The Modern FPS Health System: Evolution or Traversity?

[Neon Knight]

I will admit that this thread has been inspired by a recent edition of Zero Punctuation, specifically the Turok review. Mr. Yahtzee raised an interesting point.

Where did the health meter go? Once a staple of FPS damage systems, the health meter, whether in numbers, blocks, or bars, seems to have vanished utterly from the face of the FPS world.

Replacing it is the "Fade to Black," or more accurately "Fade to Reddish Darkness" system. As found in Gears of War, CoD4, Army of Two, Halo 2&3, Rainbow Six Vegas 1&2, and a host of other video games I can't be bothered to remember, this method has come to dominate the market. The simple method of damage causing one's screen to turn red and darken until a certain threshold is reached resulting in death, with damage being removed automatically with time spent not getting hurt, has come to seemingly captivate the genre and its audience as a whole.

The only games I can think of released recently that stick with a health meter are games based of the Source engine such As Half Life 2: Episode 2.

I was wondering which system people prefer and why, and thus turn to the GitP gaming forum to see what my fellow gamers think.

[Tengu]

Isn't the only actual difference between these two whether do you regain health by waiting in a corner for a moment or stepping on a pick-upable medikit?

[Neon Knight]

Isn't the only actual difference between these two whether do you regain health by waiting in a corner for a moment or stepping on a pick-upable medikit?

Yes... and to some that is a quite substantial difference. Every games has its nuances, of course, but generally a picked up health kit provides an immediate gain to health whereas corner recovery takes time and the enemy not pestering you.

[Zakama]

I do have a few complaints with this damage system. For one thing, it's pretty unrealistic for this to happen: "AHHH I'm dieing, I am going to die, oh geez, wait I feel better, mmm not so bad, OK I'm fine." :smallannoyed: I think Halo 1 had it pretty good with a combo of the two systems.

It also lets you do things you never would do in reality, like run across an open area to cover because you know you can just sit there and heal.

[Leper_Kahn]

It also lets you do things you never would do in reality, like run across an open area to cover because you know you can just sit there and heal.

Although, in most FPSs this is balanced by the fact that people die in very few shots. (Halo isn't included.)

I agree though. I hate this system. I think it leads to sniper sprees and overall people being more worried about survival than killing people. An interesting idea, but in death matches where the only thing that matters is Kill to Death spread maybe a long-lasting damage system would be better so it requires a huge amount of skill, and not just luck to get those sprees.

[Khanderas]

I will admit that this thread has been inspired by a recent edition of Zero Punctuation, specifically the Turok review. Mr. Yahtzee raised an interesting point.
Independantly of this post, I stumbled yesterday upon Zero Punctuation (means I saw it before I saw this post). It made my day.
As of yesterday, seeing Zero punctuation is mandatory for anyone who would frequent a board such as this (other games).

No link. Your google fu must find the true path.

[Jibar]

A better question would be the Modern FPS: An Evolution or a Traversity...

Anyway, I personally prefer the system of regenerating health.
Considering the genre relies upon non-stop hardcore action sequences, strikes me as a little silly that you should have to hide and play careful through a whole bunch of fights until you can find a health pack, when you could just sit behind cover for a few secs and dive straight back in.

[Were-Sandwich]

Killzone combines the two systems in an interesting way. Your health regenerates-up to a point. Then you have to find a health kit to get to full health. In this way you can get up to a point where one hit won't kill you by hiding in cover, but to be able to tackle large groups of enemies you have to get a health kit.

Of course, they ditched this system in multiplayer, where the only way only heal is through health kits.

[Emperor Ing]

game developers are trying to be realistic.
But your amount of health in COD4 is certainly ludicrous. 1, 2 bullets if your lucky, hit you and your dead. 3 if you have juggernaut perk. :smallannoyed:
realism can be annoying
I believe Team Fortress 2 goes by health bars, with pickups spawning around the map, frequently respawning.

[Dhavaer]

Can someone give me examples of FPSs without health bars? All the ones I've played have had either that or hit points.

[Emperor Ing]

the COD series
Gears of War

[Oslecamo]

Hey, nobody remembers Goldeneye, the best N64 game?

There were no freacking health bars or regeneration there. If a bullet was stuck in your body, well, then too bad, it's going to stik there to the end of the mission.

There were body armors, but even those were scarce. And a direct grenade or rocket launcher blast was more than enough to take you down in one hit. Bullets to the head would also finish you pretty quickly.

Now that was realistic, and I loved it. You had to carefully manage your life because, well, wounds don't heal from one moment to the other.

The game has made such an impression to me that even today whenever I play FPS I seek to get hit as less as possible, even if I know there are health bars just around the corner.

[The Rose Dragon]

I think Crysis did the best.

It has a health bar, but no medkits - instead, you wear a state-of-the-art nanosuit, which can greatly accelerate your healing process, and use its automatically replenishing energy reserves to grant you one of the following: great speed, great strength, great armor or cloaking.

Of course, you spend most of your time in the latter two modes, because the game is hard. Very hard. At least for noobs like me.

[Triaxx]

Start up Goldeneye. Pause the game. See that thing on the right hand side? That's your health bar. The left is Body armor.

I personally like a health bar. Realism is fine, but as a gamer I want a visual representation. COD4 lacks a health bar, so they got away with 'hyper-realism'.

