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Original post by mittens One of the ideas I've been tossing around doing for a while now is one where I present a given topic or mechanic in game design, get designers (professional or aspiring) to talk about it for a week or two, and then I would put together a conclusions article with aggregated responses and thoughts on all sides of the discussion.

Love the idea.

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Does this mechanic simplify action games in a good way? Is the reduction in manageable resources a boon or detriment to players? Are the hit-and-run (to cover) tactics that regenerative health systems not only encourage but often demand beneficial to most of the games that this mechanic is employed in?

On the whole I think it's a negative. It waters down gameplay, robs the player of skill building opportunities and cuts out yet another dimension in a genre that doesn't have much left to cut.

I think the most compelling argument for regenerative health is that it simplifies gameplay, which should make it easier on newbies and brings in less hardcore players. But simplicity isn't always better. What would happen, for instance, if this same mechanic was applied to ammo? Victory would be more often determined less by skill and more by the luck of the recharge. (The mods to games that do this tend to degenerate down to aim and luck, cutting out tactical planning, conservation and all the other fun skills of "the hunt.")

The search for health can be a very interesting diversion in an FPS. It can flavor encounters, making some situations more desperate or requiring stealth or diversionary tactics. It can also, as it was in Doom, be a source of meta gameplay in and of itself, requiring players to risk environmental hazards or rewarding them for quirky exploration.

What I most dislike about regenerative health is that it feels condescending. It's a dishonest way of telling me that I suck. If a game wants to kill me, I prefer that it just get it over with, rather than slow me down with lots of "wait gameplay" involving a screwed up red interface or irritating alarms. Don't coddle me when I've done a bad job. It's like giving out A's in class for attendance. How am I supposed to get better?

I am all for bringing in new players and widening a game's appeal. But to abuse an old metaphor, I think it's important to give players the stars to shoot for even if they only hit the moon.

IIRC booth republic command and kill.switch had almost regenerative health, ie your health regenerated to 25-50% and healthpacks got you back to 100. It never really allowed for that I-only-got-1%-health-where-is-that-medpack feeling of constant quick-saving.

About the realistic regenerative health, I tend to think of it more like consciousness. Your hi-tech armor absorbs all of the damage but there is still some kick left in the bullet. Get hit enough times and you get knocked out, but if you stay down and take a few deep breaths you are good as new.

There's a time and a place for regenerative health bars. At the moment, it's going through a fair 'popular phase', which will eventually either revert, become the expected (is it already?), or be supplanted by another new system.

Personally, I feel that the system has it's merits. In a game that warrants quick encounters with equally matched opponents (e.g Call of Duty 4 multiplayer), wherein the player has the potential to be eliminated reasonably quickly, giving the player the ability to regain their health prevents them from suffering immediate game-impacting permanent health loss if they are glanced early after spawning - and thus they are also not immediately forced to predictably move to locate health pickups. It serves in some respect to assist in levelling the playing area in an often sprawling, maze like arena, and prevents lucky or random shots from killing outright, but with a lower player health, a misjudgement or tactical error can easily lead to death.

Should the player have a much higher immunity to damage, or outclass it's opponents (e.g Noone Lives Forever 2 Singleplayer) the effect would be very different, and regeneration would have to be much slower. It becomes much more punishing in the immediate - but will over an extended period of time become resolved - which in turn changes the nature of how a player may approach their respective situation. This can also be measured with a risk/reward of the inclusion of a health pickup, that would require moving out of the current position, and potentially into enemy contact, or a more cautious approach allowing the player to slowly regain health over time.

In something, such as a platforming game, we traditionally see health measured simply as a number of hits - in the case of both the classic Sonic the Hedgehog, and Super Mario Brothers titles, the player is only capable of taking two or three hits based on their current status. This is significantly more punishing, and ultimately more frustrating - increasingly so as the games difficulty ramps up. This trend has changed over time, however, and the arcade style emphasis on such games is declining as the genres progress and define themselves further.

However, such a system certainly has no place in some competitive arenas. Consider Unreal Tournament 2004, and the common one-on-one deathmatch. Ultimately, a regenerative health system could only detract from the nature of the game. Experienced and veteran players are very much familiar with the strategic and tactical nature of determining one's path through the chosen environment, denoting that damage and health critical pickups are only available at certain intervals. Failure to adopt an appropriate means to control these powerup points and deny them to the opponent is a very prominant emphasis in what would otherwise be a much more bland and imbalanced game; since otherwise the player could not be encouraged to move; since they can find a suitably strong position to sit in, and remain within it, given that they are able to always regenerate their health. Without the ability, they can occupy this position, but will be forced to abandon it should they take damage - and in the case of many a good level design, health pickups are in the more vulnerable and frequently passed through areas of the map.


In short, a health based system exists based upon the intended approach for gameplay mechanics, and is a strong candidate for serving to define and balance it. Regenerative health systems are one such mechanic, which can be used to emphasise certain purposes, and therefore should only be used in those circumstances where they are suitable.

