Half Life 3 wishes

[AngryMan]

Hang on...?

So, if you were to mod the game so that your maximum health was 25, it wouldn't be any harder? I call bullshit on that one, mate. :-D There are weapons in that game that you can survive perfectly happily on full health and a fully charged suit that still do 25 points of damage to you even through the armour.

The point in HL2 is not to "not get hit in the first place" it is to "kill the other guy before they can do too much damage to you".

It's a more aggressive style of gameplay. Freeman's a living tank in that HEV suit of his, so the game's combat style reflects this - the point is that you run in and kill stuff quickly, not hide behind a wall like that pussy Marcus Fenix and kill stuff slowly.

Oh, and you CAN carry health packs with you and save them for when you actually need them. It's called "picking them up and carrying them". I'm being goofy though, because the thing is that, in Half-Life, there's ALWAYS some health stashed in a little box somewhere nearby. The game practically throws health at you. Not armour, admittedly, just health.

 

[shadow skill]

Do the enemies have more health because you have less? Do they shoot bigger guns because you have less health? Do they smell blood because you have less heath and come at you in a wave of ten firing pulse refile grenades at you? The answer is no, they stay exactly the same regardless of your health hence the difficulty of any given area remains constant.

 

[AngryMan]

not true. Half-Life does have a difficulty setting - it modifies the seed for the random accuracy of NPCs, making them more likely to shoot on target. It also slightly scales up the amount of damage their weapons do, and increases their hit points.

The best example is a Strider. Striders take only three RPG rounds to kill on easy, five on medium, seven on hard.

It's a subtle effect, but the game is harder to complete on higher difficulty levels because of it. Even if each individual encounter isn't that much more challenging, you'll still take a little more damage and expend a little more ammunition, all of which mounts up.

 

[shadow skill]

That has nothing to do wit what I said. My point is that on any difficulty level how hard the enemies you face are is independant of how much health you have.

 

[Meshakhad_v1legacy]

OK, maybe being able to pick up people would be game-breaking, but how about:

Being able to pick up corpses, and for guns to do significant damage when fired from the gravity gun. I can accept that you can't pick up living creatures, but why not dead bodies? And why the hell will a Combine soldier die from being struck by a wooden plank repeatedly, but not a gun?

A melee feature would be nice, and wouldn't detract from Half-Life 2 much. Though I request that the melee combat damage scale something like this:

Grenades/Gravity Gun (because Gordon punches) - least amount of damage
9mm Pistol
Magnum
SMG
Pulse Rifle
Rocket launcher
Crowbar - most amount of damage, and fastest

I'd like the idea of a flamethrower. Everyone knows that setting things on fire is fun. Perhaps Valve could let us set fire to boxes and other destructible wooden objects? That would rock. You set fire to a box, then throw it. It shatters upon impact, and sends flaming splinters everywhere.

Oh, yeah, that would be awesome. Forget water physics. Valve, give us fire physics.

And about grabbing onto things - that could actually be done without even changing the gameplay much. They'd have to define edges properly, but if you can define cover properly, you can define edges. Then simply allow players to use E to grab on, and treat it like a ladder. Just make sure that players learn this near the start (which is something Valve have never had difficulty doing).

And allowing players to carry multiple health packs/batteries would be nice. Here's how it could work. Players can effectively carry up to 50 health in healthpacks, and 50 power in batteries. They are selected as if they were a weapon, and used similarly to stationary rechargers (the idea being that Gordon isn't actually carrying them, but he dumped them into his "reserves").

This might actually play like a healing system, except it has to be activated. Personally, I wouldn't mind if I could recharge my health by hiding and pulling out a health pack. It could give me an extra edge.

 

[AngryMan]

That has nothing to do wit what I said. My point is that on any difficulty level how hard the enemies you face are is independant of how much health you have.

And this is justification for putting a regenerating health system into Half-Life... why?

I can't see your logic at all, I'm afraid.

 

[gh0ti]

The episodes are NOT Half-Life 3, and the story will not end with them. Notice they are all called Half-life 2 Episode (X)?

As for regenerating health, it's a terrible idea and no game has ever benefitted from it. It completely ruined Halo for me, especially in multiplayer. Changes the dynamic from rewarding aggressiveness to rewarding cowering in a ditch for an arbitrary period of time until well enough to pop out again and fire a few shots. Neither medpacs or regenerating health address the problem of realism; if you truly wanted realism you'd be playing a simulation rather than an action game.