[Oslecamo]

Start up Goldeneye. Pause the game. See that thing on the right hand side? That's your health bar. The left is Body armor.

I personally like a health bar. Realism is fine, but as a gamer I want a visual representation. COD4 lacks a health bar, so they got away with 'hyper-realism'.

Sorry, I didn't meant to say there weren't health bars. I meant to say there weren't health recovering kits.

And from what I remember, the bar on the left was the health one(red), while the one on the right was the body armor(blue).

[Archonic Energy]

Of course, you spend most of your time in the latter two modes, because the game is hard. Very hard.

no...
you spent most of the time cloaked because it is FUN to silently walk up behind your ememy, pick him up, & throw him off a cliff...

... or at another enemy
heh :smallamused:

[Ranis]

It depends upon what you want. Multiplayer, for the most part, is handedly improved with the induction of the health bar point-system. Things become instantly balanced (skill-wise) and it becomes a much more enjoyable experience. Anyone play Unreal Tournament(the original)? :smallamused:

However, the regenerating health system makes for a more authentically real experience as far as dying easily goes. CoD4 on Veteran mode is basically real life but all of the terrorists don't have *that* good of a shot, considering they're all shoddy and such.

Anyway, very rarely can you have your cake and eat it too, as far as this goes. It goes to show that, through the use of this system, what the developers want the player to experience: a great multiplayer experience, or a great single-player experience. I think the multiplayer in CoD4 was an afterthought, proof being that all of the multiplayer maps are recycled versions of things in single player. The Halo series has somehow pulled off this multiplayer with a regenerating health system business, but the cake is a lie. Halo 3 just simply isn't what it used to be, and what it used to be had a health meter.

[warty goblin]

Hmm, looking through the FPS's currently being seriously played on my computer:
Rainbow 6 Vegas (Regenerating Health)
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (Straight healthbars, medics can dispense medpacks/alien goo for healing)
Half-Life 2 et al (Straight healthbar, medpacks scattered throughout the enviorenment)

I have to say in general I seem to prefer the healthbar approach, it keeps the tension rachetted up for longer, and gives greater incentive to avoid fire. Let's face it, having all of my health come back after 5 seconds means any really dangerous moment lasts, by definition, five seconds. After that it basically never happened, or I died. Contrast that with the sometimes frantic search for health in something like HL2, where being shot is at least a semi-permenant affliction, and (at least I) have to scrap through the occasional firefight very very carefully, knowing that just one or two lucky hits and it's curtains.

In Enemy Territory it also provides better incentive for teamwork, since you want to have a medic around to keep from dying a horrible death, meaning pushing the offensive too fast and outstripping your support is very dangerous since then your enemies will have access to health and you don't.

On the other hand, regenerating health does interface nicely with cover mechanics, since it gives you a real incentive to use cover, and favor a stop and pop style gameplay. But as said, this really does undermine teamwork in significant ways, at least in my eyes, and therefor can be rather annoying. It is also damn frustrating to know that you just unloaded enough lead into your target to 99% kill it, but not manage to get off that last shot, only to have it escape and come back at full health after sitting around for a few seconds. Tragically this regenerating health seems to come hand in hand with games with cover systems, which annoys the crap out of me, because I love cover systems, but find it stupid to realize that I actually had my own weight in bullets pass through me several times over in the course of the last thirty minutes, and can still go play water polo just fine.

To me the ideal system would be some sort of combination of the two. You would start the game with say 100 health, and each hit would reduce both your maximum and current HP. Your current HP would slowly regenerate back up to your maximum, but the max could only be bumped back up by a medic type person. To make things really fun, certain weapons would be 'stun only' and not effect max HP, but drop current like a rock from an airplane, and others would be really nasty and permenantly lower max, so even a medic couldn't fix you back up. For example say you were at full health and were running to another patch of cover when some ugly SOB riddled your tender flesh with a couple bullets, knocking your current HP down to 25, and your max to 50. You however made it to cover and were able to regenerate back up to 50 current/max, but were cut off from your team's medic, and so couldn't go any higher than that. Getting back to help would then become imperative.

On your way back however, somebody nails you in a flamethrower blast, knocking your current down to about 3 and your max down to 15. Unfortunately for you, flamethrower damage is permenant, so your new max health, even after medical attention is something like 35 or 40 (for balance reasons you don't want the perma-damage weapons being able to take max HP too low after all)

Now that would be an awesome system.

[Neon Knight]

Mr. Ranis, I respect you. However, by and large you post seems bizarre to me.


It depends upon what you want. Multiplayer, for the most part, is handedly improved with the induction of the health bar point-system. Things become instantly balanced (skill-wise) and it becomes a much more enjoyable experience. Anyone play Unreal Tournament(the original)? :smallamused:

Is that you opinion, i.e. your personal taste, or do you believe it to be objectively true?

I don't see how health points make a game instantly more balanced skill wise in the objective sense. I'm also an advocate of the view that old video games survive more on nostalgia than anything else. I've played many originals and classics, and although it was fun, I still find modern games to be superior. If you asked me for "the best game ever," if I had to objectively answer or forever be silenced, it would be a modern title. Old games should honored for the fun we had and for the advances they made, but Goldeneye's time is past. If you erased all my video gaming experience and memories, all my perceptions



However, the regenerating health system makes for a more authentically real experience as far as dying easily goes. CoD4 on Veteran mode is basically real life but all of the terrorists don't have *that* good of a shot, considering they're all shoddy and such.


Once more, I don't see how regenerative health automatically equates to realistic. No part of regenerative health mandates dies in one shot. In GoW multiplayer, and in Crackdown, you can take quite a substantial number of rounds and be barely injured. (Seriously. It takes a good part of your clip to down someone with an assault rifle. Most people go straight for the chainsaw, melee kills, shotguns, snipers, or that exploding arrow shooting bow. Sweet Jesus, I hate that thing.)

This seems to be a function of CoD4's difficulty level, not something intristic to regenerating health.



Anyway, very rarely can you have your cake and eat it too, as far as this goes. It goes to show that, through the use of this system, what the developers want the player to experience: a great multiplayer experience, or a great single-player experience. I think the multiplayer in CoD4 was an afterthought, proof being that all of the multiplayer maps are recycled versions of things in single player. The Halo series has somehow pulled off this multiplayer with a regenerating health system business, but the cake is a lie. Halo 3 just simply isn't what it used to be, and what it used to be had a health meter.

This is the paragraph that makes my head spin in confusion. CoD4 was clearly designed with multiplayer in mind. The excellent balance of weapons and perks, the leveling and challenge system with the excellent prestige mode, the 3-kill UAV 5-kill Airstirke 7-kill Helicopter system (I hate that helicopter too,) the varied and interesting game modes; all this points to a stunning polished multiplayer experience. In fact, I would dare to venture that the single player game was an after thought to what I regard as one of the best multiplayer games of all time.

The reuse of maps from single player I regarded as merely an efficient decision to save time and money, and they work decently enough (Spawn locations and no spawn protection can really suck if your side is getting its arse handed to you,) but other than that I have very little negative to say about CoD4 multiplayer (Knives and Nade spammers are the only things I haven't mentioned. And now I have.)

Secondly, only the first HALO had health meters, and although its LAN parties were legendary, they play before the mythic online scene of 2&3. By and large, by the majority of gamers, 2&3 will be considered better than the first merely for that fact.

(Personally, I feel 3 is a bit off for some reason. I liked two a lot more.)

[Jibar]

and in Crackdown,

No... I have to pick up on this.
Did you just cite Crackdown as a reliable subject for an argument about realism?
Crackdown.
The game where I fling busses at gang criminals, and then proceed to jump fifty feet upwards on top of a building and blow up sixty more thugs with a grenade that makes an explosion the same size as an ICBM?
Crackdown!?

[Prustan]

Another example of the 'mixed' health system is Resistance: Fall of Man. Your health regenerates if you don't get hit for a certain amount of time - but only up to the current quarter. Get knocked below 75%, and you won't get back to full without a health pickup. I kind of like it, with a mix of "Where's a health pickup, I'm gonna die!" and "If the enemies don't come around that corner for a few seconds I'll be fine."

[Neon Knight]

No... I have to pick up on this.
Did you just cite Crackdown as a reliable subject for an argument about realism?
Crackdown.
The game where I fling busses at gang criminals, and then proceed to jump fifty feet upwards on top of a building and blow up sixty more thugs with a grenade that makes an explosion the same size as an ICBM?
Crackdown!?

If you read my post, I was citing it as an example of a game where you could take a lot of hits and not die, as in not realistic.

[Ranis]

Is that you opinion, i.e. your personal taste, or do you believe it to be objectively true?

I don't see how health points make a game instantly more balanced skill wise in the objective sense. I'm also an advocate of the view that old video games survive more on nostalgia than anything else. I've played many originals and classics, and although it was fun, I still find modern games to be superior. If you asked me for "the best game ever," if I had to objectively answer or forever be silenced, it would be a modern title. Old games should honored for the fun we had and for the advances they made, but Goldeneye's time is past. If you erased all my video gaming experience and memories, all my perceptions

Well, just think about it. You get into a firefight with someone that puts you down to 30/100 life points, you are now realistically far more easily killed, unless you find medkits/herbs/whatever. The idea now is that it takes far more skill to get hurt as little as possible over the course of each life, because your life doesn't simply regenerate back by standing and hiding in a corner. Also in this way, things become more "realistic" in the sense that you must be more careful due to you being an easier kill.


Once more, I don't see how regenerative health automatically equates to realistic. No part of regenerative health mandates dies in one shot. In GoW multiplayer, and in Crackdown, you can take quite a substantial number of rounds and be barely injured. (Seriously. It takes a good part of your clip to down someone with an assault rifle. Most people go straight for the chainsaw, melee kills, shotguns, snipers, or that exploding arrow shooting bow. Sweet Jesus, I hate that thing.)

Regenerative health equates more realism in single-player campaigns, but not to the extent that life/health meters can. I'm going to completely exclude Crackdown from the argument because arguing realism in a game where you are robocop on steroids powered by the feelings of love, order, and badassery is just a waste of time. In Gears of War, the system isn't meant to be realistic. People in post-apocalyptic "Earth" do not really have a button on their backs that will instantly let them sew up their stomachs keeping their entrails from spilling all over the ground, and people do not actually have chainsaws on their assault rifles.

