Healing Regen Suggestion

(NeroKirbus) #1

I have been playing the new Wolfenstein game (pretty decent btw) but one mechanic stood out to me the most: restricted healing regen. The player can only regen so much health at a time and in wolfenstein it is only every 20%. This keeps the difficulty in line within the game’s rule set and forces the player to explore the areas looking for med packs.

Now I think this system would work out quite well with Dirty Bomb as it would make medics even more necessary since a player would not be able to regen their entire health unless they only took damage less than the threshold.

So for Dirty Bomb let’s say that all mercs can heal in 25% MAX Hp thresholds. The thresholds would be so.

Light Mercs: 20, 40, 60, 80. So if a light merc takes 19 damage, they’ll be able to heal back to full, if they take 39 damage, they’ll heal back to 60 hp and so on.

Medium Mercs: 25, 50, 75, 100. Same rules as above.

Heavy mercs: 35, 70, 105, 140. Same rules as above.
Rhino: 50, 100, 150, 200.

These values could be easily tweaked to be more balanced and to compensate not being able to heal to the full values, regen should kick in faster to reduce passive game play.

(PixelTwitch) #2

[QUOTE=NeroKirbus;498275]I have been playing the new Wolfenstein game (pretty decent btw) but one mechanic stood out to me the most: restricted healing regen. The player can only regen so much health at a time and in wolfenstein it is only every 20%. This keeps the difficulty in line within the game’s rule set and forces the player to explore the areas looking for med packs.

Now I think this system would work out quite well with Dirty Bomb as it would make medics even more necessary since a player would not be able to regen their entire health unless they only took damage less than the threshold.

So for Dirty Bomb let’s say that all mercs can heal in 25% MAX Hp thresholds. The thresholds would be so.

Light Mercs: 20, 40, 60, 80. So if a light merc takes 19 damage, they’ll be able to heal back to full, if they take 39 damage, they’ll heal back to 60 hp and so on.

Medium Mercs: 25, 50, 75, 100. Same rules as above.

Heavy mercs: 35, 70, 105, 140. Same rules as above.
Rhino: 50, 100, 150, 200.

These values could be easily tweaked to be more balanced and to compensate not being able to heal to the full values, regen should kick in faster to reduce passive game play.[/QUOTE]

While the concept is good in theory one thing you are failing to factor in is weapon damage.
Putting a light up to 60hp would then mean death in a single bullet from many weapons (headshot).
Also it would rely on balancing weapons around the gaps your produce for this system…

ie, the gap in weapon damage effectiveness would peak at 20, 25 and 35. You would always choose a weapon that does 21damage over one that does 19damage due to the way it would prevent regen on light mercs.

I actually like how it would make odd shot picks mean more…

However I cannot help but feeling that simply doubling the amount of time before you HP regen starts and halfing the speed that regen happens would be both a better and simpler system.

infact due to the health system and bullet damage currently… Simply not having health regen at all would result in a simpler system that has the same overall effect.

(NeroKirbus) #3

[QUOTE=PixelTwitch;498285]While the concept is good in theory one thing you are failing to factor in is weapon damage.
Putting a light up to 60hp would then mean death in a single bullet from many weapons (headshot).
Also it would rely on balancing weapons around the gaps your produce for this system…

ie, the gap in weapon damage effectiveness would peak at 20, 25 and 35. You would always choose a weapon that does 21damage over one that does 19damage due to the way it would prevent regen on light mercs.

I actually like how it would make odd shot picks mean more…

However I cannot help but feeling that simply doubling the amount of time before you HP regen starts and halfing the speed that regen happens would be both a better and simpler system.

infact due to the health system and bullet damage currently… Simply not having health regen at all would result in a simpler system that has the same overall effect.[/QUOTE]

Not having health regen would be an optimal system, however, it would turn off a lot of people that are used to the system that cod and many other FPS games unfortunately have made a standard.

An absent health regen system in TF2 works perfectly since it has ammo and medkits strewn across the maps, however, this was tried with Dirty bomb in earlier iterations and it made the medic and fire support useless since their main benefit to the team is resource control.

