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Regenerating health is the way

I prefer regenerating health.

In game with health packs, the difficulty need to be designed so that even hard moments are still manageable with a less than ideal starting health amount and limited number of health packs. The result is that encounters are toned down.

With regenerating health, however, developpers will tune the hard moments in a way that will put you under pressure despite it. That mean more enemies, and more agressive ones.
 
BkzUzi said:
That's an overused annoying gif.
People sure do love to spam the same gifs over and over again in almost every thread.
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One of my biggest gripes with this site is the overuse of useless gifs/pics/memes when there's meat in the OP. Thankfully, there's an option to hide them.

OT: health packs, hardest difficulty and auto save are a nightmare. I think the Souls series does them well but idk how FPS games would be with them.
 
I like it when you regenerate to a point (eg back up to 20%) but if you want to get back up to 100% (or beyond) then you need to find some health packs. Makes things more interesting.
 
To hell with regen. You don t need health regen to make a cover and shoot type game, see CS. And yet this stupid mechanic encourages cowardry.

If you are damaged you deserve it for being in a bad place to begin with and so you don t deserve to regen. Also agree with level/game design issues. How are you supposed to make it interesting ? You must send full oppostition at all time, it s boring. Stop holding the players' hands, you already killed competitive fps now...
 
The big advantage of health regeneration is that the player will always start each battle with full health. If you don't want to have health regeneration, you need to design the entire game so that it makes sense. A game like Dark Souls does it right, while many fps games, where you can be stuck in a bad situation without any health items to help you out, do it wrong
 
whitehawk said:
Wolfenstein did it right.

Regenerates to 50% health
Need Health packs to get 100% health
Can use extra health packs to get health temporarily 100%+
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I disagree.
Too many healthy packs and too many encounters similar to the ones with regenerating health. Just compare The Last of Us, Wolfenstein and Call of Duty. Wolfenstein is a middle term, but much closer to Cod. Regenerating your health to 50% means they know getting shots is unavoidable and you could get stuck in a save. It seems a cheap solution for me.

I like health packs because then usually the combats are slow and meaningful.
With regenerating health they add challenge having you surrounded by enemies, and no cover is safe for more than a few seconds, which I find lame.

Wolfenstein also had this +100% boosters that encouraged you to go guns blazing instead of having a slower pace.

But it is all personal, I prefer:
- Health packs
- Less enemies
- Slower pace
- Strategy being allowed by good level design - the map, enemy types and enemy positioning
 
It's fine but only in fps. A part of the gameplay is sometimes health management itself. Dark souls would be a very different game of regen was available.
 
What about that cool sound that plays when you find one heart in Zelda, OP? Do you want to live without that? Do you?


Dark Souls/Bloodborne do it right
 
Wolfe said:
How did I misuse it exactly?

"The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position. This sort of "reasoning" has the following pattern: Person A has position X."

Someone says (paraphrasing obviously) "regen only works in future/sci-fi setting otherwise it's unrealistic"

To which I reply "our bodies already self regen... Not to the same degree obviously but if you want to talk about which is more "realistic" I don't think health packs exactly fit"

I'm then quoted and told "yeah fulling healing in 2 seconds is realistic"

It seems to fit almost perfectly to me, why not educate me on why I'm apparently using it wrong instead of flaunting your "superior" knowledge yet keeping it to yourself.
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I never said misuse.
 
I thought it was kind of stupid how Mass Effect 3 removed the regenerating health that ME2 had, and kind of went back to the original's way of healing. Except there's so many goddamn medical stations or kits in every single area it's a completely pointless change.
 
Nimajneb said:
How the hell are developers supposed to balance the difficulty of an area when health is potentially infinite? Regenerating health is a terrible game mechanic that leads to terrible level design.

Limited health 4 life.
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fucking this.

regen health is so stupid and has become the norm of this industry.

fucking hate it. its pretty much why peek-a-boo is so easy now for everyone.
 
Honestly I hate it. It removes continuous tension and another way to promote exploration. Half-Life 2 has this perfectly crafted as there is exploration with reward but always a risk of fucking it up even more.

I really hope this kind of mechanics goes away asap or at least some other games follow the new wolfestein game.
 
One of the most fun / intense playthroughs of a shooter i had, was Max Payne 1 (or was it 2?) on the hardest difficulty, where you only got a limited amount of Quicksaves for every level (if i remember correctly, only 5). This way i had to perfect a lot of encounters and go for headshots on every enemy. That would have been shit with regen health.