But the system works. Regardless what anyone says about what is realistic compared to what is not, what isn't debated (mostly) is that the system simply works for whatever game it is, and that's what's important here. There's a reason Gears is still a popular game today, and it's simply because the way the game determines being downed and your character dying is an intrinsic part of the tactical squad-based game that Gears is.



This is the paragraph that makes my head spin in confusion. CoD4 was clearly designed with multiplayer in mind. The excellent balance of weapons and perks, the leveling and challenge system with the excellent prestige mode, the 3-kill UAV 5-kill Airstirke 7-kill Helicopter system (I hate that helicopter too,) the varied and interesting game modes; all this points to a stunning polished multiplayer experience. In fact, I would dare to venture that the single player game was an after thought to what I regard as one of the best multiplayer games of all time.

The reuse of maps from single player I regarded as merely an efficient decision to save time and money, and they work decently enough (Spawn locations and no spawn protection can really suck if your side is getting its arse handed to you,) but other than that I have very little negative to say about CoD4 multiplayer (Knives and Nade spammers are the only things I haven't mentioned. And now I have.)

I disagree. The first and foremost thing about any multiplayer game is the maps. The game can be the most balanced thing in the world, the most clearly defined, with a great cognizant weapon grading system with unlocks to boot just like the PC titans, but if all of the maps in a given game are "Grey Castle Reigns Supreme," "Dread Castle," "Return of Dread Castle," and "Castle in a Swamp," then who's gonna want to play? That's why I really don't like CoD4 anymore, even though the incentive is there to keep getting unlocks and better weapons etc etc, I just can't stand playing in "Dessciated Urban Environment 3986782Alpha" anymore.

But anyway-my original point is that you can't have a fantastic multiplayer experience AND a fantastic single-player experience in the same game. There are very few exceptions to this rule, but they do exist, and they set the standard that other games love to fail at.

My opinion is that if the game has regenerating health, the game's original intent was for a single player experience, unmarred by getting hit at the wrong time and then getting stuck somewhere because you start out against the boss with 11 health with no medkits in sight. That kind of thing can really bum someone out from starting over from their previous save because lo and behold, the last time you saved was 2 hours ago because you got caught up in the alien smash-fest.

The health bar system would then be, in contrast, for a multiplayer experience. Everyone having a static amount of health and the ability to control the respawn time of medkits/healthpacks would severely increase the amount of player deaths that happen on a global basis, keeping people from camping one particular weapon for too long and keeping things from getting too out of hand with one player running around dominating because his health doesn't go back up to full when he hides in a corner for seven seconds.

That help clear things up a bit?

[Felizginato12]

Just wanted to post this before people start throwing Halo into the mix...

Talking realistics in Halo can't be done...it's a sci-fi setting where there is advanced technology beyound our own. I'm just pointing this out since many people tend to throw tantrums and scream out "What the hell!!! How does a punch to the back kill you??? And how is it that if I stand still for a while I completely heal?? And why do I not take fall damage?? WTF? This Game sucks!" whenever they talk about Halo...

Just wanting to remind everyone that MC is a superhuman (basically). His suit is well equipped and the way it is explained in the books it really seems resonable that it would be possible to create something like that (in the far future of course).

I'm not targeting anyone I just wanted to post this so people don't start throwing down about Halo..just trying to make things a bit smoother :smallwink:

[Ranis]

I'm just pointing this out since many people tend to throw tantrums and scream out "What the hell!!! How does a punch to the back kill you??? And how is it that if I stand still for a while I completely heal?? And why do I not take fall damage?? WTF? This Game sucks!" whenever they talk about Halo...

1: This is a thread about the mechanics of the FPS health system as a whole, not the realistic viability of Halo.

2: People actually DO that? Wow. Takes all different colors to make a rainbow, I suppose.

[Jibar]

If you read my post, I was citing it as an example of a game where you could take a lot of hits and not die, as in not realistic.

Oh Thank God.
I was so worried for a second there.

[Felizginato12]

1: This is a thread about the mechanics of the FPS health system as a whole, not the realistic viability of Halo.

2: People actually DO that? Wow. Takes all different colors to make a rainbow, I suppose.

Oh, I know. I have just seen Halo thrown around a lot when compared to other FPS (for example, I have heard people on CoD 4 say "Halo is horrible..it makes no sense at all. A single punch kills you? That makes no sense") so I just wanted to take it upon myself to point out that criticism thrown towards Halo in this discussion may lead to trouble.

You can bet your <insert valuables> that people do that...I have read guys bios on XBL dedicated to bashing Halo xD.

[ufo]

If anyone's played Operation Flashpoint/Armed Assault, I prefer that method. You get shot, and the only way to recover is find a medic (provided that those have not been shot down) or complete the mission. Simple. Of course, for the less tactical games, I prefer the auto-regain-health method. Too tired to argue.

[Ranis]

(for example, I have heard people on CoD 4 say "Halo is horrible..it makes no sense at all. A single punch kills you? That makes no sense")

A single knife wound kills you instantly no matter where you're hit? That makes no sense!!

[Neon Knight]

Pardon the delay in response.

Mr. Ranis: Ah, I see. Thank you for providing more information on your stance. Certainly a different perspective than mine. I'd say we value different things in FPS's and derive entertainment from them in different ways. I respect your opinion and thank you for your response, even if I feel differently.

