Regenerating Health In First Person Shooters A Bad Thing??

[Maggle]

6 hours ago, MrGlide said:

 I find it funny out all of the design changes we've seen with modern games, regenerating health is picked on as the one to "fuck everything up".

I agree with this completely. There are plenty of fun games that have health regen, reloading, or even a weapon limit. Halo, Titanfall, Wolfenstein TNO, and Half-Life 2 have one or several of those mechanics, and they're great games.

 

What makes modern shooters uninteresting to me is a combination of slow as molasses movement, over-reliance on scripted sequences and cinematics, a 3-second sprint, and, most importantly, an absurd lack of variety in locations, weapons, and enemies. Most modern shooters these days have a few variants of "guy with gun" that you fight throughout the game, with the occasional (scripted) boss encounter with a tank, or something. If you're lucky, you get "big guy with big gun" or "pyro unit that explodes when you shoot the tank on his back", but that's it. Weapons don't fare much better. You get 9 million different assault rifles and sniper rifles, a few pistols, 3 shotguns, and maybe 2 Machine guns. And most of these are goddamn useless. No explosives except for hand grenades. You don't get to use anything cool, like a minigun or rocket launcher, for more than 5 minutes, and there's usually a ledge or something nearby that forces you to drop it.

 

All of the games I listed above do not have these problems, and are better for it.

 

Singling out regenerating health as the thing that makes shooter games suck now, is honestly frustrating as someone who prefers the more old-school style, because it implies that the only thing that was good about those games is that you had to scrounge around for health. That's not it at all.

[Dark Pulse]

By this logic, Duke Nukem 3D is a bad game because you had an on-demand health pack if you found one that you could use to immediately regenerate your health all at once.

 

And you could slowly sip water from fountains/toilets to get back up to 100.

 

And you could take a leak and gain 10 health back.

 

Basically: Depends on the game. If it's balanced for it, it works great. If it's balanced poorly, it shows.

[Avoozl]

Yeah but at least that was a choice and not a forced thing.

[Maggle]

Duke 3D also had reloading, so it's really bad.

[Avoozl]

I never get the hate with reloading honestly.

[GarrettChan]

2 hours ago, Maggle said:

Singling out regenerating health as the thing that makes shooter games suck now, is honestly frustrating as someone who prefers the more old-school style, because it implies that the only thing that was good about those games is that you had to scrounge around for health. That's not it at all.

Well said, and yeah, from this title and the OP's content, it's simply a thread that leads to nowhere since the OP doesn't seem to care to discuss. Also, the way OP expresses opinion without reasons and situations is just common through the threads.

 

Honestly, games have gone through so many different eras. It's very difficult to say whether one mechanic is good or bad in general. Talking about regenerating health, is basically making resource management not an important factor in the game. Later COD games, I personally think they focus more on narrative and story telling, so resource management is not a point they offer in their games. Of course, I prefer more action focus games, so I personally don't like COD series, but well, this doesn't mean regenerating health is inappropriate in COD series.

[Megalyth]

8 hours ago, Rare Hatchiama said:

 

Gears of War would be better served with health packs.  Constant regeneration makes the game nothing more than XTreME Hide n Seek.  Snoozefest.

 

Traipsing around and back-tracking to find health in a game like GoW would be an even bigger snooze-fest.

[Nine Inch Heels]

If done well, regenerating health is fine. If not, then it ain't.

 

Now that we're past the "duh!-level" of the conversation, here's my take: Every design decision comes with its own "opportunity cost".

 

Let's say we had health-regen in Classic Doom, imagine the player gets low on health, and hides away in a cubby where shit can't reach them to regenerate, doing nothing at all until they're comfortable to get back in the action again. Does that sound like something you'd want in an action game? Standing still for however many seconds until you can afford to take a hit again? To me that seems kinda boring.

 

How about not having health-regen? Now there's no benefit to being idle, and in order to find health pickups you need to get out there, potentially putting yourself in harm's way. That sounds a bit more exciting to me than taking a "toilet break" every so often.

 

 

Back to health-regen: On one hand, it removes the necessity of placing health pickups (though armour/shield/whatever may still be relevant), and you might be thinking that sounds cool, because now you don't have to consider where you need to place health to keep players alive any longer. At the same time, not being able to control entirely when, how, and where players can recover also takes a lot of agency away from the mapper/level-designer/whatever, which is where the "opportunity cost" starts to ramp up quite a bit.

 

Speaking of which, with health-regen, players could potentially flee from a fight, take a toilet break, and start chipping away at the monsters again later, and if you want to prevent that from happening, you'd need to lock them in each and every time you have a fight of some sort planned. And we all know that there are plenty people who were bitching over how annoying Doom'16's arena-style combat is.

