Automatic regeneration of hit points during combat

[Jarrakul]

Obsdian should plan to tackle more reasonable goals. DA2 is a recent fiasco afterall.

 

My point was that I don't think this system is more difficult to balance than a straight hp system. In fact, it makes combat difficulty easier to balance. See my comment about fudge room. If you think Obsidian can't handle strict balancing problems, it seems to me that you should support the system that makes game balance easier.

 

Excellent question. Please ask it to whoever designed the trash mobs in NWN2 and the combat system in AP. Although I *must* admit SOZ was the jump in the right direction.

 

Okay, fair point. But no system is going to solve Obsidian being bad at balancing. Again, I think the health/stamina system is actually easier to balance, combat-wise, and I certainly don't see how it's harder.

 

Believe it or not I will rectify this particular discussion related issue soon enough.

 

Hurray!

 

No matter what you do you will never please everybody. Hey, just look at me, right?

 

So game designers should just forget about trying to please their playerbase? Bull****. Making a game people can enjoy is their job. In this case, their main focus is on fans of the old IE games, and that's fine. We're paying for the game upfront, after all. But there's no rule that says everyone who likes the IE games has the same skill level. Aren't they doing their target audience a disservice if you don't do what they can to cater to all of us? And again, I point out that this isn't making their job harder. In fact, in one very important way, it's making their job easier.

[Bonecrusher]

Now, I also see a lot of people complaining about regenerating health in modern shooters.

 

I want to talk a bit for this.

 

During Doom/Quake/Unreal Tournament times, you had to collect weapons, ammo, health packs and armors while running around the map. If your ammo get low, or you lose hp, you runaway from the fight, fall back, and collect items again.

 

In modern shooters this kind of tactic can not be implemented. Because you "earn" and choose your guns and armors between games. You don't collect those weapons while playing a map. When you respawn, you will have your weapon, full ammo and full armor. There are no items on the map. So, you need to "regain hp" with a method? There are no collectable health packs in the map. So, what can be the method?

They select "regeneration" system. Similar to Quake games, if you can escape from a dire situation, you can fall back, and "regain health". You don't regenerate instantly. If your opponent can catch you before you regain health (similar before you reach the health packs in old school FPS games), he can kill you easily.

 

Is this a good system or not? I don't know, but I don't think it is a bad system. It is a design choice.

 

However, some console games can really cheapen the regeneration system for players.

Even if you get critical wound, whenever you cover, you suddenly instaheal.

Ease of such health regain, also makes your character weaker. It is almost like you play these games with half of HP compared to older games.

Edited October 18, 2012 by Bonecrusher

[Captain Shrek]

 

My point was that I don't think this system is more difficult to balance than a straight hp system. In fact, it makes combat difficulty easier to balance. See my comment about fudge room. If you think Obsidian can't handle strict balancing problems, it seems to me that you should support the system that makes game balance easier.

 

I agree so thoroughly with you that I would say that the easiest such system is the one they have already dealt with! i.e. IE. Remove its completely solvable problems as mentioned and you have already a good system.

 

 

 

Okay, fair point. But no system is going to solve Obsidian being bad at balancing. Again, I think the health/stamina system is actually easier to balance, combat-wise, and I certainly don't see how it's harder.

 

 

See above .

 

 

 

So game designers should just forget about trying to please their playerbase? Bull****. Making a game people can enjoy is their job. In this case, their main focus is on fans of the old IE games, and that's fine. We're paying for the game upfront, after all. But there's no rule that says everyone who likes the IE games has the same skill level. Aren't they doing their target audience a disservice if you don't do what they can to cater to all of us? And again, I point out that this isn't making their job harder. In fact, in one very important way, it's making their job easier.

 

I did not say that!

 

What I said was about finding the smallest possible subgroup and chasing after it. Let's optimize the game for colorblind since every 1 of 7 males is colorblind!

 

Also, that was my public opinion.

 

If you ask my personal opinion they should consider the level of challenge they consider appropriate and go ahead. If the games are bad, we will complain and won't buy their next game.

[Jarrakul]

It seems our disagreement hinges on which makes Obsidian's job easiest. Since neither of us are video game designers (to my knowledge), I think we've argued this one about as far as we can. Unless you had something else to add, that is. I don't think I can say anything else, except that the regenerating stamina system sounds a lot easier to balance from my experience in PnP game systems. Since PnP systems don't translate perfectly to video games, I can't really call that an ironclad argument.

 

Well, actually, they should cater to colorblind players. It's very easy and would help a lot of people. Should they do so to the extreme detriment of the rest of us? No, of course not. But I don't see any compelling reason why the stamina system is likely to be detrimental to anyone. Obviously we disagree on this point. (I also think that catering the game to people whose skill is perfectly aligned with the difficulty is closer to catering to the 1/7th than to the 6/7ths, but my point stands regardless.)

[Captain Shrek]

But I don't see any compelling reason why the stamina system is likely to be detrimental to anyone. Obviously we disagree on this point.

 

 

We do not. We only disagree that whether they are easier to balance or not in terms of work schedule Obsidian has. If they do, they will at least have two pleased customers.

 

Also I am not a video game designer.

 

Nice discussing with you. Hopefully we will continue discussing in the future.

[Bonecrusher]

To have all resources per encounter is making all encounters trivial as you can always have all the resources you want ready; kind if like rest -"spamming" in the IE games. it is the same thing, rest removed. This system, mentioned to have created to oppose it, does it even more blatantly.

