The nearest I've experienced this concept (I don't play many new games) is in the top down shooter Infantry. There, you had a regenerating energy and a non-regenerating health. Getting hit would reduce your energy and health by some amount, but the amount it reduced your health was scaled by how much energy you'd lost. That is, the first hit did nothing and, if you could dodge long enough for your energy to regenerate, you wouldn't lose any health. You could also choose to purchase equipment to increase your total energy (increasing the shielding effect) or your energy regen rate (decreasing the time to recharge), but not both. This had the benefit that Wai suggested of requiring you to attack with a certain intensity if you wanted your attacks to matter, but avoided some of the issues about having to kill your opponent all in one go.

But, I'm not convinced that many of the problems are problems if the game is designed for the mechanic. Strategies and level designs regarding the placement of health pickups can be interesting, and you won't have those in a game with regenerating health, but that doesn't mean there won't be equally interesting strategies. sunandshadow suggested that high regen rates wouldn't be ideal for epic PVP and boss combat. I'm not sure I agree. You just need a way to keep the pressure on your opponent. In multiplayer, I think just always being aware of your opponent's position (e.g. always show their position on some minimap) could go a long way toward that. In single player, don't allow a situation where the player can just sit and catch their breath. I'm picturing Serious Sam (I said I haven't played new games) where you often wondered if there was ever an end to the stream of enemies, and perhaps make it such that there isn't an end.

I think it could also be interesting in a horror context. Make the horror ultimately invincible but give ways to drive it back temporarily, or infinite in number so all you can hope to do is kill the current batch. If you stop moving, the horror will get you.

Though I think this might be the same as what sirGustav said, I'll still post it.

What about taking a gameplay mechanic from some fighting games? In those games, an attack will do a certain amount of damage, but the character would be able to recover about half of that, if given enough time. This is basically the same as getting used to a pain or toughing it out. When you are hit, you feel all the pain associated with it, but over time, you can begin to ignore the achs in your arm or leg. Not 100% better again, but manageable. Scatter around some health pickups, and you have a situation where a player can still have "I've almost no health... where is that med-pack?" and still have the popular regenerating health system.

I think that regenerating health gets a bad rap simply because a lot of games are missusing it.

One thing to be careful about when implementing such a system is to not allow the player to cheat the system. The Halo series almost gets this perfect, but even they allow for a little bit of cheating (although not enough to ruin the experience). Halo avoids a lot of cheating by giving the enemy the same regenerating health that the player has, so it doesn't allow the player to pop out once in a while and take pot-shots at an enemy, eventually killing it. No, if you can't kill an enemy fast enough, it will hide forcing you to either wait for it to pop out or rush in to finish the job thus exposing yourself. Halo DOES allow you to thin out your opponents by killing the weak enemies from a distance though so they're not immune.

Whether you implement a regenerating health system or not is entirely up to the type of game experience you're trying to make though. A game where the purpose is to simply survive to the end (such as Left 4 Dead) wouldn't make sense to implement such a system. In those cases you'd want a system that makes the player feel completely fucked, and worrying about their next health fix. But games where the purpose is to go from one large scale battlefield to the next are perfect candidates. I don't find that this has any bearing over the challenge of the game. The challenge in games with regenerating health isn't the whole level, it's the battle to get to the next checkpoint. You can introduce as much challenge as you want into that focused experience without having to worry about whether or not the player will have to restart the level because they're stuck at a part with too little health.

To me, as a game mechanic, what regenerating health does as a primary effect is break up a level into discrete encounters, resetting state between encounters.

For typical FPS-style games, where a single encounter can be deadly, I think it's a net positive. Without regenerating health, either sufficient health has to be put in the level to effectively have regenerating health, or the player may have to reload after successfully defeating an encounter because they have insufficient health to make it further. And backtracking for health is just plain annoying.

One positive that's been mentioned here is that regenerating health can promote a more active playstyle, as health can be replenished. I'm all in favor of not promoting overly-defensive playstyles.

Where regenerating health would be harmful, IMHO, is games more like Metroid, where (apart from bosses), a single encounter usually isn't deadly - it drains your health a little bit, so that the tension is less "can I survive this encounter" and more "can I do well enough, overall, to make it to the next save point?" Regenerating health would destroy that mechanic.

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Original post by Stroppy Katamari 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.

