Extra Punctuation: Why Regenerating Health Sucks

[unwesen]

While I think the article makes a solid argument, my experience is almost the opposite: I enjoy games with health regeneration more. That's not to say I don't remember the glorious moments of frantically strafing around a Cyberdemon with one health remaining.

The point is that if there is no way to regenerate health other than being in a shielded position for a certain amount of time, then tactics are more about holding positions than moving between them, and therefore more about figuring out which positions one *should* hold and when. They can additionally be more about stealth, if the game allows for that.

Note that I do understand that games that require you to move to regenerate health also include tactics, and can include a stealth element. It's just that the balance is tipped towards making snap judgements rather than sitting back and thinking stuff through. I much prefer the latter.

In the end, the change makes for a different playing style; calling that a loss shows your preference in playing styles, but that's not a preference I share.

 

[Distortionfile]

I think Duke 3d had it right years ago. You could find medkits that were portable, and keep them with you. I realize D3d also had stationary health pick ups in two varieties, but I think the traveling kit solves this complaint effectively. Resident evil had a similar approach by pretending marijuana was a 'healing herb' and that burn spray worked on zombie bites.
Games like Rainbow Six had a decent mechanic, but those are scenario driven environments where the mechanic wouldn't transfer to most other platforms. In halo, you're waiting for your shield to recharge. I honestly didn't have a big problem with that. It's much more believable than standing on a red cross box. Honestly the real solution to this is the game play archetype itself. Instead of thralls of fearless enemies showering your delicate body with lead, perhaps situations involving only a few aggressors, who are just as afraid of holes as the rest of us, and who will die just as easily as the game character if a bullet grazes them.

Another excellent mechanic, one that I feel holds the most potential, is armor. A magic/technological marvel that converts energy into not getting hurt at the cost of a timed energy bar or battery pick ups or charging ports. I think Crysis does this in about the same way. Magic/power armor is really the best blend of believable and playable you're going to be able to shoehorn into an action shooter.

 

[ScipioAmericanus]

This is why I liked Sniper:Elite (lovely retro-game from 2005), taught you to be really careful about diligent searching, random shooting and taking damage.

Sod all health packs to pick up around each map, and what stuff you can scrounge from dead bodies is usually near to nothing.

 

[brinvixen]

I like what Yahtzee had to say here. I don't play many games with regenerating health systems (I've only played Halo once or twice)

can't say Halo would be the best example for you to be saying, well okay Halo 2 and 3
the first game and Reach had a health bar with a recharging shield (altho they are weaker in these games)

if you haven't played Call of Duty, that's where it's completely all about recharging health. screen turns reddish/bloody...wait a bit and it goes away (oh and Gears of War) haha...at least it keeps the action going idk

I'm not really into the God of War genre, but I remember the X-Men Origins: Wolverine game that's the only game where super fast regeneration truly fit hahahaa

I've played a bit of CoD as well, so I know about the "reddish/bloody" screen you're talking about. To be honest, I don't think there's anything wrong with the idea of regenerating health, I just think that more often that not, people wait around (in hiding) for their health to come back, as opposed to moving forward, and that could slow up the action. At least, that's my first response whenever I play those kinds of games.

Then again, since I don't play many FPS games often, I guess the RH issue doesn't really affect me. I could just understand where Yahtzee was coming from in his article =P

yeahh it is a trade off between the whole "hide behind wall waiting to heal" slowing down the pace versus the "oh god I only have one bit of health left must run around looking for health pack" situation

there's trade offs for both, although maybe if us all just got better at games and never got in those kinda situations it'd work things out lol

HA! SO TRUE! XD

 

[51gunner]

I totally disagree. Nothing is worse than the pyrrhic victory in a video game: you beat the boss or fight, and then are left too wounded and/or out of supplies to continue. Even worse is if there's a save point/check point right afterwards.

While generally any game with fixed health systems will resupply and heal you after a boss fight or a fight designed to be hard, it means that any bad fluke that still leaves you alive can doom you at any time. I'm thinking in particular of Half-Life 2's grenade-wielding suicide zombines. Get hit by one of those guys when you're not looking at it's entirely possible to be left horribly injured, away from a medkit, and with more targets to fight.

From a design standpoint, it also eliminates the element of surprise. How can you tell when there's a big fight coming up? Fresh supply of medkits. In my opinion, it's bad when I'm worried by the sight of a medkit pile. This also kills the element of surprise; you knew things were about to get bad before it happened.

With any form of regeneration, at least you can know how much (at a minimum) a player will have, and design around that. With fixed health, you have no guarantees (you can leave medkits, but you can never guarantee a player will find them or will not have used them already). You can guess, you can try, but by god the pyrrhic victory will always be possible.

