Challenge - Regenerating health

[Eclectic Dreck]

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.

The game was entirely focused on murder in ways that placed the player in peril. Removing regenerating health detracts from this core conceit and, as such, is not a good idea.

What people often fail to see in decrying regenerating health is the resulting change in pace and purpose of the game. In old FPS games, health and ammunition both acted as resources and combat was largely an affair of managing these two resources. One could expend more ammunition (or better ammunition) in order to conserve health, or they could conserve ammunition at the expense of health. Regardless of how well one played, the player was going to expend some quantity of his supplies in any given engagement. This design conceit encourages exploration but, quite logically, results in a slower and far more irregular pace of action.

Regenerating health removes one key motivation to explore but it does not, by any stretch, eliminate it entirely. Players could still be encouraged to explore by placing interesting things in hard to reach places such as weapons, ammunition, bits of lore and so forth. Meaningless collectables that have an associated achievement can also be used for the same purpose of course but I generally find that if the motivation for exploration is being enforced by a metagame mechanic, it probably won't work on the vast majority of people who play the game.

Regenerating health is, in general at least, the result of trying to even out the pace of FPS games. In the days of Doom or Duke 3d, one could spend 20 minutes in a level without shooting or doing anything meaningful because they are poking about looking for secrets and health and ammunition (or just the exit). Streamlining the genre resulted in a game that was better paced and focused more on the action - something that is, for most I'd wager, the draw of the genre. There were other casualties to this effort beyond the health meter. Keycards, jumping puzzles and the maze design inherent in older FPS titles is gone as well.

That said, there are still types of game where non-regenerating health is important. Games that attempt to be scary for example often fall flat because the player is too well armed and equipped and are never in any real danger. Other games that focus on collection and exploration also do well with non regenerating health. Since a Fallout 3 player is already predisposed to the prospect of poking about perilous ruins, you might as well give them a good reason to look around.

 

[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.

Condemned 2 did this as well, segmented with three blocks with painkillers scattered around in logical places (medicine cupboard, supply boxes) that could refill them. A good thing too was that if you died, you'd respawn at the last check point with full health, kind of the game acknowledging perhaps that bit was too hard with one health.

Brothers in Arms did something similar. If you died more than five times in a row, before you respawned a message popped up that said "War isn't fair, but a video game should be. Would you like to respawn at the last checkpoint with full health and ammo?"

Was so happy when I first read that. And it didn't break immersion, since I already broke that by yelling after getting killed five times in a row.