The idea seems to work OK in Borderlands' Mad Moxxi arena (Vampire mode), but there it's implemented as a randomly occurring temporary modifier that isn't used during normal gameplay.
The key difference in their implementation is that they ALSO have a regenerating shield on top of a standard health bar. Typically when something has eaten through your shields, your health bar goes down REALLY quickly. Vampire mode only affects the health bar and not shields, but you will 'die' when your health hits zero.
The health drain is slow enough that normally it won't kill you - enemies shooting you will kill you 100x faster than the constant health drain does. The only real thing it does is forces you to actively hunt enemies instead of sit back and wait, for example if you have a sniper character. You're still forced to take cover periodically to avoid getting shot from everywhere at once.
Choices the player has to make:
- Do I hide in cover to let my shield regen, sacrificing a bit of health to the constant drain?
or
- Do I shoot at some enemies to try to get some health back, sacrificing shields when they inevitably hit me?
Also, in the standard game without Vampire mode, some characters have abilities that can force the shield to regenerate for a few seconds after killing each enemy with no other downsides. Normally shields stop regenerating for 5-10 seconds after getting hit. Characters with these kinds of skills can typically stay in combat indefinitely and are nearly impossible to kill.
flaws with my health system?
It seems like the comments people are making here are really just pointing to the fact that it all boils down to design. Any system, badly implemented, will suck. A mediocre system, well implemented, will be fine, though perhaps not great.
Bladerz666, your idea is conceptually fine, as I'm sure you already know. But the implementation will be really difficult to balance. If the only way to regenerate health is to kill monsters, then your game will walk a fine line between way too easy and way too hard. It can still work, but you're going to have to playtest it a lot, and with a lot of people, to ensure that people won't be put off by getting blown away for lack of monster-killing skill right away, or bored by killing everything in a de facto god mode. Different difficulty modes can help with, but are not a panacea for, this issue.
No one can critique leech too heavily because we can't see its implementation; therefore, the risks and potential flaws of the system loom larger in peoples' minds than the perfectly balanced best implementation. We don't know how many monsters will be fighting the player at once, how much damage they can do, how hard they are to kill, how many skills/abilities/attacks the player will have, etc. But if you're willing to invest your time and attention in the playtesting phase, I don't see any reason that your game won't come out great.
Bladerz666, your idea is conceptually fine, as I'm sure you already know. But the implementation will be really difficult to balance. If the only way to regenerate health is to kill monsters, then your game will walk a fine line between way too easy and way too hard. It can still work, but you're going to have to playtest it a lot, and with a lot of people, to ensure that people won't be put off by getting blown away for lack of monster-killing skill right away, or bored by killing everything in a de facto god mode. Different difficulty modes can help with, but are not a panacea for, this issue.
No one can critique leech too heavily because we can't see its implementation; therefore, the risks and potential flaws of the system loom larger in peoples' minds than the perfectly balanced best implementation. We don't know how many monsters will be fighting the player at once, how much damage they can do, how hard they are to kill, how many skills/abilities/attacks the player will have, etc. But if you're willing to invest your time and attention in the playtesting phase, I don't see any reason that your game won't come out great.
I like health orbs when you kill an enemy in heavy action games. I thought DMC did this(?), and I know it works well for Marvel Ultimate ALliance games.
firstly! first post! I personally do not have any real life experience in game design, but i have tons of experience playing games, and have created many of my own games on paper. They include MMO's, Card games, Board games, IPOD Apps etc.
Anyway, I have read a lot of ideas in this thread for a way to make the health system work, and while some of them are creative and well thought out, they don't address the correct problem.
You need to specifically ask yourself what you want the challenge to be in this game, and your health recovery system should stem from that answer.
For instance, if you decide that the game will be an endurance run...from point A to Point B, you would be better off using straight up health pack(or checkpoint system). This would allow you to decide for yourself how far the player should be able to get without needing a health boost. You could add a small amount of HP per enemy killed, but this should be taken into account when you are picking where the checkpoint will go.
For example A->B early tutorial level. You determine that the player will need 500 units of health to make it past this checkpoint. So, you give the player 350 units of health base, and have the enemies drop 150units throughout the gauntlet.
