Do You Have Healing?

[Frostorm]

It might be worthwhile to think through, and write down, your answers to questions like the following:

• The reason I want healing in my game at all is _______________________.
• The reason I want MP to be convertible to HP through healing spells is ________________________.
• The reason I want healing spells to compete with offensive spells for MP is _______________________.
• The reason players will need to watch their MP at all levels (OR the reason I don't want them to have to watch it) is ______________________.
• When players use Healing Spells in my game, what it will do for their play experience is _____________________.

Cool!, I think this is something we should ask ourselves for ALL aspects of the game lol (might get a bit tedious though).

 

[Wavelength]

Cool!, I think this is something we should ask ourselves for ALL aspects of the game lol (might get a bit tedious though).

Better that we take on the tedium of hammering out a really good answer to "why am I doing this", than to let our players take on the tedium as they play and wonder "why did he do this"!

 

[duty]

@Wavelength Definitely a fan of the exhaustion idea. Not certain why it's not a more frequently used mechanism to make inns or temples more meaningful.

There have been quite a few games where a good healer means the party never sleeps.

 

[Wavelength]

@Wavelength Definitely a fan of the exhaustion idea. Not certain why it's not a more frequently used mechanism to make inns or temples more meaningful.

There have been quite a few games where a good healer means the party never sleeps.

Good point (and thanks!) - my guess why the Exhausion system is not done a lot (besides just unexamined adherence to standard genre mechanics) is that it would likely force players back to the nearest Inn on their first run of a dungeon, as they fight encounter after encounter when they get lost or need to put pieces in place for a dungeon-wide puzzle to open doors. In a standard RPG backtracking once you've already solved the puzzle (so you can come back and take on the boss with higher Max HP) wouldn't be that fun. In my own game you have a certain number of days to accomplish your objectives (so I don't want the player doing too much in a single day), and even when you fail to finish a dungeon it's progress made toward your goals, so the mechanic fits much better.

 

[Frostorm]

I was inspired by @Wavelength's Exhaustion mechanic and wondered if I could achieve something similar w/o reducing MaxHP. So I had the idea of making healing more effective at higher HP % and less effective at lower HP %. This would be linear and proportional, thoughts?

Example:
a.mat * b.hp / b.mhp

And for my project in particular:
a.mat ** (1 + a.mdf / 1000) * b.hp / b.mhp

This combined with the fact that Mana is precious in my game will hopefully make healing not OP. I also plan to make stuff hit pretty hard.

 

[Wavelength]

I was inspired by @Wavelength's Exhaustion mechanic and wondered if I could achieve something similar w/o reducing MaxHP. So I had the idea of making healing more effective at higher HP % and less effective at lower HP %. This would be linear and proportional, thoughts?

Example:
a.mat * b.hp / b.mhp

And for my project in particular:
a.mat ** (1 + a.mdf / 1000) * b.hp / b.mhp

This combined with the fact that Mana is precious in my game will hopefully make healing not OP. I also plan to make stuff hit pretty hard.

The problem with such a mechanic would be that it would reward the player for constantly topping off their HP and rarely (if ever) taking risks. Balance would also be hard to maintain the game would feel easy most of the time but when things go bad they would be very hard to recover from since the heals would not be effective while in danger.

There are certainly ways to implement Exhaustion over the course of a dungeon without reducing Max HP if you're trying to add elements of Chronic challenge - for example, you could have a separate Exhaustion counter that ticks with each turn the party spends in battle (only resetting when, for example, leaving the dungeon or visiting an Inn), and have that Exhaustion counter influence how effective incoming Healing spells are - for example a simple Heal spell on a well-rested character will heal 80% of their HP, whereas that same Heal spell on an extremely winded character would only heal 20% of their HP. Could be an interesting dynamic.

 

[TheoAllen]

I have both, and the healing spell cost a resource has a cooldown.
The character in question also able to do damage, not a pure healer.
If you need healing right now, it is good to use items.
Since the healing spell is not as strong as the item.

