoblade X's approach. There are no healers in the game, instead healing will only happen through using select arts with those bonus effects, usually costing TP to use, or through the unique Soul Voice system. For Soul Voices, every party member would have a list of conditions that could occur in battle, which would cause them to shout out a voice line and cause arts of a specific colour to glow on their party members. Using a glowing art will not only award buffs/give out debuffs, but also heal the two teammates involved. With the player avatar Cross, you could even customize the soul voice conditions to suit a specific kind of team you were building or around the kinds of arts and skills you typically would use.

[@blunderbus2695]

I think Xenoblade 3 has pretty much got its healer balance worked out. Now if only they could figure out what the hell to do with defenders...

[@mair-vq1di]

in the game ultrakill may be easy to heal, but if you take damage frequently, you receive hard damage, which puts limits on how much health you can regain. if you have a high style counter, then hard damage drops off much faster, but if you take damage your style will decrease. It is also worth noting that in a fierce battle when there are too many enemies, treatment by pumping blood from enemies is not effective, it is easier to parry the attack, this will restore your health to the limit and give you one stamina that you can spend on a dash

[@Brass319]

This is because ultrakill is a game about looking really cool first and foremost

[@themexicanattacker1503]

Yes finally seeing someone mention ultrakill here. It gotta the most interesting health mechanics I ever seen. It Helps forcing to take risk and get close while having the hard damage to players won't abuse its healing mechanic.

[@WhiteFangofWar]

13:45 Yahtzee termed it 'healing through murder' and I feel like that's the best method for most action games as it encourages aggression and really gets the blood pumping when you've managed to avoid a game over with a few well-timed kills. The Punch-Out games gave you the chance to rest and recover whenever you knock the opponent out as well as between rounds.

[@Brass319]

My personal favorite example is Roboquest, which has all enemies drop exactly one extra healing orb if you kill them with a melee attack (certain ranged weapons such as the throwing axe share this trait). It's subtle but it really does make a difference. Also if you get set on fire the amount of easily recoverable health you have drops until you run out encouraging you to run in and recover as much as possible

[@brunitop4753]

Blood is fuel

[@momiji_number1daughterwife]

@@brunitop4753also worth noting: humanity is dead and hell is full.

[@Thunderclap117]

ah yes, my favorite game with inventive healing mechanics, Yahtzee the dice game

[@SpaceyBat]

Alien Soldier has a really interesting healing mechanic - You regain health from pickups, but any time you parry a projectile, it spawns one of those pickups as well. You have an ability called the Zero Teleport that lets you zip across the screen to dodge attacks, but at full health, this move covers you in flames and deals high contact damage to enemies in exchange for losing a bit of health. This leads to a combat loop where parrying is always encouraged and beneficial whether you're at low health or nearly full, and I like how it motivates you to pay attention to attack patterns to find opportunities to heal from enemy projectiles.

[@jmh8817]

Uncle Wolfgunblood sends his regards.

[@masterofdoom5000]

Never did I think Alien Soldier would be repped by the Bat......the impeccable gamer taste runs deep!

[@dovahkat9635]

Darkest Dungeon has an interesting balance to its healing. Not many characters have access to healing at all, and for the ones that do its either limited in effectiveness or treated as a secondary effect to what the ability is meant for. And more often than not your ability to heal is less effective than the enemies capacity for damage. So you have to use crowd control to make opportunities to heal in a way that matters. And then there is the Death's Door mechanic to consider. Heroes don't die at 0 health, they enter a state called Death's Door in which any further damage has a chance to finish them off, this chance increasing with each deathblow resisted. But it also means as long as a hero isn't at 0 health, they can afford to take at least 1 hit no matter how powerful, and while a near death experience will permanently hinder a hero for the rest of that run, they won't die as long as you can consistently heal them for at least 1 health. Until you factor in stress and heart attacks but that is a whole other rabbit hole to go down.

[@shumanbeans]

While I love DD, Its approach to healing ultimately just made players over reliant on Vestals. I find myself postponing difficult bossfights/missions until one of my Vestals is in perfect condition, otherwise it feels to risky. I haven't played the secuel. I heard she doesn't appear in the game? maybe the developers realized she was overtuned

[@aVeryAngryMoth]

⁠@@shumanbeansyou actually don’t need vestals most of the time. occultist (with someone to back him up in case of 0 heal + bleed) and flagellant can serve as excellent primary healers that also deal with enemies. In fact, the only times I run vestal when I have a choice is the farmstead and party’s with a packed frontline

[@adisca2k]

@@shumanbeans Vestal wasn't in DD2 at the start, but she got added later. Healing is a lot more restricted in the sequel, with cooldowns, limited uses and conditions (usually the target must have < x% hp, so you can't keep everyone topped off). Active items and healing between encounters takes a bit more emphasis. No more healbot vestal gameplay.

[@CalebWillden]

In Kid Icarus: Uprising, there are Healing Powers you can unlock and equip, but each power takes up room in a grid of squares, so if you're filling your space with healing, if means you're not using other powers. And there are tons of types of healing! Greater but over time, smaller but instant, or lots of healing but only if you'd get taken out within a certain amount of time. Lots of opportunity cost and risk-reward.

[@myboatforacar]

My first thought was the Occultist from Darkest Dungeon. IIRC his base healing skill causes the target to recover 0-11 health at random (with a chance to crit)... and has a chance of inflicting the Bleed condition, which damages health over time.😅 Other healers in the game are less risky, but their maximum heal is a lot less.

[@pizzacarl6955]

max heal matters very little late game cause vestal can spam like 20Hp heal for whole party with right trinkets

[@myboatforacar]

@@pizzacarl6955 i mean, yeah, that's true

[@derrinerrow4369]

Another fun one is the Flagellant. Whose gimmick is that he becomes stronger when he's hurt or is suffering from a mental breakdown, he does have some heal options that really play into this He has a couple of moves (a self heal and an attack) that restores a third of his max hp, but he can only use it at 40% hp, twice a battle, and is debuffed with reduced speed and any healing he does or receives is reduced by 25% for 3 turns. He can give an ally a health regeneration buff but inficts bleeding on himself He can heal stress for an ally but stresses himself out in the process. And when he reaches Death's Door he restores everyone else's hp by 10 percent and an extra 10 hp if he does die.

[@ultrasquid579]

I have a game ive wanted to make for awhile, and healing is a pretty central part of the gameplay loop. Its a pretty simple system at first glance: killing an enemy or parrying an enemy attack gives you a bit of HP. However, the healing gets a lot more interesting when combined with the overheat bar, another central mechanic. As you get more stylish, killing more enemies and foing fancier comboes, you fill up the "heat" bar and will eventually "overheat". This increases your damage up to 2x, but decreases your healthbar down to 1/2 its initial size, preserving the ratio of health in the process. This means that as you play better, healing becomes easier, but becomes more essential as you become more fragile.

[@cyberneticsquid]

So, since you've got less health, the same amount of healing fills up a larger percentage of your health bar?

[@ultrasquid579]

@@cyberneticsquid yes

[@gomezwalker5258]

I remember a healing spell I saw almost a decade ago when I was playing Cardinal Quest II. This spell (aptly named heal) would restore you to 100% health, but afterwards there were 2 caveats you needed to work around. Firstly it would give a debuff that temporarily , though drastically, reduces your chance to dodge (normally even the strongest monsters would hit you only once every few swings) so you would have a non negligible chance of losing all the health this spell provides if it's used in combat. If it's used out of combat, it's usually not too bad to find some cover, and wait out the debuff. Then there's it's unique cooldown mechanic; while most spells/skills in the game just recharge after a set amount of time, this one recharges based on the percentage of your XP bar you fill afterwards. It goes without saying the first few level ups are way faster than those late into a run, making it something that comes back after a monster or two as you trek through the first couple zones, but late game, it likely will require you to kill off 5 or 6 lethal enemies who could easily wipe you out with poor luck or a lack of contingency plans, so generally speaking, it can top you up, but then you need to reliably survive to make the most of it. Still, this was a pretty good fit for a roguelike RPG

[@MCisAwesome95]

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

[@sinteleon]

lifesteal is often a little OP though negating any sort of healing pressure outside of not being 1HKOed.

