Unpopular opinion: +8 healing is too strong in singleplayer campaigns

[Dalas120]

Yeah yeah, torches and pitchforks, I know.

But in all seriousness, I feel that +8 healing is disproportionately powerful in most singleplayer campaigns. Would you rather start with a free Red Mage or a free White Mage, for example? A Red Mage is just a better Mage, but having access to mobile healing often redefines the entire way you approach a scenario.

As a result players almost always prioritize leveling healers first in SP, and losing your healers is usually cause for a restart. In contrast, losing your only Swordsman, Longbowman, Hero, Ranger, etc is seldom a big deal, as long as you have plenty of other leveled units.

In addition, +8 healing steps on the toes of villages, making map layout less important. Why bother holding a strategic clump of villages, when you get identical benefits from any castle or mountain hex?

I make the surely unpopular proposal that +8 healers should be nerfed to +6. Still powerful, still valuable, but not quite as scenario-defining.

[Lord-Knightmare]

when you mean +8 healers to +6 ... you mean just the level-2 ones, right? (White Mage/Elf Druid/Dune Apothecary/Saurian Seer)?

Also, why do you mention an SP issue (title) in MP Development forum?

[Dalas120]

No, I do in fact mean all +8 healers, including MoL, Shyde, etc. My issue is not with the strength of the units themselves (though I do think they're very strong) so much as the strength of healing at village speeds from anywhere on the map.

Is there any ability in the game that's as powerful as +8 healing & cures, in a singleplayer context? IMO the only thing that comes close is Leadership, and even then only if you can get it on a L4.

I wasn't sure the best place to post this, but the MP forum description explicitly calls out balance posts so I felt it was the best match. Doesn't seem like it would belong in "Scenario & Campaign Development" or "Faction & Era Development" either.

[Ravana]

You could treat 8 as limit of healer, so heal 8 if it is adjacent to one ally, 4 if it is adjacent to 2 allies, 2 if it is adjacent to 3 or 4, 1 if it is adjacent to 5 or 6.

[gnombat]

Some thoughts on this:

1. The +8 healing is actually not very powerful when it comes to healing level 3 units. A badly wounded level 3 Grand Knight might require 10 turns of +8 healing to return to full health (assuming the unit doesn't take any further damage in that time). With a +6 healer this could take 13 or 14 turns.
2. Personally I think that having good healers available generally results in a more exciting, dynamic play style relying on mobile healing. By contrast, in scenarios where the player does not have healers, or has only weak (+4) healers, or has only a small number of +8 healers in a large army, I find that gameplay often gets bogged down as the player is forced to constantly retreat to villages and to spend large amounts of time parking a big chunk of the army in villages. Nerfing the +8 healers to +6 would just exacerbate this.
3. Even if you think +6 healers are a good idea, changing the existing +8 healers at this point would cause a lot of balance issues. Probably 80-90% of campaigns (both mainline and UMC) are balanced based on the assumption that the player will have access to +8 healers (possibly not in all scenarios, but at least at some point in the campaign). So changing the existing healers would potentially require 80-90% of existing campaigns to be rebalanced.

If you're designing a campaign and think that it might be better with +6 healers (I can see how there might be some scenarios where this could be beneficial), I think it would be better to just create a custom unit with +6 healing and use that, rather than changing all existing healers.

[Hejnewar]

Is there any ability in the game that's as powerful as +8 healing & cures, in a singleplayer context? IMO the only thing that comes close is Leadership, and even then only if you can get it on a L4.

+12 healing & cures. I actually expected you to know that since I think you beaten Nightmare UtBS recently. I dont think it is in any way problematic there nor does it take away from map design, but of course that wont be the case everywhere, since only there we have extreme scarsity of gold for high level units, experience and if played in some ways tons of meat as shields.. So you often have few or even single healer but many units so you dont really have a choice. (prepare for me only citing UtBS cuz thats my only real campaigning experience)

The main reason for strength increase between mp and sp is economy, campaigns are usually played with less income, so units are less expendable and so healing is more important and also in later levels you cant really meat up well. Would +6 change that? I dont think so. It would be weaker but reliance on it wouldnt be lesser. It also wouldnt make map design much more impactful I feel. +4? Probably yeah it would.

I make the surely unpopular proposal that +8 healers should be nerfed to +6. Still powerful, still valuable, but not quite as scenario-defining.

In my opinion this is yet another sign of deeper running problem with wesnoth healing system in general, why general? Because +8 easy access healer in mp was also really unfun. There is little to no distinction between village and healer as you menationed and in current state healer design is the same across the board. Do I have a way to fix this? No, not right now. Would I push this? No, because I dont have better way just yet (and it still works well in mp, overall, so there isnt a big presure for me to do anything). But if there was one I wouldnt really mind. In the end deep running problems should be fixed even if its gonna hurt imo.