On the map, you don't heal yourself with the spell, but items.

 

[duty]

@Frostorm that formula appears like it would likely skew the player's incentives for healing. @Wavelength did a pretty good break down of how that may happen.

Breath of Fire 3 had a nice implementation of exhaustion mechanics that did not result in the "15 minute work day".

If an actor is knocked out in battle, any in-battle revive items or spells brought the actor back with a reduction on its maximum HP. The actors also automatically revived with 1 HP after each battle, but would do so with that max HP reduction.

There were powerful healing items and spells that would restore 100% of an actor's HP instantly, but had the same Max HP reducing effect as the knock-out.

Alternatively, you can implement a dungeon camping mechanism into your game, similar to tents from Final Fantasy or the logs in Darkest Dungeon. The player could get an inn like effect within a large dungeon, but would have limited opportunities to do so, and potentially run the risk of being surprise attacked in the night.

Another idea may be to add a different disincentive to healing. In Dark Souls, nipping your estus flask takes time and leaves you vulnerable while you drink. Perhaps the target of the heal could lose their next action.

 

[Milennin]

All my combat systems rely on healing through skills, not items. If items are involved, they're only accessible outside of combat.
All my character skillsets always include at least one self heal ability, as the bare minimum, because I don't like classes being focused on a single thing, whether that's dealing damage or healing allies. It also prevents a party from immediately crumbling apart against a strong encounter if one character goes down, because there's a lot of overlap between skillsets and specialisations. That way, other characters can at least somewhat fill the gap to last a while longer.

 

[Frostorm]

The problem with such a mechanic would be that it would reward the player for constantly topping off their HP and rarely (if ever) taking risks. Balance would also be hard to maintain the game would feel easy most of the time but when things go bad they would be very hard to recover from since the heals would not be effective while in danger.

@Frostorm that formula appears like it would likely skew the player's incentives for healing.
@Wavelength did a pretty good break down of how that may happen.

Oh, my goal wasn't to add a chronic challenge to the game. It's really just to punish players for playing poorly and I actually WANT to skew the player's incentives for healing. They won't have the Mana pool to constantly keep themselves topped off anyway.

Plus I want to punish players for bad positioning and allowing themselves to get hurt in the 1st place. Like monsters would be tuned to 4-shot a squishy caster. So 1 hit and your healing is already at ~75% effectiveness. Instead of having a difficulty range of "easy to hard", I'm aiming for a difficulty range between "moderate to very hard" if you get what I mean (referring to when a unit is at high HP % vs low HP %).

I'm hoping to emphasize damage avoidance and mitigation over raw healing in general, making it costly to receive any significant damage. A caster should fight like a caster if they want to maximize their potential. Almost every elemental magic tree has some form of crowd control (CC). Geomancy can ensnare targets in quicksand, set up a rock wall (a straight line 4-tiles long that blocks LoS and movement), or Petrify a target. Aeromancy excels at moving targets' positions (push/pull/trap/etc). Cryomancy can obviously slow and/or Freeze targets. The list goes on, you get the picture. So while the player could spend their Mana to keep them topped off, that wouldn't leave them enough MP for other things.

Melee characters would definitely want to armor up if they want to survive more than a few hits. Some of the most dangerous units would be ranged units (archers and casters). This is where you'd want to use terrain to your advantage since it costs you nothing. See boulders sticking out of the ground in the middle of the map? Position yourself so that it is between you and the enemy. You are allowed to move before and after you perform an action, so long as you have enough movement points. So a caster can hug a boulder, move 1 tile over, cast a Fireball or w/e, then move back behind the boulder. This should be combined w/ CC effects I mentioned earlier, since enemies can just as easily move, so long as their movement points permit. That's why there's an emphasis on CC & disabling enemies.

