A Diskussion about "regenerative health" in horror games.

[Obliviator27]

Alas, reading through this thread and seeing terms such as "Stupid viewpoint" brings me sadness.
Opinions are opinions. Nothing more, nothing less. Just because we disagree with it, doesn't mean we should condemn the individual with them. Anyhow.....

On Topic.
As far as regenerative health goes, I feel it's ultimately up to the developer. Sure, sometimes it doesn't make sense (Call of duty. Take a few bullets to the chest, sit behind a rock for ten seconds, bullets suddenly gone and feeling fresh as a daisy) though it assists through gameplay. If I had to try and find health kits that are scattered around the street for some odd reason, I'd be quite frustrated with the game when I ran over to one and was killed along the way. Unforuntately, it's not realistic. But the game doesn't try to be. It strives to be a thrill ride. I read somewhere else that it would do very well as, say, a movie. I agree with that, though sometimes it's just fun shooting people in the face.


On the other hand, it can be very good to make health non-regenerative. Dead Space, as an example. Limited health and health supplies. Definitely gave you the feel of "I can't get hit, I don't have health."
This worked out very well for the Dead Space series, and gave an air of tension to the scenario.

But the downside to that is being put in a situation where you have little health, and simply cannot progress. It's really quite frustrating, and after smashing your head against that wall for a few hours, you simply don't wish to play the game any more.

As stated previously, the idea of regenerative health is up to the developer. Amnesia used it so that the player wouldn't be crawling everywhere with a red screen all the time. That would slow the game down painfully and the player may not notice things that were meant to be noticed. Regenerative health is going to be a part of the gaming community for a while, I feel.

[Bridge]

Alas, reading through this thread and seeing terms such as "Stupid viewpoint" brings me sadness.
Opinions are opinions. Nothing more, nothing less. Just because we disagree with it, doesn't mean we should condemn the individual with them. Anyhow.....

On Topic.
As far as regenerative health goes, I feel it's ultimately up to the developer. Sure, sometimes it doesn't make sense (Call of duty. Take a few bullets to the chest, sit behind a rock for ten seconds, bullets suddenly gone and feeling fresh as a daisy) though it assists through gameplay. If I had to try and find health kits that are scattered around the street for some odd reason, I'd be quite frustrated with the game when I ran over to one and was killed along the way. Unforuntately, it's not realistic. But the game doesn't try to be. It strives to be a thrill ride. I read somewhere else that it would do very well as, say, a movie. I agree with that, though sometimes it's just fun shooting people in the face.


On the other hand, it can be very good to make health non-regenerative. Dead Space, as an example. Limited health and health supplies. Definitely gave you the feel of "I can't get hit, I don't have health."
This worked out very well for the Dead Space series, and gave an air of tension to the scenario.

But the downside to that is being put in a situation where you have little health, and simply cannot progress. It's really quite frustrating, and after smashing your head against that wall for a few hours, you simply don't wish to play the game any more.

As stated previously, the idea of regenerative health is up to the developer. Amnesia used it so that the player wouldn't be crawling everywhere with a red screen all the time. That would slow the game down painfully and the player may not notice things that were meant to be noticed. Regenerative health is going to be a part of the gaming community for a while, I feel.

It should also be said that regenerative health does not always make the game more easy. Modern example is Deus Ex: Human Revolution which can be quite tough on the "Give Me Deus Ex" setting (though I played it through completely on the "Give Me a Challenge" (for now anyway) and it was fairly difficult in some parts). The regen makes complete sense in the context of the story and is not a huge benefit to the player because it only really occurs outside of direct combat.

[darkely]

I think regenerating health makes the game far to easy - health packs are the way to go :3

[Googolplex]

A major problem in Amnesia also is that you doesn't need the Laudanum.
Because when you have regen health, it's totally worthless.
Nothing worse than to have no esteem to items.

I know, it's a problem to scatter around items in a world where you think "who the hell had left it here?".
So, such items should be really rare (~ 10 in the whole game) and only avaiable in places where it's logic to find them there.

I wouldn't say the regen health in Amnesia is annoying, but the feeling of horror and helpless would be improved when your health does not automatically refill.
Perhaps it would be a good choice when the effect would be slowed down, that it takes 5-10 minutes longer to be health.

