• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Regenerating health sucks and makes no sense in games.

kiphalfton

Member
When playing Kingdom Hearts, it was so satisfying when you step into the save circle after being on the brink of death and have all your health and MP fully restored. Same for LoZ games when you go to the fairy fountains. Even shooters like Wolfenstein, when you collect all the health and armor, after getting your ass handed to you, is satisfying.

Meanwhile other games either have regenerative health, or extremely ample amounts of health kits laying about.

Honestly imo the former seems better, as you either have to be more tactile or manage your resources (potions, fairies, health kits, etc.) or you'll die. Actually feels like a game. Whereas the latter is just mindless, as you can just run away or hide, and wait til your armor or shields restore.
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
I think it depends on the game and the mechanics of regeneration. If there's a theme in the game where it actually makes sense in the context of the game then it's ok. A character with regeneration abilities should automatically regenerate health. A soldier in a battlefield situation probably not so much. Just let them die.

I think Mass Effect with the two tier shield/health system where shields regenerate and health requires an event to refill is a good way to do it if auto regeneration needs to be a thing in the game. Bullet sponge games where the screen turns red and then two seconds later you're back to full health just feel cheap and break immersion for me. I'd prefer health generation require an actual event that makes sense drive it.
 

Con-Z-epT

Live from NeoGAF, it's Friday Night!
I love the old Quake, Doom and Unreal games for that. Or most of the older shooters. When you clear a section on a higher difficulty and have pretty much no health left feels very satisfying.

In most modern shooters you'd hide behind a cover and wait a few seconds to replenish. Why would you even have health when there is no dedicated mechanic for healing in your game.
 

Miles708

Member
It depends on the game, but usually medikits are just disseminated eveywhere and, frankly, there are few games that benefit from creating this kind of tension without turning it into frustration.
 

MiguelItUp

Member
Most certainly depends on the game IMO.

But I will say that, for the most part, I'm not the biggest fan of regenerating health. Especially if you just chill somewhere and your life completely replenishes.
 

Saber

Gold Member
I have to agree. Doom I and II(the old ones for DOS) are the ones that aways made sense in terms health of aplication mechanics. How you manage your health it's up to you.


Arguing about "sense" being made in games, and opening with "When playing Kingdom Hearts," should be considered a war crime.

As much I would agree, I think he is talking about gameplay mechanics not the convoluted story.
 
Last edited:

EverydayBeast

thinks Halo Infinite is a new graphical benchmark
One reason why I like sincere shooters but also for medics that do a lot in games like Battlefield.
 

Venom Snake

Gold Member
540pdc.gif
 

RafterXL

Member
Turn the difficulty up, most games change health regen on higher levels. Other than that I feel like the games that have regenerating health have it for the betterment of the games. Not every game has to have resource management.
 

Fbh

Member
Depends on the game really. In some games, specially shooters, I think it can be fun as it incentivized you to be more aggressive and take more risks instead of slowly crouching around and cheesing encounters with headshots.
I also often like it when some games (often RPG's) heal you automatically in between battles (but not during them). As I prefer the challenge coming from the actual encounters instead of item management.
 
Play Robotech Battlecry... There's no health packs no health Regen and your stuck with the amount you have throughout the whole mission and lvl. It was a bitch to deal with that.
 

Pejo

Member
It's an accessibility mechanic to help out casuals and game journos. It's not going anywhere.
 

Codes 208

Member
A spartan with 26th century armor with built-in advanced meds to cure injuries makes more sense to me than a single person eating 30 wheels of cheese in ten seconds.

or RE7/8 logic of “hand gone? Just use rubbing alcohol!”
 

salva

Member
It's a reflection of today's world and society in general where everyone is a winner and there are no repercussions for my actions.
Give me a health bar, make my screen go red with low visibility, make my character limp, make it clear I f'kd up and I suck
 
Speak for yourself.

Fun fact: in uncharted, you don’t actually get hit with bullets when the game tells you you’re hurt. It actually means Nate escaped a lot of close calls but his luck is running out. Then, when he actually gets shot, he dies.
 
whats worse than that is games where u don't regenerate health...and u die on a boss. And it respawns u with the low health u had and no health packs in sight
 
best part of low health is that is makes you tackle a situation differently.

game tourists/casuals/normies dont like it though, and there's a lot of them.
 

Swift_Star

Banned
There's no difference between it and using a health kit. Like at all. And the make sense statement, yeah, because it totally make sense for you to fly or shoot fires out of your hands. It's a game.
 
Last edited:

RoboFu

One of the green rats
Regenerating health is a by product of auto saves every 5 secs. If you are going to spawn back 5 secs before you died does it really make sense to have to keep your health low as well?
 

bargeparty

Member
can we just make one big thread for stupid shit like this, would really cut down on all the garbage threads that get opened constantly.
 

Bragr

Banned
It can really hamper the progression of the game if you need to save to regain health. Games these days want the player to move onward at a good pace and not get weighed down by retrying the same areas and be dependent on learning layouts and enemy placements. Which is a good thing, for the most part. There are so many games where a non-health regen system would be a terrible decision.

I almost find that non-regen holds back a lot of games, as they depend on feeding the player health opportunities and can't just leave them be.
 

Fare thee well

Neophyte
I never want any mechanic to feel like I'm cheesing it tbh. Stamina, health, magic, etc, should all feel on par with the difficulty of the game and your relative progression in it. For a lot of companies it's just easy to be lazy and air on the side of giving you more replenishing tools. Now I know sometimes we all want a fun casual playthrough; just add difficulty levels. Problem solved.
 

Knightime_X

Member
I like limited regenerating health for certain games.
Mostly borderlands.
For games like doom, having health items laying around works too.

Depends on the kind of game honestly.
 

EDMIX

Member
Arguing about "sense" being made in games, and opening with "When playing Kingdom Hearts," should be considered a war crime.

Thread.

OP doesn't really make much sense when they are asking for such a thing while referencing Kingdom Hearts of all games. Some games should have it, some shouldn't, it simply comes down to the type of game.
 

Deerock71

Member
It seems to be the copy-pasta way to make balancing a game's difficulty directly proportionate to an un-skilled gamer's ability to duck under cover for a few seconds.
 
I'm crap at this kind of game, so I like regenerating health. I can see an argument for it only happening for lower skill levels, but I'd hate to lose it completely.

It's one reason why I got to the end of Assassins Creed Origins and Odyssey but not very far in Valhalla. I spend much of the game hiding while half a garrison is looking for me. Without regenerating health I'd be stuffed.
 
I forgot which game did this (one of the modern Shadow Warriors? Possibly it was activated ability?) but it had hp regen to like 50% of health and rest you had to get from medpacks/healing kits.

I think hp regen solves the situation where you survive a big enemy encounter but are left with low health and no resources to get it back up and thus you die on the next one - making surviving the first encounter pointless.
 

mxbison

Member
Depends on the game.

But in general I agree. With regenerating health you often don't care if you get hit, which can make games boring.
 

01011001

Banned
Control has the best system of any recent game IMO.

killed enemies will drop small blue pallets, and if you collect them you regen health. this means in order to get your health back you will have to take a risk and run out of cover to get it.
so HP is never rare, but also you can't just stay behind cover like some casual all day.

☝️this should be used in way more games imo in some form or another.
 
Last edited:
Top Bottom