Making Restorative Items more useful?

[Tsukihime]

One of the biggest issues I have when it comes to restorative items is how much value I get from using them.


For example, in the beginning of the game, my actors are pretty weak, and using a potion or two would probably restore me to full health.


However, later on they are likely not going to remain weak, and the amount of potions needed suddenly goes way up. I might even forget the weak potions and go for the hi-potions since they're just so insignificant.


Is this a balance issue? Should early items just no longer be relevant at some point?

 

[bgillisp]

Is this a balance issue? Should early items just no longer be relevant at some point?

I don't see why early items have to remain useful. We don't demand that our early weapons or armor stay useful, so why can't early items be outclassed by the later items too?

 

[EternalShadow]

I use percentages.

 

[wildhalcyon]

Well, it kind of depends on what your goals are. There may or may not be a balance issue if your restoration economy is sufficient. Just like weapons and spells restoration items need to grow with your character.

Doed your character use a level 1 sword or do they use a more powerful weapon as they level? Approach restoration items similarly.

There are a lot of ways to balance these items but that will come down to their role in the larger gameplay mechanics.

 

[Zetu]

Remember, if potions heal 200 and hi-potions heal 1000, then out of battle, 5*1 potion == 1 hi-potion. The strength of the potion you use in battle is a more decisive factor than potions out of battle. Although, it would be interesting to see that, in character.

 

[TheoAllen]

I use percentages.

Same here

 

[nio kasgami]

me to I use percentage in my game so they still usefull even they are less powerful :/!

 

[Kes]

I've decided in my current project to use a combination of a set number of HP/MP heal, plus a small percentage, for my low level potions because I actually dislike pure percentage potions at low level.  20% sounds great until you realise that if you only have, say, 140 HP to begin with, that gives you a heal of 28HP, which isn't very useful.

 

[Susan]

That's hilarious, Zetu! ^^

Certain games have restorative items that restore set amounts of HP/MP, and items that restore HP/MP by percentage.

Some have low max HP/MP limit. If your max HP is ever going to 999 in that game, a potion that restores 100HP is still going to be useful compared to a potion that restores 250HP in a game where the max HP limit is 9999.

Developers can implement cure status together with HP/MP restoration items, but then there might be a game balance issue when it comes to enemies or dungeon traps spamming negative statuses to make those items useful as well.

One way some games handle this issue is to implement an alchemy/crafting system that allows the player to use lower level items to make higher level items.

E.g - 5 potions = 1 hi-potion, 5 ethers = 1 hi-ether, 5 hi-potions + 1 hi-ether = 1 elixir.

 

[Matseb2611]

Just make the cost scale up correctly. Low level potions can be made a much more cost-effective method when used outside of battle even at late game. If say the potion's benefit doubles, make the cost triple or quadruple.

Example:

1 normal potion - 250 HP - 5 gold

1 strong potion - 500 HP - 20 gold

1 super potion - 1000 HP - 60 gold

Say your character is at 200 HP early game, then 1 normal potion will suffice. Say at late game your character gets up to 2000 HP. Assuming they're at almost no health, at this stage they could use 2 super potions (120 gold worth), 4 strong potions (80 gold worth), or 8 normal potions (only 40 gold worth). This will make low level items useful. Even though they'll be useless in battle (where you want to spend as few turns as possible to do the healing), outside of battle the gold becomes a more important factor, and this is where low level items can become truly useful.

You can also let some equipment increase the Recovery Rate of the actor. For example an actor might wear an accessory that adds extra 50% to their Recovery Rate. They'll no longer need 8 of those normal potions, because an actor wearing this accessory will now receive 375 HP from each one (250 * 1.5), and thus only need 5-6 of those potions (25-30 gold worth).

Or as the others mentioned, you can use %ge based potions, or a mix of flat value potions and %ge ones. There are many ways to do it.

 

[whitesphere]

I take care of this the other way in my current game.  From Level 1 to Level 99, my characters only gain 50% HP --- so they go from 600 to 900 HP for example.  The biggest boosts they gain are to things like DEF to compensate for their HP pool.  Also, armors add % values to DEF as well.

