>Regenerating health
>Health that can be restored by using medkits and a regenerating shield
>Health and armor, both of which can only be restored by pickups/finite player resources and don't regenerate on their own
Which one do (you) prefer in FPS?
 CRIME Shirt $21.68 |
 Nothing Ever Happens Shirt $21.68 |
CRIME Shirt $21.68 |
The most realistic one is regenerating health, so option top number 1
>singleplayer
option 3
>multiplayer
option 2
Understandable, have a great day.
When the mechanic of regenerating health first started gaining popularity, I was a fan. When any video game resource is finite, I compulsively hoard it. But if there's just a cooldown period before an ability recharges, then I'll use it. Games are more fun when you use your abilities, rather than saving them up for a big fight that may never come.
Regenerating health made me realize that a character's health bar is a similar resource. When you rely on health pickups, you have to be careful all the time. Taking a chance now might cause you to wedge yourself into a more dire situation later.
With regenerating health, you're free to try bolder strategies. As long as you scrape through that specific encounter with a sliver of life, there's no long-term penalty for trying something crazy.
I love being free to do crazy shit in games. I don't like being hemmed behind cover, carefully firing at enemies. That's totally mind-numbing to me. I wanna run around, trying to get the drop on enemies, and having to deal with the moment-to-moment repercussions of my ill-advised maneuvers. Traditional health bars don't support that style of playing. You'll just get gradually ground down until you have no choice but to stay behind cover, carefully firing at enemies.
However, I heard someone mention that the downside to regenerating health is that it reduces the scope of encounters. Regenerating health boils a game down into a series of twenty second encounters. On the other hand, the scarcity of health packs can create greater tension, stretching the stress of an encounter out over three or four minutes. I think it was Jonathan Blow who said that, actually. It's a good point, and one I hadn't considered.
The Last Of Us does a pretty nice job of incorporating both styles. On the surface, the game has a traditional health bar, with restorative items. The reason I never crafted a molotov during my earlier playthroughs was because I was so terrified of running out of health. There seemed to be no safety net down there, and on my first playthrough, The Last Of Us seemed like one brutal grind of getting my ass kicked.
But on later playthroughs, I've realized how much the game is actually looking after me. Characters will coyly give me all kinds of stuff, but without it being too obvious. Ultimately, The Last Of Us has all the hallmarks of a modern game, in the sense that it doesn't want a player to get too stuck, or get too lost. As long as you put in the time, The Last Of Us wants you to see its ending.
But the game has still found a way to give the player that old-school health bar scare. It gives the player resource management stress, which is one of the things that made old games so exciting. But if that stress reaches a breaking point, one of the under-the-hood systems will find a way to help you. It took awhile for me to recognize that balance, but I became really impressed with how The Last Of Us slyly uses both methods of health management.
https://keithcourage.com/tlou/
I really like that aspect of the Last of Us, I know a lot of people thrash it for being a movie game, but in higher difficulties, the gameplay is really good at making you tense and stressed about tiny decisions and moment to moment gameplay.
The only third person shooter that achieves that effect is Resident Evil 4. Which is weird considering how different they both are.
With RE4 it's sort of a balancing act. The immediate way to heal with with Green Herbs. But you can take so much damage at once that it necessitates multiple herbs to recover. More than you can reasonably find. Meaning to make up the difference you must engage with enemies on the hope they'll drop more herbs in exchange. Which is quite the bill on higher difficulties since engaging enemies requires bullets in exchange or the higher risk knife. And even then too many herbs takes up space in your attache case so every herb equates to 50 bullets that could've taken the same amount of space. Pushed to higher extremes if you decide to catch fish which heals more than your standard herb but also takes up more space.
Yep, you put it pretty well, RE4 rules in this aspect because the sheer amount of complexity it has without feeling to overwhelmeding to the player.
I call it a balancing act because in the hands of an incompetent developer this system can suck dick. Bioshock Infinite being a prime example. If you ever heard a complaint about enemies being bullet sponges in that game, it's because it takes way too much ammo in exchange for anything the enemies can give you in return. Which you can argue that it incentivizes switching weapons but I'd argue back that forcing players to throw away weapons they like for weapons they don't and probably haven't upgraded to keep up with the massive health pools is probably what pissed everyone off about that game.
I haven't played Infinite but I get what you mean. RE4 gets so much right with this "balancing act" it's amazing. Limited inventory which encourages clever resource management, a well balanced money economy that rewards player for exploring and gives them consistent progression rewards in the form of new weapons and upgrades, fair enemy design which tests your skills in different ways without the pitfalls of large health pools.
I need to stop now otherwise I would be sucking off Mikami's dick forever.
Option 2, but:
Either by meleeing enemies like with the black eye skull, you regain a bit of health, or:
Every time you regen your shields after taking health damage, you regain 20% of your total health, kind of like Reach.