Still there are tools that help with that in campaign creator disposal so this isnt like super high priority.

torches and pitchforks

lmao

[white_haired_uncle]

I don't think +8 is too strong, but I definitely think +8x6 (one healer, six patients) is ridiculous.

I wouldn't argue against +6 vs +8, or better yet +8/+6/+4 (easy/normal/hard), but I'd much rather lose the x6.

IMO, a healer should be able to heal/cure one unit, the player/AI should be able to pick which one, and it should be an action (like an attack, consuming remaining movement, clearing rest status, etc).

You could treat 8 as limit of healer, so heal 8 if it is adjacent to one ally, 4 if it is adjacent to 2 allies, 2 if it is adjacent to 3 or 4, 1 if it is adjacent to 5 or 6.

I've been thinking about healing recently, and considered this. I think it would be quite hard given the current code, and I think that it would be frustrating to players because it may not work the way they expect, particularly when combined with curing (do you cure one unit, or heal two units +4 each, and how do you know which the player wanted/expected to happen). And it would be complicated when allies are involved (your "ally" might move a unit next to your healer which could mess up the healing distribution you planned. And it gets tricky when a patient only needs a little healing (could a healer heal one +2 and one +6?). There's a lot of things I just don't like about this idea, and yet I still find it way, way better than the current way healers work.

P.S. https://github.com/wesnoth/wesnoth/issues/8975

[white_haired_uncle]

Some thoughts on this:

1. The +8 healing is actually not very powerful when it comes to healing level 3 units. A badly wounded level 3 Grand Knight might require 10 turns of +8 healing to return to full health (assuming the unit doesn't take any further damage in that time). With a +6 healer this could take 13 or 14 turns.
2. Personally I think that having good healers available generally results in a more exciting, dynamic play style relying on mobile healing. By contrast, in scenarios where the player does not have healers, or has only weak (+4) healers, or has only a small number of +8 healers in a large army, I find that gameplay often gets bogged down as the player is forced to constantly retreat to villages and to spend large amounts of time parking a big chunk of the army in villages. Nerfing the +8 healers to +6 would just exacerbate this.
3. Even if you think +6 healers are a good idea, changing the existing +8 healers at this point would cause a lot of balance issues. Probably 80-90% of campaigns (both mainline and UMC) are balanced based on the assumption that the player will have access to +8 healers (possibly not in all scenarios, but at least at some point in the campaign). So changing the existing healers would potentially require 80-90% of existing campaigns to be rebalanced.

If you're designing a campaign and think that it might be better with +6 healers (I can see how there might be some scenarios where this could be beneficial), I think it would be better to just create a custom unit with +6 healing and use that, rather than changing all existing healers.

1) A badly wounded level 3 Grand Knight shouldn't be relying on a healer (field medic) if it needs 80 healing, it should be sent back to a village (hospital).

2) I agree with the "bog down" concept, though in my case it's usually the darn hard to hit orc assassins poisoning all my units. Though I think the fix is better allocation of villages (relying on healers means losing even one healer can have a huge impact).

3) Absolutely. I know I rely heavily on healers and others may not, but it seems to me any fix to healing, however much I'd like to see it, would be a TON of work. Of course, it wouldn't be MY work, so I guess I'm okay with that part.

4) Leaving the bulk of mainline alone and just tweaking custom units seems like a good idea. This brings up an interesting point. Since there's a lot of UMC out there, perhaps looking at UMC to see how many custom <+8 healers there are would be a way to estimate how popular such a change would be. While I think healers are WAY too able, I can only think of like one UMC example that uses <8, so maybe my opinion isn't very popular.

[Dalas120]

The +8 healing is actually not very powerful when it comes to healing level 3 units.

I disagree. Yes, you won't be healing a 1hp Royal Guard up to full anytime soon (for that you probably want to send them to a village far from the front lines), but a level 3 unit can survive on the frontline for much longer than a level 1 - and it gets healed for +8 on every one of those turns, assuming you position your units well.

in scenarios where the player does not have healers, or has only weak (+4) healers, or has only a small number of +8 healers in a large army, I find that gameplay often gets bogged down as the player is forced to constantly retreat to villages and to spend large amounts of time parking a big chunk of the army in village

This is actually exactly why I feel that +6 would be a good change. Instead of being able to play aggressively while simultaneously being safe, the player would need to choose - do I retreat to my villages and lose early finish, or do I push forward aggressively but risk losing a veteran? Right now there's no trade-off: "follow the healers" is almost always the best call.

Probably 80-90% of campaigns (both mainline and UMC) are balanced based on the assumption that the player will have access to +8 healers (possibly not in all scenarios, but at least at some point in the campaign). So changing the existing healers would potentially require 80-90% of existing campaigns to be rebalanced.