Playing Wichter 3 atm, and i'm not missing RH at all, like the op. Let me eat my bread and dumplings :)
 
Regenerating health make games too easy. Basically, every wall or cover is like a big health pack. The only difference being that it needs a few seconds to recharge. They could just add re-spawning health packs behind every cover in the whole game, it would be the same thing, just a bit faster (what's the point waiting for health to recharge).


Goldeneye (N64) had the best system. You couldn't restore your HP at all. The only thing you could do was to find the Body Armor in each stage (assuming it exists) for extra protection. The levels were balanced so this was enough, plus you had to explore a bit to find the body armor. Much more realistic, interesting and rewarding.
 
It really depends on how the game utilizes its healing system.
For example, regenerating health in a game that lets you hide behind cover for as long as you want, without anyone being able to attack you , trivializes the game's difficulty. On the other hand, when the AI is aggressive enough to not let you crouch behind a ledge all day long, a regenerating health system may provide an exhilarating experience.
As for non-regenerating health, when the game gives you a myriad of health kits/items, then the game becomes too easy.
One of the most characteristic examples is the antithesis between Demon's and Dark Souls. Both games are tough especially for newcomers. However, Demon's Souls has consumable items that you can very easily farm after a certain point in the game and even if you don't farm them, an experienced player will probably end up with a lot of them in their inventory, just because their knowledge of the game can prevent them from taking unnecessary damage. That diminishes the game's difficulty for anyone who has played another game in the series before.
On the other hand, Dark Souls gives you a limited amount of Estus Flasks each time after you die and until you die again or reach a bonfire. That adds a whole other layer of strategy and difficulty to the game because it's really challenging to manage the flasks, especially since bonfires are pretty far from one another. Therefore, Dark Souls is a more intense experience than its predecessor in each playthrough and it owes a lot to its healing system.
Of course, I love Demon's Souls to death, just not as much as Dark Souls.
 
KidB said:
On the other hand, Dark Souls gives you a limited amount of Estus Flasks each time after you die and until you die again or reach a bonfire. That adds a whole other layer of strategy and difficulty to the game because it's really challenging to manage the flasks, especially since bonfires are pretty far from one another. Therefore, Dark Souls is a more intense experience than its predecessor in each playthrough and it owes a lot to its healing system.
Of course, I love Demon's Souls to death, just not as much as Dark Souls.
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Estus in Dark Souls is really a superb healing system. I'd be interested to see it replicated in a shooter (carry X amount of heals, press button at any time to heal, heals replenish at checkpoints).
 
whitehawk said:
Wolfenstein did it right.

Regenerates to 50% health
Need Health packs to get 100% health
Can use extra health packs to get health temporarily 100%+
Click to expand...

This is a good solution, but honestly i think that between checkpoints, saves, health packs, regenerating health and more games do way too much to keep the gamer alive.
 
"Regenerating health is the way"

Your entire post doesn't mention health regen at all. You just post a rant about how you hate health packs.

It's like American politics. "I am the best candidate!" but instead of telling people why, you're only telling why your opponent is the bad choice.

Either explain your statement in the title, and make a compelling argument for it, or just don't post at all.
 
Regen health is often just a lazy way to do it. Instead of accounting for level design, enemy placement, etc. you can just slap regen health and not worry about it. I like it in some games, most I don't think it adds to the experience. It's kind of bizarre to be shot with a rocket, survive by the skin of your teeth, then walk it off back to full health. Yeah, it's a video game but that's a bit much.
 
Depends how theyre used... I like health packs in resident evil 2 for example but i like health regen in halo 2...

Both have pros and cons in each genre theyre in.
 
I feel like regenerating health between battles in RPGs makes things way too easy, unless the encounters challenge you sufficiently to the limits of your abilities everytime, basically you're not just spamming normal attack and you have to use proper strategy against every enemy to win, even then I prefer things as they are. I just love the satisfaction of manually healing up my party after a tough succession of battles.
 
No approach is the right choice. It depends on what your trying to do as different health systems have a big impact on how gameplay systems play out. Variety is good.

My preference is usually for health packs in some form as there is little more satisfying then getting through a section of a game on your last sliver of health combined with the relief of finding some much needed pickups. I also prefer games to be designed so that a player can get through the entire game unscathed if their an expert. There's no need to allow for that with regen.
 
nOoblet16 said:
Hybrid system like Resistance Fall of Man, Resistance 3 or Wolfenstein new order are the best way to do it.



That particular argument is not good since it could be made to fit the other side too though, how the hell are developers suppose to balance the difficulty of an area if health is finite? What if the player runs out of health packs during a difficult encounter to replenish his health and still has a lot of enemies to kill?
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Yup the Hybrid system is the best IMO. Wish to see more in game but it's easier to do regenerating health since it doesn't need to care much about balance, and it doesn't need to care about where you put health packs in the level.
 