[@MCisAwesome95]

@@sinteleon That's why the most flawless way to take down a lifesteal user is by dealing more damage to them than they can get back. It encourages lifesteal users to pick and choose the targets they tank, rather than rushing in and ignoring every hit they take (Assuming the game in question has properly balanced lifesteal) I love this playstyle a LOT, I can guarantee you there's far more depth to lifesteal than it sounds

[@sinteleon]

​@@MCisAwesome95 Even then, it's still a matter of picking squishy/high damage/aoe targets first, which is still generally the gameplay with or without lifesteal anyway. Or just do even MORE damage so you steal more to counter the high damage. Though I have seen some ways to balance lifesteal: (1) Lifesteal works on life. Attacks on shields/armour does NOT trigger lifesteal. This means there's some form of defense against lifesteal (though the secondary "life" bars often have different mechanics that makes those harder to recover as well to balance that out, and skills to bypass said armour/shields become more valuable) (2) Lifesteal is not instant and/or has a cap on heal per second, putting it in the same category as heal over time, letting it be easier to outdamage it. (3) Guard moves and equivalent to temporarily stop taking damage, which also indirectly means the stealer temporarily stops healing.

[@lunatickoala]

@@sinteleon Yeah, there are certain mechanics which are prone to being overpowered and lifesteal is one of them. It's not that those mechanics can't be balanced but there's a broad tendency to underestimate them. One of the most common tradeoffs is offense vs defense, and lifesteal often negates the need to make that tradeoff. It's also more prone to being an unstable equilibrium because of that, being too strong to where you can make an unkillable death machine or too weak and functionally useless. Sometimes both in the same game depending on context. If it's too strong, some people are still going to enjoy it for the same reason that some people like grinding levels until they're way overpowered for the game's content then smashing through the rest of the game.

[@iansutherland6922]

@@sinteleon V Rising handles this fairly nicely, most of the healing in it is life steal, but it can only heal 10-20% of your health, if you take damage beyond that, your max health is effectively reduced till you spend time to rest and recover it, but keep landing the life steal hits and dodging the big attacks, and you can stay topped up.

[@pippastrelle]

A bit tangential, but healing in pvp should also feel satisfying even if it's just a matter of flair. I mainly play support but I can't deny shooting or hitting someone is made more instantly satisfying than the slowww buzz of increasing someone's health.

[@MythrilZenith]

The removal of healing as an option or a necessity is also a valid choice to build a game around, if you're careful. The Zeboyd RPGs feature in-combat healing options, but after battle you always heal to full hp. In their older games like Cthulhu Saves the World you restored all your HP, but only a small amount of MP, which was reduced further by how long the battle took. This encouraged risky, all-out play even against basic mobs, knowing that you would be restored to full hp afterwards, making healing always feel like a tradeoff that you didn't want to do, but sometimes needed to. Potions were full revives that also restored MP, but were limited items that you couldn't buy, so once you ran out you ran out. Their newer games, like Cosmic Star Heroine, don't even use an MP system, instead making each ability usable once before needing to recharge, and only having 8 slots meaning that if you bring a heal, you aren't bringing another ability, and if you DO heal, you can't use that same heal again before you recharge, making heal spam force you to take at least one turn off someone.

[@fishydids]

My own example of a unique healing system to bring up: in Spelunky across each run you only start with 4 health, with the main way to heal being to bring a damsel at a random location in each level to its exit, which only gives you 1 extra health. This heavily impacts the decision-making and risk-taking in the game as a whole as you only get more health as opposed to recovering it, meaning that any damage you take still has a permanent impact, while also making the act of gaining additional health require deciding to escort a very-vulnerable damsel to the exit of the level, which also makes it difficult to carry another item with them such as a shotgun or boomerang, limiting your options for dealing with threats in the process. Meanwhile (at least in terms of Spelunky HD which is the one I've played) the only other semi-reliable method of healing is with a special item that requires collecting a significant amount of blood pellets just to recover 1 health, however this item is only obtainable by choosing to sacrifice creatures to altars you find, with live damsels being by far the most valuable to sacrifice, again forcing careful decisions and planning in order to make the most of the situation.

[@RoninCatholic]

I played Spelunky Classic extensively and that skull cup was in that, too. I never _intentionally_ sacrificed a live damsel because I like to roleplay as the good guy even if the game mechanics don't incentivize it.

[@GrahamKracky]

I would note that Ultrakill's main aggressive healing mechanic, in my opinion, is the parry system. Whenever you successfully parry an attack, you automatically heal back up to full, and even clear out all hard (un-healable) damage from your HP bar. Blood dropping from enemies is still an important part of healing, but I find that at higher levels, you almost always rely on hitting parries when you need to heal.

[@MinecraftTestSquad]

> even clear out all hard damage um... no?? game would be incredibly easy (relative to how it is now) if that were the case. you might be thinking of how reaching ULTRAKILL style rank instantly clears hard damage

[@dydlus]

Barotrauma and Rimworld also have somewhat interesting healing systems. While every character in Barotrauma does have a conventional health bar, the different kinds of damage dealt to individual limbs is tracked separately, and must be treated as such. Additionally, while certain injuries like bleeding or poison can be treated with no real problem with the respective items, damage like bite wounds or gunshots require stronger medicine. Every item that treats this "physical damage" has some downside, with the most obvious culprits being morphine and fentanyl, which can cause an overdose if not used carefully. Not only that, some of the more powerful meds (like the aforementioned fentanyl, or the internal-burn-inducing Deusizine) are quite hard to come by, being expensive to buy or fabricate. In Rimworld, meanwhile, it's not the treating of wounds itself that's interesting, but rather deciding _when_ to do so. Some colonists might be able to take a lot of damage and still be mostly fine, though slightly worse at their day-to-day work. In fact, all damage slowly heals on its own, although it does so faster if treated. However, wounds that are left alone for too long can scar, permanently reducing the effectiveness of the affected body part. Worse, said wound might even get infected - and an untreated infection can only ever end one way. At that point, the player has to decide - do they amputate the affected limb, and then try to find a prosthetic replacement? Or do they try to cure the infection, which - depending on the medical skill of the doctor and the age and condition of the patient - might not even be possible anymore?

[@sunname6252]

Oldschool Runescape's healing is its own balance of choices. Normal food puts a delay until you can attack again which means either having to find a moment you wouldn't be attacking anyway or just dealing with the lost DPS, in turn there's Saradomin Brews, which don't incur that delay, but instead outright reduce your combat stats. Not to mention the fact that your inventory is very finite which means bringing other supplies or other gear limit it, or quirks like combo eating.

[@XJ9LoL]

and that is why in oldschool people just blood amulet or dps through healing weapons which makes the healing mechanic only relevant in pvp/low levels.

