Speculation on a new FPS health system.

[Skeleton Jelly]

I for one am sick of all these realistic shooters. What is there to be sick of? The regenerating health system that plagues them. Over the years, gaming's really only taken one big leap in the area of health systems, and it's generally moved towards this regenerating health that we see in basically every new FPS that's released.
There is nothing realistic about regenerating health. I do not understand how ducking behind a big rock and waiting 5 seconds for the 15 bullet wounds you just received to magically heal themselves. Heck, it's worse than health bars in terms of realisim, yet people love it for basically any FPS. So here, we discuss how to improve or totally revamp the current way of tallying up damage in an FPS, for those that dislike the feeling of your legs regrowing a couple seconds after being hit by a mortar.


I personally would want a totally new system that would keep track of almost every part of the body and then adapt towards that. It'd not only look at individual damage (i.e. get shot in the leg and start hobbling around,) but also total blood loss and pain your character receives. You might get shot in the arm 15 times and still live, but a shot to the femoral artery will kill you. But if you get to it quickly enough and bandage it up or put on a tourniquet, you might be able to buy yourself half the battle. But if you sustain enough damage and don't succumb to your wounds, your character might be freaking out just a bit over this, shaking, looking around everywhere and generally being a ***** to control.
I can only begin to imagine how much memory and processing power that'd require, but computers are making amazing leaps, right? But I know that regenerating health is in FPSs for a reason. I assume that that's to allow players to Rambo into a room, get shot 5 times but survive and kill all the baddies, and get to the next round of enemies good as new. If the system was to keep track of previous damage like this, it'd probably mess with that mindset a lot. But, it could improve teamwork by making people work together to take out enemies and care for eachother's health like that very first Bad Company 2 trailer, instead of going solo a la MW2.

So, what's your dream way of health being counted in a FPS? I'd like to hear ideas! I know I'm not the only one sick of regenerating health.

Really? That sounds TERRIBLE.

We don't play games for realism. And if we did have that system, we'd have way too much (much, MUCH more than usual) running back to medical stations. Not to mention slow and paranoid game-play. And the chance of a random bullet just straight out taking you out. Your way, would kill any FPS.

Personally I like the Amour recharging, and having an under layer of health that can only be healed via med packs and such.

I think it'd also be nice if we have regenerating shields/self-repairing amour and blocks of health. Like 4 or 5. And it regenerates whichever block still has health in it, but only fills up that block. And depending how many blocks you have, affects your characters movement and vision.

 

[Jestere]

Pretty much all my problems with your idea have already been covered by other posts, but there are a lot of games that do have this sort of system. If you try the more simulation-style shooters like ARMA or even something like Operation Flashpoint are pretty much one-hit-kill games. Bullets are freaking dangerous man

I think a cool alternative could be a risk-level bar. functionally it could work the same way as regenerating health, but when you go storming in Rambo-style instead of taking bullet hits, you keep on getting near misses, and your risk-level increases. If you take too much risk, your luck is depleted and you take a bullet, putting you out of action. I have some vague recollection of a brothers-in-arms game having something like this, but i never really played them

 

[Skeleton Jelly]

How's this: you get shot, you die.

Sound fun? No. Realistic? More or less. Yes, I know one shot isn't always (or even nearly always) immediately fatal, but you get my point. I don't care what's realistic; I care what's FUN.

That doesn't sound bad at all. If implemented properly, it would be a ton of fun. If you got the full range of abilities that a real soldier could do (e.g. blindfire from the side while behind cover) then it would be a unique take on the genre.

Soooooooooooooooooo Modern Warfare 2 Hardcore mode with blindfire from around corners.

 

[Dexiro]

Realism isn't fun. Who wants to lose control of their player as he goes into panic because he got one bullet in his leg waiting for someone to calm him down and bandage him up to be sent to hospital for a few weeks or months.

Regenerating health is there to keep you in the action. Less health/slower regen is all you need to make players more cautious. If you want a closely knitted team you could have players only regen when they're in the proximity of others.