1. The purpose of playing a game is to learn to play the game better (and incidentally you learn abstract thought that may be relevant to more serious pursuits).

2. It is possible to play a game without ever making a mistake.

3. Getting hit too much (game-specific) constitutes a mistake.

4. The more room for error the player has, the more of the game's potential is put to waste.

This makes regenerative health systems bad for games. On the other hand...


1. The purpose of playing a drug is to distract you from the real world.

2. The less you play a drug, the more you remember the real world.

3. The more time your character spends dead, the less time you spend playing the interactive medium.

4. The more room for error the user has, the more effective the drug is.

This makes regenerative health systems good for mainstream titles.

I think that regenerative health systems are definitely a step in the right direction when it comes to simulating firefights in action games. This is because in many circumstances those systems are fantastic at simulating the real life feeling of being fired AT but not being hit which makes up the majority of 20th and 21st century combat.

In a real firefight (disclaimer - I've never been in a real firefight) many more bullets are fired into walls, the ground, the air than actually hit a target. The oft quoted statistic is that in the current US wars the US is firing a quarter of a million bullets for every insurgent they kill. ( http://www.correntewire.com/250k_bullets_fired_per_insurgent_killed ) All these bullets are getting fired in order to scare the shit out of the targets, and get them to not move or fire back while the US figures out how to safely kill them. It usually works because getting shot at is FUCKING SCARY. ( http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/12/the_year_2008_in_photographs_p.html#photo5 ) They also fire so many bullets because it is really REALLY hard to shoot someone. If you've ever shot a gun, you know that it's a little bit harder in real life than it is in games to get an accurate headshot at 50 yards.

However, getting shot at (not hit) in a game is a non-issue. It doesn't really phase most gamers because it's just a game. With their music up, they may not even know that a bullet just zipped over their head. It doesn't feel scary because you're not punished for almost getting hit. So how can a game properly simulate the feeling of getting shot at, of needing to be behind cover, that makes first and third person shooters look and feel realistic?

You can do it by make it a lot easier for the bad guys to hit the player, but allowing the player to respond to getting shot without a long term punishment. Against 5 or 6 enemies the player will stick his head out of cover but quickly be overwhelmed at the volume of fire and duck back down - not because he was afraid of the amount of bullets being shot at him, but because his health was getting low due to being hit.

As an added bonus on top of the simulation, regenerative health highly encourages player experimentation within a game system and within specific combat puzzles. The player can say "I'm going to try shooting them from back here with the shotgun" and find out that doesn't work without any long term consequences. He can try flanking the enemy from a direction that doesn't have enough cover, but has the chance to realize the problem and retreat without having to then run back 50 yards to his medkit. It allows a lot more trial and error without too harsh a punishment, without taking the player out of the experience with a game over screen or picking up a magic medkit.

Once we can properly get the player to fear bullets flying near his head we will be able to replace the regenerative health system, but until then it's a pretty good way to simulate modern ranged combat.

I disagree. I'm quietly confident that a player will learn to fear enemy weapons fire, and keep their head out of it more, if they are more likely to be permanently punished for their mistakes.

Case in example; Prey. In conventional singleplayer FPS game mechanics, the player has always had a simple single health statistic, represented by a bar or numerical value. Early in Prey, a new player will fear death, as it's drummed into a game player's subliminal instincts to avoid it and associate it with failure.

In Prey, this is fucked, because if the player dies, they play a quick minigame, and respawn where they died with more health than before. It's not long before death becomes a tool to be abused in a manner not-befitting of the game play, rather than avoided as a punishment for failure. The feedback is all wrong.

I guess it depends on whether you want your game mechanics to challenge the player or provide the player with an experience. I believe the games industry and the world at large is moving closer to the latter experience.

I believe that for the general populace the death mechanics in a game like Prey or Fable 2 or even Bioshock are preferable to those in a game like CoD4 or GTA4. People don't usually want to be forced to replay portions of a game, and this is especially true of a portion of a game that is so difficult that it causes the player to die.

It seems to me that forcing the player to replay only the most difficult and potentially frustrating portions of the game due to death is simply a bad design decision, but one that we have not yet found a solid solution to.

I guess we're getting offtopic into death mechanics now though.

To respond to your initial point, even with regenerative systems there are permanent penalties to getting shot too much - you die. It's important to find a balance in punishment between too harsh and too light. Prey may have been too light, but a game with gameplay like COD4 but no regenerative health system could be too harsh.

Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, it is extremely difficult to communicate to the player exactly what circumstances will cause him to be shot. If I stick my head up will I have 3 seconds to fire, or will I be shot immediately? If I am shot immediately, does that mean I am never allowed to poke my head up at that spot, or is it just the randomness of the AI's fire that caused the shot to land so quickly? The player has no idea, and because he needs to find a health pack every time he makes a mistake he is discouraged from experimenting in order to find out more about the combat systems.

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Original post by DrewMarlowe I guess it depends on whether you want your game mechanics to challenge the player or provide the player with an experience. I believe the games industry and the world at large is moving closer to the latter experience.

