I personally do too but I can understand their point of view. At the end of the day it comes down to how you play and who you play with. They're the competitive types. As a result I'm sure they ran into their share of assholes who would abuse the health systems. I myself and others played with just friends who didn't give a shit if they won or lost or what as long as they were having fun. Hence people like me haven't run into a lot of people who abused health etc when we played. As a result you have two totally opposite views of health and how it should be done in the game. So I can understand their sadness about not having a choice to turn it off completely.
Course David has said that it's near the top of the list for future patches so I think in the end everyone will be happy.
While I can understand the complaints about the health. Twisted Metal ( In my own opinion) has always been a Arena Shooter on wheels (Quake/Unreal). Having stuff like weapon pickups and health picks. As well as understanding the layout of the map design and the little secret area's that give you special ammo. It is up to you the player to learn the map design to increase your chances of victory. Just a few moments ago I was fighting with a cheap ass Talon player who just tried sniping all day. He was low on health and I knew exactly where he was going to go to restore his health. So I took the appropriate cut off angle to beat him to the punch.
Faster vehicles can reach health pickups faster but since they have less health the damage they repair is little compared to a heavy vehicle like Outlaw or Darkside, and being slower takes them longer to get there.
Eventually when a player learns the design of a map they will eventually create their own rotation or path they will take when it comes to picking up weapons and health. So a player who wants to stay alive will obviously learn where health pick ups to stay alive. Saying stuff like ''players will abuse [insert Mechanic]" only applies if that mechanic is unbalanced. If Health packs (or if any method of health recovery) is removed then you have to make the penalty for death even less severe to counter balance the absence of health pickups. With health packs/health semi you can enforce a stronger penalty of death (longer respawns etc etc).
Twisted Metal really is a balanced game, I say this because it is one of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to games. Most developers don't know how to balance a game for shit and thus really hampers the experience of their multiplayer.
