217 réponses à ce sujet

[Lord Zeuss]

This isn't specific to RPGs, in fact, the article I'm about to link to barely even mentions RPGs, but in light of the regenerating health mechanic ME2 introduced us to, I feel that it's relevant to our discourse.

The Guggenheim Effect On Gaming

The blogger gives the case of Wolverine, that most famous of Health Rechargers, and how his regenerating powers essentially broke his character. He raises the same points I've been noting to myself for a while now: mainly, that the trend of recharging health has not yield a net increase in overall quality of gameplay because the sense of urgency in a confrontation is lost.

Give the article a read.

[TheCrakFox]

I wouldn't mind the first Halo's approach. Regenrating shields only.

[Skirata129]

If they took out regenerating health, they'd have to remove the curent aggro system. enemies alwayys knowing exactly where to address their fire and removing aggro immediately if you use the infiltrators cloak even if used from behind cover ruin that system. you can't have tactics if the enemy has a mental map with a "shepard is here" marker on it.

[Inprea]

I have to disagree with the urgency. I was feeling rather hurried when my shields were down, my health was at half and a Geth Prime was rounding the corner while his little buddies peppered my position. I know that.

[AntiChri5]

Regenerating health increases the urgency of a confrontation.

You don't have a massive reserve to draw upon to shield you from damage, and die much quicker. But, you don't have to worry about having taken too much damage to survive later since it is only temporary. This makes every fight effectively self contained. There are harsher short term penalties for failure, but lesser long term penalties for failure.

Shepards regeneration has not broken his character, since he can be taken down with a half a dozen shots.

[KingNothing125]

Urgency Schmurgency. I'm just glad to be rid of collecting health packs littered around the world, which is what the original Call of Duty did differently than Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and Quake.

There's a reason everyone adopts a feature: because it's a good idea.

[KainrycKarr]

I don't see an issue with it. I do dislike the "bloody screen" effect.

[FlyingWalrus]

Your health didn't last more than a few seconds if you were exposed to an onslaught of enemy fire in ME1 either, no matter how huge the number was. Just try and survive a direct hit from a Geth Colossus on Insanity even at level 40.

Regenerating health still works in Mass Effect and it's backed by the entry that states that armor systems administer microinjections of medigel to injury sites.

[Bluko]

I do prefer medkits and healing abilities. Having regenerating health makes me feel like an Iguana or something. I dunno health regeneration is so common now-a-days in games I basically take it for granted. Regenerating Shields is fine since it makes more sense that it can be quickly recharged via some type of techno babble.

In essence this should be should be the premise of Mass Effect. Shields recharge, but Health must be healed via manual means such as Medigel. It makes sense as Shields are basically your defense layer that let's you make mistakes, but if your too stupid and your health gets torn down well... it's game over man!

Of course health regeneration is not something new in ME2. The Soldier class had health regeneration in ME1 anyways, why I don't really know other then supposedly so you could be a tank. There was also the various Medical Suit mods you could install to essentially allow all characters to regenerate health anyways. Also at critical health every class regenerates anyways so it's always been there.


Really my only big problem is that Unity/Medigel are now the same ability. That kind of irks me as it's almost never practical to use Unity for healing purposes or at all really. If a character is getting shot to death healing them doesn't really help anyway. To be honest I rarely revive squadmembers since whenever I do it seems like the A.I. just goes and gets itself killed again. I almost always opt to kill off the enemies by myself, even on Insanity.

In ME1 Medigel is often the difference between life and death in the harder fights. And Unity was an ability that essentially made up for the fact that squad A.I. always decides to take rockets to the face. Niether ME1 or ME2 have very good squad A.I. At least in ME1 I had ways to deal with it.

[Bogsnot1]

Sorry to rain on your parade, but regenerating health has been in the game since ME1, it wasnt introduced in ME2.
Soldiers got it initially, and then every class got it as long as you got the Krogan Ally achievement. You could also purchase armour, or armour upgrade which granted it.

[Bluko]

KainrycKarr wrote...

I do dislike the "bloody screen" effect.

This as well. Usually when you get hurt really bad your eyes don't fill up with blood, nor do you see veins. What usually happens is your sight narrows and you lose color vision. The "bloody veiny effects" just come off as silly to me.

[neubourn]

Game =/= Movie or Comic book

Fact is, a game is supposed to be fun. The problem with non-regenerating health is that once you lose health, you have to stop what you are doing (thereby killing any built up suspense right there), and waste time looking for more health JUST TO KEEP PLAYING. Cant find any? Game over, try again.

