Extra Punctuation: Why Regenerating Health Sucks

[LittleChone]

I honestly hope developers start using the Just Cause 2's style of a health regeneration system: if you're only given small wounds in combat, your health will regenerate over time. But if you're given a serious injure, you're health will be fixed at that point until you use a health pack. That way, you can still keep charging into battle, but still get killed if you aren't careful enough!

 

[karpiel]

There was literally zero problem with the old Doom system of just having medkits on the ground. Is there a mod for bulletstorm that replaces regenerating health with medkits?

 

[lead sharp]

You could argue the regen' health bar is a luck bar (with a twist of imagination). I always remember getting hit in Rainbow Six and dieing after one hit, really satisfying to complete though.

Oddly I saw a fat girl fall over today, she did cry.

 

[Fiirdraak]

I suppose regenerationg health is an easy way out. It is true that it can make the pace faster but it also takes away the consequences of the player's previous actions. It's like "Okay, that didn't go so well but hey! Your healthbar is full so you can try again in the next room with a better luck!"

Just read about the new Deus Ex game where they decided to implement regenerating health to boost the gameplay rather than making the player backtrack the area in search of a healthkit. To me that is a terrible choice since Deus Ex was never a fast-paced action game but one where you needed to think things through rather than just endlessly blast your way through of semi-detached sequences of enemy troops trying to kill you.

 

[Daemonate]

I agree with Yahtzee - Regen health is just a fucking bad idea.

I realised I haven't really played any shooters in the last 5 years, and then suddenly that that was one of the main reasons why...not fun.

Sure you can obsessively reload - which is basically regeneration by mashing the quickload button. But at least this makes you replay some content. And it's optional. WHen I first played through Doom 2, I did with quickload mashing after losing 5% HP. When I became a more mature gamer, I played through without reloading unless I died.

So it leaves the player to decide the experience.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

Segmented regenerating health, like Condemned, still reigns as my favorite.

 

[Triforceformer]

In Duke Nukem Forever (This is a bit speculation, but bear with me), health regen would work because it helps the player feel as powerful as Duke is; able to take bullets like they're candy...or some other metaphor. It also helps that the health bar is named an "EGO" bar. Duke Nukem's huge-ass EGO can deflect bullets and lasers, and absorb pipe-bomb explosions. That alone justifies the regenerating health. For me at least.

But it's not like DNF just gave up its exploration factor by going with EGO. Searching around for interactive novelties, executing "bleeding out" enemies, etc, inflates the overall EGO. So rather than searching for health packs to mend your wounds, you find say for example, a "Balls of Steel" pinball machine. If you get the high score, your overall EGO becomes larger so that you'll have a better chance at surviving future encounters. Yes it's still regenerating health, but it's regenerating health that accounts for the lack of depth that would come from just having the system and nothing else.

Pity this is all speculation; that would be a very interesting use of the ego bar. Having it go up whenever he does something cool, like a health bar tied in to the achievement system.

Well when I said "Speculation" I meant that the fine details were still a bit hazy. But the EGO system is very definitely the following. It's a health bar, which goes to a Critical Health mode if its depleted. You can take quite a beating, even if you're a modest Duke. The EGO Bar regenerates to full after 5 short seconds without being hit. If you do something cool or Duke-like, Gearbox calls these "Duke-isms", the overall EGO bar increases. Admiring yourself in the mirror, bench-pressing 600 pounds, executing (Mighty Boot) an enemy, etc, all inflate your EGO.

Health Bar
Critical Health
Regens quickly
You can take alot of hurt
Duke-isms inflate your EGO

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxKL1By-6j4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u139BR_abK0

The first video shows the basic idea and just how fast health regenerates. The second video shows just how much Duke can take.

It's just that the fine details of what exactly constitutes a "Duke-ism" is unclear. I'm guessing any of the many interactive novelties in the game will count towards your EGO. But, Yahtzee will probably still ***** about it just because it's health that regenerates.

