A fresh take on character healing

yogi_ · September 2014

Given we now have a tangle of healing options in the game (True Healing™, not True Healing™ (aka. boost of health), post-game healing and sporadic use of health abilities in game), it’s time to look at something more consistent and justifiable.

So, let’s talk about durability. In Marvel, it’s described as “the ability to resist or recover from bodily injury” and in MPQ, this translates to character healing.

By looking at the Marvel Power Ratings we can give ratings to all of our characters (the higher, the better) and here they are:

* 7 – Hulk and Juggernaut at the top level are considered “virtually indestructible” and should heal quickly.
* 6 – The “superhuman” healing Ares, Captain Marvel, Colossus, Doctor Doom, Iron Man, Invisible Woman, Loki, Ragnarok, Sentry, She-Hulk, Thor and Venom should also have a fast healing level.
* 4 – The “regenerative” Beast, Daken, Deadpool and Wolverine, should have a moderately fast heal.
* 3 – Black Panther, Black Widow, Bullseye, Captain America, Moonstone, Psylocke and Spider-Man have “enhanced” levels.
* 2 – Daredevil, Falcon, Hawkeye, Hood, Human Torch, Magneto, Nick Fury, Punisher, Storm and Yelena Belova have “normal” levels.

To clarify and simplify how healing is handled across the game, as a baseline, each character should automatically receive their associated level of healing both in game (as yellow bar temporary resistance) and post-game healing (recovery) – perhaps as a percentage value of the original and the higher the tier, the faster the rate.

More specifically, there 5 tiers in current use and each should be suitably set, for example:

* 7 – 5% of health each turn in game and the fastest rate of post game healing.
* 6 – 4% of health each turn in game and the 2nd fastest rate of post game healing.
* 4 – 2% of health each turn in game and the 4th fastest rate of post game healing.
* 3 – 1% of health each turn in game and the 5th fastest rate of post game healing.
* 2 – 0% of health each turn in game and the 6th fastest rate of post game healing.

These are illustrative numbers meant to represent a tiered approach only - I do not know the exact figures (they are likely to be a little lower). Character health levels may also need moderate adjustments to ensure no one became too powerful.

The values would be shown on the character screen via the roster, in the area where the colour damage is displayed (eg. a shield for in game resistance and a small red cross for post-game healing).

As an example, at the end of each turn in game Hulk earns the highest rate of yellow bar healing automatically (no player intervention – the numbers just increase like a "boost of health" ability being used) and also heals the fastest post-game. In a similar fashion, Daken regenerates automatically in game at the 4th highest rate and similar post game.

This would replace all characters healing abilities in the game.

[Extracted from here].

NorthernPolarity · September 2014

Wouldnt this just reintroduce the problem of prologue healing though? This feels like an unnecessarily large overhaul for really what just comes down to the confusion between burst of healing and true healing, since i dont think anyone is confused/bothered by how long it takes for different characters to heal naturally outside of battle. That true healing vs burst of healing issue can probably just be changed in a simpler fashion like renaming burst of healing to shielding or something along those lines.

Unknown · September 2014

You can't regenerate health faster than the expected match 3 damage because match 3 does more damage than most people think and if there is even a halfway decent character who can negate that every turn, he's going to be overwhelmingly better than anyone else remotely in the same tier as him. Especailly for PvE, it could be completely feasible to use a character that cannot even do damage but can regen 5% health a turn but that's completely messed up.

To make high health attractive, all characters should regenerate a % of their HP over time. It can be something like say 1% per minute for all 3*s, so it'd take 1 hour 40 minutes for a person to cover from 1 health back to full. You can throw in some additional faster regen but it shouldn't be based on stuff like "Hulk regens in the comic". It should be something to balance a character who otherwise might be a bit weak. Now that works out for Hulk because Hulk doesn't do much and could use the extra boost, but it doesn't make sense for Daken who does plenty of awesome things by himself.

I've said this before but just because there are numbers in this game doesn't make this a RPG and even if it does, it doesn't mean you have to have healing just because RPG usually have healing. Street Fighter does not have any kind of healing in the vast majority of its incarnations and that didn't make game any less complex. It was simply a concept that wouldn't make much sense in a fighting game, and I believe the same holds true here. High health characters already have a significant advantage in reusability. Right now, the threshold of requiring a health pack is around 3000 HP. That is, try to start with any of your guy with 3K HP and you're usually asking for a thorough spanking against another top tier team assuming no boosts are involved. The Hood, despite being way overpowered, is indeed held back by how easily he dips to the 3K range and then you either have to risk him potentially knocked out by a single move or burn a health pack for every 2000 damage he accumulated. On the other hand, a character like Hulk can obviously take a lot of damage before he drops into the 3K range so he's easy to reuse.

yogi_ · September 2014

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Wouldnt this just reintroduce the problem of prologue healing though? This feels like an unnecessarily large overhaul for really what just comes down to the confusion between burst of healing and true healing, since i dont think anyone is confused/bothered by how long it takes for different characters to heal naturally outside of battle. That true healing vs burst of healing issue can probably just be changed in a simpler fashion like renaming burst of healing to shielding or something along those lines.