[@sunname6252]

Even those are more extensions than the main healing, Blood fury is limited to melee, mage is blood spells/sang staff which means dps loss/utility loss and range is non existent (yes onyx bolts exist, but are such a drop in the bucket and so expensive) @@XJ9LoL

[@CaTastrophy427]

Friend of mine is working on a metroidvania-type game where there's no healing - any damage you take stays, your _current_ HP number never goes up except when you die and revive with full HP. However, you do revive on the spot if your max HP when you died was at least half of your max HP. Yes, I said that right. Every time you do a spot revive, your max HP goes down by 30% of its previous value, and your max HP recovers over time, but kinda painfully slowly (still tweaking just how slowly), as well as every time you get a kill. That 30% is just enough that if you die twice in a row your max HP is now 49%, and if you die a third time you're dead and respawn at the last checkpoint with your max HP at full. Over time you'll get upgrades to your max max HP (going from base 50 all the way to 1000, though enemy damage gets higher as you progress as well), allowing you to take more hits per revive, as well as lowering the threshold for that final death to 40%, 30%, and eventually 20% of your max HP. There're others that increase the rate at which your max HP recovers over time and how much it goes up per kill, and some that lower the revive penalty from 30% to 25% and finally 20% - giving you 9 lives total when you have all the threshold and revive penalty upgrades. Several of these upgrades are optional, requiring completing sidequests or finding hidden areas to obtain. Basically, your HP is a limited resource, but your revivals are a renewable resource, albeit still coming at a cost - each time you die, it gets easier to die again. Oh, and there're some areas, notably a few boss rooms and long enemy gauntlets, where you don't have any max HP recovery at all, that's disabled entirely. Hence why having exactly three and nine lives comes into play when realistically you'd usually recover enough to get another revive by the time you exhaust all of those lives. Finally, there's an alternate gamemode that introduces several mechanics changes, and the change to the HP system is that each time you die, your max HP goes _up_ and then your max HP goes down over time and as you kill things, with your current HP going down as well instead of allowing you to be over the new max HP (so if you revive at 200 HP, take 40 points of damage, you're down to 160 current HP. Kill some things and your max HP drops to 175, you'd still be at 160, but kill more things until your max HP is 150, and even if you didn't take any damage, you'd also drop to 150 current HP). Basically, each life lasts longer, but the longer you last, the lower your max HP gets, and the easier it is to get oneshot. There's no minimum max HP in this mode, it can drop to 0 if you kill enough things, and there's a secret achievement for that (it does also respawn you at the most recent checkpoint automatically with your base max HP, since anything times zero is still zero). In this currently unnamed mode, the maximum max HP is 15x your base max HP, and to start, your max HP doubles every time you die, but that goes down to a 25% increase with upgrades, and the limit goes up to 60x your base max HP. However, the base max HP and the rate it goes down over time will never change, it's always 50 as the base, -2.5% per minute (rounded down, won't reduce your max HP below 39). As for the HP reduction per kill, it's just a flat -1 per kill on an enemy with less max HP than you (excluding certain enemies, such as the ones that have single-digit HP and come in swarms of 10~50), and -X per enemy with at least X times your base HP, both limited to reducing your max HP by half in any given 15 second period (so killing big bosses wouldn't slam you with -500 max HP). That means that if you get up to 2000 max HP, it's gonna take you a lot of kills without dying to get back down to 50 max HP. If you're wondering how I know so much about this when I'm not part of the one-person dev team (I know enough to write hello world in python but that's about it for my coding abilities), I'm the one the dev's been bouncing ideas off of, and I'm the one who came up with the alternate mode in the first place. That's also why I know the specific details of the latter mode's mechanics more than I do for the base game's mechanics. Edit: since I posted this, my buddy got the idea for a third mode. Unlike the second, which is a completely separate thing, mode 3 uses the same maps, story, and enemies as the main mode, and is unlocked upon completion of the main mode. The differences here are that dying is more punishing, losing twice as much of your max HP as normal, but now you recover a bit more of your max HP with each kill, and then the key difference: your actual HP is what recovers over time. Max HP also can go above the base max HP, up to 250% of the base max HP, but it requires more kills to get that high. You can farm kills for HP, you can wait around to heal a bit, but you can't wait around to get extra lives, you have to go out and risk your last life if you want to get another one.

[@danirodriguez3682]

Good luck to them. I could see this being pretty divisive though. The first mode reminds me of the struggle some people had with early dark souls in which the people who need extra health the most, the ones who are struggling are punished the most. It could work but it depends on how interesting the rest of the game is and how tight the combat is. The second mode just seems like it encourages running past all the enemies or maybe just dying repeatedly to get max hp, killing a boss, and then rinse and repeat. Good luck to them. Hoping the games work out. Playing with healing systems is hard.

[@CaTastrophy427]

@driguez3682 So, the game is intended to have a souls-like difficulty, and your "rush past the enemies" idea doesn't work because in this mode, it's basically just a series of locked-room fights, where the door only opens after either a certain number of kills or a certain length of time survived with a constant stream of enemies (which, if not killed quickly, are likely going to flood the room). Score is based off of both time and how high your max HP got, with less being better for both - and X or less deaths being required for the best medal (where X changes from stage to stage, some have 0, others will allow 1, 2, or maybe 3). Since it's a side mode, there's no benefit to brute-forcing it except to say "I cleared it without any of the medals". And another issue: dying multiple times early on is kinda hard, since compared to your startin max HP - and especially your max HP after a death or two - enemies don't do much damage. If you've got 3000 base max HP, and each enemy hits for 20~25 damage, you'd need to take around 120 hits to die once. Over 300 to die twice, and over 700 to die three times. That'll take about as long as it'd take to do the shorter ones at top medal pace. One final thing, I'm adding an update to the main post bc there's a third mode now (another side mode, or rather an alternate version of the main mode with the same maps and story)

[@diogosalgado]

While designing a healing/rest system for a tabletop RPG, I approached it with a lot of thought about undertuning it a bit, and also having a rechargeable resource (if you invest in it) that can heal temporarily in-combat or permanently while having a stop Travel and exploring gets more interesting, not just a walk in the park with full healing, and the persistent storytelling of a damage you received from some challenge or mistake can create a more immersive experience for everyone at the table

[@Panory]

The second you said healing was a way to "undo" damage, I was convinced you were going to bring up the Exorcist class from Bravely Second. The class's mechanic is an ability called Undo, which doesn't heal so much as revert you to whatever you were at last turn. Because of this, it can actually break the damage/healing cap. They aren't healing more than ten thousand health, they're returning you to your HP last turn, which was more than ten thousand hp higher. The trade off is that they can only Undo one turn, so they're no good at healing characters who have gotten chipped down over multiple turns. Undo is especially amazing against bosses, which will sometimes heal to full as a Phase 2. Thing is, last turn they had very low HP. Sure would be a shame if you Undid that massive heal.

[@scienceteam9254]

Ohhh, don't be such a baby. Ribs grow back. (No ze don't.)

[@icicleditor]

An interesting thing about Ultrakill's healing mechanics, especially on its higher difficulty, violent, and at its hardest challenges like higher waves of cyber grind or the brutal gauntlets of p-2, is the hard damage system, which reduces your max health whenever you get hit or use the grapple hook without a spotless health bar. This reduced max reduces over time if youre not taking damage, but also reduces faster if your style meter is at S through SSS, but you get to clean it away instantly if you max it out at ULTRAKILL rank, letting you stay in the fray as long as you clear many enemies quickly, with your whole arsenel, and in unique ways, really creating a powerful game loop if you can stay in the zone.

[@valonyaver600]

One of my favourite healing systems is arcade games that give you additional lives when you reach certain amounts of scores. It really encourages you to learn the scoring systems of these games to try and get the highest score possible with an intrinsic reason for doing it.

[@ravenstales6457]

My take on the new Zelda games is this: Healing is now limited by resources, you have to go hunt down some special ingredients to get those full restores and other buffs, and those slots *are* limited, so each full heal is one less stamina potion and vice versa. I've found myself eating up food that had non combat buffs like ones for dealing with the temperature system, because I needed a buffer of health. In TotK, we added in the gloom, which is really dangerous as it limits your max HP, and the most powerful bosses and enemies in the game get access to gloom damage

[@avereynakama9854]

Exactly. You can hold all the ingredients you want, but you have to prepare foods and elixirs to match where you plan on going. Good ingredients you have to go out there and hunt/harvest yourself, so it's not as broken as it sounds at first.