This makes healing potions useful throughout the game and keeps combat tense because the player has to always watch the actor's HP. 

But, at the same time, high level characters get the reward of being able to utterly thrash weaker opponents, because their DEF has gone up so dramatically.

 

[Milennin]

My game has unique consumable items per area, balanced around the average player's level at that point. There is also an item cap of 5, so once a player leaves an area they're not likely to have many weaker consumables on them when they move into a higher level area. But my character growth is done by small numbers, so even if a player is several levels higher than they were when they found the consumables, they can still be useful.


In general I don't like having characters to depend on consumables to survive, because there's no proper way to manage consumables outside of stocking up on them at stores. In my game they're more intended as a safety net in case the player fails to use its character's skills properly or something to heal characters with out of combat.

 

[Wavelength]

Healing items - particularly how powerful they should be, how plentiful they should be, and how much they should cost - are situational in a ton of different ways.  I rarely see indie or professional games get this right.

First, consider buying five 200 HP Potions versus one 1000 HP Hi-Potion.  The developer should consider such factors such as:

• Battle difficulty vs. Dungeon difficulty: Will you need that 1000 HP in one shot (rather than spending five turns to heal it) because enemies are that powerful, or is each individual troop a cakewalk, making it feasible to use your potions after the battle for sustain in a long dungeon that can grind you down?  Are characters fully healed after battle (making the use of Potions for "sustain" irrelevant)?
• Concept of turns and time: Some RPGs don't use turns at all, which changes everything.  In some ABS's (e.g. Dark Cloud), you can just go to the pause menu while a monster is wailing on you on chow down as many restorative items as you want, meaning 5 Potions are every bit as useful as 1 Hi-Potion.  In others (e.g. the Tales series), you have to wait a certain amount of "cooldown" time before you can use a second item, or items take time to use.
• Inventory limits: How many of a given item can you hold?  Additionally, is there a cap to the total number of items you can hold at a time? (e.g. Super Mario RPG, Azure Dreams, World of Warcraft)
• Character HP curves: The full 1000 heal could be a waste for a character that only has 600 HP.  The designer should consider the potential difference in HP between characters due to class or level, and the overall HP level of characters due to how far in the game players might be.

There are a lot of different levers the designer can play with to come up with a good balance, so that both items are potentially useful and the decision between Potions or Hi-Potions is an interesting one.  Some of the more obvious ones include:

• Price: The most obvious differentiator.  High battle difficulty and strict inventory limits, for example, would mean the Hi-Potion should be more than five times the cost.of the Potion.  If these items are both very cheap compared to the amount of money your player has, you have deprived them of an interesting decision.
• Rarity: Perhaps the Hi-Potion isn't available in stores at all, and can only be found while adventuring.  Or maybe it's only available after the halfway point in the game, or is only available in limited supply at shops.
• Satiation: If healing items can be used outside of battle, can they be used repeatedly, or is there a limit?  (This is popular with "Food"-type healing items, such as in Tales of Symphonia, where you can only eat one meal after each battle.)
• Incomparables: Giving one item or the other a bonus or malus besides the base restoration makes the decision more interesting than "do arithmatic" and would be a useful tool for the designer in games where the 5 regular potions would normally be a cheaper way to get the same effect.
• Adjusting any of the factors above: Smart adjustments to battle difficulty, after-battle healing, character HP curves, or especially inventory limits can take a broken system and make it live again.