Madame Jibar: Your concern for my sanity, intelligence, and use of the English language is truly touching.

CoD4 Realism Side Discussion:

I'm proud that the military forces of the U.K., the U. S., Blandistan, and the Former Soviet Union are not only masters of drawing knives in a microsecond to a man, but are also comprised entirely of professional baseball pitchers, judging by their ability to throw grenades. That completely conforms to reality. :smallbiggrin:

[Leper_Kahn]

I think that CoD4 did its best to be realistic while still being balanced. I think that this really shines in the guns. How they work, how many shots to end up dead, etc. After all, you are most likely to die from bullets in the game than any other possibility. (Except those annoying knife-campers!) There are arguments for injury after one bullet, and arguments that the lack of bullet stray and drop really takes away from the experience, but I feel like CoD4 is the game to play if you are looking for a fairly realistic, but balanced experience.

The truly glaring problems have been noted already: Knife draws, Grenade throws, and the regenerating health, obviously the respawn system, the closed battlefields, and the plot line.

[warty goblin]

I think that CoD4 did its best to be realistic while still being balanced. I think that this really shines in the guns. How they work, how many shots to end up dead, etc. After all, you are most likely to die from bullets in the game than any other possibility. (Except those annoying knife-campers!) There are arguments for injury after one bullet, and arguments that the lack of bullet stray and drop really takes away from the experience, but I feel like CoD4 is the game to play if you are looking for a fairly realistic, but balanced experience.

The truly glaring problems have been noted already: Knife draws, Grenade throws, and the regenerating health, obviously the respawn system, the closed battlefields, and the plot line.

Huh, this was pretty much the opposite of my impression, namely that it felt like I was firing a laser pointer instead of a high powered rifle, and this was a bad thing. I wanted action, to feel like I was actually using a powerful weapon and not playing Call of Powerpoint 4. Well balanced it may be, but the guns being so horribly well behaved really did make them...boring, like it was hard to tell the difference between firing one and the next. One might do more damage or fire faster, but I didn't go about thinking about how to use them any differently.

Contrast this to the guns in say, Quake Wars (yes I do bring this game up all the time, it really is underrated IMHO), where recoil and spread management are integral parts of being successful. Firing the machine gun while walking and hitting is much harder to do than doing the same thing with the assault rifle or a pistol, which make sense. The bottom line is that although there are many fewer weapons in ETQW I actually feel like there are more to master, since each behaves very much differently than the next. This is not to say that ETQW is some bastion of realism in gameplay, since playing just tonight I wasted a Titan Main Battle Tank with the alien equivilent of a heavy machine gun, but in terms of ballistics models, I far prefer it to CoD 4.

At the extreme end of the recoil spectrum is something like Rainbow Six: Vegas, where the guns seem to have small jet engines built into them to drag them up. Seriously, half the time I just use the extended mag Deagle simply because it stays more or less on target and doesn't take up 3/4 of the screen with muzzle flash.

[EvilElitest]

Hey, nobody remembers Goldeneye, the best N64 game?

There were no freacking health bars or regeneration there. If a bullet was stuck in your body, well, then too bad, it's going to stik there to the end of the mission.

There were body armors, but even those were scarce. And a direct grenade or rocket launcher blast was more than enough to take you down in one hit. Bullets to the head would also finish you pretty quickly.

Now that was realistic, and I loved it. You had to carefully manage your life because, well, wounds don't heal from one moment to the other.

The game has made such an impression to me that even today whenever I play FPS I seek to get hit as less as possible, even if I know there are health bars just around the corner.

Ah another Goldeneye veteran, we are a forgotten people, remembering realistic gun fights so long forgotten
from
EE

[LurkerInPlayground]

Huh? What's with all this realism talk? When you are regenerating health in a corner or treading on medkits to heal or fighting with ray guns, realism is out the window entirely. Realism in games is overrated.

Or do we perhaps mean continuity?

Well either way, I'm firmly in the travesty camp. Regenerating health is not revolutionary, evolutionary or anything else. In fact, it's just incessantly copied by every generic Halo clone because Halo 2 did it. (And Halo 2 is an wretched and unbalanced game).

Okay, that's not entirely fair, it can make for more "cinematic" gameplay and to keep pacing. . .or something. Death can feel pretty arbitrary at times. And I suppose you could sound like this is a great advance or something, except when it is ripped off universally without any real reason. And I'm not convinced that having to sustain yourself on health packs necessarily detracts from the cinematic epicness.

Basically, regenerating health is pretentious. (I also hate Gears, but that's a different topic of discussion.)

A health meter works. Sure it's not a detailed catalog of your physiological functions, but it's elegant enough to measure your working capacity in a given round. In online games, your ability to advance is entirely governed by how skilled you are (i.e. cover usage, stealth, ability to eliminate threats with efficiency). The lower your health is, the fewer mistakes you can make, the less sustained fire you can take and so forth. Your reflexes become less of a factor the more damaged you become. You make less progress toward your objective or are less likely to score that next kill. Health meter becomes about health management.

In contrast, you can craft the most cunning ambush in existence, spring it on an unsuspecting mook, have it backfire and kill you. Of course, the mook *should* be limping away with lower health, but thanks to his amazing regeneration, he's not really punished for sustaining awful wounds. It becomes rather irritating when people can accidentally meander into your spawn.

There's my two cents.

[Project_Mayhem]

Ah another Goldeneye veteran, we are a forgotten people, remembering realistic gun fights so long forgotten

Remembering? Hah, I scorn your need to remember! I brought my N64 to Uni, and am still playing it! And occasionally Perfect Dark when I feel the need to shoot through walls.

Frankly people, the reason Goldeneye is frequently bought up as an awesome game is because it still is.

[Triaxx]

The thing is, I like Halo. I can tolerate Halo 2, but I can't stand Halo 3. I should like them, but I don't.

Halo had it right with Shields and Health bar. Dropping the Health bar was a bad move.

[poleboy]

I'll have to agree with the people who talks about a compromise. There's nothing wrong with the health bar/medkit system per se and if we're talking realism, what makes more sense to you? Healing your wounds by pumping your body full of unspecified sci-fi healing juice or healing your wounds by not getting hit for five seconds, possibly suggesting that you're half troll? Unless you're wearing some sort of super-nano armor I think the first option makes a lot more sense. However, it can also be frustrating to know that a medkit is within arm's reach, but since a single hit will kill you ('cause you're low on health and the game in question does not allow any regeneration), you'll never get to it.

Someone mentioned Killzone, which is a pretty good example. Mercenaries (though not technically an FPS) used a simliar system, where you can regenerate your health to 20% on your own, but need a medkit to get to 100%.

[DemonicAngel]

Nobody here plays America's Army, now do you? great system, in the place where you got hit - your hit. you'll start limping away if your shot in the legs, and not even the medic, which helps you regenerate lost health can help you. a great realistic game where one burst of bullets can kill you. that a game to my likings.

[Paragon Badger]

Huh, this was pretty much the opposite of my impression, namely that it felt like I was firing a laser pointer instead of a high powered rifle, and this was a bad thing. I wanted action, to feel like I was actually using a powerful weapon and not playing Call of Powerpoint 4. Well balanced it may be, but the guns being so horribly well behaved really did make them...boring, like it was hard to tell the difference between firing one and the next. One might do more damage or fire faster, but I didn't go about thinking about how to use them any differently.

Contrast this to the guns in say, Quake Wars (yes I do bring this game up all the time, it really is underrated IMHO), where recoil and spread management are integral parts of being successful. Firing the machine gun while walking and hitting is much harder to do than doing the same thing with the assault rifle or a pistol, which make sense. The bottom line is that although there are many fewer weapons in ETQW I actually feel like there are more to master, since each behaves very much differently than the next. This is not to say that ETQW is some bastion of realism in gameplay, since playing just tonight I wasted a Titan Main Battle Tank with the alien equivilent of a heavy machine gun, but in terms of ballistics models, I far prefer it to CoD 4.

At the extreme end of the recoil spectrum is something like Rainbow Six: Vegas, where the guns seem to have small jet engines built into them to drag them up. Seriously, half the time I just use the extended mag Deagle simply because it stays more or less on target and doesn't take up 3/4 of the screen with muzzle flash.

To be fair, COD4 does do a pretty good emulation of modern weaponry's firing speed, accuracy, and power... though recoil does kind of depend on the user. Rifling technology really has gone flat in the last decade or so, They fire really accurate and really fast. Each one has a different recoil and different rate-of-fire, but they're all pretty damn close.

Cod4's developers were just working with what they got. :smallwink:

As for Cod4's health system... have you ever tried it on Veteran? That last mission was nightmerish, and the airplane is just impossible. :smallamused:

Really, there's no 'good' health system in a FPS.

All have their flaws, and no one will really like it.

I'd much prefer a sort of 'pseudo-HP' system. One that stops bullets from actually hitting you, while still subtracting HP. But once you get down to 0 HP, you get shot and you die.

Like Assassin's Creed, Altair occasionally blocks attacks when you made no effort to block them, yet he loses Sync/HP bars whatever. His blocking is noticably a bit more jarring than when you do it, too.

(Granted, this doesn't happen all the time...like when he's spurting blood out by gallons... but you get the gist of it.)

Essentially, it would be a luck meter. Once your luck runs out, you actually start taking hits. And one or two is all that would need to bring you down.

Sigh...I should make video games. :smallfrown:

[Maxymiuk]

I'm going to jump in (against my better judgement) and weigh in on this by saying that I don't really mind any of the systems. Why? Because I find that whichever one is in place, the game itself is usually structured to account for that. Consider the following:

Quake II - health bar. The game promoted fast-paced action, unpredictability, and turning off all the pretty graphic options or suffering from not seeing a damned thing 3 seconds after a fight broke out. Nothing ratchets up suspense like littering the path behind you with rockets, shotgun blasts, and rail beams while hunting for that health pack in a tight 1vs1 arena.
Memorable moment: Coming back from losing 12:19 in a 20-point duel due to twitchy reflexes brought on by raw adrenaline.

Day of Defeat - minimal health bar, took 1-3 bullets to kill you, depending on the gun. The game promoted finding good fields of fire, cover, reflexes, and accuracy. While not exactly a simulation, you wouldn't get far running around and shooting wildly. A building breach actually looked like one, with grenades sent first through every door and window.
Memorable moment: As Axis on an Omaha style map deploying an MG-42 at the start of the match and hosing down the entire beach for 4 quick kills.

