What is the appeal of healthbar-em-up shooters?

[Zhukov]

So I've been keeping half an eye on Ubisoft's Division game that's coming out soonish. I was half hopeful that we'd finally be getting the triple-A DayZ knock-off I've been hankering for ever since all of the world's indie devs proved themselves mysteriously incapable of actually finishing such a game.

Finally got around to watching some unedited, non-trailer, non-press-release gameplay footage.

Aaaaaaand... it's a healthbar-em-up bullet-sponge fest. Y'know the sort, where you have to pour two magazines of ammo into standard human enemies as they hemorrhage numbers. Think Borderlands. How dull.

And now I'm a wee bit salty. I've just never understood why anyone would want to play one of these things. And now this nefarious trend has ruined, ruined I say, a maybe-possibly promising game.

You know what's satisfying? Drawing a bead, firing off a burst and watching an enemy drop.

You know what isn't satisfying? Drawing a bead, firing off a burst and watching an enemy lose 2.5% of his health bar.

It also tends to drag down a game mechanically as well. In a game where combatants can die in 4-8 shots positioning and cover and the element of surprise actually matter. In a game where it takes 40 odd shots, not so much. One person opens fire, the other returns fire and then they stand there drilling away into each other's health bars until the one with the bigger numbers wins.

So where is the appeal in the latter style? Explain this to me. Justify your subjective preferences.

 

[Pseudonym]

I think health bars should in general be short and sweet. Maybe not as short as in your average twitch shooter, but Borderlands, destiny and probably the devision as well have them way too long, making the moment to moment gameplay very stale.

I understand higher health bars better in RPG's where upping your stats and having good stats is a part of gameplay. A result of this is that it is at least possible to have a very high health bar and/or a very low damage output. In strategy games high health bars slow down the action which has the advantage of allowing the player more oversight.

If, however there is only one charactar that matters and the gameplay has me controlling that charactar directly, (shooters and melee-focussed games) I prefer to keep the pace up. I don't even really like bossfights in these games for that reason. It bores me to have to do that one evade and attack the boss at his weak point in his attack pattern twenty times in a row because the boss' has ridiculous health and armour. (Dark souls 2, looking at you here)

Though, as I understand it, the division, destiny and borderlands are all multiplayer focussed skinner boxes, taking cues from MMO's. Having the skill ceiling be too high in such games can be risky as challenging gameplay can become frustratingly stressful when you aren't too interested in the gameplay and are just there to have a good night with friends while tricking yourself into believing you do something meaningful because your stats where increased by .01%.

 

[veloper]

I don't know about Division specifically, because I haven't paid attention to it yet, but in general, I think the appeal is still challenge.

What is the appeal of boss fights? They don't drop like flies and they are challenging to beat (if the game designer did his job).

The only ingredient required is that it should take skill and not just time to beat the baddie, so lethal bullet sponges and more advanced tactics than just holding the trigger button can play just fine.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

It's because Ubisoft is stupid. Let's not kid ourselves. This was never a promising game. It's an Ubisoft game. They don't know how to design a game properly. Their idea of progression is to give you weapons that don't deal a very realistic amount of damage so that you would feel some satisfaction when you unlock weapons with slightly higher stats. It's the most basic and stupid attempt of progression that doesn't require any actual thought.

It's the same thing that happened in their latest Assassin's Creed game. You start of dealing a shitty amount of damage and you can't carry around a lot of stuff. And that actually made the game decently challenging at first. Good game designers would find a way to reward you with better weapons without sacrificing the challenge. But Ubisoft is utterly incapable of good game design. Once again their idea of progression was to just reward you with stronger weapons and more slots to carry other stuff. But that's not it. They also give you ability to reduce enemy health and enemy weapon damage with upgrades, making the game retarded easy along the way.

