It's still fairly random, it reminds me of the Halo games that hid the health bar, and just showed the shield meter (I think this was every Halo past 1). The player still had health (which in your case would correlate to the second meter, critical health) But since the player couldn't see it, they would sometimes die early, sometimes die late, if they hadn't been paying attention to how often they'd been hit after their shields went down. It was annoying there, but less so, because the player was at least guaranteed some leeway the first time their shields went down. It mattered less as a multiplayer game where death simply meant respawning. Are you making a multiplayer or singleplayer game? What happens when a player dies?

It's still fairly random, it reminds me of the Halo games that hid the health bar, and just showed the shield meter (I think this was every Halo past 1). The player still had health (which in your case would correlate to the second meter, critical health) But since the player couldn't see it, they would sometimes die early, sometimes die late, if they hadn't been paying attention to how often they'd been hit after their shields went down. It was annoying there, but less so, because the player was at least guaranteed some leeway the first time their shields went down. It mattered less as a multiplayer game where death simply meant respawning. Are you making a multiplayer or singleplayer game? What happens when a player dies?

Halo does seem like a good match to what I'm doing with the shield recharging. Matter of fact the player actual health in halo reach regenerate after a while of no damage. You can see both shield and health gauge in this game. Frustration is predicted so I guess I may need to modify my concept but this predicted frustration is only making me think very negative things about player and is pushing me toward hiding more mechanics from them. Anyways when the player dies is a topic for another month because I haven't really concentrated on that yet. I have a good feeling it will be met with similar responses to this concept.

You have to be careful when hiding mechanics from a player, especially random mechanics. Especially random mechanics that cause the player to die/lose/lose progress. Just because they can't see it, doesn't mean it won't frustrate them any less =) It might frustrate them more. You might try prototyping that mechanic in another game, if you have access to a simple top down shooter, or are good at Unreal Mutators, you can probably whip out a "Random chance of death on hit after Health less than X" rule.

Though a bullet hell shooter where the player has multiple lives, it might very well work, seeing as they still have a concrete amount of retries with no loss of progress.

I'm also reminded of the Pkunk from Star Control 2, with their random chance of respawning after death. It sort works for that game, because that was not the player's only ship.

It seems artificially complex, many games already include a few random elements, like critical hits, and those are already frowned upon in action games. It simply reduces precision and reliance on skill, and only serves the purpose of uncertainty. This is only useful if your game is simple and too easy to predict.

Depending on how many random elements you intend to include, this could quickly escalate to the point where your getting radically unpredictable outcomes.

Beyond that it looks more like different condition stated applied to low health, calling it tenacious health just makes it less transparent, and convoluted passive effects don't satisfy action gameplay much.

There's abundant discussions on the dissatisfaction of random number generation, it's a bygone of classic dice games where better mediums to interact during combat didn't exist. You can blend it into the gameplay and trivialize it so it doesn't ruin the experience, but that doesn't make it beneficial.

It seems artificially complex, many games already include a few random elements, like critical hits, and those are already frowned upon in action games. It simply reduces precision and reliance on skill, and only serves the purpose of uncertainty. This is only useful if your game is simple and too easy to predict.

Depending on how many random elements you intend to include, this could quickly escalate to the point where your getting radically unpredictable outcomes.

Beyond that it looks more like different condition stated applied to low health, calling it tenacious health just makes it less transparent, and convoluted passive effects don't satisfy action gameplay much.

There's abundant discussions on the dissatisfaction of random number generation, it's a bygone of classic dice games where better mediums to interact during combat didn't exist. You can blend it into the gameplay and trivialize it so it doesn't ruin the experience, but that doesn't make it beneficial.

I'm not trying to trivialize, I'm designing something I think would be fun with a mild bit of consideration from peers. Sure somebody else might have tried something similar and ruined it however no ideas are exactly the same and execution testing, and tweaking is just as important as the idea itself. I'm not really one to believe any statement with out some back up, otherwise I see it as a culture belief. Now I know my condition seem random and they are but everything serve a purpose that I will test.

It seems artificially complex, many games already include a few random elements, like critical hits, and those are already frowned upon in action games. It simply reduces precision and reliance on skill, and only serves the purpose of uncertainty. This is only useful if your game is simple and too easy to predict.

Depending on how many random elements you intend to include, this could quickly escalate to the point where your getting radically unpredictable outcomes.

Beyond that it looks more like different condition stated applied to low health, calling it tenacious health just makes it less transparent, and convoluted passive effects don't satisfy action gameplay much.

There's abundant discussions on the dissatisfaction of random number generation, it's a bygone of classic dice games where better mediums to interact during combat didn't exist. You can blend it into the gameplay and trivialize it so it doesn't ruin the experience, but that doesn't make it beneficial.

I'm not trying to trivialize, I'm designing something I think would be fun with a mild bit of consideration from peers. Sure somebody else might have tried something similar and ruined it however no ideas are exactly the same and execution testing, and tweaking is just as important as the idea itself. I'm not really one to believe any statement with out some back up, otherwise I see it as a culture belief. Now I know my condition seem random and they are but everything serve a purpose that I will test.

What "proof" would you like? Riot games removing dodge because they did a study on why RNG elements aren't enjoyable?, the variety of people here either describing the common disapprovals for RNG, or at best, warning you about the hazards?, or perhaps some sort of divine vision confirming that player preference is against RNG in action games so you can't pass it off as bias and anecdotal evidence where it doesn't agree?