Operation Flashpoint (yes, I'm going with the classics. Deal) - no health bar. Essentially, one shot, one kill. Two, if you got hit in the legs. The game promoted cover, flanking, sniping, and superior firepower. It was supposed to be a war simulator and it fulfilled that purpose by showing you just how easy it was to die if you went in guns blazing.
Memorable moment: a 20 minute hunt for explosives in a town while dodging one of those damned four-barreled AA tanks which cut down my entire squad (AT troopers included) in the middle of an open field. With an infantry assault through a potato field somewhere in the middle.

Halo series - regenerating shield. While the run-and-gun style could work here, the single player always promoted slow advancement, flushing the enemy out with grenades, and avoiding melee combat like the plague (multiplayer was a different story). It always paid to know where the nearest cover was - either to hide behind it, or to avoid bumping into it while running from the Flood.
Memorable moment: Damn, I actually can't recall any that don't involve vehicular mishaps and therefore don't apply.

Pariah - health bar/regeneration hybrid. The game... ok, no, that one's probably a bit too obscure. Let's go with:

Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher's Bay - health bar/regeneration hybrid - namely, your health is divided into several bars. You can regenerate energy loss from individual ones over time, but once one of them is gone, it's gone until you find a med station. The game promoted a mix of stealth, cover, and long range engagements (when not engaging in beating the crap out of one another in a fairly good melee combat system). Charging at the enemy would get you killed. Standing out in the open and shooting would get you killed. Not picking your shots would see you out of ammo and then killed.
Memorable moment: any time I actually managed to hit someone with the damned assault rifle.

Ok, that covers the most common systems. As I've said at the start of this post, I don't really prefer one over the other, since they pretty much come with the territory. But we're not done yet, since I'm going to actually answer the question in the title of the thread.

I see the shift from health bars to minimal/regenerating health as evolution: a conceptual shift that was a consequence of the evolution of technological capabilities. Just think: we've started with Wolfenstein 3D with it's simple sprites in boxlike rooms - there was no finesse, no cover, not even the ability to duck. Simply point and shoot at the nearest bad guy. Since even range rarely mattered, a health bar and health pickups were a necessary abstraction, since you were going to be hit no matter what. Why did you think Hitler kept all those salad platters around his lair otherwise? Because of his seldom mentioned vegan lifestyle?

Now here we are, almost twenty years later, with computers hundreds times faster, pretty graphics, and a demanding player base that goes into millions. Health packs just aren't cutting it anymore, especially with the growing emphasis on large multiplayer matches. Introducing dedicated medics seemed a viable solution until you logged onto a Battlefield 1942 server and realized that most people took that class just to patch themselves up between firefights and ignored everybody else. The anonymity of the internet makes it evident: most people are selfish jerks, and you can't expect real teamwork outside a dedicated clan. Best you can hope for is an unruly mob that sort of shoots in the right direction most of the time, and is going to stab you in the crotch just to get that respawning airplane to themselves.

Self-reliance is the watchword of the modern gaming battlefield, and regenerating health is the answer. It's also a trend - a solution that became as popular as health pickups were back in the day. While the latter promoted equipping the largest gun and circle-strafing the enemy, the former promotes taking cover, suppressive fire, and judicious use of explosive munitions - dare I say, verisimilitude?

Finally, at this point I feel safe in declaring that in the next 5-10 years we'll see the trends change again. Someone will come up with a different and interesting way of abstracting vitality, and everyone else will proceed to copy it. Hells, maybe one day the computers will be good enough to simulate limping along on legs lacerated with shrapnel, while stuffing your bleeding guts back into your stomach with one hand, and firing a grenade launcher into the smoke and screaming ahead with the other. Who knows.

[Demented]

Hells, maybe one day the computers will be good enough to simulate limping along on legs lacerated with shrapnel, while stuffing your bleeding guts back into your stomach with one hand, and firing a grenade launcher into the smoke and screaming ahead with the other. Who knows.

You can essentially already get that with the fixed health system and negative effects for injuries.

Far Cry 2 it seems is going to have a variety of regenerating health. Instead of regenerating automatically, you have to take the time to pluck bullets out of your body with pliers. At least it should alleviate those moments of boredom and impatience when you're hiding behind a rock waiting for that health to begin its precious process; until you become so accustomed to it that you start scoffing at having to watch the same bullet removal animation for the 812th time, probably while under fire from a small armor battalion and racking up a killboard to make Rambo envious.

[Vazzaroth]

I literally laughed out loud when my friend, who only has a ps2, was asking where his health was displayed when he played Army of Two. I said "This is next gen. Next gen doesn't have health bars."

I don't dislike this style, I prefer it in more realistic games where you can only take a few shots until you die. However, i think the best Health system I've seen in an FPS is the kind like in Resistance: Fall of Man. You had a health bar that regenerated to a certain threshold, divided into 1/4s. If you were at 45% HP, you would regen to 50%. The only way to regen more was to get Medpacks that gave you 25% health. I thought it was a good fusion.