 

Also, if you have health regen, you need to have a roster of enemies that can reliably out-pace the regeneration of players in some fashion, and one of the best ways to take down anything that regenerates all the time is substantial amounts of burst-damage, so you need either very hard-hitting enemies, or plenty smaller threats at once. Exploration heavy maps with lots of small scale fights to slowly grind players down would be impossible if health-regen were in effect, nevermind that if you tried that with health-regen, you'd need to constantly bother players with chip-damage, which can get kinda annoying, too.

 

There are "design-avenues" that open up when you have health-regen in a game, I'm not saying it's necessarily bad, although for classic Doom it probably wouldn't work very well. And sure, you can do health-regen + health-pickups, but if you're using health pickups anyway, why have regen in the first place?

[Boomslang]

i don't really like cover shooters, main reason why i never really played the COD games except ghosts.

[magicsofa]

I liked COD, forget exactly witch one. Modern warfare? Anyway I don't think the health regeneration contributed to it being a cover shooter. It's not even -that- much of a cover shooter. I remember a fair amount of running and climbing and shooting people while jumping out of windows. Yeah, you can also snipe, but the fact that health regenerates isn't really the deciding factor for why you would want to do so. You could only take 2-3 hits usually anyway so it's not like you could soak up bullets and then just wait for it to regenerate.

I also played a fair amount of rainbow 6 back in the day, that was a serious cover shooter. No health regen and you'd be gimped after being shot, good times. Both styles can be fun, and I think in games where you can be killed very quickly it's more permissible to have regeneration, since being at full health isn't even that much of an advantage compared to someone with better aim.

 

[A Nobody]

On 10/22/2019 at 5:11 PM, Edward850 said:

It's called personal preference, mate.

 

As others have said, there's no challenge, it slows the combat down, it takes away exploration to find health packs and other things, and you die too quickly.

[Gez]

Regenerating health, like pretty much every game mechanic you can come up with, works well if it's a core part of the game's design and everything else is balanced accounting for it, and is terrible when it's just grafted in cargo cult fashion because the developers just sought to imitate what's trendy without giving a thought about the gameplay consequences.

 

See also: weapon slot limits, vehicle driving, horde invasions, infinitely-respawning enemies, etc.

[Maggle]

6 hours ago, The Strife Commando said:

it takes away exploration to find health packs

Umm, no. Hard disagree. Exploration was encouraged by finding secrets that had goodies. Stuff like powerups, overstacking health items, early power weapons, permanent upgrades to your equipment and even easter eggs. The fact you could open that suspicious looking wall and get rewarded with cool shit is what made the levels in games like Doom, Heretic, Duke 3D, and Quake 1 stand the test of time, and is sorely missed in more recent games in the genre.

 

I don't want to backtrack the entire level to find a stimpack so I can not die. That's a pain in the ass, and bad game design. It only makes it apparent that the mapper didn't put enough health items for the average player to reasonably beat the level. But I'd backtrack the level to find Dopefish, or something, cause that's fun/cool.

 

In arguing in favor of the old over the new, you somehow manage to completely miss the point of the old and the new. That's impressive.

[seed]

6 minutes ago, Maggle said:

The fact you could open that suspicious looking wall and get rewarded with cool shit is what made the levels in games like Doom, Heretic, Duke 3D, and Quake 1 stand the test of time, and is sorely missed in more recent games in the genre.

 

Hm, I'm of the opposite opinion on this topic. Secret hunting was a thing that belonged and had a place in those games, yes, but I always found secret hunting tedious, frustrating, and unfun.

 

I'm glad modern games killed them, personally.

[Maggle]

Be that as it may, it sure beats the hell out of health hunting, where you do the same thing but for health items because you ended the map with 5 hp or whatever.

That sounds about as fun as pulling teeth, to me. But that's the impression TSC seems to have of those old games, even though they don't do that to you. Not often, at least.

 

It's the main reason most people hate E4M1 of Doom. Because there are only 3 health pickups, and they're all secrets. In a brutally punishing, claustrophobic map full of hitscanners and bullet sponges.

 

E4M1 of Heretic is even worse in this regard.

[[McD] James]

 

 

 

 

6 hours ago, The Strife Commando said:

there's no challenge

 

???

[Maggle]

There's simultaneously no challenge and you die too quickly.

 

How?

[Doomkid]

Simple: It's too easy and too hard.

[seed]

It's hardly too easy :D .

[GarrettChan]

1 hour ago, Maggle said:

There's simultaneously no challenge and you die too quickly.

You die too quickly because of the stupidity of designers, and this is not real challenge ;P

[A Nobody]

2 hours ago, Maggle said:

Umm, no. Hard disagree. Exploration was encouraged by finding secrets that had goodies. Stuff like powerups, overstacking health items, early power weapons, permanent upgrades to your equipment and even easter eggs. The fact you could open that suspicious looking wall and get rewarded with cool shit is what made the levels in games like Doom, Heretic, Duke 3D, and Quake 1 stand the test of time, and is sorely missed in more recent games in the genre.

