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Original post by Dathgale Quote: 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?

Are you saying players should?

Great idea by the way, I would love to put together, after a debate such as this, a list of short articles addressing the main points to common issues that come up in this forum. If you need any ideas for any more, just say, there are loads that I can think of.

On topic:

As with so many game design issues, if not all, it depends on the game. With a fast paced game, providing that the enemy is also on regenerative health, I think it works well. The point of a FPS game is to shoot stuff, managing health (even ammo) should be a sub-game at best. The regenerative health provides tension during the action without forcing the players in to the perfection route where they restart if they finish on less than full health.

It also makes it easier to set the difficulty right. If you know what health the player is going to be on, you know what to throw against them. Otherwise, you have to get in to the murky waters of dynamic difficulty based on the players health, or just get it plain wrong.

However, and this ties in to death mechanics which I hope we will cover at some point, a non-regen system creates a much tenser game. Also, as previous replies have said, it might force players in to trying different tactics, because they will simply die if they go for an all out run.

I think it is about getting the balance right. As with difficulty (something I hope we'll also cover in a similar debate), it needs to be punishing enough to keep the game tense, without being plain frustrating. Addressing the issue to do with waiting, one solution that I did think of was health only regenerating outside of combat, but then regenerating near instantaneously. Now, this is basically the same as having non-regenerative health but with a full heal health pack at the end of each section, only slightly more believable.

Also, I think it would be fair to say that it depends on whether it is single player or multiplayer. In most single player games, players stick on a straight forward linear path. Placing a health pack down is the same as having regenerative health in some respects; the player will either get it, having beaten the opponent without needing it and will take on new enemies on full health, or not get it because they have died.

In multiplayer however, the gameplay tends to be more dynamic, as it is in an enclosed space. This might lend itself better to non-regenerative health – forcing the player to find health packs, playing more stealthy while they are low on health. Do you think a game could handle two different health styles, or would this become to disjointed for the player.

Regenerative Health is a concept, in my mind, that has no good or bad value associated with it. While I personally dislike it in games as it detracts from the level of realism I look for, I believe it is a great tool for allowing games to become more like rollercoaster movies. CoD is a great example - The whole game is almost setup around this feature in that each fight scene is just that, a fight scene. It has a distinct END where you regen and then jump into the next fight scene. It works well.

But as I said, dislike the feature as I feel that it pulls the player away fro mthe atmosphere of the game. Going back to CoD - With regen health, you don't FEEL like one of the boys in the ditches. Your not scared that the next fight is going to be your end because your stocked up on health and your ready to rock.

I'd imagine that if health packs were placed often enough and refreshed often, it would a similar mechanic to regen, while still requiring some amount of movement. It would be important to communicate to the player somehow that health nodes would refresh.

The health dispensers in HL2 could be modified to slowly recharge, and placed in more places in the game. The same could work for infinite ammo boxes ("Do you have any idea how much those things weigh?" - Concerned).

Another resetting system could involve the player having to be a certain distance from a health node for it to refresh.

@nickhalme: That idea is sheer genius! If a game's fiction allows for it, some real cool gameplay elements could be added. I'd imagine that variations of the system could provide even more interesting features.

@mittens: Great discussion topic. I think we're getting some pretty productive discussion (as long as we're not supposed to be programming while we do :-D).

Edit: I just remembered. The CPs in HL2 drop health vials every so often. I think this is a good mechanic. Not only does the player gain ammunition from weapon drops, but he/she can restore defenses as well.

I think there are plenty of designs with effects close to health regen without some of the (debatable) negative effects.

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Original post by thk123 Quote: Original post by Dathgale Quote: 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? Are you saying players should?

As if it's not obvious enough, I already did explicitly say so in an earlier post.

