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Regenerating Health out of Combat...
GundamAce
Member Posts: 91
Health Regen has been a part of this genere for so long that most of us don't even think about it anymore. In fact at the moment I can't think of a single game available that doesn't incorporate it to some extent or another. It seems like such a no-brainer idea too, doesn't it? I mean, who wants to trek all the way back to town and get a room at the inn or visit the healer at the temple after every little battle? What effect has it had on the encounters we do play, though?
Earlier tonight I was playing around on the STO beta. I was wading through my third wave of the exact same five Klingon warriors when a thought struck me... "Thank god my health regenerates after every encounter, or I might have to do this the hard way." That's when I really noticed how I was playing the game for the first time. I would simply walk to within range of the MOB group, go into the aim stance, select auto-fire, and use my special ability every time its cool-down ended. Sure, it ate away at my health, but they would all go down before I did and it was the most time effective way of dealing with them. After the battle I'd usually have healed up completely before I encountered the next group, and if something suprised me, well I had a ton of healing potions... er I mean hyposprays that I could use. After all, it's not like I needed them out of combat.
Now, this isn't a stab at STO in particular. That's just the example that put the thought in my head. Actually I play a lot of games this way, and its all because I know my health will regenerate quickly after every encounter. I know I wouldn't have played Baldur's Gate that way, that's for sure. In that game resting was a risk and you had only the health, spells, and items that you took with you into the wilderness to last you until you got back to a safe city.
The result of all that hardship was that I had to really think about my battles. To make those limited resources last as long as possible, you had to hunt for every advantage you could get. Were there bottle-necks or nearby doors to help thin the advancing enemy? Should I use a fireball to end a small fight quickly or hold onto it in case there was something nasty farther down the dungeon? Did I bring enough healing potions with me? Do I have enough health left to push onwards or should I turn back now?
I don't often think like that in MMO's because I usually don't have to. Given a few seconds between battles, I generally have a near infinate supply of health and mana, even without the occasional potion, and the only battles that I have to put much thought into are against MOBs that most would call "above my level". Most of the quests at my supposed range seem to involve many, many little fights, each carried out with the same simplistic ease as the last. Sometimes I feel that I've traded strategic depth for convenience.
Comments
I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. Are you saying you don't want to regenerate health when out of combat? You would rather have it be like in Baldur's Gate where you had to do the camp mechanic and rest up to heal?
I'm not actually offering an alternative, or even saying that the more common system is even a bad thing... but I do wonder at how the seemingly simple mechanic has changed the way we play games. We know the advantages of regenerating health out of combat, but what drawbacks has it had on the gaming experience? If one were to develop a system without this feature, how would that game need to change to be playable? Would such changes make a good game? It felt like a fun topic to speculate on and I figured I'd see what people thought.
Yeah, STO's ground combat is pretty rubbish.
At least at the early levels, it might get better but by then most people will have lost interest and wandered off. The space combat is quite fun though.
Regarding OOC health regen; I prefer it to be very fast.
I like a challenging fight. More accurately, I like winning a challenging fight. I enjoy the "ohnoes, ohnoes, ohnoes, WOOT!" feeling of beating something that I really wasn't sure that I could beat. Such fights obviously leave my poor little avatar low on health. That's generally the model used in MMOs; the challenge is up front .. you either win or you die.
What you're talking about is an encounter designed to test tactical endurance rather than a front-line fight. I'm sure both can be as challenging as one another, but I prefer the existing model. I'd rather not mow down waves of enemies while my health/resources slooowwllyyy erode to the point where the "ohnoes" start. Guess it's just a matter of preference.
Playing: EVE, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed: Shift
I liked the way Guild Wars made hp/mp regeneration. I dont feel like explaining it so if you dont know how it works, tough noodles =P
I can certainly see an advantage in the current system. It makes planning encounters much easier because the designer always knows what condition the player will be in when the encounter starts. Building a chain of encounters without this knowledge becomes much harder, particularly if you take into account a non-linear game structure and the overall decision making skill of the player. After all, the designer would have no way of knowing if you completely flubbed an encounter that should have been much easier, or if you completely owned an encounter that should have been much harder, so building a balanced quest becomes a challenge.
