217 réponses à ce sujet

[Eurhetemec]

konfeta wrote...

So why don't you name some health-pack-only games where it wasn't a problem.

Um. You listed them for me. As far as I can recall, "quick-save quick-load" dance was only necessary if you were worse at aiming/moving than the current difficulty required you to be, health items were rather liberally dispensed all over the place.

That's interesting, because upthread, Notanything was saying that was what he loved about those games. Maybe you guys should have a discussion about whether that's skill-less or not? :innocent:

[Notanything]

You're right, too much or too little can be a bad thing, but I generally accepted that if I was coming upon items that like health when I was already full, I would take that as a sign that I was doing better than what would be possibly expected of me.  Not every game can take into the account the skill and playstyles of every person, let alone leave the perfect amount of items for everybody.  The developers are only human.  For me, harder difficulties were always more challenging, even if some levels erroneously gave out extra health in areas that were pitiful when compared to others.

I will have to argue with you on difficulty now, compared to then.  I'm not saying everything these days is a cake
walk either, but it just seems like a fact to me that games, and game developers were much less forgiving then, than they are now.  And a lot of games from the old eras seem to prove this.  To fit my play style and habits, to meet an optimal challenge at all for modern games, I need to play everything on the hardest difficulty, even the first time. With some old games, I still cannot do that.

But once again, different players.

Modifié par Notanything, 17 juin 2011 - 08:43 .

[Notanything]

Eurhetemec wrote...

konfeta wrote...

So why don't you name some health-pack-only games where it wasn't a problem.

Um. You listed them for me. As far as I can recall, "quick-save quick-load" dance was only necessary if you were worse at aiming/moving than the current difficulty required you to be, health items were rather liberally dispensed all over the place.

That's interesting, because upthread, Notanything was saying that was what he loved about those games. Maybe you guys should have a discussion about whether that's skill-less or not? :innocent:

Ooh, you caught me!  But I actually like quick save for the challenge.  I use quick saves, and loads generally to be a perfectionist.  I challenge myself because I get to see if I can come out of a battle perfect, no damage taken whatsoever.  If not, I start over.  That is my 'quick-save dance', if you'd prefer to phrase it that way.

Modifié par Notanything, 17 juin 2011 - 08:38 .

[Crackseed]

I think the genre really dictated how games have evolved - we've seen FPS's maintain their difficulty in general or get even harder while I feel like we've seen alot of really sub-par and too easy RPGs or RTS's emerge due to pointless dumbing down of the franchises. Good case is watching the horrible slow death of the C&C franchise. I remember the original C&C's being murderously hard on some of the end missions, but so satisfying to beat. Same with Red Alert. Whereas C&C 3/4 just felt like cheap knock-offs where I could basically spam 1 unit type and win.

FPS wise I feel like the GOOD studios are still pushing the envelope when possible [I don't consider CoD a good FPS - I boycott anything Activision shovels out FPS wise atm save for Singularity] - so I think it really comes down to what type of game we're looking at - and more importantly, who the developing studio is. And I tend to judge the games and mechanics in them by what they are trying to accomplish and if it really fits in the game as a result.

For ME2, I believe the shift from the "traditional" healing method to a regen system really benefited it, even if there is still room for improvement in terms of how the AI pushes you and removing some of the gratuitous amounts of cover half the levels had.

Modifié par crackseed, 17 juin 2011 - 08:40 .

[Bozorgmehr]

crackseed wrote...

@ Bozo - great points. If they can really push ME3's combat like they are talking about [less available cover/bigger areas] while making the AI really keep us moving in and out of cover, I think it'll be a much more intense experience and make the regen system earn it's keep.

I think that's the real challenge - go Bioware!

The main problem with health packs - regardless if they can be 'picked up' by walking over them, or used like an item (out of a supply) - will be either about knowing exactly where all health packs are located or having enough of em for any particular fight (encouraging scavenging).

Mass Effect 2 already solved some issues with powers such as Charge - which works partly like a health pack every time you use it - but also created problems with stuff like Assault Armor (too OP) and the other armor powers (GSB, Barrier etc) which have little effect on shield strength yet on huge cooldowns. The concept of powers working like health packs is good imo, it allows players to continue fighting at critical health levels but also handicaps players (they cannot use power during cooldown period). A health pack system would make those powers a lot less interesting.

