Healing-on-levelup results in bad gameplay

[Polatrite]

The Problem

Healing-on-levelup results in some really bad effects on the game and the ability to theorycraft and push content.

Level-ups can be on random screens

Based on enemy spawns throughout the world, you could see more enemies earlier and have a streak of difficult screens (4-5 enemies), causing you to level-up quicker than normal. The opposite could happen, where you meet few enemies and don't level-up quickly enough.

Your total Quiddity affects which screens you level-up on

This is perhaps the most dastardly of all, your total quiddity causes you to get increased energize gains when killing enemies. Normally this is great - more exp, more levels. However this can cause you to level-up at unwanted times, such as 4-5 screens before a boss, instead of 1-2 screens before the boss. Since players can't (really) control their total quiddity, this makes for a complete mess of progression.

Buying new things changes your progression rate

Similar to the last one, your progression can be dramatically affected by buying new offers from the shops, if it substantially changes your energize bonus.

[Polatrite]

All of the below solutions involve removing the healing on level-up complete.y

Solution 1: Health potions

When you level-up, you gain a Health Potion. This potion restores some amount of health (probably in the 30-70% base health range), and is used automatically when you're near death, or when you get one-shot.

The reason the potion would restore less total health is because in the early game, you often level-up while near full health (usually when you're one-shotting enemies), so you would bank up a large number of potions that would then only be used toward the final 1/2 to 1/3 of your run, as enemies start dealing substantial amounts of damage.

Solution 2: Find healing fairies on specific screens through the run

Certain screens would be guaranteed to have a healing fairy spawn on them, and when you walk through the healing fairy you would heal to full.

This would allow players to theorycraft around the specific screens that have healing fairies, and the fairy locations would be carefully placed to ensure players could progress without too many progress walls.

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Would love to hear other solutions and suggestions!

[EdwardMcCants]

With either solution, you could add some skill nodes that modify the healing amount and/or trigger when they occur.

[Ethret]

I like the health potions idea. Another idea would just be to let us heal at every boss screen.

[Polatrite]

Illias (Krovasteel)Today at 11:26 PM @Polatrite (don't have a github) I like the Health potion idea, I think that would rapidly increase people's progression farther than it is already. But it would be lest RNG frustrating for the rando heals.

I, for the longest time. Thought that certain enemies healed you.

You could also add skills that heal, Life steal, Heal on Evade, Heal % chance on hit/getting hit etc. But those are pretty complex.

Lifesteal would potentially break the game with the current Physical dmg meta. So maybe have it be a Spell, like a spiritual spell that heals % dmg dealt, with a low base damage.

But the Potion, Special healing enemies, and Post-boss recovery would be great options that should be easy to implement.

[Meep1303]

A clean way to implement healing would to be to have a 'healing' stat where at the the end of each screen the player would heal either percentage max health or a flat number based on that stat. The healing stat could be influenced by health. Also, when the skill tree starts expanding in further releases there could be nodes making players have to theory craft around how to most effectively balance between dps and healing for sustain.

[KimberleySmith]

"Bad Gameplay" is a very broad term, as gameplay is what you want it to be; if you want the game to be challenging and trying to hold people back from progressing without making it impossible at early stages, then something that scales poorly with the difficulty would be good, otherwise, if you want linear progression, something simple would be best. In this case, I would suggest a combination of healing though leveling (perhaps not to full health) and healing per floor, both based on a percentage of your health (once that is working). This means you are never healed to full hp at once, meaning you have less RNG conflicts, but also less edge of the seat moments that I have found pretty exhilarating (maybe not, but definitely less rollercoaster). This has the added side effect of causing Total HP to valuably add to the late game strategies, where increasing your health actually allows you to heal more per level, where health total has been less present (possibly because it is broken currently).

[hidalgob]

I believe that the potions would work quite well. In a long run you would probably stock a lot of them and start using them near the end. This, for now, would make every run go way farther than it is currently going, but would also make the healing have a real meaning. Adding to that, I believe that other forms of healing, or the effectiveness of potions should also be spread in the skill tree.