Challenge - Regenerating health

[IKWerewolf]

Pick a game that you beleive has been ruined by regenerating health. Now take this game (name it on here) and tell the whole world what you believe is the right way of doing it.

OR

Take a game that regenerating health works for and tell us why.

This is the challenge from this post:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.307765-Can-regenerating-health-be-a-good-thing

 

[IKWerewolf]

For example, although I think that Bulletsorm is an arcade shooter its regenerating health can be supplimented by the skill points.

If you are low on health, as well as getting skill points you should also get skill health basically the more you score the more health you get back. If you have full health, the player should get a x2 on all Skill Points for being that good.

 

[weker]

I simple put forwards every game which doesn't have a good reason
COD
Crackdown
yadda yadda yadda

Games like Halo work as the core game play EG energy and ballistic weapons
This is could, one example of it going wrong is Duke nukem where is EGO is so weak its embarrassing. The idea that you killed opponents to live longer such as space marine is great and under played.

 

[weker]

For example, although I think that Bulletsorm is an arcade shooter its regenerating health can be supplimented by the skill points.

If you are low on health, as well as getting skill points you should also get skill health basically the more you score the more health you get back. If you have full health, the player should get a x2 on all Skill Points for being that good.

This could have gone either way and letting you do so could be a little to easy and complex at the same time.
You take loads of dmg in bulletstorm and allows you to heal at the right pace. Its well implemented.

 

[Sixcess]

Games where regenerating health works: All of them.

Seriously, I stopped sneering at regenerating health after I played the original Half Life and found myself scraping through entire levels on 5% health because that one HECU marine got the drop on me and chopped my health bar in half in one second. Or worse yet, because I missed a jump during a platforming section.

(Question: You've just lost 50% of your health in a failed platform jump in HL. You will have to climb back up and try it again, and even when you get over it you've still lost that health. Is there any sane reason NOT to just reload from the last quicksave?)

Modern games in particular have massive incoming fire that usually can't be dodged Doom-style, and protagonists that can't take more than a couple of hits without dying. Removing regen health from these games would require the devs to rebalance the entire game.

 

[Squarez]

Games where regenerating health works: All of them.

Seriously, I stopped sneering at regenerating health after I played the original Half Life and found myself scraping through entire levels on 5% health because that one HECU marine got the drop on me and chopped my health bar in half in one second. Or worse yet, because I missed a jump during a platforming section.

(Question: You've just lost 50% of your health in a failed platform jump in HL. You will have to climb back up and try it again, and even when you get over it you've still lost that health. Is there any sane reason NOT to just reload from the last quicksave?)

Modern games in particular have massive incoming fire that usually can't be dodged Doom-style, and protagonists that can't take more than a couple of hits without dying. Removing regen health from these games would require the devs to rebalance the entire game.

Exactly, people complain about health regen being 'unrealistic', but if the developers wanted to make the game so it wasn't ridiculously difficult they'd have to make the main character able to take crazy amounts of damage before death. Which is even more unrealistic.

 

[oplinger]

I've never felt that regenerating health has ruined a game. Usually when a game has regenerating health, it was designed for it. ...However, I think some games shouldn't have it for a few specific reasons like:

Rainbow Six: Vegas: Totally did not need regenerating health, it was a tactical shooter (with very glaring design flaws anyway..) It was really silly to just be able to take bullets like superman and walk away from it in a franchise that's known for being really unforgiving about how many bullets a body can hold.

I think using medkits would have been better. Even if they just used morphine syrettes I'd at least feel a little better about it. That way I can still focus on the real time tactics, I'd still have to take cover to use the syrette. The systems impact would remain unchanged, even if they automatically used the syrette/medkit when I went back into cover.

That's kinda what I see being the problem with regenerative health as a whole, it usually is just there. It needs to make sense to me, like my space marine armor injecting it's own drugs, cauterizing my bullet holes or something. As long as something happens I guess >_> it doesn't have to be medically accurate.

 

[Zhukov]

Games where regenerating health works: All of them.

...

+1 to what he said.

As for a specific example: Mirror's Edge.

Why? Because you didn't have to run around after every fight/fall looking for health restoration items. You could just keep running for the next objective. Also, because it meant that the individual encounters could be balanced better since the developers knew exactly how much health the player would have going into them.

That is to say, the same reason regenerating health works in every game.

 

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

(Question: You've just lost 50% of your health in a failed platform jump in HL. You will have to climb back up and try it again, and even when you get over it you've still lost that health. Is there any sane reason NOT to just reload from the last quicksave?)

Nope. No reason at all, unless you're doing some sort of self-imposed-challenge run where you're trying to do something like beat it without saving/loading (whether it's at all, only at the end of each level/section, or whatever).

Modern games in particular have massive incoming fire that usually can't be dodged Doom-style, and protagonists that can't take more than a couple of hits without dying. Removing regen health from these games would require the devs to rebalance the entire game.

It's true that they're deliberately balanced quite differently because of changes like that. In a way, that's something I kind of dislike. I'm sick of spending so much time cowering behind walls/boxes/rocks and getting flattened by a few shots if I dare step out for more than a few seconds, rather than being able to charge in more recklessly like when characters were on average both more durable and more mobile. It sometimes feels like most of the genre has been trending toward nothing but glass cannons; even when they're wearing half ton powered armor with energy barriers, they go down in a couple hits. Why even bother wearing fancy space marine armor at that point? Heh.

On the other hand, when I played Just Cause 2 ~6 months ago, that had a mix of regenerating health and medkits, but the player character is also surprisingly durable (he can soak up a ton of damage compared to a lot of shooters these days, so wading into a firefight is a perfectly valid option) and quite mobile (zipping around to evade shots/reduce damage taken after having attracted a lot of attention is nearly as effective as taking cover), so in some cases things have stayed nearly the same even with the introduction of regenerating health. The only real problem there was that it sometimes took forever and a half to actually find a medkit when you actually needed one (giant map really is giant), but there would be three of them there when you didn't...

