The Health Bar is more realistic than Regenerating.

[Ordinaryundone]

I like to think of regenerating health not as "Your character magically gets better after getting shot", but as a measurement of how close your character is to being killed. Brothers in Arms did this, by having a character caught in the open never actually get shot till he "ran out of health". Every other hit was just a representation of the enemies drawing a bead on you. I like to think other games with regenerating health are the same way.

Like Mirror's Edge, for example. Faith is able to run, jump, climb, and fight just fine after being shot because she isn't getting hit. She's just being shot at, and the health representation is how close she is to being hit, or at least hurt. Same with Call of Duty. The health could represent the same, or your body armor deflecting shots.

Games with health bars actually seem more unrealistic in the long run. At least with regenerating health, your health bar is typically much smaller. It only takes a few shots to kill you. If you survive a fight, you can logically assume you were never actually hit. With a health bar, you have a character who is actually getting shot, over and over and over again, but somehow managing to patch himself up each time he finds first aid. Unless there is some handwave like armor or something (like Halo and Half-Life), it just ends up seeming silly.

 

[Zipa]

Both mechanics have a time and a place, calling one or the other out is just stupid and narrow minded.

 

[loc978]

The most realistic health system I ever encountered was that in the old Tom Clancy games, Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon. Back when you had mission planning and when one shot could end your life.

You take a hit to center mass from an assault rifle, even if you're wearing body armor, and you'll be having a bad day, if not dead or severely wounded. You take a hit to a limb, you're probably combat ineffective unless it was just a graze wound. Don't even ask about head shots. The difficulty factor was a *****, of course, but the very first FPS I ever played was Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear. Ah, the memories. Shame they let the good games die.

Nowadays I'm so used to the trends that I'll defer to regenerating health for its sheer simplicity of execution. Though the regeneration system in MGS3 was actually pretty good, if a little exaggerated like any game.

Agreed on Rainbow Six. I had a lot of fun with that game, despite the learning curve being rather steep...

But I'll take something like Deus Ex's health system over anything I've seen in a modern shooter.

 

[henrius]

Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway, if I remember correctly, had a great, realistic "health" system. Instead of being shot at and losing health, if you were out of cover to long when enemies are in range and sight to shoot you, you'd be shot by that fateful bullet(s), killing you there on the spot. Increasing difficulty would in effect shorten the time you could be out of cover. (There's a bit more to it than that but I loved the system).

So anyways if you're looking for a more realistic shooter with a good cover/suppression system (and I thought an interesting story) I'd suggest BiA: Hell's Highway.

 

[Sixcess]

I'm currently playing Half Life, and that has really put me off health bars. It's fine in a game like DOOM, where the character can soak up demon attacks for a good while, but Half Life is full of cheap attacks that shred your health bar in literally seconds - the gun bunkers, the helicopter in Surface Tension... fuck, I went from 100 to 53 from being caught in a normal sliding door.

Then there's the jumps. If I miss a jump (not difficult, because the platforming sucks, as it does in almost all FPSs) and loss 40 health in the fall sure I can find the stairs and go up and try it again, but why bother? I've still lost a huge chunk of hard to replace health. Fuck it, load the last save and try it again until I get it right.

Health bars work if a single commonplace enemy can't destroy you in seconds. If they can then it just becomes an exercise in frustration and quick saving.

 

[cke]

Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway, if I remember correctly, had a great, realistic "health" system. Instead of being shot at and losing health, if you were out of cover to long when enemies are in range and sight to shoot you, you'd be shot by that fateful bullet(s), killing you there on the spot. Increasing difficulty would in effect shorten the time you could be out of cover. (There's a bit more to it than that but I loved the system).

So anyways if you're looking for a more realistic shooter with a good cover/suppression system (and I thought an interesting story) I'd suggest BiA: Hell's Highway.

I support this post in all it's entirety!

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

After a few years of RAGEing on the subject I look at it from another angle. Its a gimmick used to keep action going and limit backtracking/scavenging. Even if people with half a brain enjoy such things they sadly are the target audience for gun and run titles.

PS:It also have a dramatic effect on level design, as levels become smaller and less intricate to meet the demand of constant action design themes.

PSS:Health regen is still a crappy crutch used by clueless devs but so is a lack of qaulity and balance in most AAA games. Getting crap to the lowest common denominator has pretty much spoiled most devs into doing less with a project.......

 

[MASTACHIEFPWN]

No crap, good sir. it is a bit obvious that humans don't get better in 10 or fifteen seconds.

In the original fallout, you healed over time, after an hour or so, you'd regenerate a few hitpoints. I found that slightly realistic. And plus, the over time healing wasn't reliable either, you'd still have to relly on your docter ability and avalible medical supplies.

 

[KEM10]

Forget both health bars and regenerating, 2-3 hits and you're dead. Problem solved. You poke out of cover and get a minor spray, you die (or just become so wounded that you can't fight anymore).