It's absolutely wrong to compare Amnesia with COD mechanics, Amnesia is not a casual game, but it has some casual features it shouldn't have.
Nevertheless, Amnesia is one of the best games I ever played.
I prefer Penumbra a bit, because I played Penumbra first and maybe that's the reason because I look at every detail. Penumbra has by far more thoughtful and tricky involving puzzles than Amnesia and the horror in Black Plague is at least on the same level as Amnesia. Both games are holy pieces in my opinion and the developers should feel honored when people making thoughts to their games and tell how to improve some general things.

[Kman]

Honestly, I think with the way monster encounters usually go I doubt it'd make much of a difference. Usually even if you're at full health, if you get spotted by a monster you're going to die. Regenerative health would only really effect gameplay if monsters didn't do much damage/you could easily escape a monster after getting hit once or twice. It's the difference between getting cornered in a room and getting hit once and dying or getting cornered in a room and getting hit twice and dying. With how much damage the monsters do what level your health is at makes a very small difference (the Brute usually actually kills you in one swing, even at full health, and the Suitor will ALWAYS kill you). Now, if Amnesia was a more action oriented game this debate would make a little more sense. In that case there would probably be more monsters and they'd do less damage, but then you'd probably have to have some way of fighting back. Or it might also make an impact on gameplay if health regenerate very fast, like in 10-20 seconds. But the fact is, Amnesia's gameplay is focused around stealth, and because of that regenerative health doesn't effect gameplay that much.

[Hardarm]

Another thing is the gamma "cheating" that should be avoided. "the dark side" says that options should be enabled in other to achieve the optimal gameplay for each player. That's not really nice because if the developers want you to play their way in other to access the proper atmosphere for each game, you have to FOLLOW that way. Yes, a thing like the "mouse" sensibility could be changable, also the combination of buttons, because our experience into a game has to be the more comfortable one.

What I'm trying to say, is, that the visual gameplay and the gameplay's 'features' should be as how the developers want you to play. Some could use options "POSSIBILITIES" that "the dark side" suggested to create a BOOST into gameplay that will be able to improve gameplay to make it less hard for the player to succeed. I'm not talking about comfortness i'm talking about a different experience instead of the game authors' "SUGGESTED" one, also because it isn't SUGGESTED, but it is "forced", but not exactly forced; It's that you cannot turn a game into another one or an easier one by having features that will ease your gameplay. Like no "Foliage" mods in Call Of Duty gameplays:

Foliage and shit may mask the other enemies, and those mods could ease your multiplayer gameplay with basically "cheating" without using a trainer; but it's not called official cheating, but it is.
If you enable a lot of gameplay options for the player to use, I don't give a shit whether the gameplay is SUITABLE for some players and not for others. This is not a casual game. This is an horror game and it's even indie. INDIE.

Of course the authors from the game have to attribute much sense on any gameplay chooses they're applying into it. The matter is... Do you like it? Do you find it a real horror experience? It has to be challenging-realistic like even without making it frustrating or else... Which is very hard. But gameplay options are most shit. Controls doesn't matter, mouse sensibility doesn't matter EVEN the absence of the crosshair doesn't matter, because it is minimal to help pointing at things, which makes it even more realistic and less difficult to pick up stuff, because "finding the diagonals from the screen and find it's center" it's pretty annoying, also because our life FOV is not made out of a center.


My really (imo) possible and most smart for a very "horror & not cheatable" experience would be the laudanum one suggested on the previous page.... or... I dunno. My last post.
And... about the gamma you could choose only 3 possibilities but, the authors want you to have the right gamma in order to play the game and they might think that you could cheat, that you are playing in the dark while you could actually light everything up. It's nonsense. They should, imo, apply 3 gamma possibilities and nothing more. People who want to mod, or to cheat, CAN CHEAT, by hacking the game files... they are free from doing that, but why ingame?


I think the key for the "perfect gameplay" is actually unknown, and many gamers are different and those that we define "REAL gamers" and those that we define "FALSE gamers (or analog)" could have different opinions and those from the "false gamers" could be ones that we cannot justify and we cannot agree with.
Example: "COD rulz11!!11! amnesia is bewring1!1 -.-". Yes it's a very rude and immature attitude we tend to ignore.... we think that those opinions couldn't be justified but... some people play for FUN, other to IMMERSE, many (that "we" consider real gamers) for BOTH, and for "we", I mean the major part of the FG community which settles to a lot of games and try to understand them. I think this is pretty smart but what about others' opinion?

Sorry for my bad english i'm just trying to tell my ideas, which may couldn't be understandable.

