Poll: Regenerating Health Vs. Exploring the Level

[TheIronRuler]

Hello escapists.
Today we'll be talking about the conflict in the headline - 'Regenerating Health Vs. Exploring the Level'. I must warn you that there are some games that manage to pull it off nicely, but in most cases regenerating Health removes the need we used to have to find items we need.
Even though you have regenerating health and you find yourself looking for items - might it be another meter that doesn't regenerate?
Yes.
Prior to Halo and it's break into the genre, we had games with a set amount of health for you, a meter of sorts. You had it in Call of Duty, scouring the trenches for health packs and walking over piles of bodies to get from the red to the dirty green. You had it in Deus Ex, among the many other items you were looking for - it made you explore the world.
Now that we have regenerating health, what other reason do we have to explore the world?
More content?
A deeper understanding of our surroundings?
A greater narrative told by images and not words?
Here is where some games fall flat.
They assume you don't want any of this, or even worse - they don't have the time (or money to burn) for it since they need to construct a beautiful campaign of a player leading a person from point A to B.
I doubt you could see the equivalent of the plunger room from Fallout 3 in a first person shooter these days. (Even though there are some that give a damn, all hail valve! . Let me know if I missed any.)
...
But on the other side of the fence, Regenerating health does improve your gaming experience.
How many times did you squeal in frustration when you couldn't find a health pack and you died because of it? Regenerating health helps you to make the FPS experience faster, denying you meaningless deaths - it improves your overall experience.
Your game is now fast paced and isn't hampered by quests for health packs throughout the level.
Don't you talk about realism. Having a meter for your health isn't realistic at all.
...
My personal opinion?
I want to have to scour the level for items that I need. It doesn't have to be health packs.
But I must have a reason to walk around, and the developer should invest time in these little unmarked mini quests to find batteries or a pack of cigars. I could find little interesting stories that are told by images - it makes the experience much more enjoyable.
In addition, regenerating health should be tweaked. I don't see red when I get shot in the leg.
I don't regenerate limbs. You should bring back health packs but in the form of bandages, morphine and calling for medical support every once in a while. You bleed for a while, your vision gets hazy. That kind of thing.
Who knows, you might learn how to treat a bullet wound and now people could claim that video-games save human lives in hospitals since gamers step in for doctors and use their self healing techniques to heal other patients.

 

[zehydra]

I think the mistake you're making here, is trying to have a one size fits all for FPS gaming. It will be appropriate for some games to encourage exploration, whereas in others, the action going on will probably be too crucial to allow for exploration.

For instance, perhaps in a Modern Warfare-esque shooter, you need to get to the chopper before something blows up, or there some other kind of critical time limit involved. In this case, it wouldn't make sense with the situation to allow for long periods of exploration time, or any exploration time at all.

However, if we consider games like DOOM, Left 4 Dead, and Metroid Prime, where time is not of the essence, then it makes sense for the game to allow exploration time, because there is no pressure to get to the end of the level by any sort of time limit.

In this style of game, regenerating health would obviously be inappropriate, because of these games either encourage exploration, or demand exploration.

All in all, the FPS genre is too broad to say that "it shouldn't have regenerating health", or "it should have more exploration". One needs to look at the context that the characters have been thrown into, and the kind of game mechanics the game favors(fast-paced action, slow-paced adventure), before making that kind of judgement.

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

I support both. Your health regenerates, but only to a certain amount. Maybe depending on difficulty (25% for easy, 15% for medium, 5% for hard) There are health packs to then bring your health up to full. Some of course would be good enough to play through on very low health, but most would have to explore a little, at least before the big fights. If you designed your games around that principles it would also make it a more seamless experience I think.

In Doom, Duke Nukem, Wolfenstein etc you could end up wandering around for hours, no enemies around, getting very bored trying to soak up health and ammo. This could really break up gameflow. Combining the two, a little exploring with the running and gunning, and it would be a better experience all around.

I've been playing Prey recently, and it actually did this very well.

 

[Kryzantine]

Please don't tell me the OP just subtly claimed Halo brought regenerating health into the FPS genre. I mean, COD did it first. Halo: CE had a health bar, it just also had a shield bar. One regenerated, one didn't. I just don't like it when people make this error, and I do believe that the Halo: CE system worked beautifully - I don't understand why more games don't use it.

As for incentive to explore the surroundings... let ammo be the motivation. Metro 2033 did this well. Most shooters have ammo by the bucketful, basically let you fill it back up after every fight. I don't like that. I think ammo supply should be tightened in a lot of games.