I love having to actually pick up health in map locations since it means each encounter means a lot more (Unless you are in vehicles, unless the vehicle explodes or you take a direct hit within the vehicle it shouldn't damage your health), that said CE legendary was a pain in the ass wherever you went down to 1HP and relied only on shields, specially post Flood reveal were there are barely any humans.
Reach perfected this, shame 343 is Black folk and ignored this.
How about this, just having both.
I'd kill for a Halo game that lets you use both one time equipment and armor abilities, they are quite different from each other to be shared, or let you have them at the same time even.
Frick you, you just reminded me how much of a slug was to play through doom 2016.
I think the shield+ limited health is the most interesting gameplay wise, allowing for players to play aggressively, to a point, with room to push the limit.
The way health and armor interact just isn't as mechanically meaningful. Armor is basically just extra XP through a formula
Gain health by bathing in the fresh blood of your enemies from close range
>Gain health by bathing in the fresh blood of your enemies from close range
so by watching cutscenes every 5 seconds
this isn't zoom eternal
it's ULTRAZOOM
I'm not talking about glory kills
no dood you dont get it, I pressed square and an epic animation played that means I'm epic
no, ultrakill has no cutsceney shit. It just straight up works like the following
>enemies kill you in 4-5 hits, sometimes 2-3
>you get your entire health back by blasting something in the face with a charged shotgun or whatever
>getting hit too much starts temporarily cutting off your healthbar, just enough to prevent excessively braindead facetanking, without hurting agressive gameplay and well-placed facetanks
its great
Both Bloodborne and Hollow Knight have systems similar to this. In Bloodborne damage can be reduced by becoming even more aggressive after taking hits rather than running for cover. Which reduces the necessity for Blood Vials which are a limited resource. In Hollow Knight restoring health requires Soul which is obtained by striking enemies with your close range weapon. But your offensive magic is tied to the same resource so every time you choose to heal, you're choosing not to damage your opponent. Healing also takes time so you can actually make fights go quicker by choosing to kill your enemies rather than keeping yourself safe.
Hollow Knight's heal system is extremely good
>you can choose between healing or more damage / versatility from spells
>if you dont take damage you can do constant spells
>soul can be used to give you extra tricks like baldur shell
>you have charms to turn damage received into damage dealt, or damage received into soul, or to make you need to heal less, lots of options
>excellent play with the nail = more heals and more spells
Not to mention how unlimited healing allows tricky, fast and drawn out boss battles.
Finite health with pickups with an extremely tiny regenerating shield just to make sure random scratches and other dumb shit don't eventually wear down resources, but you still can't get out of every fight for free.
a mix of both
health and armor , with 10% being auto regenerated and the rest only pickups
Health that doesn't regenerate, but can be restored ad infinitum at fixed locations in the level.
I prefer options 2 or 3. Unless it's borderlands then I try to get whatever regenerating health skills, class mods, or relics I can get my hands on
>Health and armor, both of which can only be restored by pickups/finite player resources and don't regenerate on their own
All of my favorite FPS games use this one, so I pick this one.
Of those options, probably the second or third.
Real shit though is what HDest does
>taking damage gives you wounds, that steadily bleed (the amount depending on the severity) until treated
>if you lose too much blood you die
>you have bandages to stop bleeding, but they can be torn by further damage or over exertion (the more you exert yourself the faster your heart beats and the more blood you lose) - you still need to treat the wounds to stop blood loss permanently
>you have stimpacks which slow bloodloss and reduce pain, but which can kill you if you overdose on them
>you have infusion kits which give you more blood - but if you're still bleeding it'll only temporarily help
It's sick and I love it.
>health that can be restored by damaging enemies up close
either regenerating shield and health pickups or the other way around, whatever is regeneration should be very little and take a while to come back, but just serve as a way out of you getting stuck in a place with 1 health
regenerating health and or shields are shit for multiplayer games
what about option 4, both health and armor/shield come from pickups that regenerate slowly or are dropped by respawning enemies that repopulate the levels
regen health is good in games if build around faster paced, high intensity combat with little down time. med kits are for games with more survival and exploration aspects that require levels built around it - if poorly designed, you are rationing/not picking up the medkit and have to back track several minutes to find it when needed; when done right, they are more of a 'you got through that, heres health if needed' aspect. much harder to pull off correctly, especially with 'diverse' developers. halo style regen shield with health pack is a nice mix of both and only really halo has managed to pull it off correctly. it has different weapons that affect both shields and health. it has fast paced sections to require shields regenning for the run and gun, take cover, keep pushing gameplay but also longer form stuff where health kits bringing you back from the edge work too.
i prefer the system the game is designed around. most just toss on strawberry jam cod health regen these days even if the game or AI or levels dont support or reward that style.