It also makes sense from an immersion standpoint. Like, if you're severely wounded, it's a lot harder to heal someone back to health. It's like the saying: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

For wielders of Holy magic (the most healing-centric discipline), their bread 'n butter spell is actually the Shield spell (grants an absorption shield, scaling w/ INT), despite being the only discipline w/ a direct heal spell. Mind you, there are only 2 direct healing skills in the entire game (for the player), which out of ~200 skills, means only 1% of spells are affected by the healing penalty mechanic.

This would pretty much force tanky builds to be the only viable unit that can "tank" a boss. Or risk the boss 2-shotting your squishy mage. Btw, all staffs have a "Mana Shield" function built-in as a guard replacement. In fact, Guard isn't even an option unless you have a Shield equipped (renamed Block).

So I guess my goal w/ this mechanic is quite different from @Wavelength's Exhaustion mechanic, which I mentioned I used as inspiration, but that doesn't mean I was trying to achieve the same goal...Tldr; I want to punish players playing poorly (bad positioning, unnecessarily taking damage, wasting Mana, etc...). At the same time, it curbs the "OP" nature of raw healing as some have pointed out in various posts. It also increases the value of the role of various builds, such as making tanks more important.

 

[Celestrium]

This is such a broad topic. What I think we all agree on is it's need to be balanced. Aggro is one way to do it. Healing characters could attract the ire of monsters and such in battle, making a healer squishy and then basically taunting the enemy would make healing difficult. Casting time is another point, potions can be used immediately and by anyone in most games, spells can have a casting time, cooldown, or warmup to help balance. I also believe that spells that cure EVERY ailment are OP, spells should cure one or two, and maybe prevent that ailment in the recent future. The infinite items is something I was wrestling with in my game, and I might make items reusable but needing to be equipped and usable in battle only. Anyway, it's all about balance and thinking outside the box, we no longer have the limitations of the 16 bit era, we should think outside the box!

Edit: @Milennin I like the idea of healing items outside of combat only. I was going to heal the party each encounter, making the battles fewer and more tactical, so that wasn't needed for me...but thinking about this might have me change some things...

 

[Frostorm]

I also believe that spells that cure EVERY ailment are OP, spells should cure one or two, and maybe prevent that ailment in the recent future.

I do it by thematic categories: (still need a name for these 2 spells)
Water cures Poison, Disease, & Burn
Holy cures Blind, Curse, & Silence

Currently debating whether they should just remove 1 or all (assuming, for example, if the target had both a Poison and a Burn on them).

 

[Wavelength]

@duty Sounds like a very interesting drawback for using super-powerful heals! I could see that stacking in an interesting way in a boss fight, leaving the player with a cool (if painful) decision over whether to stick to lower-powered heals, break the emergency glass, or let the character fall and then revive them.

@Celestrium I personally love aggro systems! I think they tend to make healers more interesting and risky to play, and they tend to give tanks a much better use in turn-based RPG battles. However, I know that not everyone loves them - some find them to be too abusable or too punishing. I don't necessarily agree about status effects, unless you're designing a game where statuses are going to be inflicted almost every single turn. Most of the time, you're not trying to clear more than one status at the same time anyhow, so having from 5 to 15 different spells in your game to cover the dozen or more statuses is just bloat that you have to sift through on the menu every time you want to cast a spell. The way I go about statuses is to make items that cure them rare (usually not buyable), make spells that cure them very expensive, and make most of their effects moderate enough that you can reasonably play through them (e.g. double spell costs) or find ways around them (e.g. taking damage every time you cast a spell). In return for these more moderate effects, I give them 100% reliability and sometimes add them as bonus effects to damage skills, or I place them on weak foes so they can do something interesting.

