Healing Pets

[medierra]

Ah, the age-old design debate between doing what might be cool and avoiding what might be frustrating.

I set up the occultist's summoned raven familiar with a healing spell that it is set to cast on allies whenever they are below 75% health. It generally feels pretty cool to have a pet that is healing you and have some reliance on it. It is especially awesome when you're getting hammered by enemies and your pet is there chain healing you, keeping you alive.

Unfortunately, as we all know, AI is not totally reliable. Of course, the case could be made that human allies aren't either but when they let you down, you tend to get mad them and not the game, which is okay with me. However, as cool as I find this dynamic to be when it works, I am worried that it has potentially to induce massive rage at the game. Imagine you're playing hardcore and you die because your raven randomly decides to wander off and attack something at the edge of the screen.

Of course, the counter-argument could be that no one playing hardcore should be silly enough to rely on AI healing to keep them alive but, I think we all know, people will anyway and then get upset when it fails.

This is one of those cases where I think I know what needs to be done but I thought I'd see how you guys felt.

[icedmetal57]

I personally like the idea, but like you said, shouldn't be too heavily relied on as AI in games can be unpredictable sometimes. Like you said, if I were to die because my pet didn't heal me in time, then I'd get mad at it, not the game, as I could have easily just used a potion or something.

[yerkyerk]

Hard to tell if all we go by is having a pet

From that info though, I'm against it. Fluctuating sources of damage are acceptable, but healing is something you don't want to take chances with when you're at low health. Since it's an unreliable source of healing, it cannot be depended upon. As you said, you shouldn't rely on it if you go hardcore - and even though I'm not sure if I'll play hardcore mode, I definitely want to go through the game dying as little as possible, just because of the challenge. Oh well, my 2 cents.

[Renevent]

I like the idea. I don't consider a healing pet something that is really supposed to keep you alive or depend on in an emergency anyways. Rather, I would say it's purpose would to keep the player healed enough to keep normal combat moving forward and not having to stop much to heal up. If you had other pets it would help keep those pets alive as well taking away some of that micromanagement from the player.

[eisprinzessin]

If you implement Support Stance and I set the Raven to support me, then I would expect my pet to heal me as first priority. Then again, who wants to rely on healing in the nick of time. Edit: Just re-read the OP. Forget the previous sentence. Thought healing is triggered once you lost 75% health ... being below 75% is certainly not in the nick of time. </edit> Maybe the Raven is dead by then or doesn't have sufficient energy to cast his healing spell.

Originally Posted by medierra

I made a rule for myself [...], that if my health was below 70% I needed to drink a health potion because in Nightmare and Hell difficulty you can easily loose half or more health from a single hit in certain situations.

Otherwise I concur with Renevent.

[carnage665]

I like the idea, but could you make it an option to let you choose if you want your pet on attack stance or healing stance or a mix of both?

I only ask because i dont really care much about dying every now and then, but i will be worried if it will make the game 'too easy'. i dont just want to be playing and thinking at the same time 'oww nvm, my pet will heal me if i get into trouble'. i would still like some challenge.

Anyways, idea is good, it's just a difficult line to draw about how far you can acutally rely on your pet for healing you.

so i voted 'meh' ---> it's not a bad idea at all, but also the coolness might actually affect difficulty to much, so MEHHHHH for now, we'll see ^^. You're developping the game, go with the flow Med. ^^

[medierra]

Originally Posted by eisprinzessin

Forget the previous sentence. Thought healing is triggered once you lost 75% health ... being below 75% is certainly not in the nick of time. </edit>[/COLOR]

I have it set so high because it can take time for the AI to receive a status update indicating that one of its allies health is below healing level and then a little more time to cast the spell. At the longer end of the response-time spectrum, it may only be a second or two but for a class that doesn't have a lot of health to begin with, that can be life or death.

If the raven were previously healing the hellhound pet or another player ally in multiplayer, it could take a few seconds for it to finish the first heal and then turn and heal its master.

This early healing also helps in situations where the player is losing health faster than the raven can replenish it. In that case, starting early may allow the player to survive an extra couple seconds.

I've played healers in 3 MMOs, I figured I'd try to impart some good habits on the raven.

[Kluga]

Originally Posted by Renevent

I like the idea. I don't consider a healing pet something that is really supposed to keep you alive or depend on in an emergency anyways. Rather, I would say it's purpose would to keep the player healed enough to keep normal combat moving forward and not having to stop much to heal up. If you had other pets it would help keep those pets alive as well taking away some of that micromanagement from the player.

This is why I voted for it, essentially. It may save your life from time to time but you shouldn't neglect drinking a potion in a dire situation because your raven is surely going to heal you. I think it'll be great fun

[CBR1000Rider]

Having a pet heal you is pretty awesome, I would not rely on it however as long as I had a potion hot keyed.

[Chameleon]

Or you could give the pet a "potion belt" and you can put various(or is there only one kind?) potions onto it. To set when the potion is used you could have a slider so it heals you with a potion when your Hp reaches a certain level.