The Interaction of Design: Bloodborne’s Healing System

Words: 2391 Approximate Reading Time: 15-20 minutes

In light of my recent essay on Bloodborne’s Chalice Dungeons, I found myself thinking more and more about some foibles of design in some of the FromSoft games. I pick these games in part because they’re among my favorite, and taking a critical eye to them is always useful. But also because they are commonly regarded as “well-designed,” and pointing out the flaws helps to keep that concept in perspective. Even when games are overall well-designed, they can still run into problems, and we should be wary of assuming that “good design” means “perfect design.”

The thing I wanted to look at was the healing system provided to the player in Bloodborne, through the usage of blood vials. I’ll provide a bit more detail later, but it’s useful to step back and examine the value of a healing system. Even in a difficult game, the ability for the player to recover health is incredibly valuable. Healing is a component of both exploration and combat. For combat, in difficult fights the ability to heal gives players more leeway to win, and also gives them more opportunities to learn and thus win in the future. For exploration, the ability to heal gives players the ability to progress for longer periods of time or just venture onto different paths. FromSoft has been fiddling with the healing systems in their games in a variety of ways, and we could take the time to examine each one in turn. But I wanted to examine Bloodborne’s in particular because it is close to being an outlier among all the others.[1]

And the thesis I want to propose is that there’s an interesting idea lurking within the healing system of Bloodborne, but it ends up running into a major execution problem. Specifically a problem that plagues newer and less experienced players. Again, since I’ve been recently obsessed with issues of how games effectively get players up to speed and prepared to play at “high” levels, a system which effectively punishes lower-skill players is something we want to be on the lookout for.

Estus Flask vs. Blood Vial

So to help set the stage, it’s useful to describe the different systems we’re working with.

Most of the FromSoft games utilize some kind of flask item that the player character drinks from. This item has a limited number of uses which varies from game to game. In the original Dark Souls, the player started with five flasks at a time, which could be upgraded to a maximum of twenty. Those flasks healed a specific amount of health, which could be upgraded through the use of particular items. In Dark Souls II, that minimum was reduced to one, and the maximum lowered to twelve. And the strength of the flask was similarly static, but could be upgraded. And again, Dark Souls III started the player off with four flasks, sets the maximum to fifteen, and maintains the same upgrade system.

The variation here is less important, as it mostly has to do with how players progress. The further along you get in the game, the easier it is to keep going, since you acquire items to increase how many flasks you can hold and how strong they are. It also means that you are strongly encouraged to explore, since those items are not provided by bosses, but are found in the world. The first Dark Souls is the exception, since the amount of flasks you are provided depends on the last save point you rested at – the more it was upgraded, the more flasks you’re allowed to carry.

The other important element is how those flasks are refilled. For the most part, you are tied to however many flasks you are carrying at the time, but upon dying or resting at a save point those flasks are replenished. You thus have a technically infinite number of flasks, with the only limitation being you don’t have access to that infinite supply at any one time. It still demands care in traversing from area to area, but at least if you use those flasks and die, you get them back. You don’t need to worry about using those items, because if you run out and die, you’ll get them back.

Bloodborne’s system uses items called blood vials. Rather than stopping to take a sip, the player character injects the blood into their side in a swift motion. This fits better with Bloodborne’s faster play style, but is a fairly small change otherwise. What matters less is how the item is consumed, but how much of the item the player gets.

Rather than a massive variability between the starting amount and maximum, the player gets a natural maximum of twenty blood vials, which can be increased to twenty-four if a particular item upgrade is equipped. In addition, blood vials now do not heal a specific amount of health, but instead a specific proportion of health. In Bloodborne, as you increase your total health, every vial still heals 40% of that total. This can be increased to 42% if another item is equipped.

So let’s stop for a moment. If the system was just this, it would be perfectly fine. In fact, it could be seen as a massive improvement, or at least a change that would help out newer players. Because now exploration isn’t as absolutely necessary, and yet you still get the benefit of that extra healing to allow you to explore to your heart’s content. Or at least until you die. Because the more access to health you have, the longer you can survive, and thus the more you can explore. Either you can take more risks trying to get to your next save point, or you can explore more pathways.

Now let’s add on something else. Some enemies can drop blood vials, which add to your total. So if you use two vials to kill an enemy, it might drop one or two, which might then bring you back to your starting point. This system was established in conjunction with a change to the save points. Rather than activating a save point and sitting at it to “reset” everything as in the Souls games, you instead needed to warp back to your hub area and then warp back again.

The purpose of these two changes was to encourage players to push forward. In the Souls games, the save points were basically anchors to keep you attached to a specific zone. If you took too many hits and weren’t sure if you could keep going, you might run back to the point, reset, and try again. And when you reach your next save point, your immediate thought is to rest and reset the world so you can get your healing items back and thus push forward. In Bloodborne, the philosophy was that you might instead keep going and see “resetting” as something to do when you actually wanted. Are you ready to go and cash in your experience for levels or items? Then you can warp back to the hub and then warp back to the action. It makes the process of resetting a bit more conscious, rather than a matter of course. It also can allow for save points to be positioned further apart. Because if healing items can be replenished as you explore, then you don’t need to be as worried with players running out before they reach the next save point.