If you want to scrap regen you could use health packs out in the field maybe. Stock up at the spawn points and use them strategically. The penalty for having low health should be kept simple, such as slightly blurred vision or slightly slower movement... shortly followed by death.
This could contribute to team work as well if people could use their own health packs on other players.

 

[Lawyer105]

If I remember, America's Army had a similar system to what you're talking about.

Correct... and even then, you didn't get healed up. You were still wounded (e.g. shot in the leg = limping around slowly). If the medic got to you in time, it just meant that you didn't bleed out, and could continue to support your team in a limited capacity.

And there was no respawn until the next round. Which was awesome once you got the hang of gameplay - but seriously crap while you were trying to learn!

 

[DEATHROAD]

I still say segmented health is the way to go.

To see it in action play Resistance Fall of Man and/or Far Cry 2.

Basically you get a health bar split into segments, and it regenerates only up whatever segment still has health in it, but isn't full.

That way we have the best of both worlds.

There are still health packs, but you don't have to put them anywhere and everywhere, and your heath does regenerate to an extent, so you won't be completely fucked during any enemy encounters.

yeah, condemned also did it, very very clever little system, i hate no hp regen cos i could checkpoint with 2 hp left and get insta killed the moment i walk into the next room, im looking at you there halflife, the segmented bar as you said is totally the best of both worlds

Also sorry for spelling, its 3:30am and im alittle bit drunk

 

[DEATHROAD]

How's this: you get shot, you die.

Sound fun? No. Realistic? More or less. Yes, I know one shot isn't always (or even nearly always) immediately fatal, but you get my point. I don't care what's realistic; I care what's FUN.

That doesn't sound bad at all. If implemented properly, it would be a ton of fun. If you got the full range of abilities that a real soldier could do (e.g. blindfire from the side while behind cover) then it would be a unique take on the genre.

Soooooooooooooooooo Modern Warfare 2 Hardcore mode with blindfire from around corners.

Throw a LMG with scavenger into the mix and campers have simultanious orgasms

 

[kwagamon]

How about using separate health bars for each part of your body? Only having the head or both of your arms. taken out would kill you, but they have to be healed separately unless you have some kind of uber-item or something. Also the head would have a tiny-ass health bar because it's so vital to your character being a thinking, semi-rational human being instead of a vegetable.

For example, your leg gets the crap shot out of it and is practically gone, but you still have the other one. Therefore you're limping. The other leg goes. Now you're crawling. Use a medkit or whatever the game would have to patch up a leg. Back to limping. You lose and arm. Severe loss of accuracy and can't use things like shotguns and heavy weapons. Headshot. Dead.

If I were to make a game on this system, I would make sure that at least at first armor for your head would be plentiful so when the baddies get shoot you in the obvious kill zone you'll be okay, then at the end have your head vulnerable about half the time towards the end. Alternatively, the head could just take as much damage to kill as anything else, but suffers hilarious amounts of damage when hit compared to your limbs. And then for armor it's just static damage reducers.

 

[DeleteMePlease9999]

[Deleted]

 

[archvile93]

The problem with realistic shooters of any kind is that realistically, one shot to almost anywhere on your body would put your out of commission. If anything, Halo, the game that started the regeneration mechanic, is one of the most realistic shooters there is. They have an excuse in the whole "super armor" thing.

Not so. There are plenty of instances (notably off the top of my head that FBI shootout in Miami or something) where unarmoured people have taken tonnes of bullets but lived for long enough to keep fighting for a while. To a motivated soldier, a bullet to the calf wouldn't really put him out of comission.

Those are pistols (and likely the berreta 9mm no less), try getting shot anywhere but the toe with a rifle and see if you can keep fighting.

 

[Maibus]

I've got it, make it a sci-fi shooter and have medical stations littered throughout levels or make it squad based and you have to have a medic you would take damage to limbs and vital organs that would degrade your character's performance and no regeneration at all, if you lose all of your health you go into shock and have to take control of the medic to stabilize yourself so you don't die and you drag yourself off to the side so you don't get stepped on or something.

 

[JWW]

The only thing that really pisses me off about regenerating health is when very unrealistic blood covers the screen.

And if you want a game where individual body parts are taken into account, might I suggest Dwarf Fortress? [<a href=] It's an RPG, but it's still good.