If you don't believe me, consider this passage:

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Games are puzzles to solve, just like everything else we encounter in life. They are on the same order as learning to drive a car, or picking up the mandolin, or learning your multiplication tables. We learn the underlying patterns, grok them fully, and file them away so that they can be rerun as needed. The only real difference between games and reality is that the stakes are lower with games. - Raph Koster, A Theory of Fun (34)

This is coming from an industry veteran who had a major impact on such titles as Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies, and Everquest II.

I backed up my argument, now you back up yours.

The thread has explored the merits and downfalls of regenerative health (RH) in single player games. What about multiplayer?

In co-operative play, I think RH is good for the same reasons it's good in single player, keeping the experience rolling without overwhelming adversity or having to "slow down" and being forced on your toes on when on low health. Also, with very few exceptions, co-op happens in games primarily designed for single player, and it's a major design/balancing issue how to handle the distribution of powerups between several players. Not having to ration health powerups simplifies things for the designer as well as the player.

In versus multiplayer, I think RH is a lousy idea in general. It invalidates a ton of tactics which are interesting with non-regenerative health (NRH for short) games, causing flat and uninteresting play where the fastest mouse hand wins. If you can't kill the enemy right away, the tactic is no good; if a weapon can't kill the enemy right away, it is no good.

Pressuring the enemy with non-lethal damage is an interesting and fun tactic that gets used constantly in NRH games like Counter-Strike. It's useful (among other things) as distraction to save yourself or teammates from getting shot so accurately, to pressure the enemy out of certain areas into ones more advantageous to you, and so on.

It's not all bad though. No doubt RH can be redeemed by adding into the design. nickhalme's design sounds like it practically requires the player to intelligently manage the "shield" to survive, using it in an aggressive role instead of the "turtle style" which is what causes most of the suck potential in RH.

Action Quake, an older NRH game which everyone interested in FPS game design should check out, has a bleeding/crippling/bandage system which could easily be adapted to a RH game. When you are shot (anywhere but on armor), even a very minor hit like 5hp from grenade shrapnel, you start continously bleeding health - slow or fast depending on how serious the initial wound was. To stop the bleed, you must bandage yourself. This takes several seconds, cannot be cancelled and leaves you defenseless. So there is an awesome tradeoff and mindgame that follows from one player being wounded; they have to bandage, *eventually*, and if you catch them at that moment you win. But they know this, so they can wait (and bleed) long enough to ambush the other player following their blood spatter tracks, and then bandage. There is also a leg damage mechanic which cuts the runspeed to half or so when you recieve a hit to the legs, also curable by bandaging. This makes for viable tactics like taking one fast shot at the enemy at long range, inflicting the bleed and leg damage, and then stalk the slow, bleeding enemy while staying out of sight. You can even use a shotgun for this as the initial shot only needs to *hit* the legs, not do real damage.

You could do regenerating health the same way, requiring the player to go defenseless for a while, etc.

There are similar questions we can ask about mana regeneration. Guild Wars is one example of a game using the same concept for spell casting, everyone has a very small amount of mana but it regenerates very quickly, particularly out of combat. This means you don't have any down time, and that you have very acute mana management issues from the beginning in every fight.

On the other hand it eliminates any mana allocation decisions between fights like in many RPGs, which allow the player to have very powerful spells that they'd generally want to save up for the most difficult battles. Those games tend to have their own problems though, particularly the D&D games like Neverwinter Nights with their resting mechanics.

It's quite a difficult problem, I was thinking about some kind of two tier system for spell casting to get the best of both worlds, but it could easily become overly complex. The world logic justification for such a system would along the lines of the wizard/sorceror distinction in D&D, some spell casting involves book learning and complex incantations to produce more powerful effects that recharge on a longer period, and another type that involves the raw manipulation of energy with simpler effects that recharges faster.