Please expand your argument on why NRH is more fun in 'versus' multiplayer. (I do guess that means two or more teams fighting eachother.)

In a way, Counter-Strike actually has RH... through its rounds system where health is reset when the enemy team is eliminated. If it wasn't, the winning team would be at severe disadvantage in the next round and in the round after that the other winning team would be at severe disadvantage. Every fight would be rather pre-determined. That is a problem with itemless deathmatch (ILDM) and NRH combined.

ILDM shouldn't be thrown out of the window just to allow NRH. ILDM makes the designers work a lot easier and allows her to concentrate on other things. The difficulty with items is not only clever placement but also of respawning and allocation. Go to Quake Live and try a game of Capture The Flag. Almost certainly you will at one point see a teammate steal a health orb right in front of your eyes even if you needed it more. That's not just a problem with the players, it is a problem with design and not easily solved.

Removing items all together is a simple and proven way to get rid of these problems. A side effect is that you're pretty much forced to use some kind of RH. Is that just a side effect or is it actually a downside? Please expand on how NRH is important for the fun in team multiplayer games.

LockeCole I have to call foul on that one...

You just said 'In a way, Counter-Strike actually has RH... through its rounds system where health is reset'

That is purely wrong. It's like saying because the game has a reset button it has regenerating health. Is having extra live regenerating health too? You know it's not so why did you even argue it?

Alos, Kyoryu, doesn't need to really expand on what he said because his claim is valid and complete. Anything that doesn't cause immediate death in RH game play is relegated to useless and the implementation of RH causes tactics that would normally be used in given situations are rendered obsolete. I would go further to argue that when you put those two together RH is an instant dumb down of any and all games with it solely in it because the game becomes a race to the weapon that can one hit kill and then becomes simply a game of tag, or worse, a game of Spawn Camping.

It means that a game that should be based on skills, laughable ones, but still, becomes a game of luck and memory more so.

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Original post by kyoryu For typical FPS-style games, where a single encounter can be deadly, I think it's a net positive. Without regenerating health, either sufficient health has to be put in the level to effectively have regenerating health, or the player may have to reload after successfully defeating an encounter because they have insufficient health to make it further. And backtracking for health is just plain annoying.

I still don't see why there should have to be a way to recover health at all. Is there a problem with not winning a game on the first try?

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Original post by LockeCole In a way, Counter-Strike actually has RH... through its rounds system where health is reset when the enemy team is eliminated. If it wasn't, the winning team would be at severe disadvantage in the next round and in the round after that the other winning team would be at severe disadvantage. Every fight would be rather pre-determined. That is a problem with itemless deathmatch (ILDM) and NRH combined.

This is what I meant when I was talking about "discrete encounters." Most games have some time at which a player's state, or the state of the entire game, is reset. Without regenerating health, it has to either be done through item placement or hard level breaks (like CS). With regenerating health, it means that the beginning of each encounter can be assumed to be full health, eliminating annoyances.

Some of this dynamic changes in multiplayer, of course.

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Removing items all together is a simple and proven way to get rid of these problems. A side effect is that you're pretty much forced to use some kind of RH. Is that just a side effect or is it actually a downside? Please expand on how NRH is important for the fun in team multiplayer games.

Items aren't necessarily bad. Having items can add a strategic level to a game beyond twitch skill or basic tactics. Whether that's a good thing or not depends on what you're looking for in a game.

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Original post by Durakken Anything that doesn't cause immediate death in RH game play is relegated to useless and the implementation of RH causes tactics that would normally be used in given situations are rendered obsolete.

Tactics that are used with RH are different than those without RH. With NRH, a "chip away" strategy is viable, while with RH, it's generally not. With RH, more aggressive tactics (that may result in some health loss) may become more viable than they would without it. So, from a design standpoint, it becomes about which tactics you want to promote in your game.

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I would go further to argue that when you put those two together RH is an instant dumb down of any and all games with it solely in it because the game becomes a race to the weapon that can one hit kill and then becomes simply a game of tag, or worse, a game of Spawn Camping.

I'd say that depends entirely on how damaging the weapons in the game are, and how fast health regenerates. If you're assuming high regen and high weapon damage, you're probably pretty close to accurate.