Now again, all of this would be just fine. Perhaps the only issue is with the resetting component. Since players rarely wind up with the maximum twenty blood vials whenever they open a shortcut or find a new save point, and/or they have experience they’d like to cash in, the “choice” to keep pushing doesn’t quite work out as well. Most players still wind up warping back to the hub, even if they don’t want to “use” it in the intended way. Which basically just adds more steps to the process of resetting the world. The intention was good, but it runs up against a problem of how people actually play.

But let’s add the one little bit that really ruins everything: blood vials are a limited item. By that I don’t mean the obvious that you can’t carry an infinite number at any one time. Nor do I mean that there are only so many in the game.

I mentioned earlier that enemies can drop blood vials. Well, what happens if you have your maximum twenty, and you pick up more? Those get sent to a storage container in the hub. When you die, your vials are refilled up to twenty from out of that storage.

What, though, would happen if you have no vials in your storage? Well, you just get access to however many vials you happen to have remaining. In other words, it is possible to use up all of your vials, leaving you with no healing whatsoever.

What do you do then? You have to go grinding. You identify enemies that are most likely to drop vials, kill them, warp out back to the hub and return to reset the world, and then do that continually. You might then also use the experience you get from that process to purchase more vials from the hub shop.

This is bad design, pure and simple.

If you’re an experienced player and don’t die much, this isn’t an issue. You’ll never run out of vials, because the number that you can get from enemy drops and from the world should be plenty. Maybe now and then you’ll spend some spare experience to buy extras, but that’s it.

But if you’re just learning the game, you are quite literally being forced to grind. It is not a choice you get to make, but a requirement of the game itself. Because it is going to be impossible to progress or beat bosses without any healing capability.

So imagine the following scenario: you’re up against a tough boss. You’ve faced it about a dozen times, and then you die again, revive…and you have only ten vials. You weren’t able to win last time with a full twenty, so what hope do you have now? The game has now handicapped you.

It’s time to go farming.

Now we could try to put a positive spin on all of this. Firstly, we could say that maybe this is for the better. It can be useful to take a break when you’re up against a tough fight, and being required to farm gets you to stop. You can process that information subconsciously while you do something else. Secondly, we could say that this is a great opportunity for the player to grind and up their stats. You can get more vials, through that get experience, and then use that experience to increase your health or damage or stamina, making you stronger.

These arguments, however, would miss a core part of the problem. Which is that whether it is good for a player to take a break or grind out stat points, that should be a decision in the hands of the player. The players must want to take a break or must want to grind.

Grinding on its own isn’t that fun. We generally engage in it because there is something valuable at the end of the process. Because it’s fun to feel overpowered, or because the sense of completion is nice, or whatever the case may be. How we feel about grinding – whether it is just a calming and mindless task or something mind-numbingly boring – depends on the person. But regardless of the person, being forced to grind without any chance to effectively choose for yourself is a problem. Because you’re not just engaging in something that isn’t fun, but being told you have to do something that isn’t fun. That compulsion compounds the problem, rather than making it better.

It would be possible to maintain the basic elements of the design with just a minor change. If the player’s storage could never fall below twenty, forced grinding wouldn’t happen. A player could die hundreds of times and use thousands of vials, and yet never have to fear running out. And yet, the system would still work as intended. Enemies dropping vials could still encourage players to push forward. The proportional heal and high vial count can serve as an equalizer for players. The actual storage system adds nothing to the experience, and in fact radically detracts from it.

Concluding Remarks

We don’t always love games because of their “quality.” Or perhaps it is better to say that “quality” is such a nebulous term that tries to reduce a huge number of factors into a single aspect. Personally, I love Bloodborne. It’s my favorite of the FromSoft games. And yet, there are plenty of issues with its quality. There are plenty of criticisms to be made. I can easily sit down around a campfire and discuss those complaints for hours.

Being able to take this critical eye is useful, and especially if we can develop that critical eye toward the games we enjoy. Because it’s easy to identify bad design in games we hate. There’s even a sense of catharsis that comes with tearing a bad game to shreds. It made us suffer, so we get to channel that disdain into something that makes us feel better. But by the same token, we can end up associating dislike with “quality.” We may start to believe that if we like a game, it must be good. If we love a game, it must be perfect and beyond reproach. If we hate a game, it must be garbage.

So I guess…expect more of this. I have more things about these games that I’d like to examine, and I’d like to take some time to examine more games that I enjoy and try to pick apart their systems in more detail like this. What works? What doesn’t? How well does the game encourage the player to keep going? These are valuable questions, and we can start to draw important lessons the more experience we have with this process.

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[1] Demon’s Souls has a system that is relatively close to Bloodborne’s. A lot of what I’ll be saying in this essay can be applied to Demon’s.