Poll: Favourite Health System

[Ryotknife]

borderlands or halo system. regenerating shields, but health does not regen or it slow/difficult/requires a certain action to regen.

 

[Evil Smurf]

I like old fashioned health bars, and you need to find health but you could also carry some around. Basically what Legend of Zelda has.

why was not this an option?

 

[peruvianskys]

Inhibitive damage is probably the most captivating for me, but it only works in some situations. Otherwise, I love a regular numbered 100 point system.

 

[Biosophilogical]

I liked Far Cry 2's system the best. It was a hybrid of regenerating health, and portable health packs.
As long as you don't lose a full square of health, it will regenerate.
And health packs will heal you, but only if you're not taking damage.

Worked well I thought.

I picked up Just Cause 2, and it is similar in that, if you can only regenerate a certain amount of damage. So if you get shot a lot before you find cover, you won't fully heal (though you will heal a little), but if you get shot once or twice, then take cover, you'll recover all the health you just lost. There are also health-pack-things around the place, though they aren't overly common outside of military bases.

 

[Hectix777]

Here's what I want in a regenerating health system. Mainly it needs to make sense. If your a soldier like in Call of Duty and you get like 15 bullets in the chest, ducking away for 5 seconds than coming back for more doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. The health should regenerate by a player's action: duck away, hold triangle making sure you don't get hurt because if you get hurt right now it will deal double damage, get back on your feet, get back out there. It's just gotta fit in with the mythos. Soldiers getting hit with plus 5 rounds in the chest means you stay down for the count or your stuck in the current shape your in until your evacuated from the combat zone, not until a medic patches you up and not until a medic shoots you with a magical dart gun.

That's just me.

 

[Muspelheim]

The classic one, where you find health kits of various efficiency. Even better is when there's an item which let you increase your healthbar, like in Fear. It gives even more reason to explore the level properly, and it's a rather neat, useful reward, as opposed to collectibles.

Of course, it depends on the game. In roleplaying games or survival horror, I'd prefer a system where your abilities or movement speed decrease as you take damage, so that being a few hitpoints away from death actually mean something. I also find limb/bodypart damage rather neat, where it fits.

Dwarf Fortress!

Shot in the leg? You lose!

Fall off a building? Have fun never walking again!

What's that? You want your arm back? Haha! No.

I thought the crutch-walking skill was just a dump-stat. Now I know better...

I wonder how many versions there is until Toady programs in some sort of psychiatric addition to the healthcare-system. A bolt through the head turning my best champion a bit dizzy and unpredictable, I can handle, but a dwarf losing his beloved kitty to a horrible drawbridge accident, I can't. Nice chairs and engravings can only do so much to cheer someone up.

 

[TheJazzyH]

I voted other simply because there was no "All of them" option.

Health systems are a game mechanic and like any game mechanic they need to fit the game. Not every game would work as well with the same setup. At the most basic level, regenerating health allows the developer to make a fragile protagonist - one who dies from a few shots. Traditional health systems require the player to be somewhat robust so to allow a margin of error. On the other hand, traditional health can add an element of resource management to the game, balancing when to use a health pack, when to backtrack to find first aid kits, etc.

I'm not against regenerating health. I do agree that it's a bit overused and is being shoehorned into games that don't benefit form it, but I don't outright hate it.

Personally, I enjoy a mixed approach, with a bar of fixed health and a bar of regenerating health, with health packs for the fixed health being rare or even non-existant.

I have to agree with this. As much as I would like to play more shooters with limited or no regenerating health (Resistance and Transformers: WFC come to my mind), all of these health systems have their merits, and influence the gameplay and level designs in more ways than most people realize.

On another note, I liked Kid Icarus: Uprising's twist on the classic health bar called "crisis mode". For those of you who don't know, crisis mode activates when you run out of health. You're not quite dead yet, and if you survive in crisis mode long enough, you'll regain a small sliver of health to continue the game on. It makes Kid Icarus slightly more forgiving than regeneration-free shooters while keeping the tension high in crisis mode, knowing that the next attack is extremely likely to kill you.