 

[mikespoff]

The Extra Credits guys made a good point about regenerating health recently - it allows much more predictable level design. The game designers know when you enter an area that you will have a certain amount of health, and can plan the enemies accordingly.

Of course, putting a health pack outside the door would probably cover this too...

 

[TyrantGanado]

Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway uses the "luck" justification for why you get your "health" back. Basically, the more Baker sticks his neck out the more likely he is to get shot by a Nazi. If he gets back behind cover and moves it comes back quicker. It's essentially like the more obvious you make yourself the more the bad guys zone in on you for the kill.

Naughty Dog used a similar reason for Uncharted's system, which makes sense given how insanely lucky Nate is story-wise as well.

 

[Mooshman]

Shooters have DIED. They've become military training simulators, and that's great if you're gung ho about the military, but what about those of us that want to play a good old fashioned shooter? Now a days you can't make mistakes or you get the dreaded game over screen, you can't go in guns blazing and just enjoy blasting everyone around you away while managing your health, and you can't play a game in a different way. It's always the same game of ducking behind cover, making a popshot/burst fire then duck back and heal up , twiddle your thumbs, go bake a cake, etc come back and move to the next cover; oh look a quick time event killed you because you were so BORED you weren't expecting something crazy to happen.

We're at the point where games are dipping their feet into the story telling swimming pool, and regenerating health allows for a flow of gameplay and thus a flow of narrative.

A lot of people (me included) have said how regenerating health lets you run into a fire-fight with full health before every confrontation, allowing devs to make epic fire-fights every 5 minutes for the player.

Back in the old days I remember before every large confrontation you'd have what I used to call the "prelude room"... usually a hallway littered with health packs, weapons and ammo. I'd always think "Uh oh... the shit is about to hit the fan" and be prepared for a big fight or boss battle to unfold.

I prefer regenerating health for one reason, it means that you can set up a large battle without the player being able to guess that one's around the corner. making the game more exciting, more suspenseful and ultimately more fun!

Regenerating health isn't a perfect system, of course not. It's barely evolved since its first implementation in Halo, and most game developers decide to shoehorn it into any AAA title.

But devs have started to tweak it here and there with games like Escape from Butcher Bay, Far Cry 2, Condemned 2 and Ninja Gaiden 2 into something less boring. (Christ so many sequels!)

 

[MowDownJoe]

I remember when Extra Credits argued that regenerating health allowed for better level design, since you always knew how much health the player would walk into any given room with. Reasonable argument, but I still wasn't sold, since you could still (as Yahtzee put it before just hide in a corner and suck on your thumb and then you'd be back to max.
Then I played Red Steel 2.
Talk about compromise. Regenerating health, but your health doesn't regenerate during combat! The level designers always knew what your health would be at in any given point in the game, but you couldn't go hide in a corner and suck on your thumb. It worked really well, and allowed for some challenging fights.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

This has probably been said, but, in many many games WITH health bars (eg. Half life 2), I end up constantly quickloading every time I lose more than about 20 health, which is a bit like having regenerating health but more boring and cheat-y.

See, this right here is the point where it's gotten ridiculous. I don't consider myself hardcore by any means, but I think if you can't force yourself to continue in a game, any game, when you've only lost 20 health out of 100 (good God, that's less than two health packs ? and those things ain't scarce!), you really need to man the fuck up. Seriously, people like you are the reason developers are scared to make games where hiding in the corner sucking your thumb doesn't make everything all better.

Well when I said "Speculation" I meant that the fine details were still a bit hazy. But the EGO system is very definitely the following. It's a health bar, which goes to a Critical Health mode if its depleted. You can take quite a beating, even if you're a modest Duke. The EGO Bar regenerates to full after 5 short seconds without being hit. If you do something cool or Duke-like, Gearbox calls these "Duke-isms", the overall EGO bar increases. Admiring yourself in the mirror, bench-pressing 600 pounds, executing (Mighty Boot) an enemy, etc, all inflate your EGO.