And because the only sense of achievement is derived from unlocking new things, you don't really have a choice but to continue unlocking new things, making the game worse and worse as you continue playing. It's a pathetic excuse for game design. And that's what Ubisoft is all about.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

I guess it makes getting new gear feel like an accomplishment.

I have already given up on the Division, I HATE bullet spongey gameplay. it makes no sense in the Division even more, I saw a guy on a video headshot a normal grunt with a sniper rifle and he didnt die. Those kinds of games can find someone else to play them.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

I've been trying to figure out the appeal of shooters full stop, since I started gaming.

You know what's satisfying? Drawing a bead, firing off a burst and watching an enemy drop.

Really? It's a little bit predictable, isn't it?

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I don't know about Division.
With Borderlands you can chalk the sponging to space armor or alien epidermis or simply the goofy tone of the series overall. I've found that, monsters and robots and bosses aside, very few humanoid enemies can take more than a a single well-placed bullet to the head. And that there is an elementary rock-paper-scissors method to dealing more damage than simply pointing and shooting, at least notable as of the second game.

 

[Bilious Green_v1legacy]

It's because Ubisoft is stupid. Let's not kid ourselves. This was never a promising game. It's an Ubisoft game. They don't know how to design a game properly. Their idea of progression is to give you weapons that don't deal a very realistic amount of damage so that you would feel some satisfaction when you unlock weapons with slightly higher stats. It's the most basic and stupid attempt of progression that doesn't require any actual thought.

It's the same thing that happened in their latest Assassin's Creed game. You start of dealing a shitty amount of damage and you can't carry around a lot of stuff. And that actually made the game decently challenging at first. Good game designers would find a way to reward you with better weapons without sacrificing the challenge. But Ubisoft is utterly incapable of good game design. Once again their idea of progression was to just reward you with stronger weapons and more slots to carry other stuff. But that's not it. They also give you ability to reduce enemy health and enemy weapon damage with upgrades, making the game retarded easy along the way.

And because the only sense of achievement is derived from unlocking new things, you don't really have a choice but to continue unlocking new things, making the game worse and worse as you continue playing. It's a pathetic excuse for game design. And that's what Ubisoft is all about.

I'm pretty sure Ubisoft doesn't design games, they design monetisation models that just happen to look oddly similar to videogames.

 

[CaitSeith]

It also tends to drag down a game mechanically as well. In a game where combatants can die in 4-8 shots positioning and cover and the element of surprise actually matter. In a game where it takes 40 odd shots, not so much. One person opens fire, the other returns fire and then they stand there drilling away into each other's health bars until the one with the bigger numbers wins.

Spoiler: That made this image pass through my mind.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

I also need to mention that there's no reason for anyone to buy this game when they can just get Insurgency and install SOCOM mod instead. It may not be open world, but it's infinitely more intense than a game where everyone is a bullet sponge.

 

[BlackBark]

Well this is bad news...I had been kind of looking forward to The Division, although I must admit I hadn't paid any attention to what it was going to be like. I just assumed it was going to be a bit like Ghost Recon, except post apocalyptic style and not shit (at least, I hoped).

If it is going to be like Borderlands, then I almost certainly won't get it.

I wouldn't say those health bar style shooters have no place, but I feel they are far more suited to arcade style games. If there is a serious and realistic setting, which is what The Division looks like to me, then I think the shooting mechanics should be realistic as well.

I just don't like the idea of sneaking through the city, coming across a group of enemies, finding a good sniping location, carefully lining up the shot, only for it to cause mild irritation to my target.

 

[DrownedAmmet]

While I do hate bullet sponge enemies, what I hate most is when shooting someone has literally no effect other than to tick down their health bar. You just got shot, curse at me or something man!
I don't even mind having to double headshot someone as long as their helmet flies off spectacularly after the first shot

 

[Soviet Heavy]

There are games that do Health Bars well, and dozens more that do it poorly. Primarily, I think that health bars should be relegated to the player in SP and everyone in MP. NPC enemies shouldn't have health bars, or at least not visual ones. Half Life 2 has a health bar for Gordon Freeman, and an invisible one for enemy soldiers. It's still there, but instead of it being shown as a bar, it is determined by how many shots they can take from a gun, and that number changes depending on the power of the gun.