Just try it out and work on it til it meets your expectations than, if your not interested in a critique, don't ask for it and than dismiss it out of hand when people gather their understanding of a subject you'd rather not investigate yourself...

It seems artificially complex, many games already include a few random elements, like critical hits, and those are already frowned upon in action games. It simply reduces precision and reliance on skill, and only serves the purpose of uncertainty. This is only useful if your game is simple and too easy to predict.

Depending on how many random elements you intend to include, this could quickly escalate to the point where your getting radically unpredictable outcomes.

Beyond that it looks more like different condition stated applied to low health, calling it tenacious health just makes it less transparent, and convoluted passive effects don't satisfy action gameplay much.

There's abundant discussions on the dissatisfaction of random number generation, it's a bygone of classic dice games where better mediums to interact during combat didn't exist. You can blend it into the gameplay and trivialize it so it doesn't ruin the experience, but that doesn't make it beneficial.

I'm not trying to trivialize, I'm designing something I think would be fun with a mild bit of consideration from peers. Sure somebody else might have tried something similar and ruined it however no ideas are exactly the same and execution testing, and tweaking is just as important as the idea itself. I'm not really one to believe any statement with out some back up, otherwise I see it as a culture belief. Now I know my condition seem random and they are but everything serve a purpose that I will test.

What "proof" would you like? Riot games removing dodge because they did a study on why RNG elements aren't enjoyable?, the variety of people here either describing the common disapprovals for RNG, or at best, warning you about the hazards?, or perhaps some sort of divine vision confirming that player preference is against RNG in action games so you can't pass it off as bias and anecdotal evidence where it doesn't agree?

Just try it out and work on it til it meets your expectations than, if your not interested in a critique, don't ask for it and than dismiss it out of hand when people gather their understanding of a subject you'd rather not investigate yourself...

What a fine example you posted. Thank you.

Every forum has it's own culture and just because I classify info given as culturally influenced doesn't mean I denied it or aren't truly interested, matter of fact I don't think I technically denied anyone's critique or advice in thread. I think it's good if I don't fully agree sometimes, it is my game after all. If I can convince through discussion or gameplay, everything is fine however if I'm unable to do so then I feel my justifications really could use work. Thank for the advice I'll do plenty of research myself looking at many hidden variables.

I reading this and I see that you're advising me to avoid randomness however I feel this is your own bias against games with random nature due to bad experiences.

This demonstrates your bias toward randomness, it's indignit to call someone else's observations a bias, as if it's self evident that the bias isn't accurate and qualified, while omitting the immediately obvious hypocrisy.

Meanwhile, your logic clears no shortcoming, if the feature isn't appreciated because of bad experience, it's naturally unwanted. Again, it is not self evident that the bad experience isn't in fact authored by the bad mechanism.

Going further into you design, with things like chance to instantly die when your weakened, it's fairly evident that you don't appreciate the disapproval of random elements. So go ahead and give it a shot, it's your time. The gravity of this advice will weigh on you whether you acknowledge it or not.

I reading this and I see that you're advising me to avoid randomness however I feel this is your own bias against games with random nature due to bad experiences.

This demonstrates your bias toward randomness, it's indignit to call someone else's observations a bias, as if it's self evident that the bias isn't accurate and qualified, while omitting the immediately obvious hypocrisy.

Meanwhile, your logic clears no shortcoming, if the feature isn't appreciated because of bad experience, it's naturally unwanted. Again, it is not self evident that the bad experience isn't in fact authored by the bad mechanism.

Going further into you design, with things like chance to instantly die when your weakened, it's fairly evident that you don't appreciate the disapproval of random elements. So go ahead and give it a shot, it's your time. The gravity of this advice will weigh on you whether you acknowledge it or not.

I do not like to make statements that don't relate to me and only me. With this being said I did not say his observation was bias, that statement that is too direct for my taste. Yes I felt he had bias against random elements but I didn't directly states he was bias in his opinion. These are my feeling on the discussing which isn't one way. I could have asked for more detail on the disapproval but I wanted to reveal more of my logic first.

Finally no sorry. I will continue to check with peers because I believe it is healthy to be able to discuss game design regardless of differences in preference and philosophy.

I want to discuss one thing I discovered thru 4 days of testing. I presented the same concept to a few college peers and they gave me similar responses to this thread. That mainly being the disapproval of the idea or randomness and a prediction of frustration for the player. On the third day of this experiment I decided to alter how my idea was presented and asked new peers what they thought about my idea. I presented concept as a chance at surviving a random attack when you are out of health and saying literally "It's like you're getting a random reward instead of death". I got far more positive responses when I used the phrase "a chance to survive" and "Like random rewards" instead of "A chance of death" and other more detailed specifics about my concept. On the last day I asked the peers from the first 2 days what they thought of my revised concepts. I mainly presented it as a new idea because I assumed most forgot I asked this question 2 days ago and I got more positive feedback.

I don't want to assume anything specific about the people who replied but I feel I presented my concept in such a way that it seemed unfavorable. I also realized that I'm too am prone to disregarding other ideas if they present their idea in a unfavorable way regardless of what the idea is. So I ask just this one time with a new outlook from my college and this forum to re-evaluate the concept I have proposed.