Devs are starting to balance regen health now tho with destruction of cover barricade walls etc. So u cant just sit back while it regens all time
 
I prefer regenerating health, but it can be extremely annoying in this circumstance:

Being damaged by a single powerful attack which forces you to run and heal, and then being damaged by a minuscule, low-damaging attack which keeps you at low health and forces you to redo the entire waiting process. The minuscule attack should only slightly slow down the time it takes to regenerate.

In a "health-pack" game the powerful attack would have reduced my health from 100% to 20%, and the minuscule attack would have brought it down to 19% (so it would actually be minuscule!)

This is the only problem I have with regenerating health.
 
MajinSweet4 said:
"Health packs" or just consumable forms of recovery is better than regenerating health because it gives games much more design space. For example, with regen health, the whole concept of your level design is forced to be much more narrow. You can't really have enemies that do small to moderate chunks of damage through out the level and expect the player to really care about that. As long as the player can simply avoid game play long enough to regenerate, the mistakes they made are essentially meaningless. Where as with consumable form of recovery, they can heal to make up for that mistake, but they are limited on how many times they can do that. Something as simple as that makes the combat a lot more tense and engaging. Often people bring up how finding health kits is tedious where as plenty of games have shown simple (and obvious) ways around that issue. Dark Souls is a pretty clear example of doing it right.
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This is a very adroit post. Well said.

But I still do think there is room for both types of systems. Regenerating health makes a lot of sense in Halo and other "cat and mouse" style games, especially those with multiplayer.

I can't imagine trying to play, for example, Splatoon with needing to find health packs... especially online.
 
Worse is a combination of a auto checkpoint with health packs. If you load into a auto checkpoint and your health is really low and an enemy is shooting and that's where it auto saves that's an instant death no matter what, worse is when you can't avoid it at all.

Regenerating health is the best. Less clutter.
 
I never played fps in the medkit era but the more i play games with regenerating health the more i prefer games with medkits.
Reg. health is the apex of this modern way of making games by dumbing them down to the extreme
 
Depends on the game really and how it is used, but that should go without saying. No one solution is the best for all games.

Ninja Gaiden Black is pretty close to being a perfect game imo and I never thought it needed regenerating health, because it is balanced around finding or buying health items and the risk vs reward element of using the blue orbs to heal up or power up your charge attacks.

Ninja Gaiden 2 had a combination of both systems, but was just as unforgiving. The encounter design was poorer tho, so I didn't consider it a step up simply because there were several 'unfair' sections that felt designed around taking a chunk out of your health bar by something you never saw coming.

As for more modern games, I think it is more about a frustration limiter than anything else. Mass Effect series for example kept fumbling around both systems and in the end settled for a combination of both, but I'm pretty sure Bioware would've preferred to just do away with it the way they were aping shooters like with the CoD red jelly veins awful system.

Like I said, there is no one size fits all when it comes to gaming, but I generally prefer non regenerating systems because that usually means encounter design is better and exploring for hp items or a more careful approach is required. Not always tho.
 
I liked the health system in WH40K Space Marine, which if I recall correctly, only regenerated while you were killing enemies in the frenzied state (or whatever it was called).

Regenerating health encourages too much boring run and hide tactics. Additionally, it resets the tension of most encounters to the same base level.

Personally, I think it's the worst gameplay mechanic that's come around since I've been playing games.
 
Resistance did it best. 4 health squares. If you took 3/4 damage than you can only regenerate up to 1/4. Or if you took 1/2 damage you can only regenerate up to 1/2 your health.
 
UncleSporky said:
What you've said is like saying that a game with regenerating ammo is no better or worse from a realism perspective than a game with limited ammo that requires pickups.
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Well, at least real ammo literally IS an item that can be picked up up and loaded into a gun in order to be fired. Magical health packs that heal on touch don't exist.

Yes, there are first-aid kits, but they need to administered, and the patient needs to rest, etc. They aren't some sort of magical healing potion.

The body will, in many cases, heal naturally given enough time. Regenerative health just greatly speeds up the amount of time healing would actually take.

But honestly, both solutions are so far from realism that even if one is ever-so-slightly more realistic, it hardly matters in any way.
 
Depends on the game. I wouldn't want all games to adopt the same mechanic. Like someone else said, Bloodborne and the Souls games make you think about when is safe to use a healing item, and knowing my health won't magically replenish makes me much more careful in my approach to encounters.

I do quite like it in the majority of FPS that I play though.
 
BkzUzi said:
OP I agree with you.