I don't think so... the in game healing is meant as temporary, so post game, it's gone. Basically, automatic yellow bar.

Did I miss something?

yogi_ · September 2014

Phantron wrote:

You can't regenerate health faster than the expected match 3 damage because match 3 does more damage than most people think and if there is even a halfway decent character who can negate that every turn, he's going to be overwhelmingly better than anyone else remotely in the same tier as him. Especailly for PvE, it could be completely feasible to use a character that cannot even do damage but can regen 5% health a turn but that's completely messed up.

To make high health attractive, all characters should regenerate a % of their HP over time. It can be something like say 1% per minute for all 3*s, so it'd take 1 hour 40 minutes for a person to cover from 1 health back to full. You can throw in some additional faster regen but it shouldn't be based on stuff like "Hulk regens in the comic". It should be something to balance a character who otherwise might be a bit weak. Now that works out for Hulk because Hulk doesn't do much and could use the extra boost, but it doesn't make sense for Daken who does plenty of awesome things by himself.

I've said this before but just because there are numbers in this game doesn't make this a RPG and even if it does, it doesn't mean you have to have healing just because RPG usually have healing. Street Fighter does not have any kind of healing in the vast majority of its incarnations and that didn't make game any less complex. It was simply a concept that wouldn't make much sense in a fighting game, and I believe the same holds true here. High health characters already have a significant advantage in reusability. Right now, the threshold of requiring a health pack is around 3000 HP. That is, try to start with any of your guy with 3K HP and you're usually asking for a thorough spanking against another top tier team assuming no boosts are involved. The Hood, despite being way overpowered, is indeed held back by how easily he dips to the 3K range and then you either have to risk him potentially knocked out by a single move or burn a health pack for every 2000 damage he accumulated. On the other hand, a character like Hulk can obviously take a lot of damage before he drops into the 3K range so he's easy to reuse.

All good and valid points. Only comment at this minute is in response to your first statement and that the numbers are for illustrative purposes only and meant to represent a level in comparison to another. You can set them to whatever you want and if they need to be lower, that's fine. It would also mean reducing a bit of the health of the highest level characters to ensure they were not overpowered and in regards to Daken (who does do awesome things), yes, his healing related ability would need amending.

ronin_san · September 2014

I don't understand your levels 1-7. Beast doesn't have improved healing. He's just an agile furball.
Same with Thor. Thor's extremely durable, but that doesn't mean "heals quicker". Black Widow is a normal human with a heightened immune system. That's just an athlete pounding multivitamins She's not even a mutate, like Spider-Man or Captain America. eh...

I think there is a confusion with durability and healing. That it takes longer to crack the armor doesn't mean the gooey inside heals quicker.

mohio · September 2014

ronin-san wrote:

I don't understand your levels 1-7. Beast doesn't have improved healing. He's just an agile furball.
Same with Thor. Thor's extremely durable, but that doesn't mean "heals quicker". Black Widow is a normal human with a heightened immune system. That's just an athlete pounding multivitamins She's not even a mutate, like Spider-Man or Captain America. eh...

I think there is a confusion with durability and healing. That it takes longer to crack the armor doesn't mean the gooey inside heals quicker.

I'm sure OP can verify but I think these are based off of actual numbers from marvel. Like if you have those old trading cards that have values for strength, speed, intelligence, durability, etc. (love those cards, gonna go look at mine

). Anyway for whatever reason marvel decided to give everything a value from 1-7 (don't think there were 0s but there might've been), which is why OP went with that. It might even be explained in his link from his original post on overhauling the whole game (which is quite long, but thought provoking, and might have answered your questions).