I think in NOLF you had health you couldn't heal and armor that could be restored with pickups.
>classic medkit system
The Patrician choice. Game is designed in a way that you can beat it without taking much or any damage, and the medkits are only there so shitters don't get frustrated from their lack of skill, or if you wanna take a high risk approach.
>shield + medkit
Game is designed around taking cover all the time, player movement is slow and becomes irrelevant. Medkits serve no actual purpose, since you rely on your shield.
>bloody screen so real
Same as shield + medkit, but the game stop pretending that medkits mean anything in a slow cover shooter and instead just warn you harder when your "shield" depletes.
Nothing stops shield+health games from being fast paced and agressive, a lot of games do it
This system was popularized by Halo, and this is probably the slowest FPS that I have ever played. What fast paced shooters use Shield+Health?
deep rock galactic on a hazard that challenges you, so 5 or modded hazard. Rapidly pushing through hordes and fast gameplay in holdouts are often just as common as slow paced
I think nu-doom uses that
Payday 2 (used to be better)
Gunfire Reborn (shit game but often extremely fast paced on high difficulties)
>deep rock galactic
the enemies in this game are faster than you. you can dodge projectiles with movement, but this game is more about identifying an advantageous position. DRG is an excellent example how shield regen FPS are always usually slow shooters that rely on positioning instead of fast reaction.
>Payday 2
slow cover shooter with the main goal to shoot as little as possible, very bad example
>gunfire reborn
never heard of it, watched a video and it looks like you can play it fast. but it also looks like it doesn't need a regen system.
I usually avoid shitty shooters, especially the console ones. The best shooters out there have fast movement.
>I usually avoid shitty shooters, especially the console ones. The best shooters out there have fast movement.
you just have shit taste. let me guess, deus ex fan?
I like Deus Ex, but I see and play it as a stealth RPG and do not count it as a shooter. I prefer fast movement in my pure FPS games.
DRG has proven to me: There aren't enough shooters with both rocket jumping and regenerating shields.
>and this is probably the slowest FPS that I have ever played
you havent played a lot of shooters.
It's certainly the slowest shooter that pretends to be fast paced
when did it ever 'pretend' to be fast paced?
>Halo
>slow
How the frick were you playing it? Did you just hide any time you took shield damage?
I think one of the Resistance games had a system where the health bar was split into 4 equal parts. If you got damaged but a bar didn't deplete it would fill back up after not receiving damage for a while. To replenish depleted bars you'd need a health pack.
I think it was a good compromise that allowed aggressive play and the potential to push through dangerous situations without it becoming a boring campfest
The best option is no regen health unless you're at a certain threshold.
Like if you go below 15 HP it'll regen back to 15, but over that you're on your own.
Shockingly M*troid Other M did this. You could recover up to 1 energy tank of health and any more must be found. It was still a shitty game though.
I like it when health get used automatically when you walk over them. Old school shooter style. Makes encounters more exciting. I.E keeps player moving in search of pickups rather than hiding behind a wall and makes it so you can't just hoard them. But it depends on the game obviously.
kill 4 heals
simple as
It's the most boring options since it doesn't really add any strategy to the game.
>Which one do (you) prefer in FPS
I have no real preference because I enjoy all of these options. The best option works on a case-by-case basis. Quake with healing like PUBG would be stupid as frick. PUBG with full regeneration would be stupid as frick. Personally, I prefer it when there's no way to recover. If you get hit, you either die or you win.
Most complaints about the first two are usually just about a bad game that also happens to include a bad implementation of generating health, or it's a complaint by a moronic puritan boomer that thinks gaming should never have evolved beyond Quake II because that's the time before they started hating their life.
I will say though that regenerating health and cover mechanics ruined most games from the 7th generation.
>I will say though that regenerating health and cover mechanics ruined most games from the 7th generation
Did it? most late 90s and early 2000s FPS are quite overblown in these 'run and gun' mechanics. Any time you encounter cultists in Blood, marines/combine in HL, any sniper in any FPS ever, and etc. you're playing peek a boo with them.
It's interesting how you've described one of the problems but arrived to a different conclusion.
None of those scenarios you gave would be dangerous if you had CoD-style regeneration.
>any sniper in any FPS ever
Take this one for example. If you have regeneration, you go into the fight with full health and can shrug off any damage by hiding for 3 seconds. You will eventually win the peek-a-boo. There's no challenge, only hindrance.
The only way you don't win is if you're playing on a harder difficulty where the sniper can one-shot you, which by the way is the exact reason that sniper rifles are 1HK in CoD multiplayer.
I don't think infinite regeneration is good for single-player games at all, but I'm sure there's some games where it's fine.