@Frostorm I admire the goal of rewarding the player for avoiding or mitigating damage rather than healing it after the fact. However, I would ask whether you are absolutely sure that your healing mechanic is actually supporting that dynamic of encouraging avoidance of damage? From the sounds of it, I feel like all it would do is make the choice of when to heal very obvious and linear - as soon as a character has taken enough damage that a heal will put them back at full health, heal them immediately, because if you wait any longer not only will they be closer to dying but the heals will also be less efficient. Avoiding damage is obviously something players will try to do anyhow, but I don't think your reduced healing effectiveness at low HP really fosters that. If anything, if you want to emphasize protection rather than healing, the best solution would probably be to reduce the pace at which the player takes damage and in return either remove healing entirely, or make it very expensive/limited so that it's only a trump card to be used when absolutely necessary. A secondary option could be to have some kind of "Grade" or score that is based on damage taken, so that avoiding/reducing damage taken will result in a better grade than taking the damage and then healing it.

 

[Frostorm]

@Wavelength So I did consider simply " reducing the pace at which the player takes damage" but all that did was make combat a slog and every unit feel tankier. It even risks making dedicated tanks too OP. I know there will be a mathematical sweet-spot that players would want to aim for in regards to when they should heal, but w/ enemies taking out ~1/4 of their HP per hit, they won't really have the luxury to be picky and heal the ally at 50% vs 60% vs 70% HP, if you get what I mean. I admit the formula I posted was probably a bit too aggressive (it was mainly to illustrate the concept). Realistically, I would set it at 50% effectiveness when the target is at 0% HP to 100% effectiveness when the target is at 100% HP.

Out of the 2 suggestions you made, I would probably lean towards the former (making Healing very costly). I wouldn't get rid of Heals outright since it just makes more sense lore-wise to include them. My problem w/ making Healing more costly is that spells are already costly in general. If I make Healing even more costly, that would pretty much be at least 1/2 to 3/4 of their MP pool (rough guestimations).

But here's what I'm going for (maybe you can suggest something that'll help in this endeavor, it doesn't have to utilize the Healing penalty mechanic): I'm trying to recreate that feeling where any DPS build (i.e. not a tank) should be scared of being within range of a Boss's atks (since they can usually 2 shot a squishy character). Melee DPS would want to make sure the enemy is Taunted and focused on the tank before haphazardly rushing in. Like in a WoW raid boss encounter, if you're not the tank and you do something dumb, you die...no ifs, ands, or buts. I don't plan on making this game easy by any means.

Edit: I wanted to add that I actually did foresee players might realize the healing "sweet-spot" hence there is a passive they can grab in the same tree. Basically, it works by converting 50% of any overhealing into an absorption shield. This creates incentive in the other direction. Tuning may be required to find a balanced % conversion to shielding though. It's basically the overheal component in Yanfly's Bloodthirster Tips & Tricks.

 

[Wavelength]

@Frostorm So if I understand correctly, in your game the rate at which characters will be highly variable based upon their positioning (say, in range of 0 vs. 1 vs. 3 enemies), and the reason that players won't be able to be to just keep their party's HP topped off is that if they position poorly for a single round, they'll find a squishy character dropped from, say, 100% to 30% health?

If that's the case, then I agree you are probably achieving your aim of rewarding prevention of damage over taking it and then healing it, and the high opportunity for skill expression sounds cool. A couple unintended dynamics you may want to look carefully for while you're playtesting are:

• Is it worth it to simply let characters fall and then revive them, rather than pouring tons of effort into the low-effectiveness heals when they're badly injured?
• Is it frequent that one bad (or even worse, unlucky) turn can put the player into a situation there is no way to come back from?

 

[Frostorm]

• Is it worth it to simply let characters fall and then revive them, rather than pouring tons of effort into the low-effectiveness heals when they're badly injured?
• Is it frequent that one bad (or even worse, unlucky) turn can put the player into a situation there is no way to come back from?