At the same time, the variations in health an resources invite developers to create a much wider range of encounters, which I find usually translates to more interesting gameplay. Increasing the number of ways in which encounters might be able to challenge players could be a good thing...
Take, for example, the nail-biter battle from the quoted post. If you didn't regenerate your health and mana after that battle, then the subsequent battles in that quest could be developed as smaller, more intimate affairs and still maintain the sense of challenge that makes the quest exciting. Thus you would eliminate the need to populate every single encounter with hordes of powerful creatures.
Yeah, you kinda nailed the crux of it there.
The only way that a developer can design an endurance system is if they know in advance what the player will be doing. Given that most players have the attention span of a hungover lemming (including me) this is something that the developer can only be assured of in one way:
Forcing the player down a linear path.
It works in an offline RPG .. it also works in some isolated MMORPG settings (such as instanced dungeons) and there are examples of endurance battles in some games already; I'm thinking gauntlets in some of Wow's instances .. but stick that sort of linear game mechanic in the mainstream part of a game, and it's gonna turn a lot of players off.
Playing: EVE, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed: Shift
Yeah, you kinda nailed the crux of it there.
The only way that a developer can design an endurance system is if they know in advance what the player will be doing. Given that most players have the attention span of a hungover lemming (including me) this is something that the developer can only be assured of in one way:
Forcing the player down a linear path.
It works in an offline RPG .. it also works in some isolated MMORPG settings (such as instanced dungeons) and there are examples of endurance battles in some games already; I'm thinking gauntlets in some of Wow's instances .. but stick that sort of linear game mechanic in the mainstream part of a game, and it's gonna turn a lot of players off.
In many ways I expect that you're right. An MMO which used this kind of mechanic would have to be episodically instanced so that the encounters could be scaled... sort of like playing a mini single player or small group game inside a larger MMO. Another way to make the system work would be to drastically reduce the actual amount of combat in the MMO. This would be counter-productive in a game that relies on combat for advancement, but might be a viable alternative in a game that doesn't use the standard types of skill or level systems.
Another thought would be to remove the "power" equasion from character advancement. If characters advanced by gaining a wider range of options but no real increase in power, then that might provide a reliable benchmark to plan encounters off of.
I think that is a good point. Health regeneration out of combat has become that fast and easy that it really doesn’t matter any more.
In fact all kind of that is stopping you from whacking mobs as long as you want has been removed. I think that is part of this „remove everything that isn’t fun“ design strategy. …
In Baldur’s Gate going into the wilderness was some kind of an expedition. There were several resources that could run low. (health, spells, food, arrows …) That added much immersion to the game.
The way health is handled in Games today is very very gamey. It really hasn’t much similarity to what wounds are in real life. For instance: Does eating heal wounds? That’s just a dumb idea.
Ok, nobody wants wounds to be plain realistic in a game, but one could figure out a game mechanic where being wounded is more challenging.
WoW's regen of health and mana is pretty slow. If my toon is down close to zero health, it takes about five minutes to recover it all without the use of some kind of healing consumable.
But with the consumable, say food for example, the recovery of health is pretty fast.
I say this is a good compromise. You can't chain pull mobs because you'll run out of health. You need to be out of combat to eat.
I tried EQ1 and the extremely slow regen was laughable. I felt the devs were ripping me off, just getting me to spend my money for just sitting there.
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
Yes, but you get bombarded with food through looting and most people have healing spells that they can use limitless. And If you take a little walk to the next location, you will end up fully healed by the basic health regain. If you are not in battle, you dont neet to bother about the health bar in wow.
In the end it’s a matter to taste, whether one prefers a mmo to have more strategy elements or keep with the instant action.
Well the core of what you want is great: challenging gameplay and interesting decisions (in this case, managing a limited resource: health.)
But you can achieve these goals in different ways. Each way, including limiting health regen, has its own set of costs. And I think limiting health regen carries a higher cost than most, since it slows the pacing of gameplay and drives players to activities which typically aren't very compelling (like travel or spending idle time in an inn.)
A higher cost doesn't mean it can't work, just that it takes more effort to make it equally as fun.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver