With regard to the stances, the issue is that AI just sometimes does wonky stuff despite the best efforts of developers and gamers. That may sound like sort of a lame cop-out but the reality is, teams with far more time and resources than us have consistently made games with AI that is not 100% reliable. I think we would be fooling ourselves not to expect that we will succeed beyond all those that have come before us. When AI meets in-game situations, there are just so many variables that there is always some potential for something weird to happen at some point. In this case, the more reliable the AI is, in some ways the more it sets players up to be surprised in that instance where it fails. Additionally, even if the AI is attempting to do what it is supposed to, it might end up out of range as a result of a pathing problem or some other non-AI related issue. Even more problematic, there are totally legimitate reason it might fail to heal the player, perhaps because the pet was stunned or died, that the player might not see at the time and therefore might assume the AI just let them down.
In game design you always have to consider that what players think is happening is more important than what actually is happening.
The other danger of this is that even when you, as a player, acknowledge that pet-healing is more of a bonus and shouldn’t be relied upon, you get used to it happening and without even realizing you’re doing it, you start to rely on it.
On the flip side, this dynamic definitely doesn’t make the game too easy the way I have it set up atm. The occultist is fairly fragile and you really have to watch your health and occasionally disengage from enemies so the raven has a chance to heal you. It also feels very rewarding when you think you’re screwed and then suddenly your pet rescues you.
With regards to a more passive healing, such as a regen aura, that would be more reliable - I think this would defeat some of the intention behind the pet healing dynamic, which is to make you feel more connected to a pet that is actively helping you. If the effect was passive, the pet wouldn’t be actively doing anything to you and I think players would tend to just sort of forget it was there.
Pet healing goes against my personal design rule of avoiding mechanics where the game can cause players to fail or where it may not be clear that failure was the fault of the player. This can lead to players feeling cheated and becoming angry with the game. I’ve actually considered this very mechanic in the past and ruled it out for that reason. However, in my old age, I guess things don’t seem quite as black and white. I remember a lot of games from my childhood that caused me to rage out for similar reasons but which I kept playing, loved, and remember fondly. That isn’t to say that my rule isn’t valid but I think perhaps special exceptions may be allowable if the potential gain offsets the potential cost. Just having a tough time deciding whether this is one of those cases or an instance where I’m going against my better judgement in order to preserve a “pet idea” that I like. (see what I did thar?! ooohh… puns FTL)
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.