I am not too worried about the 1st point since we can just have the Revive skill restore them to 25% HP instead of say, 100% HP. But yes, I am actually worried about the 2nd point. That is gonna take quite a bit of testing to ensure, or at least minimize such a scenario from happening. I am not much of a fan of RNG in general, so I try to avoid % chances whenever possible. (i.e. the application of states is typically either 100% or 0%). I admit, this is pretty foreign territory for me, as I haven't really encountered any single-player RPGs w/ this type of gameplay. If anyone knows any truly tactical RPGs out there, I'd love to hear about it!

 

[zelanius]

I am late to this discussion T-T...but, what I do is that I make different classes have different ways or types of healing:

1. a science class (physician) would do well to treat physical ailments, but they are not able to heal HP as fast, although they can resuscitate downed battlers; the science class can also take up the chemist route to be good at item effectiveness

2. a mage class can heal HP well enough, but they cannot treat physical ailments, and they are not as powerful as a dedicated healer, with the addition cost of using HP to cast their spells (they also lack revivals unless they are a necromancer); add to that, I have different branches of magic do it differently (some are AoEs, some are full party but weaker, some have different targeting like rows or randomness, some have drain spells), so they have a huge versatility in healing across different class progressions

3. a psionic class can deal well with mental ailments, but HP healing is not their strong suit (although I did give them 2 skills if they take up a certain subclass I called wildmind to supplement their main class progression, since I want them to be a viable substitute to the mages); they also have a revival if they take the medium path

4. a dedicated healer class (which in my lore is different from magic and psychic powers, in the sense that they are manipulating the same thing, but in different ways, so the input is different) who can revive and heal easier, but not much in attack skills (they only have 2, both same elemental), but they have some gimmicky skills that manipulate HP, plus they are the only class that can heal to the max HP; I would say they have the most versatility within a single class, so while mages have many ways to get HP directly, it is spread across multiple mage classes, while the healer is its own class, with various ways of direct and indirect HP heals

5. an enemy skill class (I call them scholars), who can steal spells from enemies including their healing spells, but are mostly gimmicky (like creating a health buffer or HP transfer rather than direct healing); they have both heals and damage, but requires more effort to hunt down the skills (lore-wise, the scholar is similar to the healer in what they are doing, just that they had different output)

6. various classes can heal HP, but are limited by what they can do (like I have a strategist class that is good at using items, and can spread them across the parties (costing 1 potion each time but the healing is weaken by active members), and my rogue class can use their superior agility to apply potions to the entire party (costing potions equivalent to alive members, so can get expensive), an acolyte class that can pray for healing from the right deity, a paladin class that has a singular weak healing skill, a hero class that is a jack and so can heal but limited in the variety of heals they can do, and a duelist who can do meditative healing to self-heal)

 

[Tai_MT]

I'm trying to understand why someone would want to remove healing from their game while emphasizing healing potions at the same time. It confuses me cuz an HP pot is basically a Healing spell w/o the MP cost, right? I've seen it done the other way too. Like emphasizing Healing spells but de-emphasizing potions/consumables.

Simple-ish. At least, if you're asking me.

1. MP Healing is often 3-6x more effective and efficient than Consumables. This renders game balance completely out-of-whack and "very easy". I've spoken at length about this in about a dozen topics.

The short-hand of that is:

If you have a 50 GP Potion that restores 120 HP, but have an MP Pool of 80 and can get 4 Heals out of it of 50 HP a pop, then your entire MP bar is worth 200 HP. If you double the cost of an MP restoring consumable to 100 HP, then it looks something like this:

50 GP Consumable for 120 HP (2.4 HP per GP spent).
100 GP Consumable for 200 HP ( 2 HP per GP spent).

This, of course, doesn't take into account that keeping both HP and MP consumables on hand at the same time is very inefficient with your money and/or inventory space (if inventory space is restricted, anyway). It also doesn't take into account that the act of simply gaining a level gives you more MP to heal up with, which only makes healing even MORE efficient in terms of money.

Now, just to get to THIS level of "similarity", I had to cut the effective healing of the spell by about 2/3rds AS WELL AS double the cost of the consumable.