Ugh. What's the point of all those fancy ways to earn EGO if it just jumps up to full by doing nothing? That's worse than plain old regenerating health in my opinion; it means they went to a lot of trouble to include a feature nobody will use because by the time they even get to a point where they can, they'll be back to full EGO already.

What they should have done was make the EGO be tied directly into how much he rules at any given moment. Dealing damage slowly restores it; running away and hiding like a scared bunny actually makes it go down slowly; successfully finishing off a room full of baddies brings it back up to full, like in Arkham Asylum. And so on.

 

[Ashcrexl]

i think duke's ego system is awesome. i think the best health system is the one that increases whenever you take out bad dudes. wait, has this system actually been utilized before? i'm sure it has. has it? hmm.

 

[Andy of Comix Inc]

I actually really liked Halo: Reach's system (ironically), where you had a recharging shield, but a typical health bar underneath it that got damaged when your shield ran out. So hiding in cover for your shield to recharge was viable, but you still had health underneath it that you needed healthkits for.

I'm not a Halo fan by a long mile, but that was an interesting shake-up to the formula, I thought.

 

[Triforceformer]

Well when I said "Speculation" I meant that the fine details were still a bit hazy. But the EGO system is very definitely the following. It's a health bar, which goes to a Critical Health mode if its depleted. You can take quite a beating, even if you're a modest Duke. The EGO Bar regenerates to full after 5 short seconds without being hit. If you do something cool or Duke-like, Gearbox calls these "Duke-isms", the overall EGO bar increases. Admiring yourself in the mirror, bench-pressing 600 pounds, executing (Mighty Boot) an enemy, etc, all inflate your EGO.

Ugh. What's the point of all those fancy ways to earn EGO if it just jumps up to full by doing nothing? That's worse than plain old regenerating health in my opinion; it means they went to a lot of trouble to include a feature nobody will use because by the time they even get to a point where they can, they'll be back to full EGO already.

What they should have done was make the EGO be tied directly into how much he rules at any given moment. Dealing damage slowly restores it; running away and hiding like a scared bunny actually makes it go down slowly; successfully finishing off a room full of baddies brings it back up to full, like in Arkham Asylum. And so on.

They tried that in Manhattan Project, without the "Lose health by hiding" thing, I think. It was alright, but a bit frustrating if there weren't alot of enemies around. Also, the point of all the fancy ways to earn EGO is so that later parts won't totally kick your ass. Sure your base EGO can take quite a bit, but DNF ain't gonna be a push over based off the comments who got to play the first 90 minutes. Besides, I'd be worried about Duke's mental health if his EGO was fluctuating that much.

I think you may have mis-interpreted DNF's EGO system a bit. It's not that Duke-isms restore your health, it's that it makes the overall bar larger. Yes, it jumps to full pretty quick, no that ain't gonna help when there are 5 pig cops and an Assault Commander coming after your balls of steel simultaneously. The enemies in DNF aren't just glorified whack-a-mole like CoD. They're constantly pushing in on you to kill you as quick and hard as possible. Duke-isms help give you a much needed edge when things get hectic.

You see how big the EGO bar is in those videos? That's not how big it is at the start of the game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-97N6jNKb4

About 3 or 4 minutes in is when you see Duke's starting EGO bar. That shit ain't getting you past level 15, which is much bigger when you get there in that demo. You're going to need every mirror, weight bench, pinball machine, and powerup you can get to make your way through. Not that a "MODEST Bar" challenge where you NEVER use a Duke-ism wouldn't be interesting.

 

[thereverend7]

I really liked what Assassin's Creed 2 did. There you've got a bunch of health check-boxes, each worth about 4 of the smallest type of hit, if I remember correctly. Thing is, you don't die immediately when you hit 0, you just enter a "Sudden Death" mode while your last health check-box regenerates. So in a game where you have somewhere around 100 hp towards the end you regenerate up to 4, which means you have a chance to make it to a doctor, but without really being a in a position you wanted to start a fight in.

