Health regen VS health pack pickup

[Brown Cap]

Yes: The Resistance Series (the first two, at least) Medal of Honor Airbourne, and Far Cry 3 have this very idea.
I believe it's the best health system.
It has a level of realism I can admire.

 

[Saltyk]

Well, Mass Effect 3 combined them to an extent. You had a shield and when that broke you had various health bars. If you had bad luck enemies could rip through that health fast. The shield did regenerate. But those health bars, once fully depleted, did not. You had to use a Med Kit to restore them. I think that was a decent system. And it made sense.

 

[FoolKiller]

health regen in any multiplayer makes it shitty.

The shield (and overshield) in Halo made me hate the way it works... also the grenade drop as you die shit.

I miss the health packs of yesteryear.

 

[KiloFox]

I just had an idea

Would it be possible to design an FPS or even 3rd person action game where both auto-health regen and health pickups were built in, as different levels of difficulty?

On easy you'd have the usual CoD-style health regen where you sit still for five seconds and suck on your passifier and suddenly you're back to full health, versus normal and harder difficulties where you'd have to seek out health packs and whatnot?

For game-design purposes health-regen is easy-mode, since it means that a level designer can always expect that if a player survives an enemy encounter, then he'll be at full health for the next encounter - making it a no-brainer.

With limited health a level designer has to be concious about health packs, possibly add in some scavenging/exploration reward elements - but in turn it can be all the more satisfying and challenging for players as well

Do any of you lot know of any games that have tried this already?

Halo: Reach did it, as did Halo: Combat Evolved, and Borderlands 2. your SHIELD regens, while you have healthpacks to regen your actual HP.

I actually prefer the setup because it makes the player more conscious of his HP, while making the entire level playable if you have 1 HP and no Healthpacks are around.

 

[DRTJR]

Halo 1 has the best of both worlds.

 

[MysticSlayer]

Am I alone in thinking health regen is god awful? It removes tactical elements and it prevents you from being punished by bad choices. Games like STALKER where you can bleed to death and has no regen is great, the typical HALO/COD etc ad nauseam not so much.

It depends on the game. Health regeneration helps emphasize Call of Duty's cover-to-cover gameplay. It encourages players to stick to cover, as it not only minimizes the number of bullets they take, but it also provides a way to heal when they inevitably take bullets. The games really aren't about moving around quickly taking out enemies and dodging their projectiles, nor is it about difficult survival and immersion. If you've ever played the first Call of Duty, that game used the more traditional health kit system, and while they tried designing it to emphasize cover, until you reached Hardened difficulty, cover was hardly necessary (and it wasn't even made fully necessary until Veteran) because it was easy to stand out, take bullets, and then go heal with a med kit. Regenerative health gave them a way to emphasize taking cover more. Sure, it doesn't work in faster-paced games like DOOM or survival-based games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R., but for CoD's style of gameplay, the regenerative health system is great. Even as a fan of older military shooters like Allied Assault and the first Call of Duty, I can say the addition of regenerative health was one of the best things they did for that style of game, especially when you consider how it improved their online play.

 

[Hero of Lime]

I like the hybrid of the two systems found in Halo 1, Halo 3: ODST, and Halo: Reach. Just seeing my shields and health on the screen makes me feel I can make mistakes, yet I still have to be tactical. I don't hate purely health pickup systems for shooter, but I feel as though the game will be more fun yet streamlined.

Bioshock Infinite did a fairly similar system to the Halo games I listed above, yet it kept the health pickup system from the first two games. Either one has its ups and downs, but I would like to see more games allow you to choose between the two in some way, that would be pretty neat.

 

[thejackyl]

A segmented health bar, where the individual segments regen, but to replenish the others you need a medkit. Either that or Halo's Recharging shield and separate health pool.

If you get into a segment where the segmented health screws you sideways, after so many attempts the game will give you one or two more segments.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Would it be possible to design an FPS or even 3rd person action game where both auto-health regen and health pickups were built in, as different levels of difficulty?

There is no technical reason why this would be impossible; however, it ignores the reason why the two different health systems exist.

Health regeneration exists essentially so that it is always known how much health the player has. It allows a designer to develop combat scenarios where the player repeatedly scrapes by with a sliver of health and, simply put, allows a game to focus on a series of combat encounters as the main game mechanic. This is what allows games like the Call of Duties to exist - without regenerating health, those games would become dull slogs.

By contrast, if a game treats health as a resource, it helps encourage exploration of an environment. This is most suitable in a game where exploration is a key tenant behind the design. In the ancient days of FPS games, the maps were functionally little more than mazes full of monsters and items and players simply tried to ration their supplies as they navigated the maze. More modern games can use such resource management to encourage players to look around the map more than they might otherwise - Dead Space or Bioshock are good examples of this in play.

So, while it is perfectly possible to mix the two, the fundamental conflict in core design logic between the two would ultimately undermine the game.

 

[Xdeser2]

Personally i thought Halo 1 had it down, don't know why they changed it for the rest.

Bunch of health blocks, which can only be replenished with health packs, and a shield which regens after a moment or two out of combat. Meant you still had to be careful how you played because at 1 health block left you had no leeway once the shield had gone and die as soon as the shield dropped. But you still had some room to manouevre as long you were careful.

This avoided the annoying forced constant reloading of games with no shield, where on higher difficulties you have no health for a while due to lack of health packs, and die all the time to unavoidable shit because your character is bowled over by the force of a violent sneeze. Higher difficulties were so much more fun in Halo than other FPS, where it basically became a process of dying enough times to learn where all the enemies are. Pure static health without regen may be harder, but it can make for some damn tedious gameplay. Throwing a shield on top gives the advantages of both forms of health. and the removes the disadvantages of both.

Honestly i can't fathom why they removed the health aspect from Halo.

Gotta agree with this, Halo CE almost perfectly balanced the two concepts.

Now, personally, I don't mind regenerating health as much as other people seem to. I didn't grow up with Classic FPS's like DOOM or Quake or others, so its not ingrained through nostalgia in my head that "Regenerating health = Shit game". To me, if the game is designed well around whatever health system you have in place, its gonna be fine.

The way I see it (Keeping in mind I'm obviously not a Dev, so its speculation on my part), in games where you have a limited amount of health that does not regen, level designers probably need to balance what kind of enemies you face in what areas vs the amount of health just lying around. Enough to keep the game feeling challenging, without feeling like it just straight up gimps you if you made a mistake and took a few bullets to the face 30 minutes back.

In games WITH regenerating health, it seems like you have a bit more leeway in terms of design, but to keep the challenge up, they need to throw smarter and tougher enemies into the mix to keep players on their toes, and not just lying down eating gravel until they regen their health. Enemies that keep you moving and try to flush you out of cover. This is what the later Halo titles get right, and what I feel Mass Effect 2 & 3 do great with as well. (Though, ME 3 has a pseudo-healthpack system with Medigel) and what something like Call of Duty gets wrong. (No, I'm not saying that CoD is/is not a good game, not gonna open that particular can of worms today lol) In the later Halo titles and ME 2 & 3, enemies are pretty smart, and on harder difficulties, enemies dont just get more bulletspongey, but get even smarter. Games that don't use the regenerating health system well will throw slogs of easy enemies that do nothing but shoot at straight angles toward you with the occasional grenade, or one huge hulking bulletsponge.