That is how efficient MP Healing is.

This also doesn't take into account that most players won't even be healing inside of combat, so the lower number isn't even an issue.

Nor does it take into account the fact that you may not be missing 120 HP, but maybe something closer to 50, so healing with Magic is just better since you're not wasting Potential Healing and a ton of money. Say, for example, you have to heal all four party members after combat, but none of them are even missing 100 HP. You can spend 4 of those 50 GP consumables... or 1 of those 100 GP consumables to do it.

MP Healing is far too efficient and must be nerfed into the ground to even make consumables viable.

2. MP Healing tends to render one of your party members absolutely useless for anything EXCEPT healing. Nobody is going to spend a turn with their healer doing damage if they're too weak. They're also not going to spend a turn with their healer, healing up, if they output a ton of damage. There's not really a "middle ground" with that either. If they're valuable enough to be able to fight with instead of healing... damage output is preferable as it cuts down the number of turns in combat and minimizes HP loss. If they're not valuable in a fight at all, they eat up a slot in your party to just heal you up every single turn... or every few turns... and they're largely useless otherwise.

3. Being able to heal frequently without cost or preparation tends to render most games as "very easy". Once I get an easy way to heal up, the game never again presents a challenge to me. FFX was rendered pretty much "easy mode" with Yuna's healing until I hit "Sin" who hit his overdrive and killed me instantly with no way to heal. Yunalesca was kind of a grind, so was Seymour before her, but I had enough MP Healing reserves to essentially outlast both bosses without problem. Yeah, lots of players complained about how hard Yunalesca was. She's easy when you realize, "hey, heal up every single turn and pour on the damage to win". Same thing I do in basically every RPG I've ever played.

4. Buying consumables is an effective gold-sink in the game. I've never ended an RPG with anything less than 500,000 GP and nothing to spend it on. If the player can only heal through Consumables, they will spend the cash to heal up. Likewise, they will get more effective and efficient in combat in order to not spend so many of their heals. It promotes player skill. Or, at least, it promotes player skill as long as your combat system doesn't rely entirely on stats and it isn't "mash attack until you win" type combat.

5. Promotes players being prepared. If a player knows a dungeon is coming up, they will stockpile consumables rather than rely on random chests to get them or their massive MP pools to cover for them. It also means you don't have to include so many "HP/MP fully restored!" points in the game. Those points only exist because the devs realize that players are only healing MP and AREN'T stockpiling consumables to use. They are an admission of bad game design in most instances. You can actually make a dungeon trek more challenging if you expect the player to be prepared. In fact, you will probably have to.

6. A consumable is a "strategic option" in combat. Who do you use this turn to heal someone else? Which skills are necessary to kill the monsters? Who could you afford to have skip a turn in order to heal up someone? What if you have to heal multiple characters, which ones are the priority for being able to attack while the rest need to heal up? Who do you sacrifice a turn for in order to revive someone from death? Who should spend their turn to get rid of Poison on your character? The player must decide how to spend every action and which characters will spend those actions. Each choice, effectively, matters.

7. Makes treasure with Consumables more valuable. If you get something you normally spend a lot of money to stockpile, getting some free ones will be valuable and useful rather than, "Oh, I was hoping for some new armor or a weapon or something". It also makes chests with money more valuable too. It also has a fun knock-on effect of making Inns exceptionally valuable. If your Inn will heal to full HP/MP for cheaper than using consumables, the player will prefer to use it instead. But, if they're far away from an Inn and don't have that option, they have to heal up with Consumables. Finding an Inn or leveling up near an Inn become exceptionally valuable things.

8. You can do interesting things with your consumables. In RPG Maker, you can actually increase efficacy of consumables through states or equipment if you want to. Which means, you could stretch out weaker and cheaper healing items far longer than you would using MP if you wanted (the only way to do this with MP Healing is through reducing MP cost, or installing a plugin that lets you use a formula for healing).