Gravity gun is arguably too useful as it is; can get through the games using very little other than the gravity gun.

Don't destroy the Gman's mystique. That you can fill in the vaguenesses of the Half-life story yourself is its greatest strength.

Do not try to copy Crysis and certainly do not emulate Halo 3.

The boat section was one of my favourite parts in the entire series, and the car in EP. 2, while not perfect, was a vast improvement over the buggy from HL2.

Bring back Egon and Gauss, two weapons that sum up Half-Life's quirky inventiveness. For the love of god, put a halt in this gaming trend to underpowering weapons. I adored the Egon's propensity to reduce enemies to gib after a few seconds of exposure. I blame it on Halo that bullets suddenly do a fraction of the damage of a punch to the face.

In short, Half-Life is great, drop the episode idea and ignore any temptation to bring in Halo/Crysis-esque moments and Half-life 3 will be awesome.

 

[ThaBenMan]

Dear Lord, hear my prayer.

Let Valve do what they have always done best,
Let them not be influenced by the mouths of the rest,
Let them work their art with skill and love,
Let them look at others and rise above.

Let it be as it was before,
Let regen health systems stay no more,
Let realism be left at the door
and let Alyx live, forevermore.

Amen!

 

[llamastorm.games]

There isnt going to be a half life 3 so all get over yourself.

Half Life 2 Episodes 1,2 and 3 are effectivly half life 3, this on done this way so instead of waiting 6 years like there was between half life 1 and half life 2 and then another six years between half life 2 and then 3 they decided to make episodes of slightly shorter game lenght and reduced cost.

Dosnt anyone ever go on the valve website.

 

[shadow skill]

That has nothing to do wit what I said. My point is that on any difficulty level how hard the enemies you face are is independant of how much health you have.

And this is justification for putting a regenerating health system into Half-Life... why?

I can't see your logic at all, I'm afraid.

The justification is the same as the quick save system. In more conventional FPS' there tends to be a habit of positioning health stations far enough apart that you tend to repeat various sections over and over because what ends up being created is an endurance match. The same effect would be evident if Half Life used a save point system like God of War or alot of RPG's. Difficulty should be firmly rooted in how the enemy behaves rather than where the dev team has decided to toss out a health station.

I remember one part of Halo 3 that took me maybe four hours to get through because of these rocket pack equipped assholes and this one ass munch with a fuel rod cannon. I actually ran out of ammo dealing with them, the difficulty lies more in my own ability to shoot, and how the enemies are attacking me rather than how many bullets I can soak up. (Which only affects how man times I will be repeating a section.) I want to see better AI, and better tactics on the part of my enemies rather than having to wonder where the next health station will be.

 

[gh0ti]

"There isnt going to be a half life 3 so all get over yourself."

Can you provide a reference for where valve said there will be no HL3? Valve have said as recently as December of last year that Episode 3 will not be the last game in the franchise.

In other words llamastorm, why did you bother reiterating what a half dozen people have already said without checking up on your facts?

 

[Arkeotype]

- a body, keep the first person, but at least give him some f***ing legs!
- camera that moves with said body, see F.E.A.R. of COD4 for inspiration
- an answer to the g-man question

all other additions would make it into something that is not halflife and would detract from the whole effect of the game. We play this game because we like it for it's creativity and innovative nature. If we try to take features from other games and jam them into the halflife mold, aren't we detracting from the singular nature of halflife that we all know and love?

 

[Vigormortis]

good ideas but hl3 is hl2 ep1, ep2 and ep3

gabe's mentioned it before, so next one will be halflife 4

I don't get it. The real facts have been made abundantly clear by Gabe and Valve as a whole. The Episodes are Half-Life 3 and they are the end of the Half-Life story. Once Episode 3 is released that's it folks, no more harrowing tales of Gordon's exploits against the evil forces of the multi-verse. Gabe in particular said they would be moving on to a new story that in no way involves Gordon Freeman. He hinted that they may explore other aspects of the Half-Life universe but that they would in no way be about Gordon.

So in other words: THERE WILL NOT BE A HALF-LIFE 3 (or 4 as cleverlymadeup said above). Making this entire post and any corresponding topics moot.

 

[llamastorm.games]

Also the Half Life storyline will end in HL2 EP 3 but there will be a new series of something but not in the same canon.

 

[Sarrazon]

No, they clearly stated that Episode 3 will NOT be the last game in the HL franchise.