For example, a Combine Metrocop will take on magnum shot to kill, but a Combine Overwatch trooper takes two or three depending on if they're blue or white, but a headshot on either is a guaranteed kill.

The appeal of health bars in FPS titles is that they can change the dynamic of the game from a frantic pop'n'shoot experience to an endurance test, where you judge what supplies you have and measure how risky you want to act in any given encounter. It also makes for increasingly tense experiences when you are low on health and ammunition, without a resupply in sight, so you become exceptionally cautious, or just completely nuts.

In multiplayer, I prefer health bars to twitch shooters, because it gives me more time to react, and I prefer that endurance style gameplay over whichever person just happened to shoot first. It's why I prefer War Thunder's air combat to its Tank Combat (also because I hate getting sniped by some jackass across the map after getting uptiered)

 

[happyninja42]

Aaaaaaand... it's a healthbar-em-up bullet-sponge fest. Y'know the sort, where you have to pour two magazines of ammo into standard human enemies as they hemorrhage numbers. Think Borderlands. How dull.

Seeing how your character is equally tough, I don't see how this is a problem, unless you just simply don't like that specific kind of game style.

And now I'm a wee bit salty. I've just never understood why anyone would want to play one of these things. And now this nefarious trend has ruined, ruined I say, a maybe-possibly promising game.

You know what's satisfying? Drawing a bead, firing off a burst and watching an enemy drop.

You know what isn't satisfying? Drawing a bead, firing off a burst and watching an enemy lose 2.5% of his health bar.

See, that's just an opinion. Because I in fact, am of the opposite standing. You know what I don't find satisfying, dying instantly due to somebody with a quicker hand/eye response twitch than me. You know what I don't find satisfying, leveling up a character, signifying them being "stronger", and they still drop with one hit. I've played shooters like that, and they fucking suck.

You know what is satisfying to me? Being able to strategise with a team and work on how to take down a tough opponent over an extended period of time. Of having to plan out if this is the time for me to drop a smoke grenade for cover, or maybe pull out my shield ability to cover my allies, while we advance, so they can flank. That's fun. Trying to do all of that, and dying in .02 seconds because someone with a better latency, and quicker nerve impulses was my opponent, is not fun.

It also tends to drag down a game mechanically as well. In a game where combatants can die in 4-8 shots positioning and cover and the element of surprise actually matter. In a game where it takes 40 odd shots, not so much. One person opens fire, the other returns fire and then they stand there drilling away into each other's health bars until the one with the bigger numbers wins.

Uuuh...yeah no. Sorry but in this example, the person actually using cover/position is still going to be better off. Seeing as you aren't fighting 1 on 1, sure you might be able to do a slugfest with 1 guy, but his 8 buddies are going to eat you for lunch if you don't get some freaking cover. The footage I've seen, from people play testing it, showed pretty clearly that if you try and Leroy Jenkins that shit, you're going to die, and die fast.

So where is the appeal in the latter style? Explain this to me. Justify your subjective preferences.

Because if you are someone like me, who isn't a 17 year old twitch response gamer, it's fun to play a game where planning, tactics, and the effective application of talents/abilities/gear is what you need to win, is infinitely more enjoyable than some deathmatch slugfest with tweens who spend the whole time acting like little fucksticks. Give me a game where I can try and plan out how to best support my team, to give our group the edge we need to survive the long fight, over the extended period of time, any day, compared to some .05 second response time deathgame, where all I see is the fucking "you are dead" screen rotating over and over.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Because there's just some primal satisfaction in seeing the task you're set out to do (in this case killing enemies) be achieved quicker via finding new gear and being more effective against enemies.