 

[Skuffyshootster]

I would like to see a health system where grave injuries don't heal while minor injuries do.

So, maybe damage taken from short falls eventually regenerates, but if you get shot, then you have those injuries until you pick up a health pack or something.

 

[KAPTAINmORGANnWo4life]

I think that a more detailed version of the limb damage in Fallout 3 (the other games didn't have as much of a visible hindrance, it was mostly a status effect) would be ideal.

SWAT 4 was too strict: Yes, you'd be severely injured after just one gunshot, but that's not good for video games. Maybe for harder difficulty settings, but not within typical range.

 

[garfoldsomeoneelse]

I actually really liked the first 'Halo' health system: Recharging shield, static health.
That worked well.

Following you around and agreeing with everything you say makes me feel like a stalker, but we're in agreement on this one, too. The original Halo got it right: you were able to hobble over to the next med kit if you're caught in a bad place (say, you're low on health, and an inconveniently-placed checkpoint means that there's a wall of enemies between you and your next stim pack with no way to turn back or try again, and there's no way to get past without catching a few rounds), but it still punishes you for carelessly soaking up too much damage.

 

[CrazyMedic]

the idea I came up with that was similar to this was you had the 6 regions(head torso arms and legs) but since it was for a first person hack and slash(I could go on for hours on that subject) and you had a medium sized shield(half you health bar) that could be repaired by looting enemies(you are stealing their armor and attaching it to yourself) and a health bar that didn't regen at all until the next level, and during combat if you slashed the arm their arm goes flying off and they loose their weapons head they die and feet/legs limp and on so on and so forth so you can disable with out out and out murdering.

 

[Mariakitten]

I for one am sick of all these realistic shooters. What is there to be sick of? The regenerating health system that plagues them. Over the years, gaming's really only taken one big leap in the area of health systems, and it's generally moved towards this regenerating health that we see in basically every new FPS that's released.
There is nothing realistic about regenerating health. I do not understand how ducking behind a big rock and waiting 5 seconds for the 15 bullet wounds you just received to magically heal themselves. Heck, it's worse than health bars in terms of realisim, yet people love it for basically any FPS. So here, we discuss how to improve or totally revamp the current way of tallying up damage in an FPS, for those that dislike the feeling of your legs regrowing a couple seconds after being hit by a mortar.


I personally would want a totally new system that would keep track of almost every part of the body and then adapt towards that. It'd not only look at individual damage (i.e. get shot in the leg and start hobbling around,) but also total blood loss and pain your character receives. You might get shot in the arm 15 times and still live, but a shot to the femoral artery will kill you. But if you get to it quickly enough and bandage it up or put on a tourniquet, you might be able to buy yourself half the battle. But if you sustain enough damage and don't succumb to your wounds, your character might be freaking out just a bit over this, shaking, looking around everywhere and generally being a ***** to control.
I can only begin to imagine how much memory and processing power that'd require, but computers are making amazing leaps, right? But I know that regenerating health is in FPSs for a reason. I assume that that's to allow players to Rambo into a room, get shot 5 times but survive and kill all the baddies, and get to the next round of enemies good as new. If the system was to keep track of previous damage like this, it'd probably mess with that mindset a lot. But, it could improve teamwork by making people work together to take out enemies and care for eachother's health like that very first Bad Company 2 trailer, instead of going solo a la MW2.

So, what's your dream way of health being counted in a FPS? I'd like to hear ideas! I know I'm not the only one sick of regenerating health.

You mean like in Fallout 3 where you can get you limbs crippled and you cant use them efficiently until you heal them? What I think would be good is a heath bar like system except with no regeneration, and throughout the game you pick up bandage rolls, Morphine, Plasta-flesh, and burn lotion. When you get injured you can choose to go into healing mode where you can select the item that best suits your injury and apply it in a short little animation (think Left4Dead med kit animation). But your still vulnerable in the healing state so you have to do this in a secure location of from behind safe cover or run the risk of getting shot. Using the right medicine on the right wound will regain you the most amount of health, where as using the wrong one can cause complications.