The Point of Hit Points

[XX Y XY]

For Tabletop, hitpoints are just there to make GMs' lives easier. Personally, I haven't used them in several years. A good GM doesn't need them. Videogames are a whole other story though. Because of the inherent lack of freedom presented in video games, the player doesn't have the options and resources open to them to circumvent injured limbs and body parts that they do in a tabletop RPG, where your imagination is the limit. Some games do use limb hit detection and dismemberment. Die by the Sword, an old PC game, did this to great effect. Each body part did have it's own HP total though. And some more cinematic games like Heavy Rain seem to be able to pull it off. It's frustrating to have control of your character hindered or gimped in videogames for a long list of reasons that any veteran gamer would know. More than I feel like listing and explaining. It's common knowledge to programmers that the vast majority of player's like consistency in their controls and hate any loss there of.

 

[ohnoitsabear]

Yeah, it would just get way too complicated too quickly for even the most modern of PCs.
Lots of Roguelikes implement this though. Limbs fly off a plenty in Dwarf Fortress, for example, and I remember a game called "Ivan" where through the use of magic, potions, and of course, various slashing weapons, limbs, torsos, and even heads could be removed and replaced by... pretty much any material.

I was about to mention IVAN. It's locational damage system is excellent in that it's simple to understand and has logical effects, but ends up adding a lot of depth to the game. It's implemented fantastically, and should be done in more games.

 

[GamingAwesome1]

Leaving aside the problem of the sheer cost it would take to model and animate various injuries the general problem is that in any game with locational damage and persistent injuries is that they tend to either break the flow of gameplay or just be generally irritating.

Having crippled legs in Fallout and having to crawl at a snail's pace is realistic but really not fun, extremely annoying and completely destroys any sense of flow.

Many games like fairly minimalist roguelikes can do this and get away with it because roguelikes and turn based RPG's in general play in such a way that the mechanic can be easily inserted without shattering flow or being annoying. I can't see it working particularly well in a more action-oriented game without said game being more survival-focused.

Your game generally has to be built around a mechanic like that to some degree for it to function well, just slapping it in any game of a certain kind wouldn't work.

TL;DR, works in certain genres and can indeed enhance the experience in certain genres. Absolutely inappropriate for usage everywhere, most games would not benefit from such a system.

 

[Rblade]

the problem with realism, as always, is. In medieval time getting a cut wasn´t cause for a limp, more often then not you would get an infection and straight up die

 

[Something Amyss]

Can't you just write paragraphs in response? It's not that hard, and it's much easier to read.

Can't you not quote a lengthy post verbatim and tack on a single line response? It's not hard, and it's much easier to read.

Look, we all make choices in terms of how we post. But please don't use your method of posting to correct my method of posting.

If you have anything to discuss, I'd be glad to read it, but deconstruction of one's posting style accomplishes nothing.

 

[BrotherRool]

I'm pretty sure Yahtzee did an article on this, games should be realistic up to the point it serves immersion and gameplay.

There are situations (hardcore survival games) where realistic damage could be interesting. And modern shooters prefer to have Red Screen Fever kill you rather than a hit point bar, but a system that swapped that out for realistic modelling would be much harder and more intrusive to keep track of in a battle.

And also think about this, the closer you are to death, the harder it is to get out of a situation, because you're losing your immobility. So really we've got a certain threshold after which death is almost certain but dragged out, meaning it's basically a long game over screen. Most game mechanics should work the other way, the closer to death you are the more ability you have to escape from it, because it gives people a genuine chance to recover from critical moments with genuine skill and ramps up the excitement by increasing the skin of the teeth moments.

But there are definitely places where it could be interesting.

 

[Gormech]

How about this idea. Way back on the N64, there was a Star Wars game. In it, you flew a ship and as you got hit, parts of the ship on the bottom of the screen would go from green to yellow to red and then black. Let's do the same with guys in the FPS with legs slowing down movement, arms making the gun sway, and head/chest leading to death. It's a compromise between hit points and narrative damage. Just let it have a way to heal back in story games. (Stimpacks like in Fallout?)

We can even add changes of it to the difficulty levels:
Easy: Auto regen and an adrenalin boost near death speeding up reloads and stuff.
Normal: Slow regen with decent hit points per limb
Hard: No regen, no adrenalin boost, enemies take the same damage you do.

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

How about this idea. Way back on the N64, there was a Star Wars game. In it, you flew a ship and as you got hit, parts of the ship on the bottom of the screen would go from green to yellow to red and then black. Let's do the same with guys in the FPS with legs slowing down movement, arms making the gun sway, and head/chest leading to death. It's a compromise between hit points and narrative damage. Just let it have a way to heal back in story games. (Stimpacks like in Fallout?)

We can even add changes of it to the difficulty levels:
Easy: Auto regen and an adrenalin boost near death speeding up reloads and stuff.
Normal: Slow regen with decent hit points per limb
Hard: No regen, no adrenalin boost, enemies take the same damage you do.

THat sounds like a good idea; I especially like the ramping difficulty.

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

Hit points are a basic part of mo SNIP

Just saw your comment in the "bring the pain" article. One of the points of the old CP2020 RPG was limb loss, quite common to be injured beyond the point you can't use it or have one mangled beyond repair. Assuming you survived you then had to hope you had enough cash for a metal replacement, or if you were really rich have a clone one grown, if not maybe you could get a spare one that someone else "no longer needed". But you were hopping/one armed until you got a doc to fit you up with a replacement. As per the article, getting injured also severely hampered your abilities. Might well be pulled over into 2077.