[@ravenstales6457]

@@avereynakama9854 yes, and this sort of thing is just as present in the place they got the system from: Skyrim, where you indeed *can* carry a million healing items, but then not much else is available, you have to make or buy the potions, but hey, at your last sliver of health you can always enter the pause menu to heal back to full

[@DanielisAwesome52]

I hope other developers learn from it, and implement systems with lower inventory amounts and in harder combat styles. That limit would really shine if it wasn't 60 or so meals.

[@MossMothMyBeloved]

This would work if it was 10-15 meal slots, but there are so much that the limit is very negligible, the accessibility of cooking pots also doesn't help.

[@shumanbeans]

I haven't played the newer Zelda games, I didn't know it had the "skyrim healing". Unexpected, considering it takes a lot cues from Skyward Sword, where healing was in real-time and had an animation that left you defenseless for a short time.

[@verymuchdead4677]

furi easily has the most satisfying way of healing to me. theres little balls of health scattered within some bosses attacks sure but the most reliable and coolest way is constant parrying, its such a satisfying reward for getting your parry timing down pat and getting a couple bars of health back with each perfect parry. it has a boss that absolutely forces you to get good at parrying too, so its mostly on subsequent runs that you get that intense satisfaction. instead of healing being a more defensive action it lets you completely change the flow of fights from waiting through phases to being aggressive as hell and shutting bosses down completely when you get confident enough with it, and taking hits from your risky behavior barely becomes a problem eventually. it doesn't feel like it cheapens the fights out either, since its a skill youve built up over the course of the game and runs you complete

[@CJWproductions]

The health in Furi is so tight. You get, what, 3 HP? It's perfect for that game

[@Dabestbro.]

@@CJWproductions Nah, you have 3 retries (gaining one back each boss phase you beat), but a decent amount of hitpoints. Depending on the difficulty and what's actually hitting you, it's possible you could survive only 2 hits or like 20

[@elenaschmidt9476]

Xenoblade Chronicles X has this system where you only heal by following your squad mates' orders. If certain requirements are fulfilled during combat, they (or you) will automatically yell something with a colored text box. If you 'reply' with a charged weapon art of the same color before the box disappears both you and the teammate get healed.

[@bombkirby]

Moira from Overwatch is a healer who's theme is she absorbs health from the enemy using her damage moves, and then heals her allies with her limited healing supply. You have to choose between regenerating your healing meter or healing your allies, and you can't endlessly shove heals into one person without running out of healing juice.

[@JosephHeiskell]

Final Fantasy XIV actually has 4 different jobs that act as healers, which can be separated into pure healers and shield healers. Pure healers such as white mage and astrologian have easy access to spells that heal larger chunks of health, and can usually afford to play reactively. I should also note that astrologian is the less powerful of the two, but makes up for it by focusing on buffing party members' attacks. Shield healers such as scholar and sage have less powerful healing spells, but make up for it by creating shields that protect party members from harm. Sage in particular is also focused on combat, with some of its attacks requiring a shield to be broken in order to activate.

[@kay_faraday]

Gonna just mention that even the pure healers have some amount of shielding, it's just much less than the shield healers. Much of the pure healers' healing comes from regeneration buffs, too.

[@Brass319]

You forgot to consider something: toxikon kinda sucks. Kardia healing when you attack is in practice just a slightly different version of embrace, too. Haven't played any of the other healers past level 50 so I'm not sure but I also feel like sage has more of an emphasis on combat through having several off global cooldown aoe panic buttons and their main job gauge giving you a charge that you can use on single target off global healing every 20 seconds to a maximum of three

[@Jaffersin]

I'd be very cautious on praising FFXIV's healers since, while not as much as the Tank roles, they're definitely suffering a lot of simplification and homogenization in order to try and make all four viable at high-level play. Having gotten most of them to max level they unfortunately play similarly more than differently, especially for the first two thirds of leveling, generally only separated by a minor gimmick. It really bums me out since I like Astrologian but it keeps getting simpler and able to do less and more and more utility is killed off to make way for enabling bigger raw numbers. On paper, definitely cool and interesting ways to do healing but in theory it doesn't matter which of the four you run, chances are if you're playing to maximum efficiency a major part of your game plan is standing still and hitting your heal spell while intermittently hitting your skills that do additional healing off separate timers/resources while using buffs and shields expertly feel like extra credit.

[@Brass319]

@@Jaffersin ah yes, the two healer classes: whitrologian and schager

[@Sazandora635]

@@Jaffersin ...Yeah, XIV easily has some of the worst healer design in MMOs as a whole having experienced multiple games. They lack identity and have way too much emphasis on healing/mitigation in a game where amount of such that is actually needed isn't that high (The fact that basically every encounter in the game has been solo healed says enough). You spend far more time spamming your two DPS abilities in every fight then you do actually healing, and what little healing is actually needed happens in such predictable fashion that you basically don't need to alter your healing plan whatsoever outside of other players screwing up. The role tends to be unpopular less because it's hard and more because it's boring as sin. I will take interesting healing design over pinpoint balance any day of the week,

[@Kraiglyndor]

There was an RPG Maker game I played a while back (and regret forgetting the name) where you could buy a maximum of 20 of an item. It was pretty cheep to so you practically started the game at full stock. The gameplay was pretty standard explore the map and fight random encounters, but the enemies hit hard and it wasn’t uncommon to need to heal after every one or two battles. This created a gameplay loop of exploring a part of the map, returning to base, exploring another part of the map, rush through explored areas, fight a somewhat far boss, all while trying to conserve potions, turning healing into both a timer and a resource to manage. There were a few things I thought would be cool to do with this system, such as add rougelike ellements and change the map every few expiditions, give a limited inventory where each item takes up a single slot (30 slots can mean 30 potions, but you can’t pick up any more without discarding or using one), and removing levels (give the player equipment and new spells after tough bosses and secret challenges to better control the balance).

[@TheKarishi]

Locational/"Turret" healing is interesting, particularly in games where you tend to be on the move. The Ritualist of Guild Wars had regular heals, but could also summon a chained spirit to cast heals for you. This was highly efficient...IF you didn't need to leave the spirit's cast radius. The Nature Affinity power set of City of Heroes similarly has powers that produce zones which dramatically increase the party's basic health regeneration, but these are often on a long cooldown so you want to make sure you're saving them for protracted battles. Another form of quintessential "risky healing" is healer limbo (asking "how low can you go?"), especially when there are heals with bonuses for critically injured targets. Essential Dignity in FFXIV heals for 400 potency normally, but increases the lower the target's health is, reaching a maximum of 900 if they're at 30% or lower hp. Originally this disparity was even more dramatic, allowing for massive heals if you could catch the tank at 1 hp, but the devs found this caused some healers to gamble with the party's survival a little TOO often. Besides, Essential Dignity's cooldown is short; Saving it for "an emergency" means intentionally ignoring one of your main resources.

[@michaelramon2411]

I have a system in a TTRPG system I've tinkered with where characters have three types of health - physical, mental and energy (mana). You can't really regain total health during combat, but you can shuffle HP between the three pools in a specific order (mental -> physical -> energy -> mental). Obviously, most attacks do physical damage, but rare mental or energy-draining attacks can be a nasty surprise. You also spend energy HP to use cool powers. You also have to make a die roll when you heal to see how much you can transfer that turn. You can make one heal roll each turn and still take regular actions, but since healing always has a cost, it isn't worth it to use that action each time.

[@BigaloMax]

In Xenoblade X unlike other Xenoblade games there are very few dedicated healing arts or healing characters. INSTEAD most of the healing comes from Bonuses received from Comboing whit your party. If you pay attention to what your NPC partners are Shouting out and respond in kind then you will receive attack buffs and healing in the process. You can even customize what buffs you get from said combos and weather to combo more whit close range , long range or other abilities.

