The case for Illari fully healing you

[c4sc4]

So I've seen this brought up several times on why the Illari don't fully heal you. Sorry in advanced but I'm going to bring this up once again. I didn't want to post this in a closed mantis issue or a buried forum thread so I'm making a new one. Anyway, here's my argument for the Illari fully healing you.

First off it just kinda seems like a bug, or at least would be confusing for a new player. I think the Illari don't try to heal you (make the sound an effect) when you are above 100% anymore but it still may be confusing to new players when they pass an Illari while injured and it doesn't heal them.

Second, Chris made the argument that players would warp back to town to heal when they are about to lose a vitality stone level.  Can't players already do this though without any vitality stones? I mean if players were going to be this obsessive about not losing a vitality stone level, why would they even use the vitality stones in the first place? The same thing could be accomplished by not using any vitality stones and warping back to town when they are about to die. This is essentially the same thing as warping back to town when you are about to lose a vitality stone level.

A counter point to this could be that the players used the vitality stones because they are headed toward a boss fight and don't want to lose them on the way. But to this I say that isn't really any different than what they can do right now. A player could not use any vitality stones, warp back to town when they are about to die and warp back. Then, once they reach the boss area, warp back to town, use a bunch of vitality stones and then warp back to the boss.

Also, right now I mainly use vitality stones for missions where you can't really warp back to town to heal anyway because that would mean you fail the mission or at least have to start over.

Other place I would really use vitality stones would be in underground caverns, lieutenants and Overlords, but in these cases if I were being 'optimal' I would use the warp back to town before dieing method and just use vitality stone right before fighting a boss.

The only real difference I see between the Illari fully healing you and how it is now is that if a player used a lot of stones before a boss fight and still had several extra hundred percent health left after the fight. Now players can't warp back to town to heal and keep from losing vitality levels between boss fight like they would be able to do if the Illari fully healed them. Maybe this is really a major worry.

Also, right now it kinda seems like you are punishing a majority of players for something a minority of 'optimal' players might do.

Also also, could bosses at least drop health orbs on death?

[zebramatt]

I think there's certainly a case with many of the proposed changes to make missions more 'one shot' (and presumably to the warping system?) for the Ilari to heal you back up to your current maximum.

Aside from the points you've made, it seems odd that it's actual more 'optimal' under some circumstances to go farm a bunch of puny monsters to replenish health than it is to visit your healer.

I think the restrictions should be on the warping and/or the missions themselves, rather than on the healer. The former can be explained in-game through reference to the nature of the hostile environment, or the evil beings which reside therein; whereas the latter just makes your Ilari compatriot look weak.

[Hyfrydle]

I'd like to second the bosses dropping healing orbs. It just seems odd that all other enemies drop orbs but bosses don't and after an epic boss fight orbs would be much appreciated.

[tigersfan]

The biggest problem I see with allowing the Ilari to heal you to your current maximum is that this would eventually lead to players having a TON of health (1000% or even more). The problem with this is that it makes the game a LOT harder to balance, perhaps even impossible to balance.

That said, I do like the idea of bosses dropping healing orbs.

[Terraziel]

The biggest problem I see with allowing the Ilari to heal you to your current maximum is that this would eventually lead to players having a TON of health (1000% or even more). The problem with this is that it makes the game a LOT harder to balance, perhaps even impossible to balance.

Wouldn't the obvious way round that simply be a cap on the number of health tanks you can have?

That said, I think the issue with vitality stones is that they are of variable and uncertain value, rather dropping from 400% to 300% costs me considerably more than 200% to 100%, indeed ironically the more health I have the more health is worth to me.

Having not been around when they were invented what was the logic behind the way they are now?

I think it would be better off making Vitality stones much rarer, having a set value (say 10 to a tank), applying a max tank number, and allowing Ilari healing, whilst leaving them breakable obviously.

That way the perceived value of vitality stones is flat and entirely controlled by the rarity, and going down a rank is much less of a concern. Indeed if you wanted to go full on I would say you should tie the rarity in to how many stones you have used, such that as you use more the drop rate decreases until at max health they stop dropping (which limits stockpiling or atleast makes it a playstyle difficulty choice)

[keith.lamothe]

There are some changes to warp mechanics that Chris is planning to work on soon that may change the terrain of this issue, so to speak.

[x4000]

Okay, I'm sold this time.  It's in the next release, thanks.

[BobTheJanitor]

There is something to be said for the current system where you have to fight to keep your health up. It keeps things interesting and gives a reason to fight monsters. That said, some monsters are so tricky to fight that you are lucky to break even. But that's a balancing question and probably something that is better resolved when the game is in a less flexible state. Any alternative healing method should have some risk/reward associated with it that is similar to the current question of whether it's worth it to fight these monsters in order to try and get their healing. If I could always zip back to town and heal up and then come back and warp right back to where I was, I would probably do so pretty often. The current system forces me to stay and fight for the chance to heal up.

As far as the number of health items required per buff level, either method would work just as well. The current one has a sort of 'soft cap' where getting enough of them to buff another level requires an unreasonably high number of stones. Changing that to a hard cap and requiring the same number of stones per level would have the same effect, but it means the stones would have to be seeded with much higher rarity to maintain a similar balance. As is, low HP buffs are relatively cheap, but high HP buffs are expensive, and you get the interesting question of saving your stones to always be able to buff at a low level, or spending them all to get a huge buff but then risking much more when you lose it. Having buff level 1 valued the same as buff level 5 is a little easier to grasp at first glance, but it's not as interesting of a game mechanic.

So I guess I'm just posting to defend everything about the current system. Heh, hadn't really planned that when I started typing. But please do have bosses drop healing orbs. Piles and piles of them.

Edit: ^^^^^ Oh noes!

[keith.lamothe]

Edit: ^^^^^ Oh noes!

It was probably pre-emptive retaliation for your kilo-post.

[x4000]

My rationale for the change is easily summarized as the following:

1. Players find it annoying and keep reporting it as a bug.  Enough so that this will never go away until I change it, I've learned with AI War.

2. You can't exit a mission (to run back to town) without abandoning the mission and then having to restart when you come back.  So having missions be about endurance is still alive and well.

3. If players want to run back to town from their freeform exploration, then I guess that's their prerogative.  It's not going to really affect balance of the game either way, for that.  If it's during a boss fight, the boss gets healed by the time they come back, etc.

4. With the coming changes to the warp mechanics, just running back to town all the time will be a lot less convenient in the first place.  Not super inconvenient, but less convenient than a couple of clicks.

5. In terms of the vitality stones, I've not changed anything with them, so no worries, Bob.

[c4sc4]

Okay, I'm sold this time.  It's in the next release, thanks.

I was expecting a little more resistance but that's awesome.

By the way, any chance on my second request of bosses dropping health orbs? It seems to have gathered support in this thread.

[x4000]

Oh yeah, regarding the boss health orbs... I'm not sure.  So I plan to defer on that for a few weeks at least.

When you're fighting through a big area and making it to the top of the tower or whatever else, you're essentially on an endurance run.  You can kill the monster nests in boss rooms to get relief from those monsters, but at the cost of having no health orbs.  Having the health orbs just given at the end of battle... changes things.  Not for one boss battle, but definitely for anytime a boss battle falls prior to the end of a mission in some fashion.

I can see the case for it, but I'm also not sure that having them drop orbs wouldn't break something else.  So for now, until there are more missions in place and more of the game is in a polished state that can be evaluated as a whole... we wait.