 

[Tupolev]

I think the mistake you're making here, is trying to have a one size fits all for FPS gaming.

Yep. Products are much more than a sum of parts, each of which has some absolute "quality" associated with it. They're how parts interact.

Both absolutely non-regenerating health and absolutely regenerating health can work amazing, depending on other aspects of the game. But those absolutes are not necessarily the only good options, either; there are a ton of qualitatively different ways of handling health between those two. As people have mentioned, for instance, Halo 1 itself uses one such in-between approach*, and it works great* for Halo 1.

*It's worth also noting that, in Halo 1, Covenant light troops are way more aggressive and dangerous when they know you're weak. Just an odd tidbit that a lot of people don't realize, but which is IMO relevant to how the health system works, and in choosing when to pick up health packs.

 

[TheIronRuler]

Please don't tell me the OP just subtly claimed Halo brought regenerating health into the FPS genre. I mean, COD did it first. Halo: CE had a health bar, it just also had a shield bar. One regenerated, one didn't. I just don't like it when people make this error, and I do believe that the Halo: CE system worked beautifully - I don't understand why more games don't use it.

As for incentive to explore the surroundings... let ammo be the motivation. Metro 2033 did this well. Most shooters have ammo by the bucketful, basically let you fill it back up after every fight. I don't like that. I think ammo supply should be tightened in a lot of games.

I agree with you when it comes to Metro 2033, but you could look for COINS and it would be the same.
The genius innovation here is that currency=bullets, which means that the more you miss, you more you lose cash. You could horde special grade-A bullets to fight off hordes or use it to but the shiny Kalash.
There is some element of RPG game here, even though they were laughing about the fact the protagonist doesn't talk throughout the game.

 

[Laser Priest]

I think the mistake you're making here, is trying to have a one size fits all for FPS gaming. It will be appropriate for some games to encourage exploration, whereas in others, the action going on will probably be too crucial to allow for exploration.

This.

And some games (such as the Fallout games, at least to me) are interesting. The land itself encourages exploration, so searching for items isn't needed to do that.

Games like Call of Duty focus on the action and aren't really set in areas worth exploring.

As for the regenerating health, once again, that is largely a convenience for the developers. They can design each fight you head into knowing exactly how much health you'll be working with.

 

[BreakfastMan]

A: The two (regenerating health and meter-based health) are not mutually exclusive. There are many games that have combined both to great effect (Batman: Arkham Asylum, Resistance: Fall of Man, Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay to name a few).

B: There are many incentives that you can add to encourage exploration in a game that has regenerating health. Health upgrades for example. Or cash to buy more weapons/upgrade your weapons. Or non-generating armor. Or a dozen other incentives. To say that games that have regenerating health can't encourage environmental exploration is just silly.

 

[TheIronRuler]

A: The two (regenerating health and meter-based health) are not mutually exclusive. There are many games that have combined both to great effect (Batman: Arkham Asylum, Resistance: Fall of Man, Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay to name a few).

B: There are many incentives that you can add to encourage exploration in a game that has regenerating health. Health upgrades for example. Or cash to buy more weapons/upgrade your weapons. Or non-generating armor. Or a dozen other incentives. To say that games that have regenerating health can't encourage environmental exploration is just silly.

Have you noticed that now everything is upgrade-able?
I saw it with GoW - You kill stuff so that you could get re orbs. Why? So that you could get better weapons. Why? So that you could kill harder opponents. Why? So that you'll advance the plot.
They're leveling the opponents with you! It's Oblivion all over again!
OH! THE HORROR!

 

[TheIronRuler]

I think the mistake you're making here, is trying to have a one size fits all for FPS gaming. It will be appropriate for some games to encourage exploration, whereas in others, the action going on will probably be too crucial to allow for exploration.

This.

And some games (such as the Fallout games, at least to me) are interesting. The land itself encourages exploration, so searching for items isn't needed to do that.

Games like Call of Duty focus on the action and aren't really set in areas worth exploring.

As for the regenerating health, once again, that is largely a convenience for the developers. They can design each fight you head into knowing exactly how much health you'll be working with.

Yes, that's what was talking about earlier. Some developers don't take the time to make the gorgeous and delicious things you saw in Fallout 3. Have you seen anything like the plunger room in any other game? So much awesomeness packed into one tiny area with one creature, with no words whatsoever.

 

[LilRock1976]

I have played games for 30 years and regenerating health is a concept I don't like. It encourages laziness because if you go into a situation with 30% of your meter left you have to be creative and resourceful to survive, but with regenerating health chances are the easiest path will be taken because death isn't as big of a threat. Halo was the first game I played that had the concept but they had regenerating shields. Developers took that concept and applied it to health and that never made sense to me.