[@Danodan94]

In Deep Rock galactic, each mission starts you with full health and full ammo, but it's entirely reliant on your performance to get more of it. The only way to get more ammo is to call a supply drop, which costs 80 of a resource called Nitra. Nitra is a red mineral that spawns along the walls of the cave, and serves no other purpose than to give you ammo, but you still gotta go out and find it as well as actually figuring out how to dig it out of a place likely out of reach away from the ground. Health is no small issue too. The supply pods give you a chunk of health, but other than that there are small crystals of Red Sugar that can be mined to instantly heal. And there's one perk called Vampire that gives you 5 Hp back whenever you melee kill an enemy, but it has to be medium class or bigger. Everything you do to sustain yourself relies on going out and finding the resources to do it. There is a finite amount in each mission too.

[@serialkillerwhale]

Except for Vampire. The supply of bugs is *not* finite.

[@JulieLamia]

@@serialkillerwhale But melee is typically a poor option to kill stuff with; it's slow to kill outside of the slow-recharging Power Strike, it slows you down, and puts you right in biting range of glyphids. I treat Vampire as more of an extra capability for attrition than a proper method to heal.

[@serialkillerwhale]

@@JulieLamia Quite. Twas more a joke than telling you "VAMPIRE IS INFINITE HEALTH" That slight pick-me-up after power attacking a nearby glyphid and the ability to revive yourself after iron will using it are the main benefits to Vampire, but don't go around trying to either kill bugs with normal attacks or go out of your way to set them up to be finished like you're the Doom Slayer, time is a resource as much as any other.

[@claytonpatterson3424]

there's a game called Barotrauma with a healing system I quite enjoy instead of taking damage normally you gain Afflictions which lower your health or give you a negative effect depending on severity and you need specific medical items to remove them some of which can give you other afflictions

[@tacticaljunk1608]

I really like the healing in BloodRayne. You're a vampire so you can just eat your enemies. But it's usually only good at the end of fights because just feeding off someone in a group will usually mean losing that HP or worse, dying. But you can also use your victim as a human shield if you spin them to the right angle while you're eating them.

[@18120polls]

Classic Everquest had an interesting heal concept. Healing a character to full wasnt very hard, however mana regeneration was punishingly slow. So choosing the most efficient heal became paramount. The most efficient heal was "Complete Heal" that came with a huge 10 second cast time. If you cast CH too late, the tank would die. If you cast it too early, you were not being efficient with your mana.

[@speedymatt1236]

Fortnite also has a unique healing system that recently got reworked. Normally you use up your potion or medkit after some time has passed to regain your health immediately. But now it seems to be gradual during the animation. And if you ever get interrupted by an enemy player, the item gets used up and you won’t get as much health back if you cancel the healing.

[@hank1302]

This game is probably a tad niche among this audience but one game I like is Deceive Inc which has three entirely different ways to heal. For those unaware DI is sort of like Spy Party was a hero shooter, it's a hero based shooter in which you have to blend in with NPCs and either kill all the other players or extract with a "package". The most common way to heal is generally to go to a healing station, these are nice because they quickly heal you to full, recharge over time, and are always in the same place every game. The issue is that they cost 3 intel basically the mid-match currency that you use to open doors so you might need to spend extra time hacking more intel to use them or if you get low you might not be able to hack a door or get a field upgrade, and tempo is important in this game so losing this time could lose you the game, plus a lot of the time healing stations aren't nearby a fight so you have to quickly run away before you get to low that you won't be able to escape. For more immediate healing there are one time use food items scattered around the map that heal a fraction of your HP, they heal basically instantly and are completely free, but you might not fight near food since while it has some set spawns, it's still a bit random, it's also only a small amount of HP unless you invest a field upgrade into buffing food. Food is a really good way to heal mid combat but you need to take your fights near food first which is easier said than done, it's also super sus to eat food when in cover since NPCs never do that so it's best done in combat. On the opposite side of the spectrum there is the field upgrade social battery, in the game there are various social interactions which you can use while in cover to seem more like an NPC, and while these aren't super useful most of the time, before the match you can assign a field upgrade as "social battery" the higher the chip the faster you regain HP, however healing this way costs time and you're not doing anything else while you're mid social interaction and you only get one of each tier of chip which could be spent on something like hack speed or HP, but it's really safe. Basically social battery loses you a lot of time in exchange for being very safe, but you also need to obtain it during a match. IDK if anything I said here makes sense to anyone who hasn't played Deceive Inc, but I think the take away is how it makes makes healing a choice, when you hit low HP you are not given a single solution but are instead given questions. Do you have the extra intel to spend on a healing station? Should I eat food right now when it could give away my cover? Should I spend time I could use doing something else on social battery? Do I just run with 80% of my HP and make the decision later? Usually there's a right decision for every situation but it's up to the player to figure that out and depending on your loadout the answer could be different, allowing for more strategy and player expression. This also isn't even factoring in characters with healing abilities like Chavez and Red.

[@Skibot256]

I really enjoy the healing in Brutal Orchestra. You can’t always heal, but when you can it’s always different, like drawing health from another party member, or putting on an item that prevents all healing but in exchange adds a passive regeneration, or greatly healing a party member but blocking any healing to them for the rest of the fight. I also really enjoy how Darkest Dungeon does healing, having a lot of characters being able to heal but having only 2 be proficient at it, one being the vestal that can do a wide variety of healing but needs to be in the back lines to do so, or the occultist, who can heal insane amounts, but it’s randomized and has a chance to apply bleeding, meaning that you may end up not successfully healing, have just wasted your move, and applied additional damage to an already injured teammate, really adds a bunch of risk and a bunch of fun!

[@davidbrickey8733]

There's something to be said for the simple approach in many roguelikes where healing is simply in finite supply on each level. Whether it's hearts dropped by non-respawning enemies, or specific rooms with healing stations, or carryable items which only recharge between levels. It gives you enough health to keep the game moving and erase early mistakes but once things get tough, every mistake sticks around to haunt you. If it's something that heals you fully in one go, it also creates an obvious risk-reward mechanic--can you survive not healing until you're a little lower on health?

[@wiper7000]

Any kind of "life-steal" mechanics always tends to be satisfying. Doing damage to get health back is just *chef kiss*

[@lordboostian.8802]

Bomber Crew has a neat healing system that gets effected by your crew gear. Having a lot of armor will prevent your crew members from being downed but it all has weight to it, to the point it'll slow crew members to a snails pace. With the healing station in the center of the bomber its important to decide if a crew member should be healing or should remain at the station. This can be circumvented by training a quicker crew member to be a medic in order to heal people without them leaving the stations but it is much slower. Another feature added in to heighten the stress of combat encounters.

[@werlynakadera1944]

Currently my game has a simple medikit-style health system, but I’m considering making the armor power tied to movement. The faster the player moves, the more protected they are.

[@ahmh8411]

In breath of the wild there is one-hit protection, most attacks that should be fatal won't instantly kill Link if he's at full health. Instead, he is left with 1/4 heart.

[@Aktedya1-jt7vw]

I put most of my spirit orbs into stamina upgrades because of this. After a while, heart upgrades seemed unnecessary since you can tank most hits and then eat the thousands of ingredients in your inventory to tank more hits

[@N12015]

Making the system even more broken. That's why more options isn't always a good idea, despite what Aonuma said in a recent interview.

[@PawelMordo]

I really like the Occultists healing from Darkest Dungeon. It can either shift the tide of battle in one action and heal for 15, or screw you over even more and heal for crit 0 and apply bleed to the hero on deaths door. Truly the healer for gamblers

[@Bitt3rh0lz]

Dota2 Has some interesting healing concepts on some characters. Everything from potions being deleted if youre attacked, characters lifestealing or gaining health/regen for kills or even spells such as Omniknights "Purify", which heals the target unit and does the same amount as damage to all enemies in a small radius around the target, thus rewarding risky in your face plays. Or Oracle's "Purifying Flames" which damages any unit you strike with it, enemy or ally, while also granting them a strong Heal over Time. (It comes with a way to negate the damage on allies)

[@RobertLedesma-yk5po]

I played this one weird game where you didn’t have a health bar. Instead you had three charges that would rewind time a few seconds to give you a chance to avoid the damage you took. When you took a hit and didn’t have any charges left you died. You also had a few platforms you had to activate by using some of your charges leaving you more vulnerable. These charges would Regenerate over time. I liked the idea behind it but I didn’t enjoy the rest of the gameplay.

