I am just curious on peoples opinion on today's trend on the whole wolverine health regeneration crap. I for one hate it obviously. I think it completely dumbs down game play and instigates careless motives. So, does anyone else feel the same or similar to my feelings?
Poll: What every happened to medkits in games?
- Thread starter snake4769
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Didn't extra credits talk about this?
Dumbs it down is one way to put it, makes the game more accessible is another. I played old shooters that had the health pack system and to be honest I prefer health regeneration. There isn't a point where I just say to myself "Oh I know im screwed so I will just start the entire mission over because that one CPU was a sneaky little bugger and shoot me a couple of times"
Dumbs it down is one way to put it, makes the game more accessible is another. I played old shooters that had the health pack system and to be honest I prefer health regeneration. There isn't a point where I just say to myself "Oh I know im screwed so I will just start the entire mission over because that one CPU was a sneaky little bugger and shoot me a couple of times"
I can deal with Regen in Halo, because it's a futuristic shield.Dimitriov said:
That being said, you're perfectly right, it's a cheap-ass system, designed to make it easier for the designers, at the cost of a valuable gameplay element.
If they put the regen-system in my Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, instead of just giving me a set amount of health and counting on me to do the mission with what I was provided, then I can't say what'll happen.
Med Kits belong in RPGs.
I don't want ANY method of in-mission health regen in my shooters.
I also know that it's never gonna happen, but yeah. A man can dream.
I always thought it was for realism purposes. So they took them out, cause no one wanted to go through an FPS and have to search out medkits to heal themselves.
You know what? I really do not care if they are brought back into "mainstream" gaming or not. I am fine with both systems. I do not really see how regenerating health "dumbs down" the gameplay myself (I am a getting more and more convinced that people too often mistake a more accessible game for a "dumbed down" one).
I believe we have already got nothing like realism in games, and at least health kits have a vague justification, whereas health regeneration is just odd really.
If I wrap a bandage round a wound, at least it'll stop bleeding, if I just hang on a minute, then it won't do anything, and I'll keep bleeding.
I like the L4D way of doing things though, making you stop and wrap bandages round yourself for a moment. I think every game should probably do it that way. And bring back health meters, because they really do help.
If I wrap a bandage round a wound, at least it'll stop bleeding, if I just hang on a minute, then it won't do anything, and I'll keep bleeding.
I like the L4D way of doing things though, making you stop and wrap bandages round yourself for a moment. I think every game should probably do it that way. And bring back health meters, because they really do help.
A large part of the reason is that it makes it a lot easier for the designers to have a fixed difficulty, as they know exactly how much health / shield you have when you walk into the next ambush, and can thus plan it so that you still stand a chance.emeraldrafael said:
It's also very casual player friendly, as you can simply duck out of cover, shoot one guy, and get back behind your cardboard box again.
Personally, I feel I get cheated out of a gameplay element, seeing as older games with fixed and non-regenable health forced you to be a lot more careful.
I can't even begin to count how many times I've had to restart a mission from stratch in a SWAT-series game, or from the last checkpoint in Ghost Recon, all because I got careless and did something I hadn't thought through, to put it gently.
Health bars and Med-kits are kind of making a comeback. Quite a few recent games had medkits in them, (off the top of my head) Halo: Reach, Enslaved and Fallout: NV all had medkits of a kind. and if we go back to early last year Just Cause 2 had a hybrid health system, Red Dead, Metro 2033 and Mafia 2 had both medkits (or magic-cure-all-wound soda in the case of Mafia 2) and regen health and Bioshock 2 had a med-kits only health system. Regen-only health is less common than people think.
A large part of why people say it "dumbs down" the games, is that you can take the Halo approach. Staying behind a rock, ducking out and shooting one or two of the 20 guys out there, and then just going back behind your rock again and wait for your health/shield to go back up.BreakfastMan said:
That's nothing short of bad gameplay design right there, and it makes the player reckless.
Now, I enjoy a Halo, Killzone or CoD game just as much as the next man, but I'd take a high definition remake of Ghost Recon over that any day of the week.