 

[Irridium]

Any game with regenerating health: replace that with a segmented health bar as seen in Resistance 1, Far Cry 2, and Chronicles or Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay.

So long as there is some health left in a segment, it will regenerate.

With this, you get the benefit of a health bar, without the cons like scraping by on 2 health or whatever.

And you get the benefit of regenerating health, that is always having a set amount, without the boring-ness of sitting behind a wall until you're all better.

It also makes you watch your health, and think more about how you approach battles.

Personally, I like Far Cry 2's implementation of it the most. Where you have seven, and if you get hit to the last bar, you have to duck in cover to pull the bullet out/bandage yourself/ect., and then you'll have two bars.

Seriously, it's the best of both worlds. More games need to do it.

 

[LookingGlass]

For me it's never felt more out of place than in Rainbow Six: Vegas. The earlier rainbow six games were all about "you get shot, you die". They were about planning and execution. They were not like every other shooter on the market.

Vegas changed so much of the Rainbow Six experience that it really shouldn't have been under the Rainbow Six name. It wasn't a bad game, but it wasn't a Rainbow Six game. It's as if they weren't trying to appeal to the same audience at all anymore. The regenerating health wasn't the only issue there, but it was the most major contributor.

 

[Scizophrenic Llama]

As much as I hate to say it. Duke Nukem Forever's regenerating health acting as Duke's ego was a pretty brilliant way to do regenerating health.

 

[BabySinclair]

DNF, the Duke shouldn't have to hide behind cover for his ego to recover (should make it go down instead), but should gain health by kicking alien ass. The more damage he deals the more health he gains so he can shrug off weak attacks but very strong ones will still have to be avoided. It would make Ego actually reflect his ego.

edit

As much as I hate to say it. Duke Nukem Forever's regenerating health acting as Duke's ego was a pretty brilliant way to do regenerating health.

see above. Great idea, horrible execution while relying on cover mechanics.

 

[oplinger]

It's true that they're deliberately balanced quite differently because of changes like that. In a way, that's something I kind of dislike. I'm sick of spending so much time cowering behind walls/boxes/rocks and getting flattened by a few shots if I dare step out for more than a few seconds, rather than being able to charge in more recklessly like when characters were on average both more durable and more mobile. It sometimes feels like most of the genre has been trending toward nothing but glass cannons; even when they're wearing half ton powered armor with energy barriers, they go down in a couple hits. Why even bother wearing fancy space marine armor at that point? Heh.

I wouldn't recommend actually playing the game, but it sounds like you'd like a system like Bet On Soldier. You wear bulletproof armor (big metal plates) and it wears down the more you get shot, so it has ID damage, and each plate has it's own health. YOu can also have a shield and such. So you have to be a little careful as one plate going bad, you can die.

I very much liked the idea. Very much hated the game. It's terrible.

 

[zuro64]

Battlefield: Bad Company 2
I love the BF series more then any ohter game series but the regeneting health sucks in that game!

First of all you dont have a healthbar in your HUD but you can se what other players in your team has in health and you see what the guy who killed you had in health!

Secondly it doesnt really tell you when you have regen enough health to take a bullet without dying unlike CoD that you become blinded by blod to tell your about to be screwed!

Thirdly it takes away the reason for medickits in BC2 as of now that peaple use only for faster rengen. In the older installments it was an escentual part of what made BF different from most other FPS's.

That and 64 players maps, vehicles, knife as a weapon and not as melee and realods that are realistic meaning that when you reload with bullets still in the mag, they are spent and doesnt automatically bunch up with the rest to be used at another reload.

So the solution to this would basically be to make it exactally like BF2

 

[RatRace123]

Duke Nukem Forever, there are other things wrong with it, but this is one of 'em too.

I'd change it to a non regenerating health bar and have first aid power ups be scattered through the levels once again. That's it, just another throw back to classic shooter days.

 

[Bloedhoest]

I don't know. Sometimes a health bar adds more tension to a game, for example Dead Space.
On the other hand, regen let's you focus on the game more and let's yo have more fun. Just gunning on enemies without looking in the corner of the screen all time.

My gaming gets better when my health is low. with 100% health I go in guns blazing. But with 10% I'm more tactical.

 

[IKWerewolf]

Duke Nukem Forever, there are other things wrong with it, but this is one of 'em too.

I'd change it to a non regenerating health bar and have first aid power ups be scattered through the levels once again. That's it, just another throw back to classic shooter days.

Another option is a minor change. Duke Nukem is a bad*** so give him ego back when he kills an enemy which is faster than regeneration, the tougher the enemy the more he gets back and allow it to chain so the more kills in rapid succession allows it to occur faster.

 

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

I wouldn't recommend actually playing the game, but it sounds like you'd like a system like Bet On Soldier. You wear bulletproof armor (big metal plates) and it wears down the more you get shot, so it has ID damage, and each plate has it's own health. YOu can also have a shield and such. So you have to be a little careful as one plate going bad, you can die.

I very much liked the idea. Very much hated the game. It's terrible.

That really does sound like a potentially interesting idea if done right. You can rush in and soak up damage, but only to a point, so you have to take advantage of it only when it's appropriate. With the different bodyparts/plates separated properly and good level design, you could also set up some interesting tactical situations, too, like alternate approaches to areas that might be riskier/safer depending on how damaged you are and where, e.g. going in one way leaves your left flank much more exposed, which would be fine if your armor's in good shape on that side but suicidal if that's your weakest point.

Looking at reviews for that particular game, though, it does kind of sound like crap. Oh well.