Get rid of the stupid "recharging health"!

This has got to be one of the dumbest "advances" in gameplay ever. Basically, developers realised that it wasn't really realistic that someone could walk upto a health pack, pick it up, and instantly heal wounds. So instead, they decided to get rid of these unrealistic health packs, and have you auto-recharge health in a matter of seconds as long as you don't move. Come on, really?

The odd thing is, reviewers ate it up, they seemed to think this was awsomely realistic, dunno how they were talked into it, but yeah, beats me. So we can conclude that this idiot system is less realistic than the old system, so whats the point?

It's a gameplay revelation people, it improves teh gameplays :O ahh no... what recharging health bars do is simplify the gameplay and make it easier. No longer do I have to worry about health. You know them health packs I used to have to find within the environment? Well now, I'm carrying an infinite supply with me that I can activate by standing still for a bit! Rather then worrying about enemies, I can happily jump out in front of them, knowing I can easilly get my health back later.

Farcry for example, felt like a continuos battle, my actions in previous fights effected what happened in the future, I had to be aware of how I was doing, and try to avoid taking damage so I'd be prepared later. A level was a full on battle from start to end. Now look at Crysis, same general gameplay, but rechargy health. Now, every battle is an individual mini-skirmish totally unrelated to anything else, and hooked together with other fights through little walks through the forest. Nothing keeps from one fight to the other, it doesn't matter how badly I do, I'll be as fit at the end as I was at the start.

So yeah, it's unrealistic, makes games way easier, kills gameplay, and turns what should be epic battles into a selection of mini skirmishes. WTF is the point of them and why don't we just go back to traditional health bars??? Imagine if STALKER had instant health recharge! It'd spoil the whole damn thing, just like it spoiling other games at the moment.

I agree completely. Auto-healing is the worst gameplay fad I've seen in a long time. I'm glad that Monolith took it out of FEAR2. It just kills the flow of a game. Shoot stuff, notice your screen glowing red, hide behind a wall for 5 secs, shoot stuff again (now with all your health again). It doesn't make any sense and just newbifies gaming even more.

I'd say that Crysis kinda got it right because the process is fairly slow in this game and the gameplay itself isn't necessarily about hiding behind walls at all times. In COD4, auto-healing is pretty much instantaneous and 100% of the game is spent leaning behind a wall. Lean & shoot, get hit, hide, lean & shoot again, get hit again, hide, etc. It pretty much breaks COD4's core gameplay, but it's alright in Crysis. Still, the game would have been better with medkits; I sure know that I would have cared more about individual fights and used more skills to dispose of my enemies, as I would have actually tried to manage my health, instead of just thinking "if I'm not dead at the end of the fight, then it went perfectly".

It's bad enough that we'll never get a pure, fast-paced deathmatch FPS ever again, please, stop sucking out the little skills involved in the slow games.

I somewhat like recharging health since finding health pack were just so frustrating to look for. Although when it comes to competitive multiplayer, recharging health can be a mixed blessing. When you're just one bullet away from killing a guy and he manages to escape, the health will go back to 100%. Of course the other way around, it's a great feeling. But the upcoming Far Cry 2 seems to try and innovate the way you gain back health by taking time to tend to your wounds. Something like seems like a great idea for future games. It's not too cheap, but also not so tasking.

I've been playing through Duke Nukem 3D again, and I gotta totally disagree. In that game, if I see a 30 point health pack on the ground when I am at 90 health, I leave it there. A minute later, I walk all the way back when I fall below 70 health. This is not a good thing.

It is especially awesome for online play. It is one thing in a round-based game like Counter-Strike, but in the traditional deathmatch, health packs just aren't as good. Let's say you only have 1 point of health left- what can you do? There is almost no way you can beat your enemy head on, forcing you to go find the health packs hidden in the level. It's easier to not have to worry about managing how healthy your guy is and to focus on fighting the enemy. It also can't make the game easier if your enemies have the exact same advantage.