While we're making things more real, give grenades a shrapnel effect. Just because you're out of the blast radius doesn't mean a chunk of metal isn't going to come flying across the entire map and hit you.

And the last step, get rid of save games. You either complete the game in one go or you have to start over. You die, you failed at saving the world (or you turn off the system and go AWOL).

Realism != fun. Some games rely on their brand of realism for their fun, others develop their own system for a different kind of fun. If you don't like Pepsi's fun, buy a Coke.

EDIT:

PSS:Health regen is still a crappy crutch used by clueless devs but so is a lack of qaulity and balance in most AAA games. Getting crap to the lowest common denominator has pretty much spoiled most devs into doing less with a project.......

Sorry to hit you with this, but it's PPS not PSS. PS stands for post script, so the second aside would be Post Post Script.

 

[dakorok]

Honestly, the "wipe the jam out of your eyes" system in MW2 pisses me off. It's basically a Halo ripoff, without any explanation why it works like that. Master Chief had recharging shields. What do these solders have? Voodoo magic? Doubtful.

I think Battlefield 2 (not Battlefield: Bad Company 2, the ACTUAL Battlefield 2)had the right idea, with a set health bar. If you got wounded, a medic had to patch you up to recover health.
It also threw away bullets kept in your clips when you reloaded. In fact, I think it was one of the most realistic games that I've ever played.

 

[akibawall95]

I think something like the MGS3?s health system would is the most realistic. Anyone agree?

 

[nYuknYuknYuk]

Honestly, the "wipe the jam out of your eyes" system in MW2 pisses me off. It's basically a Halo ripoff, without any explanation why it works like that. Master Chief had recharging shields. What do these solders have? Voodoo magic? Doubtful.

I think Battlefield 2 (not Battlefield: Bad Company 2, the ACTUAL Battlefield 2)had the right idea, with a set health bar. If you got wounded, a medic had to patch you up to recover health.
It also threw away bullets kept in your clips when you reloaded. In fact, I think it was one of the most realistic games that I've ever played.

I agree with your point on BF2, especially with the discarded bullets thing. It's pretty annoying how it's somehow a good idea to reload with 29 bullets left in your 30 round magazine. I think Bad Company 2 also had the same health system as 1942 and BF2, though. Maybe it didn't have a health bar, but it had a number or something like that, and had a Medic class that had health packs.

 

[Ice Car]

Has anyone claimed otherwise?

This.

[/thread]

 

[Senaro]

Regen makes sense sometimes, like how Halo tends to put more of your health into your overshields. However, looking into the new Duke Nukem game, I'm praying it doesn't actually include regenerating health. I enjoy the challenge of having to survive stages by managing healthpacks and not getting shot. If I have regenerating health, I can run into just about any fight without a second thought and run away when my health gets low.

 

[Davey Woo]

Most realistic type of health I've seen is Fallout 3/New Vegas' "limb" damage system.
You don't regenerate health over time, and each limb has it's own health bar, as well as your overall health, when a singl;e limb has lost all of it's own HP, it becomes "crippled" my only issue with this is that a crippled limb doesn't really do muc to either the player or the enemies in the game.
Crippled leg means you run slower, crippled arm means you're less strong/accurate with weapons and a crippled head (for the player) makes the screen go a bit blurry.

I'd like to see some kind of extended version of this, where if a limb doesn't lose all of its HP it can "regenerate" but if it loses its HP you could bleed out if you don't heal it in some way or something.

I'd say both regenerating health and numbered health have their own realistic qualities, but neither should really be considered realistic in any sense.

 

[messy]

Well a health bar is only more realistic if you are some how slower, or something similar, at low health. Otherwise it's the whole black knight scenario, any hp above 0 (even .1%) and I'm good to fight with no hindrance.

 

[supermariner]

i agree with you that the health bar is more realistic
but i hold the opinion that regenerating health makes for more enjoyable gaming experience
and to me that's the most important thing

 

[Tzfanya]

Health bars add more drama to a situation. Regenerating health makes each combat binary: either you win it, or you don't. With a health bar you may win the fire fight, but then you're down to 40% of your health and that leaves you creeping around praying the next round of enemies isn't sitting past the next corner.

Perfect example of this is things like God of War. That keeps throwing wave after wave of enemies at you, and why? It's saying, 'Okay, you managed that fight, but you lost more than half your health. So now do it again, but better.' If you'd had regen there, you'd just be fighting the same battle in a loop.

If you're going to have regenerating health, your game should be really, really challenging, and should be something other than a bog standard FPS.

 

[KEM10]

Well a health bar is only more realistic if you are some how slower, or something similar, at low health. Otherwise it's the whole black knight scenario, any hp above 0 (even .1%) and I'm good to fight with no hindrance.

Hero Clicks.
These need to be big again...er, you know what I mean.