All media provides an experience. You're going to have to be more specific than that.

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It seems to me that forcing the player to replay only the most difficult and potentially frustrating portions of the game due to death is simply a bad design decision, but one that we have not yet found a solid solution to.

Are you saying that people shouldn't have to learn anything from the games they play?

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To respond to your initial point, even with regenerative systems there are permanent penalties to getting shot too much - you die.

You're missing the point. If you take one bullet by mistake and then hide behind cover until your health regenerates, there is no permanent penalty. That encourages poorly thought out courses of action.


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By the way, what's wrong with combining wide Cones of Fire with short healthbars (1-3 hits until you die) to get the suppressive fire effect?

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Original post by Wavinator What would happen, for instance, if this same mechanic was applied to ammo? Victory would be more often determined less by skill and more by the luck of the recharge.

There are actually a few games that do this to varying extents.

Mass Effect essentially gives the player an infinite supply of ammunition restricted by a regenerative system; fire too much at once and you'll have to wait a while to fire again. I feel this isn't neccesarily a bad thing - while it may not fit with all games equally and has both pros and cons to be weighed it does gives the player that same consideration as going into combat with a limited clip-size but without the hassle of managing supply over the course of the entire game. Really it boils down to the same effect as on health, segregating gameplay into smaller chunks and seemingly increasing accessibility for a more casual audience.

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The search for health can be a very interesting diversion in an FPS. It can flavor encounters, making some situations more desperate or requiring stealth or diversionary tactics. It can also, as it was in Doom, be a source of meta gameplay in and of itself, requiring players to risk environmental hazards or rewarding them for quirky exploration.

This is the point I was initially going to raise when I started reading through the topic myself: a system with health pickups can lead to interesting situations where a player makes a mad, basically suicidal run into a group of enemies with the goal of reaching a health pickup just before death, or where a weakened player can be tempted into navigating difficult environmental obstacles.

As a few people have already mentioned, you can also increase tension by sniping at the player constantly with weak attacks that keep them at a mid to low level of health.


A health pickup (or some mechanic for increasing the total level of health - think Zelda's heart containers, or the large potions from Prince of Persia) can also make a good reward in systems where they're allowed.

My final project for a game design program I took was a first-person shooter that ended up relying on a play on health regeneration. Plot and its repercussions aside it was based on the idea that you could absorb an enemy's fire type and fire it back, and also a mobile cover option. The player absorbed the shot with a shield which, well, also worked as a traditional shield with a damage threshold(which would regenerate over time if 'broken').

The player has a normal attack with a gun that the vanilla enemies shoot as well (besides the quirk that it functions more like a minigun, speeding up and overheating), but the shield meant they could absorb the (this was in UE3 btw) shock balls some enemies shot and the bursts of liquid fire that others shot.

The kicker is that players could heal themselves (the player has his own health bar and a Halo 3-esque overshield) by absorbing the normal shots, but it also damages their shield weapon (assigned to L2), which they use to absorb and protect against the special fire types constantly. When the player fired back an absorbed fire type they would get a second or two of slo-mo, so they could plan movement (and watch people explode). As a sort of skill move, players could also melee attack with their left hand (mapped to L1, while shield was R1 and fire was R2).

It ended up encouraging an active but careful arcade-style offense. Players knew they'd be overwhelmed if they stayed back and used the shield too much, so they would move around a lot while actively dodging and absorbing the special shots. They would take some damage and get in hairy situations, but if they kept their heads about them players could usually hang on and build back life, or manage to get their overshield back up. And we never got any sort of advanced AI working, so we just piled on the enemies -- 'hairy situation' usually meant you could only see a hail of gunfire onscreen. Skills with the basics of FPS play was all that was required to stay in one shape in an arena scenario. When they messed up they could regain life by skillful play.

You can see a video here:://student.vfs.com/~gd09nick/portfolio.html&feature=player_embedded

I think regenerative health has somewhat cheapened the shooter experience, even if it is a comforting safety net. What we did was try to change up how players went about staying alive in an otherwise conventional shooter space; get more health by getting shot, but do it smartly or else. Getting health can be more of a central aspect of a game's play, rather than simply being a take on a finite life system, or one that is totally regenerative. You live, then you die and try not to die again -- that's the sort of behaviour most sorts of life systems encourage. Regenerative health means you worry about staying in a line of fire too long; it makes you more ballsy.

Even shooters with regenerative health, at harder levels of difficulty, make it more difficult by subjecting the player to more one shot kills. Binary is hard, ambiguous health is not *as* hard. Really finite or regenerative health systems are just an easy stopgap for more involved life systems. We might see life systems advance when more games cease to be about just shooting; just adding and subtracting damage to ascertain if the player can keep playing. Maybe a game could tackle staying hydrated in a survival game or scrounging food in an apocalyptic wasteland -- making life preservation an equally important but more subtle part of the game.

[Edited by - nickhalme on April 10, 2009 12:12:08 AM]