However, it doesn't belong everywhere, that I agree with. I've been playing UT3, and I couldn't imagine a game like that with regenerating health. Then again, dying isn't a big deal in that game.

It is one thing in a round-based game like Counter-Strike, but in the traditional deathmatch, health packs just aren't as good. Let's say you only have 1 point of health left- what can you do? There is almost no way you can beat your enemy head on, forcing you to go find the health packs hidden in the level. It's easier to not have to worry about managing how healthy your guy is and to focus on fighting the enemy. It also can't make the game easier if your enemies have the exact same advantage.

However, it doesn't belong everywhere, that I agree with. I've been playing UT3, and I couldn't imagine a game like that with regenerating health. Then again, dying isn't a big deal in that game.

AtomicTangerine

See I don't think it belongs in multiplayer at all. If you've only got 1 health point left, you gotta be wondering what you were upto in the first place. I mean, you lost a fight, now your paying the consequence, to be able to just get it all back seems kinda like cheating.... It kinda works in COD4's multiplayer as so few hits are required to kill anyone anyway.

I agree that chronicles of riddick got it right, so did a few other games, I think Doom 3 auto-recharged your health a little if it got overly low, and so did bioshock... (i think). Basically, the games recharged your health enough so that you'd still have a chance, but not so much that you just didn't care about that battle.

Personally I disagree with the hunting for health point. It's never exactly hard, in farcry it's always in obvious places your going to come accross, in FEAR you'd be silly to miss it, Doom is the same deal, the older WW2 games it was generally around every occupied area, it really wasn't hard to find health, at least I never had an issue comming accross it as I made my way around.

I think ReddestSkies explained the point I'm trying to make well. With recharging health, you really don't care about the result of a battle, all strategy is thrown out the window when you realise as long as you can survive for a bit after you take your shots, your gonna be fine. It just takes the edge away from every single encounter...

The whole point of recharging health was originally that it made combat more fun. Now if you're on low health, the difficult point is getting to cover, and keeping the enemies from shooting distance. It beats searching for health packs IMO, because it takes longer, and has less to do with core gameplay. Also, why are you saying you can just jump in the battle because you can recharge your health later on anyways? With recharging health also comes less maximum health. If you jump in without any plan you'll be dead in no time. Also, use too much cover, and your ammo will run out fast, because the enemies will usually recharge health too. Your teammates won't like it too if you cower away, and you really notice in a game like Halo 3 that if you manage to advance quick, there's always your team around to kill any grunts walking about while you can take care of the bigger enemies.

So basically, it was first used successfully in halo (if I'm right), because it was more fun, as you were fighting more, and looking for healthpacks less, and because it fitted in the story. Since then, lots of developers saw the success of halo's game mechanics, and now lots of fps play almost the same as halo.

Depends on the Game for me.I got used to it over the last years.PDZ made it pretty well.But I understand your point.It totally depends on the game´s design.In Halo I whouldn´t want Health Packs,while I can´t imagine a recharging life-Bar in Doom 3.

I've been playing through Duke Nukem 3D again, and I gotta totally disagree. In that game, if I see a 30 point health pack on the ground when I am at 90 health, I leave it there. A minute later, I walk all the way back when I fall below 70 health. This is not a good thing.

It is especially awesome for online play. It is one thing in a round-based game like Counter-Strike, but in the traditional deathmatch, health packs just aren't as good. Let's say you only have 1 point of health left- what can you do? There is almost no way you can beat your enemy head on, forcing you to go find the health packs hidden in the level. It's easier to not have to worry about managing how healthy your guy is and to focus on fighting the enemy. It also can't make the game easier if your enemies have the exact same advantage.

However, it doesn't belong everywhere, that I agree with. I've been playing UT3, and I couldn't imagine a game like that with regenerating health. Then again, dying isn't a big deal in that game.

