Medal of Honor Airborne uses it too. You also can literally pick your difficulty on the fly by choosing where in the drop zones you land on a drop, which is kind of neat I think.

I find that the hybrid regen/medkit system used by games like FC2 and Riddick is a decent compromise between the two extremes. Sadly, it doesn't get used very often. It's much easier for developers to just use full health regeneration, as they don't have to worry about designing and balancing health pickups. Full health regeneration is also more appealing to casual gamers, of which 90% of today's market is comprised. Casual gamers don't want to be challenged and they don't want to be forced to think in the long-term or improve their own skills. They just want to sit on the couch, play their user-friendly consoles and relax.

One of my favorite (albeit annoying as a player) health regen systems was in Riddick. You get X squares of health (where X starts at 4 and grows as you go through the game) each of which can be regenerated up to its maximum if you stay hidden for a few seconds. For instance, you take a shot across the abdomen, you lose 2 & 1/2 of your 5 squares. Hiding regenerates you only that 1/2 square you lost. You need to find the health cartridges in order to use the health machines in the athena (or butcher bay).

I just don't get all that bent out of shape about the concept of regen-ing health. It's really all about the implementation in my view.

Ironically, the game that is widely reviled for being largely responsible for starting the regen-ing health craze, Halo, did it pretty darn good in my opinion. A Regen shield with a health bar re-filled by health packs - the best of both worlds! Well, sort of.

Prez wrote on Dec 20, 2010, 16:43:
A pretty compelling argument that the Op Ed piece makes to be sure, but the "slowly killing gaming" headline is silly, sensationalist fluff.

The one problem with the article is that it didn't really acknowledge replacing "that health kit" with "cover" in something like "I would much rather know that after I get shot a couple of times, I’ve either got pull off a massive win and cap the last two guys without dying or make a dash for that health kit." Realistically, I don't think it matters too much in a normal single player game or even in a standard deathmatchy multiplayer fps with no health pickups. However, regenerating health would obviously take out the whole dynamic health pickups can add to a game.

A pretty compelling argument that the Op Ed piece makes to be sure, but the "slowly killing gaming" headline is silly, sensationalist fluff.

While I agree that Hardcore mode wasn't quite hardcore enough, I don't think you give it enough credit.

- The needs system actually makes food useful.
- Your companions can die, which means you can't just use them as cannon fodder.
- Ammo weight forces you to think more about what to carry and prevents you from being a walking armory like in FO3.
- You don't heal while sleeping, which makes Stimpacks/doctors/etc actually useful.
- Delayed stimpack healing means you have to be more careful in combat.
- Crippling is more significant, given that you can only heal limbs with hydra or doctor's bags.

The Advocate wrote on Dec 20, 2010, 15:21:
Harcore mode in F:NV is fucking awesome.

In my case, it made me start to feel that I really WAS in a post-apocalyptic wasteland and maybe drinking that irradiated water wasn't such a good idea.

I had more fun on my second playthrough on Hardcore than I did on my first without it.

Hardcore in FO:NV should be called "Manage a few more sliders that have no consequences Mode," because it's basically utterly pointless. Really the only good thing about it is that stimpacks take time to heal you rather than do so instantly. The water/food/sleep requirements are so easily overcome (by the abundant prevalence of food and water, and how easy it is to find a bed because of the small world size) that they're just afterthoughts. Needing a doctor or a doctor's bag to heal critical damage is more fun, but between doctor's bags and Hydra, you'll have PLENTY of items to instantly fix it anyways.

So that just leaves that ammo has weight, which is more annoying than anything else, though it does eventually teach you to bring just a few guns rather than a dozen.

Hardcore mode goes nowhere near far enough, and I have no doubt it's because of the console monkeys that it doesn't. :\

Creston

Harcore mode in F:NV is fucking awesome.

In my case, it made me start to feel that I really WAS in a post-apocalyptic wasteland and maybe drinking that irradiated water wasn't such a good idea.

I had more fun on my second playthrough on Hardcore than I did on my first without it.

The rate of health regeneration could be tied to the difficulty level being played. The level of regeneration would be high on the Easy setting and none for the most difficult setting. It could also be designed to be set completely independently of the overall game difficulty.

Unfortunately, it's not that simple. When you design a game around regenerating health, it's probably going to be pretty broken when you remove regen entirely. Unless you replace the regen with some alternate replenishment system, some levels would likely be impossible.

That aside, I agree that regenerating health makes games too easy. In any game with regen, I find that I don't care about getting hit unless I'm about to die. There's otherwise no long-term consequence to getting hit. It's boring.

