Near Death Power Ups

[Goldsickle]

What are your thoughts on skills or abilities that gives you power ups when your character's health is very low or dying?

On one hand, it gives you more fighting chance and can be useful in turning the tides but on the other hand, it feels like you are being rewarded for not playing well.

Regardless of genre, whether it's a turn-based RPG, VS fighting game, hack and slash, etc. I never could get into the "near death" power ups system.

 

[Lain]

I always felt that these sort of things work best when it's useful but not overly noticeable. Take Kingdom Hearts for example, in almost every game you start off with the Kingdom Key which has the unique ability of "Defender" which halves damage when your health is in the red. This is obviously to help newbies with the learning curve and when you've got the hang of things and beat the first couple of bosses you're rewarded with new Keys that have different abilities and your safety wheels can be taken off if you so choose.

The obvious problem with making near-death power ups "too cool" is that competent players won't get to use it unless they deliberately play badly.

 

[Foxtrot94]

it feels like you are being rewarded for not playing well

It depends. For example in a fighting game, you might be getting near perfected because of 50/50 setups where you guessed wrong, and that's not really a case of you playing badly, but rather having bad luck. So as long as the comeback mechanic isn't too powerful, I'm cool with it.

 

[Lain]

Oh yeah, characters in fighting games that can come back after dying is some bull****.

 

[DreadnoughtDT]

Oh yeah, characters in fighting games that can come back after dying is some bull****.

Like in Gundam Versus when Gundam Exia can come back as Exia Repair in the case that your death would cause your team to lose.

 

[Lain]

Like in Gundam Versus when Gundam Exia can come back as Exia Repair in the case that your death would cause your team to lose.

My man, you've suffered because of that too huh? :'(

 

[DreadnoughtDT]

My man, you've suffered because of that too huh? :'(

Dude I died to its EX burst. lol