What so bad about health regenaration?

[FDARI]

Waiting for health regeneration is boring, yes. However, if I spend 80% of my play time waiting for the right moment to make a move, earning the occasional perfect victory... It might be a very intense, exciting and satisfying 80% + 20% (complete game experience) we're talking about. Hideous Destructor goes a little ways in that direction. To get any further in that direction you'd probably need more ability to predict or observe activities in unexplored areas. (And hey presto, we're playing Commandos: Behind enemy lines.)

You could also have a regeneration system where your automatic regeneration caps based on how low your health has been, with healing items restoring health and/or max autorecovery. Fast recovery during fight is not smart, but fast recovery to a cap between fights gives you some extra durability without making the individual fights too easy, and without making you wait much at all.

I don't know... Maybe. An idea anyway.

[LilWhiteMouse]

The thing about health regen is that it encourages you to stop playing and just wait for your guy to be back to full health. Like, hide behind a crate and go make yourself a sandwich and a cup of coffee, come back ten minutes later and you're good to go.

It's not exactly gripping gameplay.

As opposed to having to trudge around for ten minutes in areas I've already cleared, trying to find health items? If regenerating health lets me get back to blowing stuff up sooner, why am I going to complain? It's a game, I'm supposed to have fun. This isn't training for the next post apocalypse. Saint's Row 2 just wouldn't be any fun if in the middle of a fight I have to wander off to find health. I'd much rather just find some cover, gain some health, and get right back into the fray. Either let me heal when I want (useable items), or give me fast'ish regenerating health (Mass Effect 2). I just want to enjoy myself, real life is hard enough.

[InsanityBringer]

I find slow passive health regen (ie: tf2's medic, reelism's bloody screen so real reel, and other examples) to not be overwhelmingly bad because they don't encourage waiting as much as some of the regen systems I've seen, where you basically regen your full health in a short period of time if you don't take any damage. Slow health regen doesn't allow you to just ignore your low health issues by waiting, unless you're really patient.

[NeuralStunner]

"yeah, making the player spend 80%* of his time waiting is a good idea!"

"Over 40 hours of play time!"

[Minigunner]

In my opinion, regeneration, if any, should only occur if you are above a certain percentage of health (50%, 75%, w/e), and it should be relatively slow (1%, 2%, or 5% every second). External methods, such as interactivity (Duke Nukem 3D), health pickups (pick a game, any game), or a medic (TF2, BF1942, RPG games) should be available if regeneration is not possible. Also, for the love of God, provide evasive maneuvers, such as rolling (Star Wars Battlefront) and diving (which COD already has).

[Ravick]

Hum, I got the reasons, thanks.

My main motivation to have asked is that I am using this in my mod. And having seen so many people complaining, I feared I was doing something that in the end the majority would dislike.

I understand the problem that it motivates the player to stand still waiting by the regen, but there is also the problem out of a fight with only 1% health, and know that is almost impossible to continue. I mean, in games with gameplay less predictable, it is difficult to calculate how much health a player loses in every confrontation, and under what conditions he will go to the next. Also this is not always this linear. I mean, there are maps and games where the enemies are wandering around and you do not know for sure who the player will face first.

For example: In my mod health regenerates 1% per second if it is lower than 20%, up to 20%. Player is a little more vulnerable than the original Doomguy, so 20% is still a very dangerous value, but gives some chances to survive until find some medic items, or a health station. I know it's just a detail of the gameplay from many others, but, only with this information, do you think this would make the gameplay very easy, boring and/or uninteresting?

_______

"I just want to enjoy myself, real life is hard enough." (LilWhiteMouse)

Haha, just loved it.

[Gez]

As opposed to having to trudge around for ten minutes in areas I've already cleared, trying to find health items?

Pretty much the reason why my gaming philosophy tends to favor unlimited inventories. Pickup items when you see them, instead of saving them for later and then having to backtrace. If you're carrying three dozen medikits, you won't need to wait behind a crate until you've regenerated enough.

[TerminusEst13]

It's obvious to say that Halo popularized it. The idea behind it is a simple, if not admirable one.
While not the first to use regenerating health, Halo had every single encounter based off the idea of regenerating shields. With other FPSes, devs usually have to take a ballpark guess at how much health the player will have in a certain area, balancing encounters for what they hope is a reasonable amount of health in a certain area. This creates a problem if the player was supposed to pick up a few medikits and missed it, or if they lucked their way through an encounter and now are at full health in an area where you're supposed to be limping.
Bungie used the shield as a sort of cushion for their gauges--no matter what, they knew that when player enters an area they can soak X damage, so they can plan encounters accordingly. They can have enemies come from behind and surprise you, because with static health you don't want to take the chance this surprise attack will kill you, for example.