 

[redstar alpha]

alyx and gordon walking of in to the sun set

 

[redstar alpha]

alyx and gordon walking of in to the sun set

 

[Strafe Mcgee]

You can really feel the love in this thread, can't you?

 

[Spartan152]

Indicisivegamer's Half Life 2 thread got me thinking "What do I want from Half Life 3?"

Most of the stuff that came to mind dealt with the game interface and some minor gameplay tweaks here is what I came up with:

1. No more driving segments they sucked. They really fucking blew, I wanted to kill myself during the boat segments especially.

2. No more contrived puzzles they are just annoying after the fourth or fifth one

3. No more "Platforming segments" they always end up sucking in games not intended to actually be platformers Half Life is no exception.

4. A redesigned weapons selection UI, Crysis has a pretty good system and one I think is worth emulating. There should be an option to have the game pause while you are in the menu.

5. The gravity gun should be able to pick up people from the start of the game.

6. A cover system because lets face it, it's lame to see a shooter that does not really let the player use the environment to absorb some of the bullets flying in your direction and still shoot back without stepping all the way back into the line of fire.

7. A hybrid regenerating health/shield system. Resistance Fall of Man is a great example of what I would like so see though I would prefer carrying the health packs with me like in Black.

8. Assault rifle and shotgun combo (This is a real system.) weapon. The guns are a bit too muh of standard fare something like that would be something you almost never see in games.

9. Auto-shotgun, just beause pump action shotguns are overdone.

10. An answer to G-man's angle and hopefully his death if it does not happen by the end of episode 3.

What are your wishes for Half Life 3?

1. Personally I thought Half Life 2 shined at its boat segment, because i found great enjoyment from plastering CPs with it, where as the buggy was, well, buggy. and annoying as hell, and far too long.

2. Half Life is built on the fact that it is a hybrid of first person shooter action and puzzle segments to out all the retard gun gamers out there. the first one had a lot of great puzzles, and so did HL2, but i will admit there hasn't been a specific new one in a long time. I go back to Yahtzee when I make these points, obviously.

3. again, Half life is built on being a nice ix up of multiple genres to make something new instead of a bland samey FPS we've all played 20 times. CoD4 doesn't have platforming or puzzles, no matter how awesome it is, and neither does Halo 3. Half Life (as a series) does, and its one of the things i love it for, for being different.

4. I don't really see where you come from on this one, as the fact that switching between weapons in Crysis made was tedious, and Half Life's UI is great, and has been a recurring feature in all its games, except maybe for DOD:S. also, pausing during the weapon switching just kills a fundamental part of gaming. realism. you get the same basic effect (that being of not getting shot and hurt) by hiding behind COVER. remember that? we used to use it back in the day, and definitely in paintball. why the hell doesn't that translate to games unless its like GoW where you have to?

5. story wise this is impossible. The overpowered gravity gun is because of the Citadel manipulating the gravity gun, accidentally flooding it with power, as shown by the sparks and such form it. because the citadel is now donions, it makes it almost impossible for the thing to overload again, possibly on the Borealis this will happen, but again, it makes no sense for the GG to randomly be super powered again. I too was amused by the Super Gravity Gun, but the point is that you need to figure a way to overload it again before you even THINK of using it again.

6.you can manually use cover as easily as you can in Rainbow Six Vegas or GoW, except wihtout a button. I constantly use cover to my advantage when I play HL2, or CoD4, games that don't specifically use a button for it.if you really apply some actual strategy to Half Life 2, you can use a lot of cover. a great example is the auto turret in Episode 2, where you had to duck to avoid getting vaporized. good deal, you used cover! besides, cover can get redundent if you have a freaking suit that stops most damage for you.

7. All right, if I may, NO, NO, NO, NO, and NO. go watch Yahtzee's Turok review, because honestly the fact the Half Life still USES a health meter system is one of the best things what with all games as of recent time being ones that have the bullshit regen system. i was hoping as I went along contradicting your points that this wouldn't come up, but then, BAM!
regen systems are retarded and offer no real challenge since all you have to do is be smart enough to hide somewhere until you're fine. health systems make think about what your doing, forcing you to be careful, as you have 5 hp left and need to get through a few more baddies before the enxt hopeful health pack. it always gives me a rush to just hide ina corner sobbing about how hard this'll be instead of sobbing in a corner about how hard i just got my ass kicked and how I'm gonna run back in after i regen. re. tar. ded. I honestly was annoyed by that change of pace when it was thrown into Halo 2. I was like.... "Why??" health meters make a game a real kick in the arse, and only outstanding games like CoD4 and GoW do the regen system justice. I miss the meter system from CoD 1. honestly I do.