Slowing down when the regen kicks in would promote camping. If there are no medics it would make it more difficult to push, especially after firefights since it would promote defensive game play to wait for health. Then again, if the regen is even longer it would help out promoting the usage of medics, but it would still just bandage the problem. People will seek out medics for health, but if there are none, people will resort to defensive maneuvers and actions til’ they are full health again.

My hypothesis may be incorrect, but I think the system Wolfenstein the new order is a nice balance of modern and archaic mechanics that could be implemented in a competitive game, especially one like Dirty Bomb.

(PixelTwitch) #4

[QUOTE=NeroKirbus;498291]Not having health regen would be an optimal system, however, it would turn off a lot of people that are used to the system that cod and many other FPS games unfortunately have made a standard.

An absent health regen system in TF2 works perfectly since it has ammo and medkits strewn across the maps, however, this was tried with Dirty bomb in earlier iterations and it made the medic and fire support useless since their main benefit to the team is resource control.

Slowing down when the regen kicks in would promote camping. If there are no medics it would make it more difficult to push, especially after firefights since it would promote defensive game play to wait for health. Then again, if the regen is even longer it would help out promoting the usage of medics, but it would still just bandage the problem. People will seek out medics for health, but if there are none, people will resort to defensive maneuvers and actions til’ they are full health again.

My hypothesis may be incorrect, but I think the system Wolfenstein the new order is a nice balance of modern and archaic mechanics that could be implemented in a competitive game, especially one like Dirty Bomb.[/QUOTE]

Wilst you are correct that slowing regen down could promote camping…
Your suggestion would simply increase deaths and still ontop of that have a high chance of promoting camping due to the player knowing they are 1 shot away from death…

The difference is that at least with a regen that is slower… Players will break out of that camp at some point where with 20hp you will find many players reluctant to move full stop.

Now… your idea did give me a new idea… A crazy idea really…
How about an old fighting game health system?

so on taking damage you have the normal health regen (like now) however 20% of the damage you take is knocked off your Max HP…

ie, You have 100hp take 50hp worth of damage… Your max regen HP would now be 90hp… Take 50hp more damage and its down to 80hp.
Obviosuly the % is something you could look at but it would make medics inportant while having a new look at how hp is handled :slight_smile:

(Glottis-3D) #5

Why it will turn those off?
There was pretty much a lot of not so old games without regen.

anyway, could care less about those ‘gamers’ that can be easily turned off by such a simple thing like regen.

I Vote for NO regen at all. and instant Medpack hell yeah!

(NeroKirbus) #6

[QUOTE=PixelTwitch;498292]Wilst you are correct that slowing regen down could promote camping…
Your suggestion would simply increase deaths and still ontop of that have a high chance of promoting camping due to the player knowing they are 1 shot away from death…

The difference is that at least with a regen that is slower… Players will break out of that camp at some point where with 20hp you will find many players reluctant to move full stop.

Now… your idea did give me a new idea… A crazy idea really…
How about an old fighting game health system?

so on taking damage you have the normal health regen (like now) however 20% of the damage you take is knocked off your Max HP…

ie, You have 100hp take 50hp worth of damage… Your max regen HP would now be 90hp… Take 50hp more damage and its down to 80hp.
Obviosuly the % is something you could look at but it would make medics inportant while having a new look at how hp is handled :)[/QUOTE]

The system I am suggesting would actually just force people to /kill if they are at such low hit points if there is no medic present; the regen should be pretty short so running to an objective or to the next firefight it would replenish the hit points in the mean time. It’s sub-optimal, but it would be better than the current system imo. Medics aren’t always needed unless there is a hard push required.

I totally forgot about those systems and I think it would work really well if iterated enough. TBH anything other than the current system would be better.

Why it will turn those off?
There was pretty much a lot of not so old games without regen.

anyway, could care less about those ‘gamers’ that can be easily turned off by such a simple thing like regen.

I Vote for NO regen at all. and instant Medpack hell yeah!

TF2 doesn’t have it, but it is also super cartoony and appeals to a different crowd, medics also give an awesome benefit to pushes, and there’s also medkits strewn upon each map. The current direction this game is going with ADS and what not, it is trying to appeal to both CoD and Battlefield players and beat out the competition. So some sort of health regen is going to be present.

(BAMFana) #7

The current health regen system is fine. It’s slow enough that medics always improve a team’s performance, but it’s slow enough that you can still enjoy the game without having a medic on your team.