[@drewlevy9557]

Blinx the Time Sweeper is peak design ruined by whoever handled camera angles

[@l9m241]

I'm surprised you haven't mentioned Noita! Noita has an interesting take on healing, while after every stage you can get a full heal, once you start to explore other areas healing becomes greatly limit, soon every little unit of health matters and no matter how strong you are you could be polymorphed into a sheep and lose it all. I find the limited healing options good in it, and make it fun.

[@Flyce_9998]

I was looking if anyone mentioned Noita, having healing be scarce is a very underrated use of the mechanic. There are also two other ways to heal, but they are more advanced: - You can exploit some enemies to heal you (or even increase your health!). - Some rare spells also heal, although they have limited uses (which you can get around with clever wand building).

[@DJB3lfry]

You could also become a vampire and heal by drinking blood. However, this means you have to choose between either permanently filling an item slot with a blood potion, or risking drinking a pool of blood that might be mixed with other, potentially harmful substances.

[@Firem-et2dj]

@@DJB3lfry or, if you're lucky with perks that you find, get an iron stomach perk that negates all of the potential harmful effects from ingesting any not-so-edible stuff. But vampire perk also comes with a cost of a chunk of your max health.

[@Firem-et2dj]

Also there are rare items that could heal you, so coming along one is can be very rewarding, but also very punishing if you're not careful. - Kami is a rune item that when thrown, summons a small wooden shack with a healing spell active inside, which could allow you to recover a bit and potentially hide from enemies for a while. But because it's made out of wood and the walls are pretty thin, it all can be caught on fire or destroyed in a midst of chaos. (Also doesn't help that there is a tnt box that also spawns inside, which if not careful, could nullify all that healing you just got) - Healthy gourd is an item that casts a healing circle spell when thrown and broken, which can cause a problem of accidentally throwing it too far, breaking it prematurely, or heck, there is an enemy that spawns right next to them, so it can also break gourds. And the only place where you can get them is pretty far off from where you begin the game and the way up there is not easy. (Also there is like, limited number of those gourds. And they do not respawn) - Hearty porridge is a flask consumable that heals quite a bit of your hp upon consumption. You can only get one of it upon picking up "Eat your veggies" perk, which has it's own downside. (be careful to not break the flask) There is also two healing potions, but one of them is extremely rare to spawn as a rare potion flask, and the other one can only be mixed with a list of random materials that is different in every world seed. Also there is no way of knowing which materials you need without the use of external programs other than experimentation. (and even with that the chances of getting an easy list of widely-available stuff that you need to mix to make it is extremely low) (Also those both still require careful handling)

[@ashleigh2376]

Somebody else in the comments already mentioned Ultrakill’s “hard damage” system which temporarily lowers your max health when damage is taken, but I think it’s also important to note how the game incentivizes healing through parries, especially in later levels. Parrying an attack will heal your HP up to max, but the timing for almost every parriable attack is quite tight, which further incentivizes the game’s already-existent aggressive and risky playstyle, while also rewarding being stylish and looking for things to counter.

[@Ne1vaan]

Health gating in Borderlands 2 was always an interesting thing on glass-cannon builds. You couldn't be killed in one hit from over half HP no matter the damage amount, so use an item to reduce your HP and turn a minor trickle of healing from X, Y, or Z source (there were myriad) into a tightrope act of invincibility as long as you didn't get hit twice too quickly (or get a status effect...). Combined with the good brokenness of the game to be just a delight.

[@jonotarthetyranitar7639]

Minecraft’s healing system is pretty weird. It all depends on how full you are, if you’re full you heal verry fast but this uses a lot of hunger and once you loose a full chunk, your healing slows down dramatically. Loose another half chunk and it stops all together

[@areadenial2343]

Yeah, saturation healing is a pretty weird mechanic. That's why in the experimental Combat Test snapshots, they made natural healing more consistent. Rapid healing is removed, and healing no longer consumes saturation. Instead, you heal at a constant rate (half a heart every 2 seconds) when your hunger bar is at least 40% full or so. Natural healing directly consumes hunger points. I think this is a better system. Hunger points restore health, but at a slower rate, and saturation does what it's supposed to: prevent hunger depletion from other actions such as sprinting/jumping/mining etc.

[@appelofdoom8211]

The best alternative healing systems are the ones that don't encourage stalling like the kh2 system. Like you argued the kh1 system was worse but there you have to attack or use an ether so you can have a chance to heal but the kh2 system requires you to use an item or just stall until the mp bar comes back.

[@SaxoraMcOhn]

Why would you need to stall when you are back in great shape or even full health?

[@justcallmexen]

don't forget that MP Charge also increased how much drive you got for fighting, resulting in a feedback loop where you use MP to bump up drive and then spend drive to either restore HP/MP directly with a form change or indirectly from a summon.

[@appelofdoom8211]

@@SaxoraMcOhn kh2: You heal>you have no mp>you get hit again>you still have no mp> stall until it comes back or You heal>you have no mp>stall until your safety net comes back because you might otherwise get killed kh1: you heal>you still have some mp> you get hit> you heal> you realize you have to keep on the offensive in order to not run out in the long term. or you heal>you have no mp> just moving in circles dodging the boss won't save you you have to get hits in

[@balanced2482]

In Genshin Impact, the a recently released character name Furina has a pretty interesting take on healing. Healing itself being a resource. Furina's ultimate gives a massive boost to damage to the entire team that scale with healing and damage taken. More healing = more team damage. However, over healing doesn't count and only occur while her ultimate is active (30s) . This means to take full advantage of her boost, you must keep your entire team at low health until you are ready to use her ultimate. By having this one character on your team, healing is now something you have to think about because her damage is boost is well worth it

[@CrashmanAndKirby]

A LEGO product tie-in flash game called Spybotics: The Nightfall Incident has one of the most fascinating healing mechanics I've seen. The game is similar in concept to something like Advanced Wars, with units you have to position and attack with, and this LEGO game also ties healing to other mechanics... but not unit strength. It ties unit health to unit size and unit movement. Each tile you move leaves an "after-image" trail up to a maximum size for each unit. Each tile in that trail contributes to your unit health, increasing when you move and decreasing when hit (in order of oldest tile to newest). Notably, you also can't move after attacking, only before. Enemies are subject to these mechanics as well, and some can attack from range. This poses interesting challenges to the player regarding where they move their units. Your unit is currently injured, can take lethal shots at the enemies closing in, but will be overrun if kept there for too many turns. Do you move your unit around to regain health? How do you plan to move, making your hitbox bigger, while staying out of range? Is it worth moving to regain health, but losing out on your optimal attack position? You have a chokepoint watched by enemies to get through. How do you get through while maintaining your health? How do you get through while not blocking your own units? Can you strategically take some hits to make a unit that just got through smaller, so your other units can rush in on the next turn? Some units even have abilities tied to being at least a certain size! So do you become a big target to use the "ultimate" ability, or do you stay a small target to avoid getting deleted? I could go on. Easily one of the finest and most unique health systems I've ever seen in a videogame. Sometimes aggressive, sacrificial plays are the answer. Other times, wiggling around for health to slowly tank everything is. I wish I knew other games with this mechanic!

[@CoolJosh3k]

You missed that the Medic in Team Fortress is rewarded by doing a better job. Healing players who need it more (like low health or no other healing source) are faster at unlocking the special ability, the Über. Those players who really need the help though, are typically closer to the opponent and puts the Medic at greater risk of losing it all.