[Bridge]

Another thing is the gamma "cheating" that should be avoided. "the dark side" says that options should be enabled in other to achieve the optimal gameplay for each player. That's not really nice because if the developers want you to play their way in other to access the proper atmosphere for each game, you have to FOLLOW that way. Yes, a thing like the "mouse" sensibility could be changable, also the combination of buttons, because our experience into a game has to be the more comfortable one.

What I'm trying to say, is, that the visual gameplay and the gameplay's 'features' should be as how the developers want you to play. Some could use options "POSSIBILITIES" that "the dark side" suggested to create a BOOST into gameplay that will be able to improve gameplay to make it less hard for the player to succeed. I'm not talking about comfortness i'm talking about a different experience instead of the game authors' "SUGGESTED" one, also because it isn't SUGGESTED, but it is "forced", but not exactly forced; It's that you cannot turn a game into another one or an easier one by having features that will ease your gameplay. Like no "Foliage" mods in Call Of Duty gameplays:

Foliage and shit may mask the other enemies, and those mods could ease your multiplayer gameplay with basically "cheating" without using a trainer; but it's not called official cheating, but it is.
If you enable a lot of gameplay options for the player to use, I don't give a shit whether the gameplay is SUITABLE for some players and not for others. This is not a casual game. This is an horror game and it's even indie. INDIE.

Of course the authors from the game have to attribute much sense on any gameplay chooses they're applying into it. The matter is... Do you like it? Do you find it a real horror experience? It has to be challenging-realistic like even without making it frustrating or else... Which is very hard. But gameplay options are most shit. Controls doesn't matter, mouse sensibility doesn't matter EVEN the absence of the crosshair doesn't matter, because it is minimal to help pointing at things, which makes it even more realistic and less difficult to pick up stuff, because "finding the diagonals from the screen and find it's center" it's pretty annoying, also because our life FOV is not made out of a center.


My really (imo) possible and most smart for a very "horror & not cheatable" experience would be the laudanum one suggested on the previous page.... or... I dunno. My last post.
And... about the gamma you could choose only 3 possibilities but, the authors want you to have the right gamma in order to play the game and they might think that you could cheat, that you are playing in the dark while you could actually light everything up. It's nonsense. They should, imo, apply 3 gamma possibilities and nothing more. People who want to mod, or to cheat, CAN CHEAT, by hacking the game files... they are free from doing that, but why ingame?


I think the key for the "perfect gameplay" is actually unknown, and many gamers are different and those that we define "REAL gamers" and those that we define "FALSE gamers (or analog)" could have different opinions and those from the "false gamers" could be ones that we cannot justify and we cannot agree with.
Example: "COD rulz11!!11! amnesia is bewring1!1 -.-". Yes it's a very rude and immature attitude we tend to ignore.... we think that those opinions couldn't be justified but... some people play for FUN, other to IMMERSE, many (that "we" consider real gamers) for BOTH, and for "we", I mean the major part of the FG community which settles to a lot of games and try to understand them. I think this is pretty smart but what about others' opinion?

Sorry for my bad english i'm just trying to tell my ideas, which may couldn't be understandable.

Or maybe it's because different types of monitors and GPUs draw graphics in different ways (and therefore there is no absolute brightness) which is why it's called gamma correction? Some people may even still be using tube monitors (though I doubt it). There's a reason they give you two images and tell you to decrease the gamma until one of them is almost invisible, and it has nothing to do with cheating.

"This is an horror game and it's even indie. INDIE."

This comment always bugs the shit out of me. "Indie" means nothing more than independent and that means that usually there are no monetary reasons for developing the games. It doesn't say anything about the quality because there are a lot of bad indie games and there are even extremely casual indie games (in fact I'd say the majority).

[Hardarm]

Another thing is the gamma "cheating" that should be avoided. "the dark side" says that options should be enabled in other to achieve the optimal gameplay for each player. That's not really nice because if the developers want you to play their way in other to access the proper atmosphere for each game, you have to FOLLOW that way. Yes, a thing like the "mouse" sensibility could be changable, also the combination of buttons, because our experience into a game has to be the more comfortable one.