Unknown · September 2014

I remember seeing those marvel charts, but I think some character like Sentry or Thor would just be godlike in every category that matters, since those characters aren't meant to be balanced relative to each other in their original universe. Even if you have say a character can only have 25 total points or whatever, someone with a 7 (godlike) in health and 1 (useless) in damage isn't necessarily balanced with someone with a 1 in health and 7 in damage. In fact they almost certainly will not be balanced in the context of this game which greatly favors offense over the ability to withstand damage.

yogi_ · September 2014

mohio wrote:

ronin-san wrote:

I don't understand your levels 1-7. Beast doesn't have improved healing. He's just an agile furball.
Same with Thor. Thor's extremely durable, but that doesn't mean "heals quicker". Black Widow is a normal human with a heightened immune system. That's just an athlete pounding multivitamins She's not even a mutate, like Spider-Man or Captain America. eh...

I think there is a confusion with durability and healing. That it takes longer to crack the armor doesn't mean the gooey inside heals quicker.

I'm sure OP can verify but I think these are based off of actual numbers from marvel. Like if you have those old trading cards that have values for strength, speed, intelligence, durability, etc. (love those cards, gonna go look at mine ). Anyway for whatever reason marvel decided to give everything a value from 1-7 (don't think there were 0s but there might've been), which is why OP went with that. It might even be explained in his link from his original post on overhauling the whole game (which is quite long, but thought provoking, and might have answered your questions).

This.

Yeah, I just used the Marvel categories and individual character stats that existed and then linked them as closely to something that existed in the game. A couple of the categories were easy, a couple had one or two options and a couple were quite tricky to place.

In this case, durability was most closely able to be linked to a consistent way of interpreting healing.

This probably belongs in my main post and sorry for the formatting, but for those interested here are the numbers.

Char / Rating: Intelligence Strength Speed Durability Energy Projection Flighting Ability
Ares 2 5 2 6 1 7
Beast 5 4 3 4 1 4
Black Panther 5 3 2 3 3 5
Black Widow 3 3 2 3 3 6
Bullseye 2 2 2 3 1 5
Captain America 3 3 2 3 1 6
Captain Marvel 3 5 5 6 5 4
Colossus 2 6 2 6 1 4
Daken 3 3 2 4 1 7
Daredevil 3 3 2 2 4 5
Deadpool 2 4 2 4 1 6
Doctor Doom 6 4 5 6 6 4
Falcon 2 2 3 2 1 4
Hawkeye 3 2 2 2 1 6
Hood 2 2 2 2 4 3
Hulk 2 7 3 7 1 4
Human Torch 2 2 5 2 5 3
Invisible Woman 3 2 3 6 5 3
Iron Man 6 6 5 6 6 4
Juggernaut 2 7 2 7 1 4
Loki 5 5 3 6 6 3
Magneto 5 2 5 2 6 4
Moonstone 4 4 3 3 4 3
Nick Fury 3 2 2 2 1 6
Psylocke 2 3 2 3 5 6
Punisher 3 3 2 2 1 6
Ragnarok 2 6 3 6 5 4
Sentry 5 7 7 6 5 2
She-Hulk 3 7 3 6 1 4
Spider-Man 4 4 3 3 1 4
Storm 2 2 3 2 5 4
Thor 2 7 7 6 6 4
Venom 3 4 2 6 1 4
Wolverine 2 4 2 4 1 7
Yelena Belova 3 2 2 2 3 5

yogi_ · September 2014

Phantron wrote:

I remember seeing those marvel charts, but I think some character like Sentry or Thor would just be godlike in every category that matters, since those characters aren't meant to be balanced relative to each other in their original universe. Even if you have say a character can only have 25 total points or whatever, someone with a 7 (godlike) in health and 1 (useless) in damage isn't necessarily balanced with someone with a 1 in health and 7 in damage. In fact they almost certainly will not be balanced in the context of this game which greatly favors offense over the ability to withstand damage.

It was hard to link some of the ratings to something that currently exists as a feature of the game (and why my main document has had quite a number of drafts and may in the future too).

I kept a running total of the number of characters in each ranking and tried to ensure that it would broadly balance. I can tell you that for Intelligence, Speed and Energy most characters are low ranked, Strength most characters are low-middle, Durability is bunched at either end and Fighting Ability is in the middle.

In general, most of the high total rating characters tended to have a lot of stats at mostly similar levels and same with the lower totalling characters. A bunch in the middle of course, but there were actually very few examples of character totals that had such extreme differences such as your example above.

Continuing this, the interesting thing that I guess does connect to that, is while some characters had high levels for a few things, most of their other stuff was low, so there is a sort of inherent balance to some degree and their opponent should be similarly ranked to them or of a strong alternate ranking - a little more intricate team building than now.

At the end of the day and even having both characters at their theoretical max level rank of 100, the lowest ranked Falcon will have his uses, but there is no denying that Thor (being the highest) is a freaking powerhouse in most ways. Somethings are just unavoidable.

A fresh take on character healing

Comments

Categories