[@CyborgPrime]

I love your video essays - keep up the great work!

[@negative6442]

I suck at Tarkov, but one thing I like about it is the healing system because of how intricate it is, and it requires you to put actual thought into it. You need to worry about bleeding, fractures, broken bones, pain, limb health, and what areas to prioritize. That's on top of resource management, as you can only carry so many meds with you (especially if you can't afford the good stuff), and time management, as different items will take differing lengths of time to complete their animations. Its a very cool system that compliments the hardcore gameplay.

[@omolio]

Something I like about the health flasks in Dead Cells is how with every difficulty you suddenly become more grateful for the healing you had last time. When I started, I though "Man, only a limited amount of healing per level? That seems kind of harsh." Then on 2 Boss Cells I thought back to how easy it was when you got a full heal after a level. On 4 Boss Cells I felt grateful that on 3 I at least got two free flasks per run. And now at 5 Boss Cells, I miss the times when I could actually use food to heal without any consequences.

[@orlandobrown8190]

I've been playing MH since the PS2 and the thing that makes it great is that the game's difficulty scales up with your equipment so that having items alone won't make hunts easy. They just keep things from being brutal. You still have to have a certain level of skill to beat the harder monsters. I remember in earlier installments going into the end game and buring all of my healing items and still struggling with monsters. This is before MHW made the game more beginner friendly.

[@benedict6962]

The problem with MH healing is that Items can take so long to use you will literally run out of time. A truly full inventory can take 5+ minutes to chug, and some hunts cut themselves to 20 minutes.

[@laggalot1012]

Generally true, though the one thing older MH games deal with in terms of healing balance is leaving areas. If the particular hunt doesn't lock you into an arena, you can just beeline the nearest loading zone and heal in the next area over. Sure, it's probably not as fast and it's certainly tedious, but it's also virtually risk free if the loading zone isn't too far away. And you are free to do any other prep or maintenance while you're at it, too, and then come back in for free once you're topped off. Against the faster monsters especially, they would often be the most reliable way to go about thing. You can do this in MHWorld or Rise to an extent, but it's a lot harder without such defined areas, and monsters having a tendency to give chase if enraged.

[@dondashall]

Grim Dawn has a pretty interesting healing system, in that potions have a cooldown just as skills so you can't spam potions and you are therefore also encourage to keep switching up potion sizes when it becomes relevant. Hollow Knight also has a cool charm called Hiveblood (which you get from the hive) which will heal itself up to a certain point (I don't know the specifics by heart) over time, but that stops if you use manual healing. It's an expensive charm, but well worth it, but in fights you're constantly monitoring what's the best choice, let it heal and risk it and use the soul for spells or do a bit of manual healing to get you out of the danger zone. The opportunity cost is so true. I did a recent playthrough (my 3rd) of Hollow Knight a bit back. During my first playthrough (my first metroidvania) I played incredibly defensively, used spells very sparingly to keep it for healing, which I needed. This latest one, I was more aggressive. Some because I knew things from the game (but honestly been a while) but other just being more comfortable in the genre so a lot of time, even when at low health, I would prioritize using the soul for the vengeful spirit spell and in most cases it would turn out to be the right choice. There were a few bosses (and a few tougher regular enemies) where I was at my last sliver of health, but I would decide to go for VS instead and it would let me finish the fight.

[@furiouscorgi6614]

Hiveblood only heals your most recently lost Mask, and resets when you're attacked.

[@feryth]

Grim Dawn doesn't have healing potion now, it's just a skill with cooldown.

[@dondashall]

@@furiouscorgi6614 I've certainly had it heal more than one, it's gotta be it heals the damage from your last received attack (which can be more than one mask), but thanks - the rest sounds right.

[@dondashall]

@@feryth Thanks. I haven't played in a while. I enjoy the early-mid parts of the game, but once you have to faff around constantly with the resistances I eventually lose interest.

[@furiouscorgi6614]

@dondashall To quote the HK Wiki: The regenerating Mask is marked by a small blob of dripping honey that slowly grows bigger. Taking damage again while regenerating starts the process over (at the Knight's current health). In the case of an attack that deals two Masks of damage (such as an explosion), Hiveblood only regenerates one Mask.

[@genio2509]

One game I want to mention is Lone Fungus, a 2D metroidvenia, very similar to Hollow Knight on the healing. On the early game it feels good, healing during a fight can be risky, but it pays off. The game gas a parry mechanic that you can bounce a projectile by using the hotkey, but it uses one parry charge. There are emblems that you can use that modify how the parry works. One of them allows you to get a lot of s instead of bouncing, but you can also parry the enemies themselves. The issue now is those s are so long that they allow you to completely heal and then escape, removing the risk of healing at all. The issue lies more on this emblem being overpowered more than the healing system itself, but it does bring a point of making sure some other items or abilities allow this to happen. After I got that emblem and tried a sword/heal build, no boss was challenging at all except the final boss. For me the game was amazing in every way except for this big flaw.

[@fabiomcmuffin]

I’m very late to the party finally playing The Last of Us recently. But I like how healing works there. Healing takes time so you can’t heal during a fight unless you run and find a place to hide. Feels very immersive. Plus the opportunity cost of health kits and molotovs using the same crafting materials

[@AdamTheGameBoy]

Having lax healing mechanics can also be beneficial, for example Xenoblade has more engaging combat than nearly any other RPG because you quickly heal after every battle. Every fight near your level could kill you, rather than sustained battles whittling you down, but the first few being nearly impossible to die to. It doesn't have to balance difficulty based on guessing where your current HP is. This also opens up opportunities to make crisis builds more interesting since you can't just get to low health and stay that way across many battles.

[@manuelmadama1636]

Final Fantasy XIII is the same way, with most normal encounters being extremely dangerous since you get fully restored after each fight... but that's only the case once many of the game systems open up and the game lets you explore rather than forcing you to go down an endless hallway. And since it takes around 30 hours to get to that point... What were they thinking, making those initial 30 hours something closer to a tutorial segment, almost completely devoid of any depth or challenge?

[@Monocular0]

@@manuelmadama1636 Bold of you to assume they were thinking.

[@magic_cfw]

For monster hunter, I actually feel that the new "gradual heal" is more punishing. Before, when you heal you get everything in a single pop. But with the new one, small interruptions which don't even have to damage you can make you drop your pot. I guess what I mean is there is more depth, where the consideration is not just "which potion and when to use", but also "how much of the potion can I drink before I need to act again".

[@revonfyll]

Naah, it's easier to avoid attacks now. Plus, in Rise you get some health instantly. If you skill for Free Meal 3, you can just chug potions and roll. This makes healing both fast and safe.

[@emblemblade9245]

Movement is king, always. Healing was more of a commitment before. Sure you’d get the health back faster, but if you pop a potion, get health, then get hit again before you can even move, you’re down one potion (no restocks), your health is as low as it was before or lower, and now you have to avoid follow-up attacks from the monster while possibly having low enough health for the next attack to KO you. So getting health back faster was a mulligan at best, but you really did usually have to just find a safe time to heal. Most attacks in 5th gen can be avoided by walking while healing unless they’re homing in on you. And since monster patterns are fairly predictable, you can even just walk around right next to it and be safe if you know what’s coming. Healing that freezes you in place does not ever allow that option.