8. I don't believe that there should be some weird gun like that, because i mean, the games don't really need that, and also, there are 3 weapons in the entire game you could find replicas for in real life. they are the magnum, the crow bar, and the shotgun. the rest have been brilliantly created strictly from the developer's imagination, and how can you say the gravity gun is samey? it was the first of its kind!

9. pump action shotguns make the game challenging because you have a slower rate of fire, thus keeping you on your toes, where as the auto shotty is just BLAMBLAMBLAMBLAM WIN! CS:S is a great example of how the two are different and how pump makes things tougher.

10. I too wish to find an answer to the G-man, because the man is like, so sneaky, it pisses me off when he dicks everything up. he's so manipulative and crafty, that one finds himself confused by him. also I wanna know where the hell Calhoun went.

Keep in mind I didn't mean to attack you even though i pretty much did anyway. I just felt a lot of your points were out of bounds when talking about Half Life, and I just wanted to clear some things up on many of your points. many of the changes you suggested would rip HL of everything that makes it good and pure, and make it a samey sci fi shooter. if you want these changes, I would not reccomend Half Life, because puzzles, platforming, and shooting are its bread and butter.

 

[AngryMan]

The justification is the same as the quick save system. In more conventional FPS' there tends to be a habit of positioning health stations far enough apart that you tend to repeat various sections over and over because what ends up being created is an endurance match. The same effect would be evident if Half Life used a save point system like God of War or alot of RPG's. Difficulty should be firmly rooted in how the enemy behaves rather than where the dev team has decided to toss out a health station.

I remember one part of Halo 3 that took me maybe four hours to get through because of these rocket pack equipped assholes and this one ass munch with a fuel rod cannon. I actually ran out of ammo dealing with them, the difficulty lies more in my own ability to shoot, and how the enemies are attacking me rather than how many bullets I can soak up. (Which only affects how man times I will be repeating a section.) I want to see better AI, and better tactics on the part of my enemies rather than having to wonder where the next health station will be.

No offense intended mate (no, really) but maybe you should learn how to shoot straight before you make blanket statements concerning what and does not work from a gameplay perspective.

It's my experience that Valve make very realistic assumptions about what the average player can achieve, and what sort of level their health and ammo will be at in a given area. Maybe they playtest it to shit, maybe they're just good at eyeballing it, but the fact is that their set pieces tend to be very well-pitched. A decent player can get through them, if not on their first try, then probably before their fifth. The more difficult the challenge, the bigger the stash of health and ammo they reward you with afterwards and supply you with before.

Besides, I will say this now: Halo should NEVER be used as a benchmark example of good gameplay. I don't care that it's fun, how good the plot is, or whatever. The fact is that the combat in those games is, by the standards of the broader FPS genre, mediocre and uninspiring.

Some of us like tension and difficulty that's brought on by being caught in a tough situation. Personally, I find regenerating health/shields make games too easy. "Aww, you got shot? Poor baby, give it a few seconds and it'll feel better"

give me "I'm shot! Crap, get to cover! kill that guy! oh god oh god where's that health pack it was around here somewh-shit! where did he come from! killhimoh god he took even more of my health away I only have seven hit points fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckwhew! got the medpack! still not healthy though, better be careful..." any day of the week.

I reckon hovering on the verge of death and the only thing you can do is fight to the best of your abilities is far more of a satisfying game experience than being able to go from nearly dead to fit as a fiddle in five seconds just by sucking your thumb in a corner.

That's not to say that games which use that mechanic aren't fun - I enjoyed CoD4 and GoW immensely - but variety is the spice of life, and some of my most scrotum-shrivellingly awesome moments in HL2 were induced partly by the fact that I was hanging by a thread.

There's nothing wrong with the way that Half-Life handles health. Nothing at all. So don't try and fix what isn't broken.

however...

Difficulty should be firmly rooted in how the enemy behaves rather than where the dev team has decided to toss out a health station.

Difficulty is a function of developer decision anyway. The level design, number, armament, location and behaviour of the bad guys, plus any time limits, failure conditions and that like are all part of the game, and thus was, at some point, decided by the dev team.

What you're basically doing is whining at the devs for making the game too hard for you. Cry some more, dude.