Health Percentage and Difficulty Ideas

Does anyone have any ideas as to what you think a good health value for the player to be at? That may seem a little confusing so I'll try to clarify. I mean a good constant health that the player should be at for most of the game. As in I do not want the player to have very low health for the game just like I don't want the player to be at 100% health most of the game either.

I noticed that this is one of my greatest weaknesses, I usually end up putting too much health in a level. So what do you think a good constant health percent would be?

Secondly:
What methods do you prefer to make the game more challenging (but not too hard) and fun. Such as many monsters, puzzles, complex maze like areas, etc...
Thanks for the ideas.

To be honest, it's specific to the level, right. You need to watch people play it, or get feedback from them.

Something you can do is, for testing purposes, label each area with a number or something, in the game (so like a texture near the health)

Then ask players to document when they get health from where, and how much health they had to begin with and how much after healing.

That information would be invaluable. It would tell you not only if you have too many or too few health kiosks, but even how difficult it's been so far based on health numbers.

But really, what you're talking about is play-testing, and there's really no other way around that. There's no rule of thumb or anything ...

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Thanks for the ideas.

I don't really think there's any strict rules for how many health packs there should be in a level. It all depends on the experience you're after, if you think it feels too easy then remove some health packs but don't forget that player's skill varies and that there is three difficulty levels in the game.

And as Crono said, play testing is really great. It's interesting to see how people play through your level, what they find boring, how they approach situations, where they die or get confused at etc. Practically no commercial game studio would make a game without play testing so that speaks for itself. Don't forget we're all happy to play through your level and tell you what we think.

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Aaron's Stuff

If you (or anyone) would like to play test a single level of my mod that I am creating then check out Ground Zero mod and let me know what you think. Here is the Snarkpit link
http://www.snarkpit.net/index.php?s=maps&map=3423

Keep in mind though that it is only a single level of the mod.