DocLasty wrote...

Khayness wrote...

Health regen is only there to promote careless gameplay, what the industry thinks is fun.

New gamers will never experience the thrill of surviving on 10 HP, carefully planning until you find the next HP pack, giving yourself a pat on the shoulder for being so awesome to dispatch a room full of mooks with the least scratches as possible.

And on the flipside, they'll never experience the boredom of scrounging around for health packs, retracing your steps to get more, stockpiling the crap. And they'll never experience the utter frustration of having to start an entire level over just because you don't have quite enough health packs to be the final boss.

Indeed, and what's the difference between having to reload a couple times to complete a fight with limited health and not having to reload but instead the fight will last much longer. It comes down to the same thing - time required to complete a fight - I prefer using cover and wait for regen over using the reload button all the time.

[Eurhetemec]

Notanything wrote...

Ooh, you caught me!  But I actually like quick save for the challenge.  I use quick saves, and loads generally to be a perfectionist.  I challenge myself because I get to see if I can come out of a battle perfect, no damage taken whatsoever.  If not, I start over.  That is my 'quick-save dance', if you'd prefer to phrase it that way.

I have to admit, I used to do the same thing, and yeah, it was fun, but I honestly don't think that, for me, it was ever more fun than a modern "regen" shooter on max difficulty with checkpoints or no saving in combat.

(Of course badly-placed check points make me want to throw the game out the window, luckily, they're becoming more rare)

Re: difficulty, one thing is, I don't know about you, but I'm actually much *better* at games now than when I was a teenager. I've gone back and played games I thought were hard, and been like "Bwuh, this was hard? Really?", I don't know if you'd see the same thing with some, maybe, maybe not.

[Notanything]

Eurhetemec wrote...

Notanything wrote...

Ooh, you caught me!  But I actually like quick save for the challenge.  I use quick saves, and loads generally to be a perfectionist.  I challenge myself because I get to see if I can come out of a battle perfect, no damage taken whatsoever.  If not, I start over.  That is my 'quick-save dance', if you'd prefer to phrase it that way.

I have to admit, I used to do the same thing, and yeah, it was fun, but I honestly don't think that, for me, it was ever more fun than a modern "regen" shooter on max difficulty with checkpoints or no saving in combat.

(Of course badly-placed check points make me want to throw the game out the window, luckily, they're becoming more rare)

Re: difficulty, one thing is, I don't know about you, but I'm actually much *better* at games now than when I was a teenager. I've gone back and played games I thought were hard, and been like "Bwuh, this was hard? Really?", I don't know if you'd see the same thing with some, maybe, maybe not.

Oh no, I have.  I know exactly what you mean, i'm one of the lucky ones to still have all of my old consoles and most of the video games.  It worked that way very rarely for me, the other times it didn't.

[mjh417]

Regenerating health has been the new standard now for most of this generation of gaming, and not even it just shooters. I think it makes somewhat good sense within in the world of Mass Effect, except when applied to armor-less squadmates

[konfeta]

Maybe you guys should have a discussion about whether that's skill-less or not?

I must have missed the part where I claimed anything about skill requirements of old shooters vs. modern shooters. I simply maintained that "running out of health" wasn't really a common design problem. I guess you could say that difficulty ranges needed to be made wider if enough players can't play the game without mashing the F# button, but I hardly think you can make the claim that most shooters inherently failed at providing enough average health restoration to outstrip average unavoidable damage.

Truly difficult single player shooters are a rarity, always have been, always will be. The question comes down to whenever develoeprs can make the shooter entertaining and prevent tedium. Personally, I found older shooters more fun as the current shooter trend of "lower health pool, more unavoidable damage, easier restoration" somehow leads to less varied gameplay. There is only so much you can do with gameplay when the player dies after 2 seconds of unavoidable in the open fire. Gameplay feels more constricted in terms of how you can play under those conditions.

Any game that's easy on the hardest difficulty and on ones first playthrough is very poorly designed imo.

I would take it a step further. Any game that is even winnable on hardest difficulty through attrition style gameplay has made a design mistake. I feel that games should have a wider range of difficulty - starting at "this is basically an interactive movie" and reaching at the very least the level of "made an obviously wrong decision? die." Perhaps even further where slight mechanical mistakes punish you by failure, but I heavily suspect that players good enough to need that for challenge are 100% multiplayer anyway.