 

I don't want to backtrack the entire level to find a stimpack so I can not die. That's a pain in the ass, and bad game design. It only makes it apparent that the mapper didn't put enough health items for the average player to reasonably beat the level. But I'd backtrack the level to find Dopefish, or something, cause that's fun/cool.

 

In arguing in favor of the old over the new, you somehow manage to completely miss the point of the old and the new. That's impressive.

I also said "and other things."

 

Ok, I may have got the dying too quickly and game being too easy parts wrong.

[snapshot]

On 10/24/2019 at 7:06 PM, Maggle said:

The fact you could open that suspicious looking wall and get rewarded with cool shit is what made the levels in games like Doom, Heretic, Duke 3D, and Quake 1 stand the test of time, and is sorely missed in more recent games in the genre.

Unless I accidentally stumble upon them, I never bother looking for secrets in any of the older games because I don't feel like carefully analysing every single wall in them, but I at least give them a shot in newer ones because I know what I'm looking for thanks to a side-quest objective or a marker on the map, they usually even make them question marks so as not to completely spoil them, but the game still lets me figure out how to reach it. I find this a more fun way of making me do these side things.

 

On 10/24/2019 at 9:49 PM, The Strife Commando said:

Ok, I may have got the dying too quickly and game being too easy parts wrong.

Play Insurgency, no health regen and you still die real quick.

Edited October 28, 2019 by tempdecal.wad

[jazzmaster9]

It really depends on te type of game.

 

Games like Borderlands, CoD4 and Halo, really did health regen well and i couldn't imagine a straightup health pickup system being used in those games, it just wont feel right.

 

Regenerating health is a great way to balance games where all enemies are hitscan, since there is not realistic way to dodge them consistently.

 

Also CoD2 and CoD4 are some of the most punishing games i've played so all this "it makes things easier" is complete BS

 

But then again if you Hate something, nothing can convince you its not "objectively bad"

Edited October 25, 2019 by jazzmaster9

[Avoozl]

If it's used in games like Crysis because of the nanosuit or Halo because of the spartan armor then yeah I can accept it.

[CyberDreams]

On 10/25/2019 at 3:42 PM, jazzmaster9 said:

It really depends on te type of game.

 

Games like Borderlands, CoD4 and Halo, really did health regen well and i couldn't imagine a straightup health pickup system being used in those games, it just wont feel right.

 

Regenerating health is a great way to balance games where all enemies are hitscan, since there is not realistic way to dodge them consistently.

 

Also CoD2 and CoD4 are some of the most punishing games i've played so all this "it makes things easier" is complete BS

 

But then again if you Hate something, nothing can convince you its not "objectively bad"

I agree. I've recently been playing the Playstation 2 COD games and those don't have regenerating health (plus the controls haven't aged all that well imo) and they are damn hard on higher difficulties, especially the first PS2 COD game titled "Finest Hour". I'm playing on easy due to the fact that i suck with a controller nowadays lol.

 

But yeah, after i beat the second PS2 COD game titled "COD 2: Big Red One", which is actually a damn good game with a decent story, i'm going to try to play through the COD games on my X360/XB1 since i own most of the older ones and i remember COD 2 being quite hard even though it has regen health. So i agree that regen health can be done well in certain games. After all, when i was younger i was a huge fan of Halo on the original Xbox ;)

 

I've only been playing the COD games lately since i've missed all of them past BO2 and i just wanted some easier linear FPS games to play before i go to sleep lol. The problem is that these earlier ones are actually pretty hard without regenerating health, and even with regeneration health (like in COD 2 and COD4 MW) they can still be quite difficult. It's a misconception that all games with regenerating health are easy imo.

 

 

Edited October 27, 2019 by CyberDreams : adding more

[A Nobody]

18 hours ago, jazzmaster9 said:

It really depends on te type of game.

 

Games like Borderlands, CoD4 and Halo, really did health regen well and i couldn't imagine a straightup health pickup system being used in those games, it just wont feel right.

 

Regenerating health is a great way to balance games where all enemies are hitscan, since there is not realistic way to dodge them consistently.

 

Also CoD2 and CoD4 are some of the most punishing games i've played so all this "it makes things easier" is complete BS

 

But then again if you Hate something, nothing can convince you its not "objectively bad"

I see.

[jazzmaster9]

1 hour ago, The Strife Commando said:

I see.

Im glad you were able to formulate a very well thought out response...

 

:P

[A Nobody]

I like that Halo used health packs.

[MassiveEdgelord]

Yeah health regen sucks. Just use medpacks instead.

[jazzmaster9]

There are types of games where medpack hunting just doesnt work.

 

Mechanics don't "suck" implementation does.

Everything Else

 

        

11 hours ago, The Strife Commando said:

I like that Halo used health packs.

I like that CoD4 uses Health Regen.

Edited October 28, 2019 by jazzmaster9