 

restricting the player's possibilities too much, leads to rest-spamming after every encounter.

 

Of course, similar to you, I don't want rest system completely gone, too. I don't want insta-heal regeneration, too.

 

However you can easily balance the rest-spamming with regeneration.

 

How?

 

Three ways I can think of:

 

1- Out of combat regeneration and no in-combat regeneration. The out of combat regeneration will be slow. Think about %10 heal per minute, so if you stay on one location and don't enter combat, you will regenerate your health slowly. This is not a "resting" system, but think this as "relaxing" system. Instead of rest-spam after every combat, you can relax, let your hp back to %50-60 and continue to the next fight. you don't necessarily fully recover in this system. If you want recover your health faster, you can just Rest. So, resting system will be still here, but just softened.

 

2- Slow in-combat regeneration and quick out of combat regeneration. After each fight, you will just wait one minute and your health will fill up (I am not talking about insta-heal, this will still take some time). However, during fights, you will get many stat damages. You need to rest to recover these stat damages, these stats can't be recovered by hp regeneration system. What this mean is, you will not need rest-spam after each combat, but you will still need to rest time to time because combats will have affects on your character.

 

3- Seperating hp with stamina. Each time you get soakable (dodged, blocked, reducted) damage or blunt force trauma, they will reduced from your stamina. Each time you get wounds, burns, injuries, they will reduced from hp. Stamina will be regenerated slowly, during out of combat. If you want to recover stamina during combat, your character may have some specific skills to do that (battle rage, for example). If you want to recover your stamina quickly, you need to use rest system. However, resting will not recover your HP. In order to recover your HP, you'll need to use bandages, healing potions, healing salves, medical treatments or healing spells.

 

Each of these three system have their advantages and disadvantages.

And can really change according to game's own playstyle.

[Captain Shrek]

To have all resources per encounter is making all encounters trivial as you can always have all the resources you want ready; kind if like rest -"spamming" in the IE games. it is the same thing, rest removed. This system, mentioned to have created to oppose it, does it even more blatantly.

 

restricting the player's possibilities too much, leads to rest-spamming after every encounter.

 

Of course, similar to you, I don't want rest system completely gone, too. I don't want insta-heal regeneration, too.

 

However you can easily balance the rest-spamming with regeneration.

 

How?

 

Three ways I can think of:

 

1- Out of combat regeneration and no in-combat regeneration. The out of combat regeneration will be slow. Think about %10 heal per minute, so if you stay on one location and don't enter combat, you will regenerate your health slowly. This is not a "resting" system, but think this as "relaxing" system. Instead of rest-spam after every combat, you can relax, let your hp back to %50-60 and continue to the next fight. you don't necessarily fully recover in this system. If you want recover your health faster, you can just Rest. So, resting system will be still here, but just softened.

 

2- Slow in-combat regeneration and quick out of combat regeneration. After each fight, you will just wait one minute and your health will fill up (I am not talking about insta-heal, this will still take some time). However, during fights, you will get many stat damages. You need to rest to recover these stat damages, these stats can't be recovered by hp regeneration system. What this mean is, you will not need rest-spam after each combat, but you will still need to rest time to time because combats will have affects on your character.

 

3- Seperating hp with stamina. Each time you get soakable (dodged, blocked, reducted) damage or blunt force trauma, they will reduced from your stamina. Each time you get wounds, burns, injuries, they will reduced from hp. Stamina will be regenerated slowly, during out of combat. If you want to recover stamina during combat, your character may have some specific skills to do that (battle rage, for example). If you want to recover your stamina quickly, you need to use rest system. However, resting will not recover your HP. In order to recover your HP, you'll need to use bandages, healing potions, healing salves, medical treatments or healing spells.

 

Each of these three system have their advantages and disadvantages.

And can really change according to game's own playstyle.

 

Hi.

 

It's like 12:30 over here. I would love to respond to you since these are some good ideas! But do you mind if we continue this later?

 

Good night to you!

[Bonecrusher]

no problem for me.

[ComMcNeil]

Just an idea, but what about if the game lets you only rest so often? (in the dungeon itelf at least)

As an example, you can only rest if you either had a few (successful) encounters already or if you completed a quest objective. That is something I guess dungeon masters in PnP like to pull, as they say you cannot sleep again just 2 hours after you already slept for 8 hours. Still its an arbitrary limitation and may be counter intuitive.

[TrashMan]

JAGGED ALLIANCE 2

 

It had the best health/wound mechanic ever.

Hell it's the best and deepest tactical squad combat game I ever played.

 

Learn from it.

[ComMcNeil]

JAGGED ALLIANCE 2

 

It had the best health/wound mechanic ever.

Hell it's the best and deepest tactical squad combat game I ever played.

 

Learn from it.

 

the health mechanic wasnt that big of a deal there, simply put, you had HP, damage would subtract from that and as long as you were not bandaged after taking a hit, you bled and took more damage.

And as the devs already said they want to do a 2 value system, I guess simple HP are out of the question (for now) - but I guess a wound mechanic would make sense, so if you took HP damage and not only stamina damage, you may start bleeding, so you need to be bandaged.

 

In comparison to JA2 though, I dont think its going to work so well in PE, as you will get damaged a lot more in PE, because you are always in an infight scenario, at least with some of your characters, while in JA2 or other tactical games, you were in cover and ofter not even hit if played correctly.