I think this is almost impossible for games like Mass Effect.

It's not impossible as much as it takes up resources to design the game that way. You need to physically playtest most reasonable permutations due to class, power, squadmate, weapon, upgrade differences players will have at any mission. Like, if we are going to plop enemies that enter combat by flanking us in ME2, Infiltrator and Vanguard players will probably hold a strong advantage because they have a tool that lets them relocate safely. So the developers would either have to give other classes some tool to deal with a situation or design the entire arena so that being flanked isn't a death sentence. Etc. etc. etc. - more work on Bioware part, and they probably don't feel like doing anything to extensive to appease the minority of players who like higher difficulties.

I think playing ME2 on Insanity without relying on cover and regen whenever possible is very rewarding.

Well, yes, combat in ME2 is essentially a puzzle you solve by yourself and/or with reading/look at what other players say/do. It does feel rewarding to optimize it. But, if you want to look at difficulty as a test of your ability to think quickly, priotize quickly, and act quickly, it's not well designed for that - ME needs far more varied enemies, encounters that are less scripted, perhaps even randomization in enemy group compositions/numbers, a less constricted terrain. I would very much like to see that sort of thing in RPGs, but so far, it has been the domain of real time strategy games and a select few of shooters like unreal tournament or serious sam.

Re: difficulty, one thing is, I don't know about you, but I'm actually much *better* at games now than when I was a teenager.

Really? I see how I got better at RPGs and strategy games, but I most definitely got weaker at straight up shooters. As a kid I beat Battlefrogs and could do Unreal Tournament on Godlike without too much fuss and frustration, not true today.

Modifié par konfeta, 17 juin 2011 - 09:28 .

[MrGone]

To be fair Eurhetemec, rampant quicksave loading is pretty much the equivalent of HP regen. In both cases you're extending a fight (one by replaying it, the other by waiting behind something). But unlike HP regen, you could, you know, not do it. Almost no games with pure health regeneration allow you to turn it off.

Also, it's odd that you use Halo: Reach as a counter example, considering it uses the Halo 1 system. I read that article too, and the guy does nothing but defend the Halo 1 system as a way of doing regen right. It is way too long though, jeez.

I suppose you're saying it's better than just health packs as in HL, which OK. But it's not pure regeneration on the same level as ME2's either which is more like Halo 2. Personally I think ME3 would be better suited if it borrowed from Reach rather than 2, but that's just me.

[Eurhetemec]

konfeta wrote...

I would take it a step further. Any game that is even winnable on hardest difficulty through attrition style gameplay has made a design mistake. I feel that games should have a wider range of difficulty - starting at "this is basically an interactive movie" and reaching at the very least the level of "made an obviously wrong decision? die." Perhaps even further where slight mechanical mistakes punish you by failure, but I heavily suspect that players good enough to need that for challenge are 100% multiplayer anyway.

It's interesting that one of the first attempts to make an FPS game impossible to win through attrition was in Doom's Nightmare mode, where the enemies respawned, effectively meaning that you would run out of ammo/health if you tried to draw things out.

As for shooters, yeah, definitely am. Reactions still fast, mouse-aiming better, understanding of enemy AI and how humans play MUCH better (esp. the latter), and understanding of resources better. I'm also a lot better at strategy games, but NOT at RTSes, because I just don't have the patience for the level of fiddly clicking micro that modern RTSes love.

MrGone wrote...

To be fair Eurhetemec, rampant quicksave loading is pretty much the equivalent of
HP regen. In both cases you're extending a fight (one by replaying it,
the other by waiting behind something). But unlike HP regen, you could,
you know, not do it. Almost no games with pure health regeneration allow you to turn it off.

To me it's immaterial if you "could" not do it, because you "could" not
upgrade your armour, or you "could" fight only with melee attacks
(people do!), but that's not going to be a normal, mainstream way to
play the game. Most people are going to quicksave constantly and quickload any time anything goes wrong.

Also,
it's odd that you use Halo: Reach as a counter example, considering it
uses the Halo 1 system. I read that article too, and the guy does
nothing but defend the Halo 1 system as a way of doing regen right. It
is way too long though, jeez.