That's an overused annoying gif.
People sure do love to spam the same gifs over and over again in almost every thread.
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just give it a few weeks and it'll be dead once gaf plays it out like they always do
except that stupid fuckin captain america gif
 
I feel like every post that has defended regen health in the thread so far more or less is defending on its convenience rather than how it actually meaningfully affects the game.

I cannot think of a single game that would be improved with regen health while I can think of quite a few that would be ruined by it. L4D, Doom, and Half life would basically be joke games with regen health.

Waiting for the poster who comes and says Resident Evil would be better with it. Managing items is annoying!
 
DOWN said:
Tell me it is anything more than a weak pace-breaking eye-sore of a distraction in Halo when I am forced to stop what I am doing to backtrack for a health pack that I don't feel one bit special about.
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When Halo does it? Okay, sure. But what about when Resident Evil does it? A lot of survival horror is about resource management within a hostile but familiar place. Mapping a safe route to where you last spotted some herbs, or balancing your inventory between healing/keys/weapons, are intrinsic parts of the experience.

Comfort Jones said:
I feel like every post that has defended regen health in the thread so far more or less is defending on its convenience rather than how it actually meaningfully affects the game.
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Health regeneration allows gameplay focused around balancing the amount of pressure the player allows themselves to be put under. It lets you plunge yourself into a dangerous firefight, make on-the-fly improvisations, and not be punished for it.

When health is finite, the player is encouraged to make far more prudent decisions, and exploit holes in the AI in order to avoid conflict entirely. This may or may not suit the pacing of the game.
 
Junahu said:
Health regeneration allows gameplay focused around balancing the amount of pressure the player allows themselves to be put under. It lets you plunge yourself into a dangerous firefight, make on-the-fly improvisations, and not be punished for it.
Click to expand...

This really comes off as a fancy way of saying it lets the player take damage so they can shoot things and then not get punished for taking damage.

When health is finite, the player is encouraged to make far more prudent decisions, and exploit holes in the AI in order to avoid conflict entirely. This may or may not suit the pacing of the game.
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I don't see how you'd be exploiting holes in ai more in one game than another, especially when most regen health shooters kill you SUPER FAST on harder difficulties anyway. I find myself going through regen health shooters much slower for this very reason. It's literally always better to be at as far of a distance as possible because there's nothing incentivizing you to go forward.
 
For some games it's good.

For other games it's not.

Who would've thunk it.

I actually miss rations in MGSV. Feels stripped away from the game to have such a series staple missing.

Imagine Resident Evil 2 REmake without herbs lmao, that would be so shit.
 
potatohead said:
I actually miss rations in MGSV. Feels stripped away from the game to have such a series staple missing.
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I feel like MGS5 would be a muuuuch better stealth game if my health didn't regenerate. The only time combat didn't feel like a good option was if there was some other hard fail state attached to getting caught. Otherwise the punishment for getting caught was more of an inconvenience than anything I got worried about.
 
Hypron said:
Why? That goes directly against the limited resources and scavenging aspect of the game. It'd make the game worse.
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Instead of searching for aid, you could be looking for things to fight off infections. If you had unlimited meds, you could heal in full, but with the added antidotes you can take less damage. Maybe while being infected, you could be killed off with a few hits. Bitten or coming across virus induced smog could lower your immune system. This way you are vulnerable and it causes you to cough, which alerts enemies.
 
gafneo said:
Instead of searching for aid, you could be looking for things to fight off infections. If you had unlimited meds, you could heal in full, but with the added antidotes you can take less damage. Maybe while being infected, you could be killed off with a few hits. Bitten or coming across virus induced smog could lower your immune system. This way you are vulnerable and it causes you to cough, which alerts enemies.
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...I'm so confused. You're just throwing out another design idea without explaining why it's good to remove limited healing to begin with. Firefights would be free as hell if I could use health kits infinitely and the only way they wouldn't be is enemies were aggressive to the point of ridiculousness or if you died even faster which was literally part of my problem with health regen to begin with.
 
I don't really like a strictly regenerating health system.

NIN90 said:
I always thought the hybrid in the recent Wolfenstein games is a good compromise.
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Agree.

Three said:
The most annoying thing is saving with low health in a location with no healthpacks. Can stop you from playing the game entirely.
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Yeah, this is one of the drawbacks of limited/nonregenerating health. I've had this happen a couple times in situations where I ended up losing hours of progress. Doh.
 
I play games for fun, not "challenge" or "difficulty" per se, so I'm fine with either as long as I'm not frustrated. I'd prefer regen as looking around for health packs does break the flow of the game for me, but as others have mentioned, it depends on how the game is designed. I don't think there's a right or wrong way to do it as I've been entertained by games that have done it both ways.
 
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