Next, consider buying a Potion (heals 200 HP) versus an Ether (heals 200 MP).  So many games get this balance wrong, because the designer needs to consider:

• Cost and power of healing spells: This is the most important one.  If your healer can heal 200 HP for 5 MP, the Ether is much more useful outside of battle, and possibly in battle as well.  The basic out-of-battle formula is ((Ether power * Healing Spell healing) / (Healing Spell cost * Ether price)) vs. (Potion power / Potion price).  The higher number represents the better item.
• Cost and power of offensive spells: Let's say you take an average of 50 damage per turn in battle, and using a 100 MP Fireball shortens the average battle by one turn.  Using 200 MP has saved you only half of the HP that a Potion could have restored.
• Characters' Max MP and MP Regen: In some games, you don't really need the Ether at all.  And in some games, you restore all of your MP (but not your HP) after each battle, making the use of Ether a solely battle-focused decision.
• Battle difficulty vs. Dungeon difficulty: It shows up here, too, because it determines whether you have the time to use the Ether then a healing spell within a battle while monsters are wailing on you.

In addition to Price, Rarity, Incomparables, Inventory Limits, etc., the designer has a few additional levers to work with:

• Spell use restrictions: The most common one is to forbid spell use outside of battle, meaning you need to use a turn in battle to heal characters.  This isn't a very good one, because it's very easy to abuse by waiting to kill the final, weakest monster in a troop until your party is all healed up.  Other restrictions, however, such as only being able to heal low-HP allies with magic, could get the job done (but require elegant design so as to not annoy the player).
• Item vs. Spell incomparables: Perhaps most healing spells are more focused on buffs or curing statuses, as opposed to direct healing.  Now your MP-restoring items have a slightly different use than your HP-restoring ones.
• No healing spells!: This requires excellent battle balancing skills, but it does make battles much more exciting (especially if Healing items are limited as well), and as a bonus, it also takes away the easiest direct comparison between Potion and Ether, and forces you to think about how much damage you might be able to avoid by singing your enemies with an extra Fireball.

Finally, like you mentioned, Hime, there's also the question of whether your Potion should heal 200 HP or 20% of your Max HP.  The 200 HP is much easier for most players to understand and calculate, so if all other things were equal, it would be the better way to go.  However, there are several factors that are important:

• Character HP curves: Gentle HP curves mean that your fixed-HP items can stay useful for a longer time.  In one of my games, despite other stats growing, Max HP stays flat at 100 for the entire game!  Steep HP curves mean your fixed-HP items will quickly become outdated.  Additionally, if Warriors have three times the HP of Mages, then your percentage-healing item is three times as useful when used on them.
• Spell calculations: Do your healing spells restore a number of HP (much more common for spells), or a percentage of the ally's Max HP (rare for spells)?  You might want to match it with items, or you might want to intentionally pick the other one for items to create an incomparable.
• Granularity: In a game where the three main types of Potion heal 20 HP, 500 HP, and 9999 HP, especially where Inventory Limits or Satiation are at play, the player will find themselves at some weird, uncomfortable decisions ("what do I use to restore 3600 missing HP?") at certain points throughout the game.  This is much less likely when your three options are 20% Max, 50% Max, and 100% Max.
• Game economy: The single most important factor, and perhaps the one that designers most often botch.  If the amount of money you earn increases exponentially throughout the game (e.g. you're earning 10 gold from early monsters, 2500 gold from midgame monsters, and 60000 gold from endgame monsters), it's actually very important that your items (and equipment!) do not stay relevant through the entire game.  If they do, the player will be able to buy everything they want as well as everything they don't really want, and the whole system becomes very uninteresting.  You might as well not have money in the first place.  This is one of the strongest arguments against %-based Restorative Items.

I don't think there are too many levers you can play with for this one, so as a designer you really have to nail it when it comes to the above factors (like character HP curves and game economy), and then make a smart decision about flat vs. percentage healing items.

These are just a few of the things a good designer will consider when they create restorative items in their RPG!  They're also a few of the things that a poor designer will overlook as they go for the traditional Potion - Hi Potion - Max Potion setup without considering how it will play with the dozens of other mechanics in their game.  It's really kind of a trap for newbie RPG designers, who want to make an RPG with all the classic fixin's, and it actually dries the fun out of what might otherwise be much more interesting battles/dungeons.

It's for that reason that unless you can point to a strategic depth that the existence of Items can add to your game (and a reasonable minority of games do accomplish this), it's better to just get rid of consumable items altogether, and pay close attention to battle balance.  This will often make for quicker, headier, more thrilling, and ultimately more fun games than the standard Item setup will.

