Poll: Healthpacks vs. Regenerating Health
- Thread starter ColeusRattus
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Examples of games who did each thing right..
Healthpacks - Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, Quake, DOOM, Wolfenstein 3D
Health Stations - Half-life
Hybrid - definitely agree with Far Cry 2
Regenerating health/shields - COD2 and 4; and as much as i don't wanna admit this, Halo 1.
One-shot one kill/Survival - Tom Clancy's: Ghost Recon 1 (nearly 1 shot 1 kill), Brothers in Arms, Asteroids :O
Healthpacks - Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, Quake, DOOM, Wolfenstein 3D
Health Stations - Half-life
Hybrid - definitely agree with Far Cry 2
Regenerating health/shields - COD2 and 4; and as much as i don't wanna admit this, Halo 1.
One-shot one kill/Survival - Tom Clancy's: Ghost Recon 1 (nearly 1 shot 1 kill), Brothers in Arms, Asteroids :O
In multiplayer you have the option of a medic class, which IMHO is even better because it encourages teamwork and tactical play.kebab4you said:
Whilst regenerating health may seem unrealistic, what most people seem to forget about health pack systems is you get unscrupulous players camping over health packs both to a) pick up easy kills of wounded players and b) make sure they're always at full health; so regenerating health is fairer and more balanced.
That said, I play Hardcore on CoD and SWAT in Halo, so it's 'one shot one kill' modes for me.
That said, I play Hardcore on CoD and SWAT in Halo, so it's 'one shot one kill' modes for me.
Regenerating health
Being able to take a moment after combat to recover (say 1% hp/sec) means that those who are patient can always enter the next combat phase at full health if they wish.
It also prevents occurrences where you barely survive an encounter only to be unable to proceed due to impossibly low health.
Being able to take a moment after combat to recover (say 1% hp/sec) means that those who are patient can always enter the next combat phase at full health if they wish.
It also prevents occurrences where you barely survive an encounter only to be unable to proceed due to impossibly low health.
this is one of those questions you shouldn't answer unless your completely ignorant.
as i said to the guy who made this EXACT SAME TOPIC yesterday, there is a place for both.
in cases like halo and gears of war, they want game play to be as continuous as possible, no time for scouring for med kits. but in a case like duke nukem, one needs to be able to sit in the middle of the open of long periods of time dishing out pain, and the inherent low damage taking ability of a regen system does not work here.
so it depends xD
as i said to the guy who made this EXACT SAME TOPIC yesterday, there is a place for both.
in cases like halo and gears of war, they want game play to be as continuous as possible, no time for scouring for med kits. but in a case like duke nukem, one needs to be able to sit in the middle of the open of long periods of time dishing out pain, and the inherent low damage taking ability of a regen system does not work here.
so it depends xD
halo got to hybrid status... health regenerating to a certain level (stabilising), otherwise need med packs... that was a good system
I would say I prefer the sort of hybrid system, like what, as you said, you get in far cry, chronicles of riddick, condemned, etc... it keeps some of the challenge there but means theres less chance the game will auto save you in a position where theres huge odds stacked against you and you're stuck with one shot left in you, such situations happened all too often when i played doom 2 again just recently haha, that'll teach me to make more than one save in future though
there's certainly nothing overly bad about either of the health systems alone but i personally believe they work best when combined
there's certainly nothing overly bad about either of the health systems alone but i personally believe they work best when combined
Know why health regeneration exists? People complained home video games were too hard. They didn't want the extreme challenge that arcade machines offered, as the only reason they were that hard and used that style of health, was so the machine would take more of your money.Haakong said:
People will complain about anything.
Healthkits were commonly used in shooters before regenerating health and I don't remember these being particularly hated.IBlackKiteI said:
True there's possibly a small nostalgia effect but I do remember carefully managing my health to be more immersive and challanging than running behind a wall every minute and a half.
I went with the hybrid choice. Far Cry did it really well. To those of you who voted for healthpacks:
Have you ever had to restart the same sequence a million times because you only could take one more hit before you died and with no healthpacks around you where forced to go into the battle and die over and over again because it autosaved right before the fight. Does that sound like fun to you?
EDIT: If I have to play a game with healthpacks it should be games like Left 4 Dead where teammates could revive you and such. This made me think of another health system that worked fine. Anyone here played Killing Floor? The health system works pretty well in that game as well, but thats pretty much a regenerative health system you have to activate yourself or by a teammate. You get a syringe that recharges over time. When you use it on yourself or a teammate it drops to zero and starts regenerating again. Thats system works really well
Have you ever had to restart the same sequence a million times because you only could take one more hit before you died and with no healthpacks around you where forced to go into the battle and die over and over again because it autosaved right before the fight. Does that sound like fun to you?
EDIT: If I have to play a game with healthpacks it should be games like Left 4 Dead where teammates could revive you and such. This made me think of another health system that worked fine. Anyone here played Killing Floor? The health system works pretty well in that game as well, but thats pretty much a regenerative health system you have to activate yourself or by a teammate. You get a syringe that recharges over time. When you use it on yourself or a teammate it drops to zero and starts regenerating again. Thats system works really well
hybrid, but not the way you said but rather the way it's done in max payne: health packs(that you carry around with you) but your health regenerates until you hit about 15%. this prevents getting killed by a few stray bullets in a row and allows the designers to make each room so it's possible to do if you only have minimum health.
i hate to do it but i have praise the first halo in this regard, the shield ate only very little fire(at least in my memory) so it encouraged careful play and you still had to hunt for healthpacks.
i hate to do it but i have praise the first halo in this regard, the shield ate only very little fire(at least in my memory) so it encouraged careful play and you still had to hunt for healthpacks.
Err... the mainstream target audience of Halo and Call of Duty is hardly the kind to spend any significant time on a website dedicated to criticism and analysis of the video game medium and industry.Shio said:
No doubt there are people here who do play and enjoy the series, but I very much doubt they're a majority.
I would dare argue that it's the opposite, or at the least highly dependent on how it's applied. Medipacks are from the days of Doom and such, which as I recall correctly were all about running and gunning like there's no tomorrow.voorhees123 said:
Whereas many games with regenerating health also are cover based shooters where the player is encouraged to duck behind said cover every so often to let their health regenerate, which certainly isn't a fast method of advancing compared to barrelling down a corridor and letting rip. In DN3D you didn't even have to look around for medpacks after every fight since you could patch yourself up after or even during a fight by using the medkit that you could find.
Left 4 Dead is another recent example of a health pack/medkit type of shooter that, in my opinion, is fast paced.
Regenerating health ~could~ allow for fast gameplay, but then you need to be able to take more than three hits before being in mortal danger, if not already dead. And since DNF if is being used as the reference material here, the wait needs to be less long before the regeneration kicks in to make sure that gamers aren't forced to take cover for prolonged periods of time after taking the aforementioned three hits.
Edit: That said, I don't mind either system, but it just depends on what type of game you're going for.