Wolverine is a fictional character, so even if he DIDNT regen health, there would still be some more story to it, and you would still be reading page after page. You wouldnt have to backtrack and read 2 pages earlier just to see him healthy again.

And i disagree that regen health doesnt have a sense of urgency, because every game is laid out the same: take TOO MUCH damage, and you die, so you have to balance your actions against the damage you take, and if you take to much, its urgent you get into cover. Fact is, health regen is a necessity in modern games since it keeps the gameplay flowing. Its not very fun to take damage and wander around hoping you can find a health pack before getting shot again. if thats urgency, then ill pass.

[MrFob]

Bogsnot1 wrote...

Sorry to rain on your parade, but regenerating health has been in the game since ME1, it wasnt introduced in ME2.
Soldiers got it initially, and then every class got it as long as you got the Krogan Ally achievement. You could also purchase armour, or armour upgrade which granted it.

It is still a bit different though as in ME1 the health regen was much slower, which IMO is the best approach for RPGs. I don't want to drag tons of medi-gel/healing potions or whatever around that I just drink out of combat every now and so often but I still want to be forced to manage muy health carefully in combat.

So IMO the best approach ME1 took was the best one. Fast regenerating shields and very slowly regenerating health with the ability to upgrade the health regen with armor mods and skill points.
But it is a matter of taste of course.

[FlyingWalrus]

Bluko wrote...

KainrycKarr wrote...

I do dislike the "bloody screen" effect.

This as well. Usually when you get hurt really bad your eyes don't fill up with blood, nor do you see veins. What usually happens is your sight narrows and you lose color vision. The "bloody veiny effects" just come off as silly to me.

This I hated so much in ME2. It didn't even look decent. The veins all looked blocky and half-assed like the addition was a last-moment afterthought.

I would prefer that instead—the narrowing field of view and/or grayscaling of vision.

Someone take it to Bioware!

[ItsFreakinJesus]

If developers are going to use regen, they should either do it like Metal Gear or Ninja Gaiden. In MGS3 and Ninja Gaiden 2, you can regenerate your health up to a certain point, depending on how much damage you took in a certain amount of time, and what kind of damage.

In Metal Gear specifically, fall damage, knife wounds, and point blank gunshot wounds would cause a portion of the health bar to turn red immediately after the damage, and unless you use a medical item, your health would only regenerate up to the point where the red in the bar stops. You could wait it out, but it would take either hours of in-game time to clear up, or neglecting to play the game for several days. Non crucial damage would regenerate slowly (or at least in comparison to other games), and it was also affected by your stamina, but that's something else entirely.

Ninja Gaiden 2 had a similar concept. Each time you got hit and you lost health, part of the bar would turn purple. And after the fight, your health would regenerate up to that purple part. You could get in a fight and lose half of your health bar in a single hit, and a fourth of your bar will turn purple so after the fight, your health would regen back to the 3/4th mark. Once again, health items cleared this up.

This created urgency to not mess up, but enough leeway to know that if you got out of the remainder of the fight unscathed that even though you had no health items, you would be somewhat safe for the next encounter.

If you're going to add in health regen, doing it one of these two ways would probably be best.

[CajNatalie]

Armor actually doing something to make your HP last longer, while only your shields regenerate, is the way it should've stayed.

The only way you get any urgency is when specific enemies or scenarios come along that try to flank you or break you out of cover.

It's just awful... most of the game can easily be beaten with the following on any difficulty...
Break cover to do your thing... let HP fall to half... wait for regen... rinse and repeat.

Modifié par CajNatalie, 17 juin 2011 - 03:25 .

[Gatt9]

He's right.

ME2 is a great example, crouch and wait 5 seconds, and you're back to 100%. It seriously decreases the difficulty of a game.

Personally, I blame it on a key facet of today's Game Industry, the Disposable Game.

Games today are meant to be played, and beaten, inside of a few days to perhaps a week at most. I strongly suspect that this is intentional, in order to move you onto the next $60 expense as fast as possible. They don't want you doing anything that might extend the time you play a game, because if you're playing Game X for 4 weeks, then you're not spending more money.

I mean seriously, we're getting games with *maybe* 7-8 hours of gameplay in them today.

Regenerating health is a key factor in this with modern Shooters, because it encourages wanton disregard as you progress. Who cares if you charge into the room and lose 90% of your health, it'll come back in 5 seconds. Just charge through the game as fast as possible!