I suppose you're saying it's better than just
health packs as in HL, which OK. But it's not pure regeneration on the
same level as ME2's either which is more like Halo 2. Personally I think
ME3 would be better suited if it borrowed from Reach rather than 2, but
that's just me.

You're right, all these games are blurring together in my head, sorry.

As for ME3, well, no ME game
has used "on the floor" health-packs, and the lore of the game means
that doesn't make sense now (it could have if it had always been the
way), because of medi-gel, and the fact that armour supplies it to you.
So that's not really an option, I'd suggest. It's also definitely too
late to redesign ME3's combat system and hope it's good, 9 months from
release.

Modifié par Eurhetemec, 17 juin 2011 - 10:03 .

[KrunkMasterB]

I think before doing anything with the health, it's the armor that needs retooling. Why is it that in ME2 elite enemies had another "armor" bar after you wittle down their shield that you have to get through, but Shepard doesn't? He must be wearing the most advanced armor possible, just like the mercs.

[Crackseed]

I think it was really to make the enemies on the higher difficulties more tactical to fight - if Shep had an armor bar, it would probably make Insanity easier which isn't needed while stripping the armor layer out of the enemies would just make mowing them down easier w/ one less protective layer before you could start pimpslapping them with powers.

[EternalPink]

crackseed wrote...

I think the genre really dictated how games have evolved - we've seen FPS's maintain their difficulty in general or get even harder while I feel like we've seen alot of really sub-par and too easy RPGs or RTS's emerge due to pointless dumbing down of the franchises. Good case is watching the horrible slow death of the C&C franchise. I remember the original C&C's being murderously hard on some of the end missions, but so satisfying to beat. Same with Red Alert. Whereas C&C 3/4 just felt like cheap knock-offs where I could basically spam 1 unit type and win.

FPS wise I feel like the GOOD studios are still pushing the envelope when possible [I don't consider CoD a good FPS - I boycott anything Activision shovels out FPS wise atm save for Singularity] - so I think it really comes down to what type of game we're looking at - and more importantly, who the developing studio is. And I tend to judge the games and mechanics in them by what they are trying to accomplish and if it really fits in the game as a result.

For ME2, I believe the shift from the "traditional" healing method to a regen system really benefited it, even if there is still room for improvement in terms of how the AI pushes you and removing some of the gratuitous amounts of cover half the levels had.

The original C&C was a good game, had a few issues with the AI though which made the game stupidly easy the one i most remember is the sand bag one were you could block off the entrances to the enemy base with sand bags, they couldn't/wouldn't destroy them and you could just farm in peace until your army was big enough to kill the base.

Believe they fixed this sort of thing with the later releases.

I think the health pod/regenning health both suffer from the same things, with the healing pod as mentioned you can just spam the ability and its very hard to justify how walking/using one item fully heals you even if you are currently getting shot.

With regenning health yes you can duck and just attrition enemies down but some had regenerating health as well (Krogan/vorcha) which stopped that and the lore justification is plausible for single/small wounds but your armor managing to heal you up from 1 HP point off dead to full health is a bit harder to RP.

I think that either healing's negatives in combat though could be mitigated just by having the AI work smarter and push enemies that are near dead, so soon as one player goes to 10/15% HP then more enemies group on that character to "finish him/her off" which would make finding the cover/spamming the healing a challenge in itself

[lazuli]

KrunkMasterB wrote...

I think before doing anything with the health, it's the armor that needs retooling. Why is it that in ME2 elite enemies had another "armor" bar after you wittle down their shield that you have to get through, but Shepard doesn't? He must be wearing the most advanced armor possible, just like the mercs.

Shepard lacks armor for the same reason that enemy biotics can't lift you off of your feet- gameplay.  Two defensive layers would crowd the UI and needlessly complicate combat.

[Crackseed]

Fair point Eternal - I mean if you were avoiding exploiting the AI the mission setups in the later portions of the game could be incredibly brutal as you had little setup time and generally got bum-rushed early and w/o end. But I think an interesting point you raise is that often times, these systems we're discussing become flawed or questionable because the AI does not push us as players enough. While I find ME2's regen system more favorable, there were definitely missions where the combined cover and the AI's lack of forward momentum let me hang back and snipe with impunity till I was ready to rush in closer. So it comes down to a combined gameplay of the AI being able to really push the player's use of healing mechanics too.

