The Future of the Health Bar

[Kahunaburger]

> An obsession with "One hit one kill" mechanics.

THOSE THINGS ARE NOT DESIGNED TO BE FUN

Just sayin'

> "Health" indicators which are not part of the UI

This I agree with, though - although I think the moral of the story is less "no health mechanics other than health bar" and more "make sure you have a good UI for non-health bar health mechanics." I liked the way Mechwarrior games did it, for instance - they had mini health bars for each chunk of armor/chassis, and your computer would inform you in a hilariously calm voice if any internal mechanisms were damaged. That obviously won't work in every setting, but that general idea is something I think could see play in a lot of different games.

 

[michael87cn]

"When consoles began to get powerful enough to deal with polygons over sprites, the results were less than stellar; early 3D polygonal games sucked, and sprite-based games were looking better all the time. Had games designers employed this sense of mentality ("Why go 3D? Sprites are fine the way they are. If it ain't broke...") then games wouldn't have progressed in the exciting way they did."

Unless like me you think polygons have almost killed off good games. I am still perfectly happy with sprite games like Might and Magic 6, and I still play them, they're that good.

I think polygons add beauty to a game at the expense of everything else sucking.

Before, we had lush expansive worlds, now we have corridors. Before, we had games with 100 plus hours of gameplay, now its normal to beat a game in 6. Before, we had options and choices, now everything is space marines, regular marines and middle earth.

Simply boring.

As for the health bar, I like it, and haven't played a game yet that does something better.

The best way to go about changing it is to get into the gaming industry yourself and make your own games. Talking about it here isn't really going to change anything.

 

[Something Amyss]

I have to ask why the hell do we have to replace it with something to try and make it more realistic? Games are not realistic and very very few games every try to be. You want realism then fine how about this. You get shot in the head and your game kills itself. Or shot somewhere else and your game respawn time is set to six months.

He's bitching about his immersion being ruined. Obviously, the game industry should tailor to HIS concept of immersion.

I do love the "realism" argument, though.

I want to see some utterly real games and see how well they sell with the people who think what they want is "realism."

Also, I like your idea. Game lobbies where the wait times are measured in months, even for minor wounds, or where death bans the character permanently.

 

[CulixCupric]

So, does anyone have any good ideas on how to replace the health bar with a more realistic approach to player health/status?

yeah, one shot, one kill. every hit is a kill. no need for health, just use lives. this is what pac-man did, and it would be realistic for fps games like COD and BF.

 

[Weentastic]

Doesn't anybody remember SOCOM:US Navy Seals? That was a game that made realism cool. I felt like a Navy Seal when I played that game, and it had more realism than all the CODs put together. You could get shot in the head in that game, and when you did, you died. When you got shot in the arm or the leg, your player's light changed color, but you usually couldn't die from getting hit in the hand. What it did lack was consequences for being shot. You bled but you couldn't bleed out, and your combat effectiveness didn't go down. Now with the magic of technology, we could easily have all those things, adding depth and challenge to the game. There were deficiencies, especially in enemy AI, but that could be fixed today. The difficulty of the game, namely that there were no med kits, made your planning and execution all the more meaningful. It was frustrating if you expected to grab an m60 and run in, but the game made it pretty clear that wasn't a good idea. I've beat the game many times on a couple of difficulty levels, and I'm no kind of super star. I wouldn't mind health bars or regenerating health so much if combat effectiveness actually came into play.

 

[Brawndo]

I don't care so much about health bars as much as I care about modeling damage appropriately and having characters who react to being damaged to specific body parts.

I don't like how in Skyrim, for example, enemies are just a giant block of HP and it doesn't matter where I hit them. Most enemies do not even react to being damaged unless you get lucky and stagger them. It would be awesome if in a melee fight, I could chop off an enemy's hand so he drops his sword, or stab that heavily armored knight in his unshielded neck. Or if I hit an enemy with a fire spell and ignited their clothing, sending them out of the fight while they rolled around trying to extinguish the flames.

The closest game to what I am talking about is the fighting game Bushido Blade for Playstation 1. The technology exists, it just needs to be implemented.

 

[Brawndo]

Games are designed to be fun and entertaining, not bog you down in the endless finicky details of "realism". You don't go to the movies and expect it to be possible for giant transforming robots to be able to... well, exist, you cannot play a video game and expect it to stick to realism.

All I'm saying is, you are playing a game about slaying DRAGONS. By playing said game, you have already agreed to suspend your disbelief, so what does it matter that you have a little number or a red screen that tells you how soon your character is going to cease to function.

I completely disagree. Just because we introduce a few fantastical elements into a game does not mean we have to throw out realism altogether. Skyrim would probably suck without gravity, don't you think?

I especially like when fantastical elements are taken super serious and attempts are made to fit them to real world science. An example is how Max Brooks gives the straight-face treatment to zombies and tries to explain their behavior and physiology using real science.

[Sorry for the double post, this should have been an edit to my post above, not a new one]

 

[Dfskelleton]

What's so good about realism again? People constantly talk about it like it will be the ultimate achievement in gaming history, when really it means little to nothing. I don't sit down and say "You know, I want to play a game where if I get shot then I assume the fetal position and go into a coma for a few months." I don't think that's considered fun.
And besides, whose to say that health measured as a number is impossible in whatever universe the game takes place in?
"THIS GAME ABOUT ROBOTS AND ALIENS AND SPACE BATTLES REGISTERS MY CURRENT PHYSICAL STATE AS A NUMBER, MY IMMERSION IS COMPLETELY RUINED."
Not everything needs to change. The reason we haven't gotten rid of health bars since 1984 is because we haven't needed to. That's like saying that laws banning slavery should be done away with because we've had them for more than 20 years (bad comparison, but you get my point).