Believe it or not, i had a similar idea to yahtzee's about that "luck" system. you could have a character who is considered "very lucky" and as he's getting shot at, the bullets whiz by or he happens to dodge them. once your luck bar runs out though, its close to curtains for you. you would have a very limited health bar and once the bullets started hitting you, it would be realistic and you would die in one or two shots.

I'm genuinely distressed that Yahtzee has thought of my 'luck' system to replace health. For years I thought I was terribly clever to be the only person to have come up with it. Damn you, you behatted semi-Antipodean.

I've seen variations of this idea in indie tabletop RPGs and the likes. The reason I think it's never really caught on is that in the end it's pretty much just that you change the name of the red bar in the corner and remove a little effect that adds drama. And it gets a bit weird in some situations with stuff like fall damage - you land totally unscratched twice when jumping out of a window on the third floor and then you instantly die when stepping down from a table.

I think it could be done in a game like devil may cry or something really well. what i mean by that is you could have an over the top character- someone who does things that you couldn't even dream of doing at all times, so why not throw in dodging bullets and calling it luck? or "slickness" or something.

 

[Keldrif]

Ok so I have been working on a Rpgish map for StarCraft 2 for the last few months. It's kind of an homage for the "NOTD" maps with more Diablo 3 like abilities. My health system is kind of a hybrid. First there is no heath regen, but every class has shields that do regen so its like to health bars. And I liked the idea Blizzard had for D3 to curb potion spam with the God of War heatlh orbs so I put that in my map as well. Now in my map some enemies have a higher chance of dropping health orbs and the others are good at keeping you away from them, which I think works pretty well at least in my map where I am trying to encourage teamwork. A good team can pick off the "health droppers" then work their way through the others to make quick work of a mass of enemies. While a crappy team will get separated and over whelmed with no chance of reaching the health orbs.

The death system is also a Diablo rip off when you die you drop you gear and a naked clone is created at the last cloning station then the clone must make his way back to your equipment to have a chance of continuing on.

I have a lot of hope for health orbs, it works really well with a group of people that work together with the bonus of getting rid of the need for a medic I never liked playing a healer, I wanna kill stuff and with this setup everyone is the healer and no one is the healer. The best strategy seems to be when the team is at full health they should focus on killing enemies when shields start getting low and the group starts taking damage let guys with full shields move up and cover while the other let their shields regen, and when the team needs health cover the guy closest the the health orbs while he picks them up. Once the team is back to full health it's back to killing and covering who ever has the lowest shields.

But the best part of all this is it lets me send a small group of heroes against 1000s enemies, and a good group can smash their way through them in no time by taking turns covering and picking up heatlh to keep the team at full health. While a bad group has to pull little groups of enemies and wait for their shields to regen between pulls and the health orbs go poof before they were anywhere near them. Plus the more time you waste the harder everything gets and you eventually die because you couldn't work together. But thats just what I like.

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

Health systems to me are fine the way they are, for games that need immersiveness and planning out attacks (Dead Space 2, Bioshock) and have lulls in combat and exploring (FarCry2), it works well.

For games which need run-n-gun non-stop pacing, the regen health system works well. For those kinds of games (Vanquish, Gears of War), to have to stop and think and worry about health kits/healing just takes away some of the action.

Although it seems a few more games are gravitating towards this these days, I'm not complaining. Enemies getting more brazen to come and finish you off when they know you're wounded, and responding like so is a nice touch.

I remember those games on the other end of the spectrum, 2 shots max and you're down. Bloody Rainbow Six: Raven Shield was tough as hell, I could finish almost all terrorist hunt maps. Now, after finishing R6: Vegas 2 terrorist maps all on 'Realistic', I go back and play that and can barely get past 2 levels =S