Like Diablo had, every other game in the FPS/RPG/MMO genre should have...Ironman servers. Obviously you'd have to tweak the rulesets for each genre - like no regen health in FPS' - but the principle is sound. Those who want a real challenge, go Ironman. I haven't done that in Fallout NV yet but I'm damn sure going to. And I hope they have Ironman servers again for Diablo 3. I'd love to see every MMO have an alternate ruleset server with some kind of Ironman mode - maybe like 3 strikes and yer out type thing for permadeath.

Ozmodan wrote on Dec 20, 2010, 12:36:
BTW AC2 is Asheron's Call 2 for many of us which longer exists. If you are going to use an acronym, make sure it uniquely identifies the game.

Is this a diatribe on FPS games, because I don't find in true in MMO's?

As Asheron's Call 2 has been long dead (for damn near five years) and Assassin's Creed 2 was released about a year ago...I figured most people would be able to figure it out.

Even were that NOT the case, any chimpanzee with enough grey matter to actually comprehend the post would be able to figure out what I was talking about from the context. What game it was doesn't even matter.

An no, the commentary doesn't apply to games that don't use regenerating health or overly simplified dynamics (ie, PC only games like most MMOs).

-Jn-
Ifriti Sophist

Dr. D. Schreber wrote on Dec 20, 2010, 12:52:

(I gotta say that I kinda enjoyed ME2's approach to difficulty, by adding layers of protection to enemies, although plenty of munchkins whined that their adepts now were no longer Supreme Gods of the battlefields.)

If they can't make biotics work on higher difficulty settings, they're doing it wrong.

Biotics work perfectly fine on higher difficulty levels. I've finished Insanity with an Adept three times, never had any issues whatsoever. The higher difficulty means you need to combine powers, which is the whole point of having a party to begin with.

I know people just want to spam "Lift" like they did in the first ME, and thus make the entire game a joke, since you can just lift Reaper Saren for 30 seconds at a time, but thankfully a developer finally made a game a little more DIFFICULT, by requiring you to use tactics and teammates.

ME2's biotic system is just fine.

Creston

I like regenerating health in single player.

I don't like it in multiplayer.

I'm pretty sure it's not killing gaming either way.

I thought one game on the Nintendo 64 handled this particularly well:

Goldeneye.

There was no health regen, there wasn't even anything you could pick up to replenish your health. There was armor to be found, but that was it.

(I gotta say that I kinda enjoyed ME2's approach to difficulty, by adding layers of protection to enemies, although plenty of munchkins whined that their adepts now were no longer Supreme Gods of the battlefields.)

If they can't make biotics work on higher difficulty settings, they're doing it wrong.

BTW AC2 is Asheron's Call 2 for many of us which longer exists. If you are going to use an acronym, make sure it uniquely identifies the game.

Is this a diatribe on FPS games, because I don't find in true in MMO's?

If you ask me the game with the best 'health recovery' system in some years was Far Cry 2. As much as folks hate on that game for it's various faults the way you regained health was fantastic. For those that didn't play the game you basically picked up shots from emergency kits around the game and as you were injured you would take a second to basically give yourself a shot to heal up. Fairly simple but the way it was done was fantastic. If you were shot and took damage the animation involved removing a bullet with pliers. If you took like falling damage you'd remove a branch from the wound, etc. It was quick and not to difficult (though if you did this in a firefight you needed to find some quick cover) and you could break the animation so if you tried and were being shot at you could stop and try again.

Anyway it was 100% better than the craptastic regenerating health/armor of most shooters these days. You can blame the consolization of the shooter IMHO.

I usually play on my PC, in the seclusion of my den, and my wife doesn't see the games much, but recently I was playing AC2 on the PS3 on the big screen, and my wife has been watching (while playing tetris on her laptop).

She asked me, just yesterday "Is this game really easy, or are you just a total bad ass?"

My response was, of course, that I am a total bad ass - but just between us, I don't even know if you CAN die in combat in AC2. I play stealthy because it's fun, but really...I can kill any number of foes, and I don't even have to play well.

And there's not even regenerating health.

Not an indictment of AC2 - just of lowest-common-denominator gaming.

-Jn-
Ifriti Sophist

I liked the way health worked for the marine in AvP. You had 3 regenerating bars, that once debpleted needed a health kit to refill. A light injury would take half a bar, a normal one a full bar, and headshots and the like 2+ bars.

And the bad thing about how ME2 dealth with enemy health on higher difficulty levels is some of skill/powers didn't fit with the system. I started off on Hardcore then Insanity after that, and remember checking Normal (or whatever fancy term they used) and thinking "Wait, these guys only have a single HP bar, wth?"