[@fatyoshi696]

Recoverable health in fighting games actually has so much depth it's crazy, you wouldn't expect something that goes "some of the damage you take is healable, switch out to heal it but if you come back in you can't anymore" to have a ton of nuance to it. If your character in the back gets caught in a combo as you call their assist, all damage they take is recoverable, so you need to take care to keep them safe if that happens. Tag fighters also have a mechanic called snapback, which allows you to forcibly bring in one of your opponent's characters on hit, usually at the cost of a resource, so you can bring in a character and deny their healing if you think it's worth the cost. There are also many universal or character-specific ways of interacting with the recoverable health: mechanics like marvel 3's X-factor and dbfz's sparking blast allow your active character to heal their recoverable health while also acting as a defensive option on activation and giving a few other buffs, but its duration depends on how many characters you have left and you can only use it once, so you need to decide if you want to use it early to build momentum or save it for healing on your final character, who otherwise can't heal; melty blood's heat works similarly but instead of being a unique single use resource it causes your entire meter to drain over time, and you can also use supers at a discount during heat so managing heat has a lot of decision making involved, activating heat is already a big commitment and then you need to decide whether it's worth spending on health or supers. Many moves even have unique interactions with recoverable health, especially in dragon ball fighterz. All invincible moves cause the subsequent combo to be entirely recoverable damage, so if you land one you need to decide how much of your resources are worth spending on a combo your opponent could potentially fully heal off; a few different moves let you heal your recoverable health immediately at the cost of meter or specific combo routing, krillin's senzu bean in particular can be used to heal anyone on the team's recoverable at the cost of half a bar, but to use it on yourself you need to throw it on the ground, where your opponent can potentially steal it; there are even moves that delete the opponent's recoverable health if you spend meter, like baby's EX command grab. Fighterz in particular has really fun health micromanagement, i really enjoy keeping my characters' health up by switching them around mid-combo

[@budget4863]

I really like the scientist's healing options in plants vs zombies garden warfare 2, being able to choose between the more mobile single target heal beam and the stationary group healing station, then theres the option of being able to swap out damage from sticky explody balls for additional healing from mega heal bombs

[@YB-dh1fu]

Cuphead actually has healing, kinda. You can equip a charm called the heart ring which lets you gain hearts after enough parrys. (I might be wrong though, been a while since I played the game)

[@turbo8628]

Been a while for me too but i think that charm gives you an additional 2 hearts at the start of the level. Useful for s ranks where you struggle to dodge everything/specific attacks cos as long as you finish with 3 that's all that matters. Parrying anything pink will boost your power meter for special attacks.

[@gamerkyle2402]

As an avid Medic player, the class has multiple tools that make the act of healing much more dynamic. The Quick Fix trades most of your overheal for a faster heal rate, encouraging the playstyle of topping everybody off, Medic Baddies included rather than pocketing a single Medic Buddy. Additionally, your temporary invulnerability is replaced with a faster-charging burst of dramatically increased healing. This can be used as a poor man's Ubercharge despite the lack of true invincibility, but it really shines in quickly topping off multiple health bars in the blink of an eye in a dire situation. The Crusader's Crossbow takes the concept of burst healing and doubles down, adding a risk/reward element. You're rewarded with more healing based on how far you are from your target, meaning you can turn the tides of a fight by instantly saving an ally from the brink of death. Miss, however, and you may lose a patient you could have saved simply by using the Medi-Gun. Finally, a competitor for Medic's highly-contested melee slot is the Amputator. It deals the least damage out of any other option, but grants a boost to your passive self-healing while deployed. The main gimmick of the item is an AOE healing effect while taunting. You lock yourself in place for several seconds in commitment to the animation in exchange for healing everybody around you for the duration. It's VERY risky, but can output tons of healing if used in the correct situations.

[@Nitram-MH]

I’m a personal fan of healing that has a certain condition to it. Deal damage. Cause a status ailment. Hit multiple targets. It feels like a reward for doing a side objective that also could help you improve at the game by doing that action many times

[@Wraithfighter]

One thing I'd like to add to this is that games shouldn't be afraid of letting the player go entirely the other direction. Some players like having overpowered healing at the cost of offensive ability, it gives them a feeling of control over the fight, the feeling of being unstoppable and inevitable, grinding out fights. Sometimes, that is fun for them, even if the majority of players would find it tedious. This frequently comes paired with strong tanking effects. Being able to shrug off damage and heal it up quickly just appeals to some players, and the old adage of "The Customer is Always Right *in Regards to Taste*" does apply here. If a players leans towards a certain playstyle and genuinely enjoys it, giving them options instead of saying "you're playing the game wrong" is a good idea. You just need to make sure that it's not an easy option, its something they need to spec into and design their build around, so that the healing abilities don't become a crutch for those that would prefer more aggressive play. That said, this mostly applies to single-player games. Fighting an enemy player that just won't damn well die is rarely appealing, and should be avoided at all cost.

[@maxifire32]

In dead cells after taking damage you don't immediately lose health rather the damage taken turns into orange health, dealing damage will turn some of that orange health back into green health, allowing you to undo some of the damage you've taken, but you have to think about it well since just like how you can run up to an enemy and slap them with a flying pan they can also attack you while you're attacking them if you don't stun them or don't pay attention to their attack animation, meaning you'll be in a way worse situation if you try to heal back what you still tecnically haven't lost but are losing quickly, as taking damage will completely deplete all orange health and turn another section of your healthbar orange

[@naomicoffman1315]

Every fighter and bomber in the Freespace series has an energy shield. It regenerates over time, but if a section of shield is breached, hits in that area will damage the ship's hull instead, and there's no way to repair hull damage. Energy can be diverted between shield sections and other ship systems, so if you're about to finish off a bomber when one of its escort fighters targets you, it can sometimes be correct to divert energy to shields and ignore the escort until you've dealt with your current target. It's a snap judgement call that can have a huge impact on higher difficulty settings.

[@MattLeIdjut]

Tekken 8's Temporary health mechanic is a pretty fun fighting game healing system. In short, it's like the red health system of tag team fighters, but instead of tagging out to heal you get the red health back by going on the aggressive. Whether you ram an opponent's block or juggle them to the wall, hitting the other guy gets you back small amounts of your temp health. It incentivizes playing the game the more fun way to make come backs, a lot like the Modern-Doom design approach. More violence = better results (if you don't suck)

[@plantplayer303]

So it's the same as Bloodborne it seems, though i don't remember anything about it vanishing with time.

[@Lonk0279]

Revita has a great healing/health system. Healing (or overhealing for max HP) costs souls, which are dropped on enemy death. Souls are multiplied by your chainmeter, which you increase by killing enemies fast but goes down if you aren't killing enemies when there are still some in the room or if you take HP damage. The catch? They vanish after a short while, so you have to run right into the fray to get them. Your health and max hp are also your money in runs, and (almost) the only way to get items, so you have to constantly sacrifice your health to get stronger, at the risk of losing it all. Health and shields can also show up on room clear (but you can only find HP pickups if you're hurt), and the soul meter fills up fast if you keep your chain up, so it isn't too punishing to take damage or gamble your hp for what turns out to be a bad item, especially at lower difficulties.

[@bocetintv6904]

The healing system in ULTRAKILL is one of the key reasons why the combat is so interesting. Not only do you need to get close to your target to heal (which discourages camping, most importantly in bosses), but there's also the Hard Damage mechanic: 10% of the damage you receive reduces your max health, and enemies deal really high damage in this game. What makes this so interesting, is how the player has to remove Hard Damage: it drains over time depending on how high your rank is at the moment, the higher the rank the faster it drains out. In order to increase your rank, you need to switch weapons often and kill enemies in fast and stylish ways, and the way in which the game detects a kill as "stylish" encourages players to take out foes in creative ways.

[@All4Tanuki]

Pseudoregalia has a genius healing system. You build up a meter by damaging enemies. While it's high, your attacks are enhanced, and you can spend meter to heal. So you trade damage output for personal safety.

[@MrCovi2955]

Doom took the idea of "Murder things to heal" from Space Marine. Because in the age when Gears of War really cemented in the cover mechanic and said "don't move forward, stay there," Space Marine said "You're the angel of the God Emperor, you fear nothing." And by making it so that executing things healed you, it really made you feel like a fearless war machine.

[@davidmaximus6709]

Just found your channel recently and am loving these videos! It's cool to see all these different styles in game design that I've never thought about before, even for games I've played