The problem is that a lot of devs completely threw the possible ideas and twists out the window in favor of hiding behind walls BECAUSE HALO DID IT SO IT MUST BE GOOD.

[Vaecrius]

First time I ever encountered regen was in the Opera Half-Life mod... it doesn't say how much health you have, you just sort of guess based on subtle hints in the interface (swaying, red tinted view, etc.) and you're not hiding so much as trying to outflank your opponent the next time you two have LOS and see if you can finish him off - often by getting a lucky "heart" shot that killed them instantly.

Thing was, I remember it being very easy to just cheese your way to the top of the server by using hard-hitting weapons that don't let your target get away. (Shotguns were especially bad since any pellet could deal a heart shot and IIRC was treated as a separate shot for accuracy purposes...)

[Rangaisia]

Eh, I don't mind health regeneration. Most games I've played that had it used it fairly well. All health systems are unrealistic in the long run, and I doubt the difference is as pronounced as some people would like to believe.

In fact, player's ability to avoid getting hit in the first place probably matters more in terms of how (un)enjoyable the game is. Personally, my inability to enjoy Modern Warfare stems mostly from the spray-and-pray shooting mechanisms and the controls not really facilitating the use of cover.

With proper design, regenerating health doesn't have to slow the game down. Vanquish had regen health (and a cover system) and it's probably the fastest shooter I've ever played.

[Apothem]

I think one of the big issues that regenerating health in a lot of games fails to cover is the fact that you can throw a much higher volume of enemies at the player at one time, depending on the style of gameplay. In the case of Doom, I've found that regenerating health does have a place, but only as an extra item or embelishment on top of the pre-existing health system. I always looked at it more as an excuse to allow the player to stay in the middle of a firefight longer, and actually get the opportunity to have a large-scale battle without everything just insta-killing the player on-sight.


But truly, without any connection between fights, or some kind of TRUE WEIGHT for your actions, it lacks any meaning. So it's either you up the chaos, or find some other way to bridge the gap. I would like to think of it as the act of balancing through replacing one feature with another. So if you're adding some kind of thing like regenerating health, you had better make sure you add something else to counter-balance the extra survival capacity. Be it a larger opposing force, puzzle-type challenges in the middle of a battle, or some other crazy crap. But there has to be SOMETHING. That's why a game like mass effect, which technically does have regenerating health, still works as well as it does with its combat without being entirely too boring.

[Xaser]

I'd like to see more games use the gimmick that your health regenerates when you kill enemies, so the incentive is to go balls-to-the-wall instead of hiding behind a pillar all day.

Cover-based shooters are a different thing, I guess -- I really like Gears of War because its overall formula works, as the entire engine is geared toward ducking behind stuff and firing from cover. It sucks in most FPS's, though, since you have to play a half-assed version of this without the proper tools to do so.

[Lava Grunt]

I find slow passive health regen (ie: tf2's medic, reelism's bloody screen so real reel, and other examples) to not be overwhelmingly bad because they don't encourage waiting as much as some of the regen systems I've seen, where you basically regen your full health in a short period of time if you don't take any damage. Slow health regen doesn't allow you to just ignore your low health issues by waiting, unless you're really patient.

Exactly. TF2's does it nicely. Lone bullets or shotgun pellets or whatever other small minor damage is quickly patched up - it's the benefit of being a medic. Slow health regen is sort if like an armor; shrugging off minor nips and bites but leaving you sol'd if you start getting wailed on.

Hideous Destructor also does this nicely. (if you haven't played HD, drop everything your doing and play it now)

For instance, I had a medical supply drought on some Oblige maps I was playing, and I took a heavy beating from a prior firefight. But, playing better and more cautiously over awhile brought my health up a decent amount (by roughly 25%), and that took a long time.

Overall, balanced, slow health regen is perfectly fine and a good gameplay mechanic when used correctly.

[amv2k9]

I'd like to see more games use the gimmick that your health regenerates when you kill enemies, so the incentive is to go balls-to-the-wall instead of hiding behind a pillar all day.

Loved getting Second Winds in Borderlands. Sure they were ridiculously cheap when combined with Phoenix, but damn if it wasn't fun!

[wildweasel]

Half the fun in Borderlands came from figuring out just how horribly broken you could build your character. My personal favorite is the Heavy Gunner build for Soldier, where it's entirely possible to get your machine guns carrying about 110% more ammo and firing at double the speed once you've killed someone.