 

[Patryk]

I always thought that restorative items were way overpowered in RPG Maker games, and crpgs in general. At the beginning you could buy so many of them, with little, to no grinding for money, and go everywhere you'd want without any worries and by the end of the game you've had 130 potions anyway. That's why I'm always making them pretty expensive, and they restore fairly good amount of HP or MP, around 40%. And in later stages of the game, when your party has lots and lots of HP, I'm making new potions available in all shops, and they restore a lot more HP, but they aren't cheap either. And, of course I do it fairly progressively, not jumping from restoring 200 HP to 2000. It's funny, because It's pretty easy for me to balance that stuff, and 90% of the time I'm not that good at balancing rpg elements haha.

 

[BlackLiquidSorrow]

Well, you could have an accessory that raises a user's effectiveness with items. I don't see a lot of games play around with the pharmacology stat. 

 

[Wavelength]

Well, you could have an accessory that raises a user's effectiveness with items. I don't see a lot of games play around with the pharmacology stat. 

I thought that trait raises the effectiveness of items when used on YOU, rather than when you use the item on someone else?

I've never found such a trait to be massively useful since it's basically there just for healing items (and like we've discussed, the healing spells often prove far more effective than healing items, which is a design flaw in itself, so you have something that's kind of "garbage in, garbage out").  But in a well-designed game it probably could be.  You could also script bonuses like extra experience or a temporary stat boost when a character with an "Item Master" trait uses an item on anyone.

 

[BlackLiquidSorrow]

Well what about stuff like the AlBhed potions in Final Fantasy X? They cured a bunch of status effects and healed your entire party. Equip the alchemy ability and you can restore even more HP.

 

[Omnimental]

Personally, I prefer to go with the %+# method (eg, {MHP*0.1}+100).  That way, while still weaker than later game items, they're still useful in a pinch.  I also like having a system to 'mix' weaker potions into stronger ones (eg. turn 3 s.potion into 1 m.potion).  Larger potions should be effiecent at the cost of expense.  So a medium potion should heal twice as much as a small one, but it should cost three times as much.  Outside of combat, the smaller potions are better to use, but when rounds matter, the more powerful options are preferable.  I tend to use it in conjunction with a limited inventory, both to encourage using items and to avoid stockpiling.

Another method would be to tie state removal items and healing items together.  So each item would both heal and remove a negative state (or the more powerful healing items could ADD a negative state).  That would make healing with items in combat a more nuanced affair then just using the one with the largest heal.

 

[Scott_C]

What if half way through the game you introduced a “needy” NPC who asks the player to donate spare potions and gave them a unique reward if they donated enough? Maybe something like a village recovering from a monster attack or a hospital on the edge of a war zone.

Mechanically this is just a way to turn un-needed items into a useful boost, but it has the extra benefit of making the player feel like a hero for helping solve a medical emergency.

Kind of like how Tales of Symphonia had that village rebuilding quest that gave you something useful to do with your inevitable oversupply of easy to earn RPG money.

 

[Heretic86]

I actually tend to make health items a common drop for the weakest enemies until the player is strong enough that they can earn enough money to buy what they need.  Although balancing gameplay is very important, at the beginning of games, I tend to make enemies so pathetically weak that the enemies stand almost no chance.  It is only later in the game, when the player has a way to provide for themselves that I actually start balancing gameplay.

Infinite Damage = Infinite Health

Another way to do this is to allow the party to fully recover all their health for free, but with some reasonable limitations.  Putting a camp fire where they can rest and recover from ailments is a good way to do this.  Camp fires are not portable, thus, can not be exploited.  Players use infinite health until they are strong enough that they dont have to worry about sustained damage between battles.  For example, a camp fire prior to entering a difficult dungeon allows for a save point and infinite recovery point.  These are especially useful early in the game, but later, players can be provided with Shops and Inns as opposed to camp fires.