AtomicTangerine

"Traditional deathmatch" is built around pickups. Timing powerup respawns, knowing the map perfectly so that you can get all the weapons you want as quickly as possible, being able to retreat from a fight efficiently to pick up health after a certain amount of damage, etc. Control of the map and of its powerups is a skill that used to matter in online FPS.

Now, it's all about vehicle spam and recharging health and pleasing people with gamepads. FPS today involve no movement skills (since they're all painfully slow), little aiming skills (since everybody moves so slowly), no weapon mastery skill (since they are all random "spraying" weapons with a shotgun and a sniper rifle here and there), and now you don't even get to worry about your health. What's left is a genre that is all about respawning, spraying on random people, hiding behind walls, spraying again, running to that vehicle, vehicle spamming, getting killed by a rocket launcher, rince and repeat.

Also, if there's no way to beat you enemy head on with 1 point of health left, the game sucks and I wouldn't be playing it in the first place. Yes, it's easier to just hide behind a wall and have all your health back after 3 seconds. No, that's not a good thing.

Well I think the games that have health packs or auto-regen suck anyways and were NEVER realistic. MoH, CoD, Brothers in Arms. Those arent FPS they are moving shooting galleries.

Ghost recon and Socom are actual shooters. Limited ammo, limited health, finite enemies.

I Like the health recharge rate in the crappy fake shooters. It may make it super easy in single player but against other people whats the number 1 rule in an FPS??? If your standing still, your dead. Even in single player when im low on health i freak out and im like omg oomg omg where can hide so i can recharge!!. lol.

I have been thoroughly and completely disappointed with every FPS i have tried since Ghost Recon 1. 2 teams of 3 guys. The ability to swap between any member of either team. The ability to use a map or just point and click to order the other team into different positions for overwatch or xfire. The cool experience system that let you upgrade your guys' skills.

Why hasnt anyone including tom clancy been able to reproduce such awesome elements into an FPS nowadays??? Ahhh well.......go back to talking about your acceptable methods of healing in those fake stupid shooters.

There's obviously two issues here, multiplayer and single player. I'd say in multiplayer, rechargign health can work well when aiming for a game like CoD, simply because it means nobody is going to steal your kill, or there's less chance of them doing so.

But yeah, for single player, I never had a problem with health packs. If you are in so much desperate need of health so often, then you've probably done something wrong and should probably be dead anyway. Thats just part of the game and the challenge, you can't just claim it's no good cause it makes it harder. I'd say just tone down the difficulty and go for it again. I kinda like the fact that based on your health you play differently. It adds an extra element to the game. If you have recharging health, chances are your overall general strategy is never going to change, every fight will be rather similar to every previous fight, and fights will be individual with no consequence or relation to each other.

Without recharging health, your strategy changes according to how your going, and I enjoy that exta gameplay element you have to deal with there. It's kinda a thrill to be low on health, know there's enemies about, and have a health pack in a little shack just infront of you, deciding how you want to take the situation and doing so is kinda an adrenelin rush. You don't really get that with recharging health...

I believe there are far better systems than either the original Doom med kit scheme or the reigning recharge scheme. I definitely like the mix of both better than either extreme though. (Halo 1 style > Halo 2 style)dchan01

I think its fine if done right. I died plenty of times in games like Halo and Gears of War. In fact, I much prefer the gameplay that way than having to worry about picking up health packs.

I'm reading alot of posts that whine about back-tracking to pick up health. While I agree that back-tracking in general sucks, it's worse when you're on the brink of death. However, that does not make the regen health system appropriate. I think Bioshock and F.E.A.R (to name a couple) did it best by having health kits readily available for use. In other words, you'd have them stored for later use after you pick them up. In Bioshock's case it wouldn't even heal you completely. Towards the later parts of the game you'd have to use 2-3 kits to get back to full without some kind of health bonus equipped. This type of system does not impede flow or progress, but will penalize you for being stupid by running head-on into battle and wasting your health.

Stored health pack-1

Regen health-0