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General discussionRegenerating health in roguelikes: Yay or nay?(28 posts)(28 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted September 19, 2018
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dtgreene: Also, maybe you should try playing Rogue: even with health regen, the game is not exactly easy.
May not be easy, but will be down right annoying to know that there is not going to be a consequence for the rogue's arm being severely damaged only for a few moments later to fully heal. It's a theme that kind of fits for exploring what is dangerous places which could potentially end your life, each scrape and bruise adds up. Pyrrhic victories are simply negated as a possible scenario because of health regeneration. The lack of regeneration makes perma-death all that more threatening, like Alien Isolation. One mess up and you pay for it with your time (also no health regen).

If Rogue/Roguelike definitions mandate Health Regeneration, then I simply don't like that genre.
Posted September 19, 2018
Regenerating health improves the gameplay in roguelikes significantly.

Roguelikes are simply more fun if they are fast paced and wrong steps lead to consequences pretty fast.

For this, health needs to drain very fast and shouldn't be a resource that's part of your long term resource management and instead only depend on short term decisions.
Regeneration gives you exactly that.
Posted September 19, 2018
As it was mentioned many times before, regeneration isn' t a problem, but how it is implemented. There is an old rpg game Robinson's requiem which health/survival system is quite developed and complex. That feature seems interesting, but many players give up because of it.
Posted September 19, 2018
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dtgreene: How about the (rather simple) approach taken by Shiren the Wanderer (and many other Mystery Dungeon games):
* If your belly is not empty, you recover some of your health (about 1/150th of your max; I think this is the number Shiren uses) each turn.
* If your belly is empty, you instead lose health at that rate.
* Even a minor food item (like an herb) will give you 5 belly (enough for 50 turns), so using them when you've taken damage from hunger (rather than using them the instant you start starving) can be a way to conserve food.

(The situation could be interesting in something like Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, if say you have no food but do happen to know Leech Life, which you can use to keep yourself alive if you can find an enemy to use it on.)
I found that mechanic aggravating due to RNG in the early mystery dungeon games, and pointless by the time PMD rolled around. As for Leech Life, it would be neat if it worked that way, but Game Freak are often a brutally lazy and uncreative lot, so it doesn't. It and Leech Seed are just generic lifedrain movies.
Posted September 19, 2018
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dtgreene: How about the (rather simple) approach taken by Shiren the Wanderer (and many other Mystery Dungeon games):
* If your belly is not empty, you recover some of your health (about 1/150th of your max; I think this is the number Shiren uses) each turn.
* If your belly is empty, you instead lose health at that rate.
* Even a minor food item (like an herb) will give you 5 belly (enough for 50 turns), so using them when you've taken damage from hunger (rather than using them the instant you start starving) can be a way to conserve food.

(The situation could be interesting in something like Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, if say you have no food but do happen to know Leech Life, which you can use to keep yourself alive if you can find an enemy to use it on.)
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Darvond: I found that mechanic aggravating due to RNG in the early mystery dungeon games, and pointless by the time PMD rolled around. As for Leech Life, it would be neat if it worked that way, but Game Freak are often a brutally lazy and uncreative lot, so it doesn't. It and Leech Seed are just generic lifedrain movies.
Thing is, when you're constantly losing HP, any effect that can restore your HP will keep you alive longer; this includes Leech Life. Hence, if you can find enemies to absorb HP from, you can keep surviving for a while, at least until you run out of PP for that attack.

The one move I was disappointed in, actually, is the Transform ability; in the main games, I happen to like the move as it allows you access to moves the Pokemon would not normally get (along with moves like Mimic, Metronome, Mirror Move, and Sketch), but in the PMD games, it's useless. Furthermore, since it is the only move a certain Pokemon (Ditto) can ever learn, it makes Ditto useless. (Smeargle, on the onther hand, is *really* good; in PMD1, Smeargle can eventually be the most powerful Pokemon, and in PMD2, Smeargle is still one of the best (though maybe not as good as Drifloom/Drifblik who can attack twice per turn if not holding anything.)
Posted September 19, 2018
Health regenerates IRL, so why not in a game?
Posted September 19, 2018
It's all about the balancing.
Posted September 19, 2018
This doesn't make any sense. Roguelikes are turnbased by definition and as such, regenerating health makes little sense, you just go back and forth until you're back to full health. At which point, why have health at all?

It can still work, you'd still have poison effects and instant deaths, but I'm not sure it really helps much.
Posted September 19, 2018
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hedwards: This doesn't make any sense. Roguelikes are turnbased by definition and as such, regenerating health makes little sense, you just go back and forth until you're back to full health. At which point, why have health at all?

It can still work, you'd still have poison effects and instant deaths, but I'm not sure it really helps much.
Don't forget enemy respawns and hunger, both of which are not unusual to find in a roguelike (and, in particular, were present in Rogue, I believe).

Also, even if you can just move back and forth, if there is an enemy chasing you, you can't go past the enemy without getting hit, so you will likely end up in a dead end or corner and be forced to fight.
Posted September 19, 2018
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hedwards: This doesn't make any sense. Roguelikes are turnbased by definition and as such, regenerating health makes little sense, you just go back and forth until you're back to full health. At which point, why have health at all?

It can still work, you'd still have poison effects and instant deaths, but I'm not sure it really helps much.
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dtgreene: Don't forget enemy respawns and hunger, both of which are not unusual to find in a roguelike (and, in particular, were present in Rogue, I believe).

Also, even if you can just move back and forth, if there is an enemy chasing you, you can't go past the enemy without getting hit, so you will likely end up in a dead end or corner and be forced to fight.
Yep, of course.

I think this is like most game mechanics, it depends a great deal on how you do it. If you're going to have regenerating life, then you have to keep the action coming so fast that getting the health to regenerate is tricky. Or, you have to have some other mechanic that prevents players from playing it too safe which can lead to it becoming a puzzle game.
Posted September 19, 2018
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dtgreene: Thing is, when you're constantly losing HP, any effect that can restore your HP will keep you alive longer; this includes Leech Life. Hence, if you can find enemies to absorb HP from, you can keep surviving for a while, at least until you run out of PP for that attack.

The one move I was disappointed in, actually, is the Transform ability; in the main games, I happen to like the move as it allows you access to moves the Pokemon would not normally get (along with moves like Mimic, Metronome, Mirror Move, and Sketch), but in the PMD games, it's useless. Furthermore, since it is the only move a certain Pokemon (Ditto) can ever learn, it makes Ditto useless. (Smeargle, on the onther hand, is *really* good; in PMD1, Smeargle can eventually be the most powerful Pokemon, and in PMD2, Smeargle is still one of the best (though maybe not as good as Drifloom/Drifblik who can attack twice per turn if not holding anything.)
I know what you're saying, but I've ceased to care of pokemon since the end of gen IV, so all of the words are vaguely familiar mush. Not because I've forgotten, but because I've willfully suspended my knowledge of the series.
Posted September 21, 2018
Only if the health meter exists within a non-binary state.
Posted September 21, 2018
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General discussionRegenerating health in roguelikes: Yay or nay?(28 posts)(28 posts)
(28 posts)