Hell. I play ArmA 2 regularly, and I've once had a drunk player in charge of piloting a Blackhawk insertion with 16 players on board crash us into the side of a hill, forcing us to wait two hours until the remaining players were done with the scenario.
I've had more fun being DEAD and WAITING in a game, than I have ever had running around at superhuman speeds, shooting .50 Desert Eagles akimbo-style in a CoD game.
I can only look forward to Battlefield 3, when we actually get a publicly accessible semi-realistic shooter.
Regenerating health serves a very important purpose to gameplay.
Bullets move at the speed of bullets. If you want to have enemies using projectiles that can't just be sidestepped, players are guaranteed to take some damage. This makes certain scenarios impossible if you don't have the appropriate amount of health.
Regenerating heath allows for much more gameplay experimentation, is much easier on developers, and cuts down on time-wasting backtracking.
It basically says "If you are taking x amount of damage in y time, you're doing something wrong."
Static health bars would only really work for FPS RPGS, (Fallout) heavily cover based FPSes, (I can't think of any FPSes with cover system and static health, but it would work as the entire point of cover is to avoid damage) or Stealth FPSes. (Goldeneye)(If you're getting damaged in general in a stealth game, it's your own damn fault)
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Edit: It also allows for better damage balancing, making situations more appropriately dangerous.
Bullets move at the speed of bullets. If you want to have enemies using projectiles that can't just be sidestepped, players are guaranteed to take some damage. This makes certain scenarios impossible if you don't have the appropriate amount of health.
Regenerating heath allows for much more gameplay experimentation, is much easier on developers, and cuts down on time-wasting backtracking.
It basically says "If you are taking x amount of damage in y time, you're doing something wrong."
Static health bars would only really work for FPS RPGS, (Fallout) heavily cover based FPSes, (I can't think of any FPSes with cover system and static health, but it would work as the entire point of cover is to avoid damage) or Stealth FPSes. (Goldeneye)(If you're getting damaged in general in a stealth game, it's your own damn fault)
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Edit: It also allows for better damage balancing, making situations more appropriately dangerous.
When done right, its great. When done wrong, its horrible.
I remember an article Shamus (I think it was Shamus) wrote regarding the automatic healing of you and your teammates in FF 13. Fans whined and complained about it, claiming it dumbed down the game for newbies, but Shamus said that it allowed Square Enix to toughen the normal NPCs, because they could predict what the players health will be at all times.
Health systems are a pain on developers because they require the developer to tweak everything so you can actually make it through without getting overly frustrated. This often means tweaking the number of enemies, placing med kits to help you survive and often giving you powerful tools to help you in a pinch.
In today's games, the dev teams knows what your health will be whenever you enter a room. They don't need to tweak the AI so there will be just enough for you to handle, they don't need to worry about placing med kits around and less dependency needs to be placed on the power weapons. They have their faults, but regenerating health allows Developers to do some things that they could never do before.
I remember an article Shamus (I think it was Shamus) wrote regarding the automatic healing of you and your teammates in FF 13. Fans whined and complained about it, claiming it dumbed down the game for newbies, but Shamus said that it allowed Square Enix to toughen the normal NPCs, because they could predict what the players health will be at all times.
Health systems are a pain on developers because they require the developer to tweak everything so you can actually make it through without getting overly frustrated. This often means tweaking the number of enemies, placing med kits to help you survive and often giving you powerful tools to help you in a pinch.
In today's games, the dev teams knows what your health will be whenever you enter a room. They don't need to tweak the AI so there will be just enough for you to handle, they don't need to worry about placing med kits around and less dependency needs to be placed on the power weapons. They have their faults, but regenerating health allows Developers to do some things that they could never do before.
It makes things easier for the designers. This way, they know how much health the player will have in any given situation, so they know how many enemies to provide for the right level of challenge.
Also, why would you use Wolverine as an example? It's hardly the first game to use it, and he actually DOES regenerate, so it makes perfect sense in that game.
Also, why would you use Wolverine as an example? It's hardly the first game to use it, and he actually DOES regenerate, so it makes perfect sense in that game.