And about Realism: Play Red Orchestra. That game is TOO realistic. To the point where it's not too fun. I like playing it for the novelty and feeling of ultimate hopelessness I get when I unload a clip at a Nazi and, instead of getting 4 headshots like in other games, all my bullets miss. Or perhaps I pull the trigger on my last clip only to realize it had only 3 bullets in it, and it's the clip I removed from my gun earlier. Or maybe I line up a perfect sniper shot, only to have real-world physics simulations make my bullet hit the window frame around my target instead, as gravity pulls it down. Or maybe I'm stuck with a crappy singleshot rifle, and I turn the corner and a guy with a submachine laughs as he lacerates me. And this isn't Day of Defeat. Those single shots really do suck. :smalleek:

Edit: That Riddick game sounds like the system I like also. Never played it though.

[Teioh]

I really don't like health-regeneration, as it just means that it doesn't matter how you win a gun fight, so long as you win, as you'll have full health by the time you run into your next enemy. I've been playing Cod4 as my shooter a lot these days, and while most of the game is pretty awesome, I really dislike this part of the game. Something about hitting a guy with a Sniper Rifle that did 70 damage to his 100 health due to him having an armor perk, then hitting him again 5 seconds later and having not die due to having regenerate back to a safe range is just annoying.

I liked the Socom 1 days with no health bars, and bullets just killed your guy dead if you got hit. Sure, you unless it was directly in the heart or head 1 shot wouldn't do you in, but that 2nd shot often would, and since you couldn't regain health and may have respawn times as long as five minutes, it made people a lot more cautious about just charging someone as they thought they could gun them down before the opponent did the same.

I know I'm guilty of tactics like that In Cod4 where I will just rush someones postion because I'm sure I can take them down and still have a sliver of life myself, yet be fun as I just camp where he was for about six seconds and I'm raring to go again. It's not a fundamentally worse system, just a different style of gameplay, but it's one I happen not to prefer.

[LurkerInPlayground]

I see the shift from health bars to minimal/regenerating health as evolution: a conceptual shift that was a consequence of the evolution of technological capabilities. Just think: we've started with Wolfenstein 3D with it's simple sprites in boxlike rooms - there was no finesse, no cover, not even the ability to duck. Simply point and shoot at the nearest bad guy. Since even range rarely mattered, a health bar and health pickups were a necessary abstraction, since you were going to be hit no matter what. Why did you think Hitler kept all those salad platters around his lair otherwise? Because of his seldom mentioned vegan lifestyle?

Now here we are, almost twenty years later, with computers hundreds times faster, pretty graphics, and a demanding player base that goes into millions. Health packs just aren't cutting it anymore, especially with the growing emphasis on large multiplayer matches. Introducing dedicated medics seemed a viable solution until you logged onto a Battlefield 1942 server and realized that most people took that class just to patch themselves up between firefights and ignored everybody else. The anonymity of the internet makes it evident: most people are selfish jerks, and you can't expect real teamwork outside a dedicated clan. Best you can hope for is an unruly mob that sort of shoots in the right direction most of the time, and is going to stab you in the crotch just to get that respawning airplane to themselves.

Self-reliance is the watchword of the modern gaming battlefield, and regenerating health is the answer. It's also a trend - a solution that became as popular as health pickups were back in the day. While the latter promoted equipping the largest gun and circle-strafing the enemy, the former promotes taking cover, suppressive fire, and judicious use of explosive munitions - dare I say, verisimilitude?

I don't buy it. Maybe health meter was a necessary abstraction in the days of Wolfeinstein 3D, but now it's a potential game mechanic. And it's one I still far prefer over the complete regenerative mechanic.

Needless to say, I'm with Vazzaroth on this one. I feel like people are putting regenerating health because it is the trendy thing to do. Because it's "next-gen." As if it's a hard advancement in the art of game design or whatever. Which it isn't. What it usually ends up being is formulaic and derivative.

Health meters have a certain elegance about them that I don't think all FPS's make use of.
- Your performance actually does decrease with health.
- Physical distances between spawns actually matter. Since you do not have as much in-field staying power.
- Ambushing and "wounding" people actually matters, even if you don't score the kill. Attrition will take the wind out of your sails.
- Health kits *could* be used as another "placed weapon." An actual commodity worth fighting over. Which it usually isn't.

And neither health meters or regeration is more lethal than the other. You're undermining your point here when you cite Day of Defeat or even Halo 1. Day of Defeat is remarkably lethal as a WW2 game. In Halo 1, you can die alarmingly fast in the right conditions, you're just able to free-range more before your demise hits you. Skilled players often orchestrate these key conditions to your demise.

If anything Halo 1 promoted the "solo-Rambo" style of play than the team-oriented gameplay that Halo 3 has. Indeed, CoD4 is more "solo-play" than Halo 3 is. So health meter is no indication of which style an FPS will promote.

The entire reason I hate regenerating health is that it's almost never used creatively or for any good game design reasons. Developers have the rather stupid insistence on making the same cookie-cutter clone of the Halo franchise. It's gotten so bad it's leaked over into the "realistic shooters." They don't even see the franchise's successes, so they rip off everything according to The Formula. For the most part, regenerating health is "better" just because people say it's better. It isn't.

Now the regerating partitioned regenerating health bars sounds like an interesting variation on the theme. And really, it seems like a logical expansion of the shield+health system that Halo 1 utilized. So those guys get off the hook for actually doing something interesting with the mechanics instead of just dropping into the game according to the blockbuster FPS formula.