 

[Tupolev]

There's no real need to be conservative and hold onto it as if it's the most important aspect of a game to you, just because you can't instantly think of a better system that can replace it (for none exists). Games evolve. They always have done, and will continue to do so; why can't the health bar do the same?

Because that requires impetus. Most theoretical and practical forays into the land of more complicated health systems turns up very limited or poor results. Remember, it's far easier for unnecessary complication to become a hindrance than a benefit. You want to see lots of games with health systems like you're proposing? Come up with a concept that can be expanded upon in many different and exciting directions, and prove that concept. If it looks like juicy territory, people might leap at it.

You keep asking, "why not go in this direction?" Remove the "not," ask yourself the question, and see if you can come up with good, applicable answers. If so, awesome. If not, you might find more understanding of the original question. Regardless of which, hopefully we all learn something.

 

[FalloutJack]

Come on guys, surely we've moved on from this?​

Problems with not having the health bar, however, would dog FPS games, where you rarely see your body, and thus would not be able to see whereabouts on your person you would be injured.

So, does anyone have any good ideas on how to replace the health bar with a more realistic approach to player health/status?

Fella, if people had any idea what to use instead of a health bar, THE ESCAPIST WOULDN'T FREAKIN' HAVE 'EM!!!

I am sorry, but even I don't have the answer to this. Games need something to tell the difference between dying and not dying. And since, in medical science, we have this measured by a line and a machine that goes "Ping!", I don't know what to say about video games. Some things in games are better in that I'm sure we'd all love regenerative health!

 

[II Scarecrow II]

Games are designed to be fun and entertaining, not bog you down in the endless finicky details of "realism". You don't go to the movies and expect it to be possible for giant transforming robots to be able to... well, exist, you cannot play a video game and expect it to stick to realism.

All I'm saying is, you are playing a game about slaying DRAGONS. By playing said game, you have already agreed to suspend your disbelief, so what does it matter that you have a little number or a red screen that tells you how soon your character is going to cease to function.

I completely disagree. Just because we introduce a few fantastical elements into a game does not mean we have to throw out realism altogether. Skyrim would probably suck without gravity, don't you think?

I especially like when fantastical elements are taken super serious and attempts are made to fit them to real world science. An example is how Max Brooks gives the straight-face treatment to zombies and tries to explain their behavior and physiology using real science.

[Sorry for the double post, this should have been an edit to my post above, not a new one]

I actually agree with you (Max Brooks is pretty awesome), but also with your first paragraph, however, a game doesn't have to be realistic to be immersive, which is what the OT was trying to get at. Immersive is a subjective quality, and for the OT to claim that something as small and insignificant as a health bar should break said quality cannot be taken seriously IMHO. I am not saying that any realism is terrible, as you said realistic physics make even fantasy games seem grounded in realism.

But it is not realism that keeps a player immersed. I myself can play some iPhone games for hours on end, even though they are pretty far from realistic. What makes a game immersive is its challenge and entertainment, but nothing breaks it more than boredom. Since the original post was about health bars, a more complex system of determining the status of the player would simply lead to boring gameplay, as I stated when I used OFR and Over G as examples.

TLR: Immersion is not generated by realism, but by the challenge and excitement a game brings. A health bar - while unrealistic - does what it needs to and doesn't break immersion.

 

[babinro]

Personally I consider the trend of health regeneration to actually be the evolution in the health bar.

I find it to be a near perfect system when the level design can assign appropriate challenges to the player because they know the state of your health.

Players won't run into situations where they have to load saves from an hour ago because of a poor choice of save. Players don't have to grind through segments of the game until they not only succeed, but succeed with sufficient health to satisfy the next challenge.

Most importantly though, it's a system that allows gamers to continue having fun with a game while advancing in the plot. I understand that I'm in the minority among hardcore gamers that love health regeneration.

The more realistic a games health system is to real life, the less fun a game actually plays. At least this had been my own experience thus far. It's why I never cared for Doom and Wolfenstein growing up but love Resistance 1 and Borderlands.

 

[Ddgafd]

What's with this need to make games more realistic? I think that we're fine as we are now. Of course graphics could use tweaking, but I don't think that is of utmost necessity. Anyway, I really can't add anything else to this thread, because babinro ninja'd me pretty well already.

 

[Jesse Gunn]

When I'm playing Gears of War and Fenix is getting shot up, I don't see that as him taking bullets in the face and then healing in a few seconds, I see it as his luck slowly running out as he's out in the open field of fire, with bullets coming closer, grazing off his armor, until that one actually hits him solidly and drops him down.

That's a FANTASTIC explanation. It makes so much sense out of that mechanic.

"Personally I've always thought, in a realistic game, health should be replaced by a "luck" system. When the game calculates that a bullet is about to hit you, it corrects the trajectory so it doesn't, and you lose a bit of your luck bar. Then when it runs out you finally get hit by a single bullet and go down crying like a big fat girl."

Please do share someone's innovative ideas, just give your props where props are due rather than accepting people's admiration. especially if you're on the forum of the website where they're the most popular columnist.

 

[Zaik]

Closest thing I've seen to what you're after is Arma 2, although there's still a bit of sillyness in it.

 

[Kahunaburger]

"Good heavens, is this a thread from 2011?"

"Yes it is!"

"What on earth do you intend to do with it?"

 

[DoPo]

"Good heavens, is this a thread from 2011?"

"Yes it is!"

"What on earth do you intend to do with it?"

Technically, it's from the very end of 2011. But still...

 

[shrekfan246]

This is the second necro'd thread I've seen in the last 24 hours, what's up with that?

 

[General Twinkletoes]

While it is a bit weird to have healthpacks/regenerating health, the system you described is just... not very fun. It's not entertaining at all to do that.