Of course, you lose tension, planning, strategy, resource management, and a whole host of other benefits.

But OTOH, you can go buy the next 8 hour game in a few days!

[FlyingWalrus]

I get the feeling you haven't played many shooters, Gatt9.

You cannot charge like an idiot into a situation even with regenerating health. Halo 2 was the game that pioneered this concept and it is, IMO, one of the hardest FPS campaigns ever made, especially since the enemies would easily overwhelm your position if you let them. Halo 3 was no cakewalk either. I can't speak for any of the CoD games as I have not played them.

In comparison, ME2's enemy AI just wasn't very good. The only enemies that provided a real pressure situation in my case were the Husks simply because they would rush your position and suss you out. Other than that, enemies were a shooting gallery.

Please tell me how ducking for five seconds into cover is any different on a fundamental level from ducking and manually using a medigel pack, especially with a high rank in First Aid which would make medigel recharge super quick? All that ME2 did was automate the process and remove the manual input.

Modifié par FlyingWalrus, 17 juin 2011 - 04:03 .

[The Spamming Troll]

Gatt9 wrote...

He's right.

ME2 is a great example, crouch and wait 5 seconds, and you're back to 100%. It seriously decreases the difficulty of a game.

Personally, I blame it on a key facet of today's Game Industry, the Disposable Game.

Games today are meant to be played, and beaten, inside of a few days to perhaps a week at most. I strongly suspect that this is intentional, in order to move you onto the next $60 expense as fast as possible. They don't want you doing anything that might extend the time you play a game, because if you're playing Game X for 4 weeks, then you're not spending more money.

I mean seriously, we're getting games with *maybe* 7-8 hours of gameplay in them today.

Regenerating health is a key factor in this with modern Shooters, because it encourages wanton disregard as you progress. Who cares if you charge into the room and lose 90% of your health, it'll come back in 5 seconds. Just charge through the game as fast as possible!

Of course, you lose tension, planning, strategy, resource management, and a whole host of other benefits.

But OTOH, you can go buy the next 8 hour game in a few days!

****ing awesome.

[Kilshrek]

Bogsnot1 wrote...

Sorry to rain on your parade, but regenerating health has been in the game since ME1, it wasnt introduced in ME2.
Soldiers got it initially, and then every class got it as long as you got the Krogan Ally achievement. You could also purchase armour, or armour upgrade which granted it.

Only health didn't regenerate completely once you hid in cover for a couple of seconds. It was over time, and it was an armour mod that granted health regeneration, at a grand pace of X/sec. And even then only the highest grade of the mod. Here. *X/sec really is a single digit, when player health by that time normally went up to 300+? So healing rate is never more than 10% I should think.

Also shields did more. And armour did more. It felt more sci-fi in the sense that you can stand up and take the sort of punishment(with appropriate armour and mods) that in ME 2 only the enemy's elite can take. Strange that you as an "elite" soldier yourself can't take half as much.

I think to gain the maximum "benefit" of regenerating health you have to play at a high difficulty, whereas at lower(normal, even) difficulties regenerating health makes the game altogether too easy to play. And quite breaks any sense of immersion when teammates heal magically as well. Fine if Shep's the only one with super healing powers, Lazarus project and all that, but everyone else patches up bullet holes in 3 seconds? I think not.

[Rolling Flame]

FlyingWalrus wrote...

I get the feeling you haven't played many shooters, Gatt9.

You cannot charge like an idiot into a situation even with regenerating health. Halo 2 was the game that pioneered this concept and it is, IMO, one of the hardest FPS campaigns ever made, especially since the enemies would easily overwhelm your position if you let them. Halo 3 was no cakewalk either. I can't speak for any of the CoD games as I have not played them.

Mass Effect 2 buys heavily into the Call of Duty health system, where, when shot, health decreases (obviously) and the screen blurs up. Hide away for a few seconds, and you can be back at full strengh, which, naturally, makes the game easier. Mass Effect 3 should use, in my mind, one of the two health systems implemented in Halo, where either health doesn't regenerate (Halo CE, ODST and Reach), and medi-gel is needed to recover, or regenerates about 10 seconds after shields have recharged (Halo 2 and 3). 

[Massadonious1]

Kilshrek wrote...
but everyone else patches up bullet holes in 3 seconds? I think not.

As opposed to instantly field dressing everyone with one application of futuristic medi-goop?
Both make about as much sense, realism wise.