I would suggest this only if you have predetermined monsters for each section of the game. If they are randomly spawned, or if they respawn, you would probably have to think of a different way to do it.
If you decide to do it this way, there would be plenty of different ways you can go about it..Give the player a Cure spell and mana. This would allow the player to choose when they should HEAL, and add the extra challenge of being required to do it DURING battle. Or of course, you could use HP potions. This again limits the amount of times he can heal, but gives the player the choice to decide when to do it. "Should i try and kill that last guy and save some potions?! or do I not take the risk and just use it now!"
If, however, you decide that each checkpoint will take place after EACH enemy destroyed, then you can give full HP back. However, do this only if each fight with an enemy is extremely challenging. It seems to me that this would require the AI to be extremely smart. Not just to make it challenging, but to make it fun as well.
Again. Its based solely on how you want the player to proceed through your game, and without you telling us what you want, its fairly impossible for us to tell you what to do.
Perhaps more information on
1) How strong each set of enemies is
2) How far you want the player to go in each endurance run
2a) if you even want an endurance run
3) how many obstacles will be in the platforming sections
4) Do you want the player to have potions or a means of healing himself?
5) etc.
Anyway, I have read a lot of ideas in this thread for a way to make the health system work, and while some of them are creative and well thought out, they don't address the correct problem.
You need to specifically ask yourself what you want the challenge to be in this game, and your health recovery system should stem from that answer.
For instance, if you decide that the game will be an endurance run...from point A to Point B, you would be better off using straight up health pack(or checkpoint system). This would allow you to decide for yourself how far the player should be able to get without needing a health boost. You could add a small amount of HP per enemy killed, but this should be taken into account when you are picking where the checkpoint will go.
For example A->B early tutorial level. You determine that the player will need 500 units of health to make it past this checkpoint. So, you give the player 350 units of health base, and have the enemies drop 150units throughout the gauntlet.
I would suggest this only if you have predetermined monsters for each section of the game. If they are randomly spawned, or if they respawn, you would probably have to think of a different way to do it.
If you decide to do it this way, there would be plenty of different ways you can go about it..Give the player a Cure spell and mana. This would allow the player to choose when they should HEAL, and add the extra challenge of being required to do it DURING battle. Or of course, you could use HP potions. This again limits the amount of times he can heal, but gives the player the choice to decide when to do it. "Should i try and kill that last guy and save some potions?! or do I not take the risk and just use it now!"
If, however, you decide that each checkpoint will take place after EACH enemy destroyed, then you can give full HP back. However, do this only if each fight with an enemy is extremely challenging. It seems to me that this would require the AI to be extremely smart. Not just to make it challenging, but to make it fun as well.
Again. Its based solely on how you want the player to proceed through your game, and without you telling us what you want, its fairly impossible for us to tell you what to do.
Perhaps more information on
1) How strong each set of enemies is
2) How far you want the player to go in each endurance run
2a) if you even want an endurance run
3) how many obstacles will be in the platforming sections
4) Do you want the player to have potions or a means of healing himself?
5) etc.
I think "Batman: Arkham Asylum" can be a good reference - the player gets healed after he passed a section (by beating or going around a group of enemies). If he failed to pass the section, the game restarts from the beginning of the section.
Easy to progress, no calculation is needed.
Regenerative Health: what I hate in CoD are endless enemies + endless restoration until you pass the section, which make a section can take forever to beat or fail.
For Health Pack: if they're well placed, the effect is the same as what I suggested; if they're not, bah...
For Leech: it's really hard to control the difficulty and easy to exploit - I'll pummel every enemy to near death, then kill them when I need to be healed.
Easy to progress, no calculation is needed.
Regenerative Health: what I hate in CoD are endless enemies + endless restoration until you pass the section, which make a section can take forever to beat or fail.
For Health Pack: if they're well placed, the effect is the same as what I suggested; if they're not, bah...
For Leech: it's really hard to control the difficulty and easy to exploit - I'll pummel every enemy to near death, then kill them when I need to be healed.
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