I haven't played any other "health bar" shooters aside from Bordelands, but to simplify it to this extent kind of misses the point. Having the capacity to take some damage can change the dynamic of a shooter to something totally different from, say, COD. In BL2, for example, weaker enemies will often rush you into melee, weak ranged units will shoot from cover and throw grenades, and bigger baddies can stand there and be a major threat. It forces the player to not rely on cover and always be on the move, forcing quick tactical decisions. Since the player can take a fair bit of damage compared to most shooters, movement becomes more viable as a strategy. Then there's the element of some enemies having shields while others have armor, some are weaker to fire, some have visible weak spots and so on.

You know what isn't satisfying? Drawing a bead, firing off a burst and watching an enemy lose 2.5% of his health bar.

It also tends to drag down a game mechanically as well. In a game where combatants can die in 4-8 shots positioning and cover and the element of surprise actually matter. In a game where it takes 40 odd shots, not so much. One person opens fire, the other returns fire and then they stand there drilling away into each other's health bars until the one with the bigger numbers wins.

These things don't really apply to Borderlands. Most enemies will die from 10 shots or so, and only the biggest bosses will lose that little health from bursts of fire. The bosses are meant to be big climactic moments, so if they dropped from firing a single clip into them the spectacle wouldn't really be that spectacular, would it? Also like I said, enemies in Borderlands are varied enough to keep the player moving and the player isn't a bullet sponge. Standing still will get you killed in seconds in Borderlands.

 

[maninahat]

It's why I hated the one hour I spent with one of the Gears of War game. It wasn't even a difficult game, it was just get behind the cover, place a magazine and a half into one enemy behind the other bit of cover, do the reload minigame, repeat.

If the enemy can't be quickly killed, at least have a good bit of injury animation. That's what thrilled me about MoH and COD back in the day, in that you could knock an enemy down without killing them, thus making them marginally more tougher whilst still making your weapons feel like they had an impact. Also, doing this allows "juggling" to become a valid gameplay mechanic, stunning various enemies as they try to overwhelm you.

Half Life takes a weird approach, in that it is far more about weapon and situational optimization. Most enemies are moderately spongey, but there is always a certain choice of weapons and tactics that lets you kill them faster (which is important, as you are also a bullet sponge, constantly losing health from their hitscan weapons). It is old fashioned, but it works well enough by giving you so many weapon options. Modern games now like to restrict player weapons as much as possible though, ruling out the diversity.

 

[Bombiz]

So where is the appeal in the latter style? Explain this to me. Justify your subjective preferences.

Because if you are someone like me, who isn't a 17 year old twitch response gamer, it's fun to play a game where planning, tactics, and the effective application of talents/abilities/gear is what you need to win, is infinitely more enjoyable than some deathmatch slugfest with tweens who spend the whole time acting like little fucksticks. Give me a game where I can try and plan out how to best support my team, to give our group the edge we need to survive the long fight, over the extended period of time, any day, compared to some .05 second response time deathgame, where all I see is the fucking "you are dead" screen rotating over and over.

What if you're 1not a 17 year old twitch response gamer but still finds bullet sponges to be boring? sorry but I just don't get why bullet sponges automatically make things more tactical/strategic. For me at least , most of the times I play a game with bullet sponges enemies I try to use some sort of cover/plan of attack but it all becomes moot because all the enemies just end up rushing me with their Spongy HP bars and one hit weapons. I also don't get why having enemies with less health automatically make the game a 'twitchy shooter'. Just because the enemies die quickly doesn't mean you won't.

 

[Souplex]

I find it vastly preferable to "Squishy" shooters where it's all about who gets the drop on who rather than who can win a sustained fight.
Plus having reasonable amounts of health makes melee a viable option, and melee is always more fun.
The fact that as a top-of-the-line super-cyborg you were too squishy to survive if you were spotted was a big part of what ruined Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
The term is "Full clip shooters" as in it takes a full clip to drop an enemy.