I prefer regenerating health in most FPS that heavily utilize hitscan enemies since it is fricking BOUND you're going to take damage in these games regardless of your movement. I do not recall single FPS that ever implemented these enemy types where you can still purely run and gun in any capacity. In Doom wads, where chaingunners and etc. are spammed heavily, your fast movement is completely rendered superfluous outside of running to cover when encountering them. Generally, it's a band aid solution to shitty design. but it's been used for the last three decades and very few developers rarely adjust them to be fair in any manner.
Regenerating pickups.
>Instead of loading a save to escape your 1 hp before entering a hitscan enemy zone you backtrack to the pickups again as (some) eventually respawn
>You can cheese but that's on you to ruin your game
The third one. The other two aren't horrible, but they can lead to players brute forcing encounters. The third option forces you to be wary of your resources.
Medikits were always fine, the problem is shitty level/encounter design
i prefer medkits because i feel the level design can be better and more balanced that way. suddenly it matters a lot how many medkits are placed and where.
Well, I'm not a spastic mongoloid that rushes blindly and then blames the devs for acting like a prime moron, so i'll take 3, maybe 2 if i'm being exceptionally stupid and playing when i feel tired or not in the mood for vidya and pushing trough anyways.
2 in a bad game, 3 in a good game. At least shield-having games are typically designed with a couple enemies that instantly deplete or bypass shields, so there's rare moments of challenge. A health+armor game with too many pick-ups removes all challenge.
I like shield + limited hp OR threshold based regenerating hp/medkits (e.g. resistance fom), that being said, I don't think full on regenerating health is a bad this as the trend seems to be to hate on. yeah yeah the whole 2weapon/regen health thing also came around the same time as flood of cod clones and industry paradigm shift but hear me out
you remember those old "boomer shooters" or games with really similar mechanics to them? was it *fun* to backtrack to look for health and armor pickups or to end up effectively softlocked because you used it all up and the next hallway is filled with hitscanners and need to restart the level?
Remember how those games were effectively impossible on initial playthrough on higher difficulty levels because it wasn't about reflex or quick thinking or transferrable skills, but literally memorizing level layout and enemy placement and cornering hitscanners before they melted you instantly? like sure yeah once you've slogged through on normal difficulty you can do it on hard or turbo on memory, but the whole
shield or full health regen in combination with checkpoints (which also started becoming more common at the same time the aforementioned did) allows for a lot more intense and tactical individual encounters, and "aggressive regeneration" stuff like bloodborne and d44m I think are actually an interesting evolution and potential next step for shooters on the whole
we can be as nostalgic as we want for the shooters that got us into gaming decades ago (for me it was dn3d) but you can't objectively say that your first car with its hand crank windows and cassette player is better than modern standards
How stupid does this idea sound?
>no health/armor auto-restoration during combat
>regenerate health in-between larger encounters/at checkpoints
A good number of older games already do that and it works fine, they just give out health in the form of pickups.
Regenerating health/shield encourages passive playstyles. They should only exist in multi-player games
Health from pickups is something I don't really like but I can't articulate why. Again, I think it works for multi-player but I'm not a fan of it in singleplayer.
Health from limited inventory items encourages you to play carefully, which I don't hate, but doesn't fit every game.
Ultrakill's heal from close range damage is better than Zoom Eternal glory kills, but I think both are worse than something like heal on melee kill. I got through ultrakill's second hardest difficulty by just spamming punch whenever I ran into a harder bit. Only the hardest difficulty shuts that strategy down.
Goddang kids and their fancy-schmancy regenerating health. Back in my day, when we took damage, we had to walk FIFTEEN MILES for a medkit! Uphill! In the snow! Fighting demons all the way! And by God, we were HAPPY!
Health bar that consist of multiple smaller sections that can regen, but require a health kit to replenish when a section is lost.
Like in Resistance:fall of man.
>regen health
>with low death timers
or
>static health
>with numerous health pickups
both encourage playstyles that reward skill, strategy, and pvp engagement
How about you don't get to fricking die just
because your health goes to zero?
If I'm on a long combo, mayhem streak or otherwise playing in a way that feels really hype let the game dynamically show context clues or new HUD elements if I'm slowing down too much and as such the next couple of hits WILL be fatal unless you spike it again?
If a game has regenerating health, it is a cover shooter.
regenerating blocks like in riddick and far cry 2
I like it when you can only restore health by killing enemies effectively. Doom Eternal does this to a moronic degree, there's a mod I played of Blood that did it better, where you only get health from heart drops and all other health pick ups and health packs only heal you to 25
>You gain health from playing aggresive
Glory kills are the best mechanic.
I think you're too young to be on Ganker.
>Enemy is weak to the counter gun
>Shoot enemy with the counter gun
>Enemy flashes the execute color
>Press the execute button
>3 second animation plays of which there is only about 10
>Wow soooo epic dude, soooo fast paced