I agree with you on this, and IMO it would be the biggest hurdle. TBH I don't think mainline would need massive adjustments (EI at least I'm 100% sure would be fine without changes, and that's a fairly difficult campaign that relies heavily on MoLs), but I could certainly see changes like this breaking UMC and multiplayer scenarios.

+12 healing & cures. I actually expected you to know that since I think you beaten Nightmare UtBS recently.

Haha, you got me there! Sometimes it's hard to remember that UtBS and AToTB are in the same category of "mainline" . And I agree with you that with all the crazy stuff in UtBS the +12 healing didn't feel like an issue.

The main reason for strength increase between mp and sp is economy, campaigns are usually played with less income, so units are less expendable and so healing is more important and also in later levels you cant really meat up well.

Makes sense to me.

Would +6 change that? I dont think so. It would be weaker but reliance on it wouldnt be lesser. It also wouldnt make map design much more impactful I feel. +4? Probably yeah it would.

No, because I dont have better way just yet (and it still works well in mp, overall, so there isnt a big presure for me to do anything). But if there was one I wouldnt really mind.

I do see what you mean, and honestly... I agree with you that I'm not sure +6 would be the perfect change either. But I do think it would be a step in the right direction - and I'm very confident it would make villages more useful, as they'd be the only way to access +8 healing.

I don't think +8 is too strong, but I definitely think +8x6 (one healer, six patients) is ridiculous.
[...]
IMO, a healer should be able to heal/cure one unit, the player/AI should be able to pick which one, and it should be an action (like an attack, consuming remaining movement, clearing rest status, etc).

You and Ravana both mentioned something along those lines. Funnily enough, I actually think the x6 is really good design - it means that it's easy to heal your entire army, but beyond that you don't get any benefit from more healers because they don't stack and you're already "fully saturated".

That's just my opinion though, and I could be convinced otherwise (though I don't make balance decisions so it doesn't really matter what I think; that's up to Hejnewar).

[Hejnewar]

How about we do this a bit differently. The problem is clear but the solutions can be many.

This might sound OP but how about +12 / +16 healing tents or temples / hospitals / magical oasis that heal more if unit stays there for longer like +4/+8/+12+16.... or so. This gives maps some significance again with strong healing terrains which seems to be the main problem for you currently.

In MP I actually quiet like the +8 healing it seems to be in just the right spot and while from balance perspective changing that is not a big deal I guess it would just feel weird kinda. That being said, Im open to new healing abilities.

Ravana idea is interesting but Im afraid that it could lead to non intended playstyles, +8 is fine (in fact it is very weak), +12, maybe even +16 but what I can see happening is a healer per every unit that is somewhat important because there is no upper cap and healing +16 to a single unit is just good if you dont have many units in the first place and in campaigns usually you dont. In MP it could see specific use as well when for example you want to force unit recovery, I actually see it as more interesting in MP than SP because it enables some strategies there.

[Ravana]

How about rest heal increasing from 2 to 8 when staying in village.

[gnombat]

A badly wounded level 3 Grand Knight shouldn't be relying on a healer (field medic) if it needs 80 healing, it should be sent back to a village (hospital).

I disagree. Yes, you won't be healing a 1hp Royal Guard up to full anytime soon (for that you probably want to send them to a village far from the front lines)

Keep in mind scenarios don't necessarily even have any villages at all. (This is more common in UMC - I'm not sure if there are any scenarios like this left in mainline. An example: "Wasteland" in An Orcish Incursion.)

This is actually exactly why I feel that +6 would be a good change. Instead of being able to play aggressively while simultaneously being safe, the player would need to choose - do I retreat to my villages and lose early finish, or do I push forward aggressively but risk losing a veteran? Right now there's no trade-off: "follow the healers" is almost always the best call.

That seems like the sort of choice you don't want to force the player to make - choosing between one strategy which is likely more fun (relying on mobile healing) and another strategy which is more likely to be successful but boring (sticking to villages, which gives better healing).

"The Burden of Optimal Play suggests a guideline for game designers: if you want the player to have fun, then the most effective path to victory should also be the most fun. Playing well should never result in a worse experience."

[Hejnewar]

How about rest heal increasing from 2 to 8 when staying in village.

Thats works and is fine if it is new terrain. For the existing villages I really dont want to see any defensive improvements that would make it harder to attack or push the enemy in standard 1v1.

[Dalas120]

Ah well, fair enough. I'm open to healing "temples" or the like, but as you mentioned I feel that only solves the village half of the issue (and only on specific maps), but not the "healers define strategies" issue.

Alas! I'll just do my best to design SP scenarios in ways that try to make healing less powerful.

[holypaladin]

Is heals +8 really that bad? Maybe I am a bit too defensive towards it beacuse using for years but looking on scenarios it's not like they're the only who decide on win/failure... Orc warlord or dwarf lord needs many turns to be healed even with this and don't see reason why to change.