It also helps that Kid Icarus actually penalizes you for dying, something that I don't see most modern games doing. The worst a game over today can leave you is wasted time, unless of course checkpoints are placed every five steps. Death in Kid Icarus, however, causes you to lose hearts (the in-game money), and the difficulty to get forced down a level (assuming you're playing beyond the standard difficulty). This means that if you're attempting to beat a level in Kid Icarus on the highest difficulty, you must do so without dying at all. How many other games these days ask that of you?

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

I liked the Deus Ex health system where each body part had its own health bar and when that body part's health runs out then its crippled (or you die in the case of head or torso damage). Though I guess that system only works in certain games but I would like more developers use it in their games.

 

[Black Arrow Officer]

My favorite, although very few games have it, is just having no regeneration period. SWAT 4 was a very difficult and intense game, made even more so by the fact that there's no disappearing spaghetti sauce or magic medkits to help you. You get shot, deal with it ************. You should've been more careful before rushing around the corner. There was also a "body part" damage system where getting shot in the leg makes you hobble around, getting shot in the arm throws off your aim, and getting shot in the chest or head kills you quickly. The no regeneration whatsoever system worked well because SWAT 4 went for the "extreme realism" system. Although making players look for medkits keeps things harder than regenerating health, it's still not very realistic. Forcing every bullet taken to be a drastic consequence made players be much more careful approaching situations in SWAT 4. Since I know that not every game should have no way of regenerating health, my second favorite system is the medkit system. Regenerating health needs to die a painful death.

 

[dessertmonkeyjk]

There are some fighting games that have a proportinal health regeneration system. It's abit complicated on how it works so I'll lay down the basic rules.

1. The amount of damage dealt = 50% health to be regenerated slowly.
2. Massive damage means higher health that can be recovered.
3. Being hit during regeneration keeps health recovered and cuts the regeneration threshold in half again.
4. Repeated hits means less health recoverable. Larger hits means more health recoverable.

You're probably thinking the last rule is rather unfair and I'm incline to agree with you.

 

[MattRobinson]

Mass Effect 3 probably had my favorite, a regenerating shield and a health bar that can only be refilled with medpacks

 

[sethisjimmy]

Spoiler: The RIG has some questionable design decisions...

Ahh I noticed this as well when I was playing through. For the games benefit I like to imagine that Isaac has his own small HUD inside his faceplate where he can see his health, and that the health bar on the back is there to alert other engineers working nearby that he is injured.
Or perhaps he can just feel his own level of injury, and the health bar on the back is purely for other people's benefit.

 

[Sacman]

I loved S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s... if you get shot it'll take away health and you'll slowly bleed out, taking away more health... depending on the placement and severity of the wound, you could bleed out in a few seconds or a few minutes... and once it drops below a certain point it starts to sap your energy, first it'll make it so you can't run as far or carry as much stuff, but it continues until you're a pile of meat rolling around on the floor incapable of doing anything other than being torn apart by a pack of wild dogs...

but you can circumvent that by using bandages to stop the bleeding... while they do that they don't restore much health, but your health will very, very, very, slowly over time restore... but you'll probably die of the radiation, or from a stray bullet while fleeing bandits before it goes back up... you can use a medkit or food to restore your health too... but they're generally not very common... though I'd stockpile them myself...<.<

 

[teebeeohh]

the resistance 1 where your have small units that automatically refill but need medpacks to restore completely removed units. this encourages searching around for medkits but at the same time prevents dying from a series minor wounds.
oh and give me fucking numbers in addition to an icon representing my health.

 

[ThePenguinKnight]

I went with TF2 since I just don't feel it takes any skill to go on a killing spree when your health just starts rocketing back up every few seconds.

 

[Nouw]

It depends on the game really. For Aliens:Colonial Marines, it'd make sense to have an altered version of the filter? health system.