I wonder if a game with low-medium damage and reasonably high regen, combined with a stiff death penalty, would cause retreats to become more commonplace - since deaths would be somewhat hard to come by, retreat may become a more valid option. I imagine it would - one thing I notice in single player games with regenerating health is that there's a lot more "oh ****" types of moments where you run to cover, barely make it, and then can continue the fight than in games without RH. Games without RH seem to trend more to creepsave game mechanics, which I find infinitely annoying.

Certainly, you can make a poorly balanced game with regenerating health, or without regenerating health.

What changing the balance of things like this will do is change what skills are most relevant to success in the game. That doesn't mean that the game is "dumbed down," it means that a different set of skills are required for success. Some people will still be the "best" at a game, but what criteria makes up "best" may change. Generally, "dumbed down" means "the things I'm good at become less important." Nothing wrong with that, by the way.

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Original post by Dathgale I still don't see why there should have to be a way to recover health at all. Is there a problem with not winning a game on the first try?

Nope, and I never said there was. But, if a designer intends for one encounter to be separate from the next, and the player is left without sufficient health to even attempt the next encounter, that's kind of annoying. Which means that either the designer will have to put sufficient health between the encounters (effectively giving regenerating health), force the player to reload (which is annoying if he just BEAT the encounter), or retreat for supplies.

If he loses the encounter, he loses, and there's nothing wrong with that. But it's kind of annoying to "win, but not really" and have to reload even though you beat the enemies. I think annoying players is generally a bad idea. Challenging them, angering them, even frustrating them, those can be good. Annoying... not so much.

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Original post by kyoryu But, if a designer intends for one encounter to be separate from the next,

Why design such a thing?

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Original post by kyoryu and the player is left without sufficient health to even attempt the next encounter, that's kind of annoying.

My words appear to be falling on deaf ears.

It should be possible to play the entire game without getting hit. Attempting to overcome a challenge with less remaining health than you are comfortable with is how you get better at a game. Do you silently deny my claim that a player should learn something from a game?

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Original post by kyoryu I think annoying players is generally a bad idea. Challenging them, angering them, even frustrating them, those can be good. Annoying... not so much.

Back up this argument, please.

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Original post by Dathgale Quote: Original post by kyoryu But, if a designer intends for one encounter to be separate from the next, Why design such a thing?

Pacing?

Deliberate design of challenges, which is nearly impossible if you don't know the resources the player is bringing into a challenge?

The fact that I can't really think of any games offhand that don't do this to some extent?

And notice that I said 'if'. I didn't say "all games must be this way." Different design decisions are appropriate for different games, depending on the decisions you want the players to face, and the experience you want them to have.

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My words appear to be falling on deaf ears.

How so? I've really only argued that regenerating health has an effect on gameplay, and can be beneficial in some cases. I've never stated that it's the bestest thing in the world, or the only possible design decision.

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It should be possible to play the entire game without getting hit.

That's quite the blanket statement. Chess and Go both seem to assume loss of pieces during play - should this be cosnidered a design flaw? In some games, it's a reasonable design decision. In others, maybe not. There's no one single set of design decisions to make the ultimate game. If there were, there'd only be one game :)

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Attempting to overcome a challenge with less remaining health than you are comfortable with is how you get better at a game. Do you silently deny my claim that a player should learn something from a game?

Absolutely not. There's a difference between "not enough resources to realistically overcome the next challenge" and "less resources than you're comfortable with." I think this is a strength of Metroid-style designs where typical damage is low, but quicksave is non-existent, in that you are often placed in positions where you have to try and scrape by with less resources than you want. Insta-kill games (which seems to be what you're advocating? not entirely sure...) would kind of subvert this by always having you at full health (since health would be binary).

Let me invert your question - if I, as a designer, want a player to learn something from a game, shouldn't I design the game in such a way that the player will always be challenged, as opposed to it only being challenging if they don't do well?

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Quote: Original post by kyoryu I think annoying players is generally a bad idea. Challenging them, angering them, even frustrating them, those can be good. Annoying... not so much. Back up this argument, please.

Well, if you want to be a professional, you're relying on players to buy your games and pay your salary. Annoying them is usually not a very effective way to do this. Of course, boring them by making an unchallenging game isn't an effective way to do that, either :) I somehow think you believe I'm arguing in favor of making boring, easy games, and I'm certainly not doing that.