 

[TheIronRuler]

Personally I thought the old Vaults and abandoned pre-war installations were far more interesting than the plunger room. You never knew what bit of history you'd unearth digging around in them.

You're right. It was great reading those terminal logs, as much as it was awesome listening to the audio logs from Bioshock.

 

[puffy786]

I support exploring the level. I hate spending a good deal of the game waiting 10 second to regenerate my health. It breaks the pacing of the game and prevents any real fast or slow sections of the game.

 

[IBlackKiteI]

It varies depending on the game. You don't want to be forced to roam around looking for medical supplies to patch yourself up if these areas have nothing interesting around them. It'd just get extremely tedious.

In short, I'd say that any game that has to use the player being injured as the main incentive to make them explore the place, is doing it wrong.
The game's areas should be interesting enough for the player to want to heavily explore without the soul intention of fixing yourself up in the first place, if that is meant to be the game's goal.

I'm not saying that regenerating health is a good or bad thing, I'm just saying that scattering med-kits all around the place just to make the player wander around would be really cheap.

 

[Sixcess]

Removing regeneration health would necessitate more than a redesign of the levels, it would require a complete rebalancing of most modern FPSs - something which I think is forgotten all too often when this debate comes up.

The DOOM Marine faced mostly slow projectiles that could be dodged; could take a ton of damage anyway; and could kill most of the harder to dodge heavy hitters (shotgunners, chaingunners) in one or two shots. None of that is true of modern FPSs, which are balanced around the fact that you will take incoming fire and most enemies can kill you in a couple of seconds if they get a clear shot.

Playing Half Life for the first time last year cured me forever of my rose-tinted nostalgia for health packs. The HECU marines can chop half your health bar off in one burst of fire - one unlucky moment can leave you either crawling through the rest of the level looking for health packs, or reloading from your last save. It's frustrating trial and error gameplay, and it would be even more so in games where the protagonist has even less resilience than Freeman - i.e. most modern regen-health shooters.

Removing regen-health would only only work in games where the protagonist is a run and gun bullet sponge, and if we went back to those days it wouldn't take long for people to start bitching about the lack of 'realism.'

Exploration should be driven by level design - interesting visuals, side story details, useful but not essential loot, alternate paths to aproach problems - not by annoying health pack mechanics that just would not work in most modern games without ramping up the difficulty to absurd levels.

 

[Ordinaryundone]

I thought Alan Wake did it great. You had regenerating health, but it regenerated much faster in lit areas, making them "health points" of a sort. Exploration was encouraged by rewarding you with ammo or collectibles. Non-essential stuff that made the next few areas easier (or, at least, filled you in on some plot) if you were willing to step off the beaten path and away from the safe zones to find them. Arkham Asylum was similar. Batman's health came back after every fight, but you didn't regen much (if at all) while there were enemies still around. Exploration was encouraged, but it was just to get XP to buy new skills.

The problem with mandatory exploration for health and ammo is that it completely kills the pacing of the game. You might be having all sorts of fun running and gunning and blasting away, but eventually you will get down to 10% HP or so and then the games pace drags to a halt, as you are forced to backtrack just to get enough resources to move forward again. Its tedious.

 

[MrJKapowey]

Have you noticed that now everything is upgrade-able?
...
They're leveling the opponents with you! It's Oblivion all over again!
OH! THE HORROR!

Whats so bad about that? In Oblivion each class of enemy has sub-classes (Undead - Zombies, Ghosts, Skeletons)

As you level up these enemies change to become harder versions (Zombie, Headless Zombie, Dread Zombie{?})

When you reach the highest level enemy in that sub-class, it begins to level with you so you don't have a game sans challenge.

Why is that so terrible? If you dislike being on an even footing with your enemies, go kill some bandits - they are scaled at '(playerlvl - 15)=Banditlvl' with a minimum level of 1.

 

[EightGaugeHippo]

Although its kind of beside the point...
Take another look at the first Halo... Theres is a none regenerating, HEALTH METER WOOOOO!

Anyway... In my opinion, MGS3 snake eater did regenerating health best...
It only regenerates on its own as far as your stamina bar is up.
You can use life medicine to boost it all the way up.
But if you don't have enough energy, your health will stay low.

 

[jpoon]

I generally always prefer the health bar because that is what I was raised on when I was a young'n. Not a big fan of the regenerating health but I will still play games with it and not ***** about it much.