What I'm trying to say, is, that the visual gameplay and the gameplay's 'features' should be as how the developers want you to play. Some could use options "POSSIBILITIES" that "the dark side" suggested to create a BOOST into gameplay that will be able to improve gameplay to make it less hard for the player to succeed. I'm not talking about comfortness i'm talking about a different experience instead of the game authors' "SUGGESTED" one, also because it isn't SUGGESTED, but it is "forced", but not exactly forced; It's that you cannot turn a game into another one or an easier one by having features that will ease your gameplay. Like no "Foliage" mods in Call Of Duty gameplays:

Foliage and shit may mask the other enemies, and those mods could ease your multiplayer gameplay with basically "cheating" without using a trainer; but it's not called official cheating, but it is.
If you enable a lot of gameplay options for the player to use, I don't give a shit whether the gameplay is SUITABLE for some players and not for others. This is not a casual game. This is an horror game and it's even indie. INDIE.

Of course the authors from the game have to attribute much sense on any gameplay chooses they're applying into it. The matter is... Do you like it? Do you find it a real horror experience? It has to be challenging-realistic like even without making it frustrating or else... Which is very hard. But gameplay options are most shit. Controls doesn't matter, mouse sensibility doesn't matter EVEN the absence of the crosshair doesn't matter, because it is minimal to help pointing at things, which makes it even more realistic and less difficult to pick up stuff, because "finding the diagonals from the screen and find it's center" it's pretty annoying, also because our life FOV is not made out of a center.


My really (imo) possible and most smart for a very "horror & not cheatable" experience would be the laudanum one suggested on the previous page.... or... I dunno. My last post.
And... about the gamma you could choose only 3 possibilities but, the authors want you to have the right gamma in order to play the game and they might think that you could cheat, that you are playing in the dark while you could actually light everything up. It's nonsense. They should, imo, apply 3 gamma possibilities and nothing more. People who want to mod, or to cheat, CAN CHEAT, by hacking the game files... they are free from doing that, but why ingame?


I think the key for the "perfect gameplay" is actually unknown, and many gamers are different and those that we define "REAL gamers" and those that we define "FALSE gamers (or analog)" could have different opinions and those from the "false gamers" could be ones that we cannot justify and we cannot agree with.
Example: "COD rulz11!!11! amnesia is bewring1!1 -.-". Yes it's a very rude and immature attitude we tend to ignore.... we think that those opinions couldn't be justified but... some people play for FUN, other to IMMERSE, many (that "we" consider real gamers) for BOTH, and for "we", I mean the major part of the FG community which settles to a lot of games and try to understand them. I think this is pretty smart but what about others' opinion?

Sorry for my bad english i'm just trying to tell my ideas, which may couldn't be understandable.

Or maybe it's because different types of monitors and GPUs draw graphics in different ways (and therefore there is no absolute brightness) which is why it's called gamma correction? Some people may even still be using tube monitors (though I doubt it). There's a reason they give you two images and tell you to decrease the gamma until one of them is almost invisible, and it has nothing to do with cheating.

"This is an horror game and it's even indie. INDIE."

This comment always bugs the shit out of me. "Indie" means nothing more than independent and that means that usually there are no monetary reasons for developing the games. It doesn't say anything about the quality because there are a lot of bad indie games and there are even extremely casual indie games (in fact I'd say the majority).

It's INDIE also because imo it doesn't have to do almost anything with the players, it's like underground music... anyways don't count that fact it's that i've written everything in a rush; mind the other ideas I think some make sense I just wanted to share it with you guys.

[Googolplex]

Yes, of course. The gamma cheating is a further problem.
When you play Amnesia with a standard gamma of 1.0, it's OK. I set it to 0.9 for myself (looks a bit darker and more realistic especially in the cells area).

The problem is that when you set the gamma to the value the game wants (until you can't see the right quadrat anymore) then it's by far too bright! This is an absolutely horror break!!!
I'd recommend for most poeple to let the gamma as it is (1.0).
Don't follow the hint of the right quadrat.

[Hardarm]

Yes, of course. The gamma cheating is a further problem.
When you play Amnesia with a standard gamma of 1.0, it's OK. I set it to 0.9 for myself (looks a bit darker and more realistic especially in the cells area).

The problem is that when you set the gamma to the value the game wants (until you can't see the right quadrat anymore) then it's by far too bright! This is an absolutely horror break!!!
I'd recommend for most poeple to let the gamma as it is (1.0).
Don't follow the hint of the right quadrat.

No. No. and No.
FRICTIONAL GAMES wants you to play at that brightness?
YOU BETTER DO. Don't alterate the gamma.... and yes it might look better and scarier but if FG wanted you to do that, there must be a reason; but again, you are free to do whatever you want but the experience expected from FG might look different. Read all my previous post for further problems on this horror game argument.