vlad321 said:
GameOver22 said:
Good response. I completely agree that regenerative health doesn't punish players for making bad decisions, atleast to the same extent of games with finite health bars. Not much debate from me on that issue.
I think your other point can primiarily be summed up by saying that regenerative health gives rise to lazy developers who are more focused on making technically impressive levels with large fire fights rather than focusing on strategic fights that rely on balanced level design. I definitely recognize why developers would take this route, but it is ultimately their decision about what they intend to do. Point being, I could actually see where a FPS could have regenerative health and still take these things into account (strategy, level design, smart AI). In the same way, I could see a FPS with a finite health bar that did not create a game that took these gameplay mechanics into account. With this argument, it sounds to me like you have more of a problem with lazy developers who implement their choices poorly rather than regenerative health in itself. I can see where regenerative health might give developers an incentive to make those choices you criticized (valuing large fire fights over strategy and linearity over openness), but it does not force them to make those decisions.
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I very much agree, the developer is the one that decides how they want to proceed with the design.
I also wanted to add how health packs also promote better level design. Since the player has to actively find health, instead of having health passively, the packs give players a lot of incentive to explore the level more. That means that unless the packs were literally in front of the player every time (and the players would really rip the devs a new one for that), developers can't create a linear level to the extent that we are seeing in some modern games.
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True although I would include more that just health packs in that assessment. Taking an example from my playing experience. I searched every area of Bioskock and Bioshock 2 (probably multiple times) looking for items that would give me a better chance of winning. This would include health packs, tonics (help level up powers), money, hack tools, ammo (given that its limited in Bioshock), etc. In contrast, I just finished playing Crysis 2, and I essentially ran from objective to objective- not because there were no collectibles but because the collectibles did not add anything to the gameplay experience.