 

[TacticalAssassin1]

I thought Far Cry 2 did it good.

I think it would be interesting if you got shot up pretty bad, somebody could drag you to cover and you just lay there for a while with your pistol drawn, shooting around the corner while you wait for the medic guy to come fix you up.

 

[repulsion666]

Regenerating health is an awful system and it suites the bland modern gaming scene very well, it slows the gameplay down (take a few shots then hide while your health regenerates), it encourages people to play like wimps. FPS gun battles were awesome when the combat system revolved around you defeating opponents by out manouvering them instead of taking cover behind a pile of sandbags. Overall it was a system made to make games appeal to casual gamers and basically water down the FPS genre.

I love it when people say picking up health packs is fake, since when is taking hundreds of shots, a couple of grenades blow up beside you, then your health regenerates like some kind of superhero with regenerating limbs realistic?

 

[Dethpixie]

It's nice to see I'm not the only one to have thought of the 'luck' thing. Though I suppose that it would throw off all of our current character archetypes. Suddenly the huge space marine encased in two Hyundai's worth of armor is less useful in a firefight than a Las Vegas card shark.

Actually someone implement this immediately.

 

[Mike Fang]

I don't recall the last game I played that had regenerating health, but this is definitely true; when all you have to do is sit around fingering your own bunghole until you get back up to health, it takes a lot of the challenge out of a game. Yahtzee's alternatives to randomly spawned health items are good, but if it hasn't been suggested yet, I want to toss in my own suggestion: Health by Self-Medication.

This isn't an unexplored concept. The best example I can give right now is either Killing Floor or LFD/LFD2 on Steam. For those of you who haven't played the former game, every player starts out with a syringe that injects some sort of painkilling/health restoring drug (maybe there is a future in medicinal marijuana, ba dum tish.) When the players find themselves injured, they can use this syringe to inject themselves with drugs that will, after a few seconds, boost your health back up. You get an unlimited supply of vials of drugs, but it takes a while before you can use them again. Also, you can use the syringe on other players for even greater effect and vice versa.

I think this kind of system is a very good one; it's not effectively giving you unlimited health in the middle of a fight because the rate enemies injure you is a lot faster than the rate the drugs heal you. Plus injecting yourself requires you to put away your weapon and pull out the syringe, so while healing you can't fight back. The best strategy is to find a lull in the battle (often provided by team mates covering you) and either taking your meds or having someone else administer them. This kind of system seems like a great way to keep health item drops to a minimum.

If you want to have at least SOME health items, I would advise going the LFD/LFD2 route and be able to carry around first aid kits. To use them you have to stop and either bandage yourself or get someone else to bandage you. Now I sometimes find it a little surprising that the entire contents of a first aid kit would be used by one person, so maybe the system could be revamped more like Call of Cuthulu: Dark Corners of The Earth, where the first aid kit can be used more than once, but still a limited number of times.

Whatever the model, I think this method of healing would really work well. It could reduce or do away with having to drop health items like confetti all over the game while still not making recovery as brain-dead easy as just staring at a wall. You'd have to pick your time to heal up, possibly have to ration your carry-on healing supplies, and it could even involve a mini-game to determine how much health you get out of the experience. I know Yahtzee said he doesn't like quick-time events very much, but he did say once he could understand them as a core part of gameplay rather than a random, no-warning-dick-move sort of element. This could be a good place to apply that.

 

[Howling Din]

Idea: have a health system in which there is no bar, but physical indication of bodily damage (cuts, bleeding, limping, etc.) and let the player subjectively guess how much health remains. I think it would work very well in a horror game if well executed. One could even get extreme and have free-flowing blood, and howls of pain with each step taken. a dramatic spectacle cutting its' way into the interactive element my representing something meaningful.

 

[Arppis]

I have to say, that luck meter thing is something I have wanted to see also for a long time. It's "movielike", you know how the heroes are never getting hit and are extremely lucky. Just makes sense. Other way around it is ofcourse to have your character loaded with some experimental tech, like in Crysis games. So you would have atleast some reasonable cover against bullets.

 

[ZexionSephiroth]

Another option of getting health back could be the Farcry 2 method of "Dig out the bullet and/or treat the wound". It leaves you vulnerable for a few seconds, you're actively taking care of your health, and most importantly it makes sense. Of course, it could make things more interesting in the otherwise boring FPS genre.

Guy 1: "I've been hit! Hand me the knife skipper!"
Guy 2: "You want a splint with that?"
Guy 1: "nah, just pass me the boot padding so I can get the foot working."
Guy 2: "I Think we're doing quite well."
Guy 1: "What do you mean?"
Guy 2: "we're in a squad of 20 and we've only got 16 major injuries, not bad for a Battlefield 6 deathmatch."