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Original post by Dathgale Quote: Original post by thk123 Quote: Original post by Dathgale Quote: 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? Are you saying players should? As if it's not obvious enough, I already did explicitly say so in an earlier post. If you don't believe me, consider this passage: Quote: Games are puzzles to solve, just like everything else we encounter in life. They are on the same order as learning to drive a car, or picking up the mandolin, or learning your multiplication tables. We learn the underlying patterns, grok them fully, and file them away so that they can be rerun as needed. The only real difference between games and reality is that the stakes are lower with games. - Raph Koster, A Theory of Fun (34) This is coming from an industry veteran who had a major impact on such titles as Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies, and Everquest II. I backed up my argument, now you back up yours.

My point was simply that games don't necessarily have to teach the players anything. Like every other medium, there is room for both. I enjoy thought provoking books, but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy books where the action is non-stop and requires a complete suspension of disbelief with virtually no character development. Likewise with games, I enjoy deeper games that require me to engage my mind, but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy a game that is just moving forward and shooting.

The way you wrote your original point suggested that all games should teach the player something. My point was this is not the case, a game can be enjoying whilst being shallow and entirely pointless, it doesn't make it a poorly designed game.

I have no jobs to back up my point :(

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Original post by thk123 The way you wrote your original point suggested that all games should teach the player something. My point was this is not the case, a game can be enjoying whilst being shallow and entirely pointless, it doesn't make it a poorly designed game.

When you play Tic Tac Toe, you are either getting better at Tic Tac Toe or you are bored and moving on to another game. Similarly, when you play a simple adventure FPS, you are learning 2 things: 1. how to mouse-look better, and 2. what happens next-- when you master both, you stop playing. Is there anything wrong with a game you get bored with quickly? I guess not much, except that there is so much of the same out there already. What's the point of making more?

Whilst not the best phrased argument, I'm inclined to agree, although this is taking us more off-topic and into more abstract territory.

In a game environment, the player is to be provided with a series of challenges and obstacles to overcome. Without these, there cannot be any immediate objective, and there can be no game.

Should the player not be required to adapt and learn based on their immediate situation, then the player is no longer really playing the game, and is instead more 'going through the motions' required to arbitratily progress. Is it providing an experience? Possibly. Is it providing a challenge? Definitely not.

Case in example, take a point and click adventure as an example of simpler game mechanics. Should the player realise that all they have to do to progress, is click anywhere in the screen, they will likely take that route to completion - if they don't get bored of what they're being presented beforehand and give up anyway.

Pointing and clicking, and never having to learn anything, nor solve anything is not conducise to a good gaming experience. Sure the story and visuals might be reasonable, but if you want story and visuals served to you for no effort, you might as well be watching a film; or in this case, you're just watching an expensive flickerbook.

As a player, I'm not a huge fan of regenerative health - it promotes a stop-start kind of gameplay where you run around killing stuff for a while, and then hide behind a corner for five minutes while your health regenerates. Battling through that last level with only one point of health makes for much more memorable experiences.

From a designer's point of view though, it would seem that regenerative health makes it much easier to balance the difficulty of encounters, since you can pretty much assume that each one can be started with a roughly level playing field regardless of the ability of the player. It makes no difference whether the player screws up the first encounter so badly that he limps out with one point of health, or breezes through it without taking a scratch - either way he will probably be starting the next encounter in roughly the same state. That difficulty balance is a hard thing to get right for all players, so anything that helps get it right is probably a good thing.

Personally, I think the mechanic could be fixed by making it a bit more involving for the player. I'd suggest:
1. Make the healing process elective. Rather than hiding behind a corner and waiting for a while, just have a 'apply sticky plasters' [grin] button which heals them back to full health, but takes some time to complete, kind of like L4D's system.
2. Add an 'adrenaline' mechanic that gives the player some bonuses when on low health.

This way, you can still get those 'last stand' moments where you win despite the odds - in fact they will happen slightly more often since your character will be slightly boosted when injured. Players may choose to 'game' this if they like, and take a few hits to boost their adrenaline, but that's fine. They're getting that bonus at the cost of increased risk of failure - now they only have to be hit once and they're dead. Of course, if the price of dying is just reloading the last save ten seconds ago, maybe no-one cares, but combined with a checkpoint or limited save system this could be interesting.