[lloyd87]

I think shepard should take the max payne route and realise 100's of bottles of painkillers are the way forward! Nothing like a bit of drug abuse whilst fighting a bloody war!

[Sidney]

The zero regen of BG2 was lousy for game play because it either meant guzzling a swarm of health potions or having a less than thrilling fight-sleep-fight mechanism - although the idiotic 3E magic system also encouraged that.

Regen works for me because I rationalize something as dumb a hit points as something akin to luck/evasion or something. Sort of the way James Bond can run through the field of fire of 20 guys and not get hit. It isn't a perfect rationalization but it is the only thing that makes sense - I mean Shep can't take 5 bullets anymore than the Warden can get stabbed 8 times because they are human (mostly in Sheps case) and the body just doesn't get exponentially tougher. I can still kill a SEAL with one bullet just as surely as I could a 5 year old child IF the bullet strikes both of them. Now game animations don't do me any favors in that vein.

[Dannyboy9876]

If you think Regenerating health is boring and makes Shep invincible, you're playing ME2 wrong.

[The Spamming Troll]

why not have shields regen, but health needs medigel?

[Crackseed]

You'd still have to redesign the system and potentially make medi-gel/healing a secondary cooldown with a sufficient timer. W/o Immunity and the relative beefiness of ME1's late game mods, ME2 Insanity would chew us up alot more if we had a non-regenning health with the current cooldown system. Not saying it couldn't be done though, just think given their current iteration, provided they can make the AI up to snuff more with less "sit in cover" scenarios, the regen system will probably gain more worth.

[Technocactus]

I never saw what was so bad about health that regenerated between battles, myself. Stops the regen health problem of fights being a matter of hiding behind a wall until your health is up then shooting for a bit, but prevents any problem of health being whittled down over battles until a battle is almost unwinnable.

[Zem_]

Bozorgmehr wrote...
Indeed, and what's the difference between having to reload a couple times to complete a fight with limited health and not having to reload but instead the fight will last much longer. It comes down to the same thing - time required to complete a fight - I prefer using cover and wait for regen over using the reload button all the time.

The difference is that in the health regen case you don't "lose".  That is to say, you don't lose bcause of repeated health damage.  You only lose when you receive too much health damage too quickly.  In the case of medkits, you can also lose when you run out of medkits.  With health regen, any mistake that doesn't almost immediately kill you is basically consequence free.  There is no difference between not being hit the entire fight and being damaged to within a sliver of death.  So long as you make it through the fight... all is forgotten.   Kicking butt is pretty much the same as just barely scraping by.  Not so with medkits.  At least not if you have a bad enough battle that you can't replenish all that you lost.  That poor performance carries over into the next fight.  It's a great incentive to get better.

This is also why I was a fan of the new limited ammo in ME2 vs the regenerating ammo of ME1.  It functions much the same way.  Not to mention encouraging me to make use of ALL of my abilities instead of relying on just one inexhaustible supply of ammo for my favorite gun. 

[The Spamming Troll]

crackseed wrote...

You'd still have to redesign the system and potentially make medi-gel/healing a secondary cooldown with a sufficient timer. W/o Immunity and the relative beefiness of ME1's late game mods, ME2 Insanity would chew us up alot more if we had a non-regenning health with the current cooldown system. Not saying it couldn't be done though, just think given their current iteration, provided they can make the AI up to snuff more with less "sit in cover" scenarios, the regen system will probably gain more worth.

healing should be on a seperate cooldown. im not sure why i cant have a tiny icon on the lower left side of the screen that represents my medigel cooldown. i feel like ive played a game that did something similar to that......

personally i dont like going from near death to full health by crotching behind cover for a few seconds. any way you look at it, it makes it a little easy. i think halo changed it up a little like that in that recently, and i liked not being able to be at full health at any point in the game, even after i just took 4 rockets to the face 5 seconds ago.

ive never noticed much difference in shooter AI. they all can be figured out in one playthrough, and ME2s is fairly easy to master. sometimes i feel like im controlling the enemy just by putting my scope on them at the right time just becasue i know they all behave the same way.

to me it seems like the sheidl regen only was alot more satisfying in completeing a level, becasue i couldnt have the oportunity to go to 1 HP and not worry about it 5 seonds later.