---

Anyway, yeah, I avoid MP healing pretty much constantly. For all of those reasons listed above. Also, for a few reasons I didn't list which are specific to the kinds of games I design.

 

[Pootscooter]

Being able to heal frequently without cost or preparation tends to render most games as "very easy".

Hmm, one way I've seen the healing issue addressed is by tuning the encounters so that healing is expected. At least that's what I've experienced playing WoW, where not having healing in a dungeon = suicide. So couldn't the vast majority of those issues be solved by simply expecting healing to be utilized and designing encounters w/ that in mind? In WoW, healing is so important that you often have to use both MP Healing and MP Potions in concert to defeat tough bosses. Sometimes you even have to have multiple healers spam heal the tank just to keep them alive. This is back in the "good 'ol days" though, back before all the current expansions (I've heard WoW is super easy and noob friendly now). I'm aware it's an MMO, but the logic can be scaled down to a 3-4 man party as well (instead of a 5-40 man).

Not saying your method is wrong or anything, just the opposite side of the coin. I just don't feel like we should go to such extreme lengths such as removing healing spells altogether.

 

[Tai_MT]

Hmm, one way I've seen the healing issue addressed is by tuning the encounters so that healing is expected. At least that's what I've experienced playing WoW, where not having healing in a dungeon = suicide. So couldn't the vast majority of those issues be solved by simply expecting healing to be utilized and designing encounters w/ that in mind? In WoW, healing is so important that you often have to use both MP Healing and MP Potions in concert to defeat tough bosses. I'm aware it's an MMO, but the logic can be scaled down to a 4 man party as well (instead of 5-40 man).

Not saying your method is wrong or anything, just the opposite side of the coin. I just don't feel like we should go to such extreme lengths such as removing healing spells altogether.

The problem you'll run into is precisely BECAUSE it's an MMO.

You don't even need to add Healing in order to attain the same effect here. You need only make attacks less deadly so the fight lasts longer.

After all, what's the point of requiring that healing in an MMO? It exists to ensure you PARTY UP with players who have chosen to play healing classes. It exists for the group dynamic of human interaction. Healers are valuable in MMO's because the game design requires they exist in order to tackle any of the group content. It is healing for the sake of healing. It doesn't even need to exist in MMO's either. It primarily exists in MMO's, because there is a type of player who likes to spend the game not watching the monsters or many of the attacks and instead watching ally health pools and buffs and keeping them in the fight. Basically, it exists to make players social.

I should know, I'm one of those players. I enjoy playing "Support".

In an RPG that isn't an MMO, there is no real "value" to designing combat where healing is necessary. At that point, you have healing for the sake of healing and serving no gameplay purpose what-so-ever. You have included dangerous enemies in order to validate the healing spells... which don't need to exist if your enemies didn't drop nukes all the time.

Likewise, the reason MMO's often include "potions that heal" is for this same reason. They created a class that crafts potions... or has potions because every RPG has potions... and unless those potions are absolutely useful, then why do they exist? So... you know... bump up the difficulty to require them in order to pass content. The potions literally serving no purpose other than maybe the same as having a key for a dungeon door. It doesn't really offer anything to the gameplay except one more thing to program into your macro. It isn't even a strategic option. It's just one more necessary thing in your rotation.

Purpose: Zero.

In a singleplayer RPG... the purpose of needing all that healing is gone. There's no reason for it except to "artificially lengthen combat and your game". Which, you can do more easily without using MP Healing. Just give your boss another 200 HP or whatever so battle drags on another 10 turns.

EDIT: I should probably also add that I play FFXIV as a White Mage. I primarily Tank as a WHM. That is, I last longer than most players who Tank and am very good at staying alive unless a mechanic instant-kills and you can't dodge/avoid it. And no, I'm not even a "good player".

As I said before... once I find any easy way to heal, I use it to render a good chunk of the game "easy mode".