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[Fallsburg]

I particularly like the health system Fez has. There is no health bar or anything, because its a game that has it as a secondary feature. It focuses more on the gameplay.

But what's the point of having it at all then?  There's no risk in Fez.  Either I kill myself with a bomb or fall too far and die.  But why?  It just starts me back at the same place.  There's no reason to "die" if there is no penalty for it.  The only penalty is wasting my time with a stupid death animation.

[tha_Chiller]

Vagrant Story, anyone? The Full-Body health mechanic was real awesome that caused physical performance to drop when a limb was in critical condition that resulted in status effects.

The problem with Health in games that when the character gets hurt nothing really happens. The only true consequence is that you're closer to death with each mishap but soon you become too skilled & that's where my attention span starts to dwindle. Mechanics like "Bleeding" are awesome because its realistic & teaches the player not to depend on just a "-25% HP" hit but the worry that you can eventually bleed to death, causes them to coordinate better.

[seagaia]

I particularly like the health system Fez has. There is no health bar or anything, because its a game that has it as a secondary feature. It focuses more on the gameplay.

But what's the point of having it at all then?  There's no risk in Fez.  Either I kill myself with a bomb or fall too far and die.  But why?  It just starts me back at the same place.  There's no reason to "die" if there is no penalty for it.  The only penalty is wasting my time with a stupid death animation.

IIRC Fez was intended to be a relaxing experience, for the most part.

Looking at the choices, you could either die or not when you fall far, and it's probably more frustrating to fall all the way to the bottom while climbing and then have to climb all the way back up, rather than to just have what they did, where perhaps climbing downwards is frustrating (but at least you don't really lose progress)

The perfect thing to do would be to somehow figure out whether the player is intending to ascend or descend, but, well, that's probably impossible. I think what they chose in the end was a good tradeoff.

For me, the fall death makes sense, but I do think the bomb death is kind of pointless.

[Schoq]

The perfect thing to do would be to somehow figure out whether the player is intending to ascend or descend, but, well, that's probably impossible.

The "perfect" thing, from the sound of how it plays, and what you want to achieve, would be to just remove fall damage and add save states.

[Fallsburg]

@seagaia -- Well, I go back to what's the point in having it then?  Why die?  If there is no punishment, then death hardly seems the right metaphor to use. Why not a rewinding of time (PoP:Sands of Time), magical savior (PoP:The Forgotten Sands), or something else?  Why must it be death?  

I guess what I'm saying is, we needn't be tied to the constructs of "health" and "death" in videogames, just because they are historically what have been used.  If you don't feel that health or death fit in with the vision/theme of the game, get rid of them.  

Example:
In Super Mario Galaxy (I forget if it was one or two, but it probably doesn't matter), you can get extra lives, but they don't matter.  They disappear upon leaving the game and they don't offer any real benefit (only taking you back to some midway mark in a level).  So why do they exist?  So that if I run out of them, I'm forced to watch a game over screen?  What's the point of that? Wasting the player's time?  They haven't actually mattered since Mario 2, so why keep them around?

[Nix]

Health is a way of attempting to find a player's mean (average) skill instead of taking a single sample point and assuming that is always how the player will fare when faced with a challenge. Let's say we created an ultra-simplistic fighting game where the player dies after a single direct hit. There is no health -- just life and death. We pit players A and B together and player A manages to land the first hit, killing player B and winning the game. Let's look at another simple fighting game, but in this one, players can sustain ten hits before dying. Player A again manages to land the first hit, but by the end of the match, player B's skill has been on average higher than player A's, and player B manages to land the 10th hit on player A by the time player A has landed six hits.

Health is all about giving a player an opportunity to overcome statistical outliers. The multiplayer scenario is the easiest to conceptualize, but the statistic-based understanding of health applies to most situations. The harder a game is, the less forgiving it is to outliers. Shoot 'em ups with "one hit and you lose" mechanics only allow you to win if you are good enough to manage 100% attempts at avoiding obstacles, and only the best of the best players can do this, especially when thousands of bullets in a bullethell start spewing all over the screen. Health is a cushion which allows less-than-perfect players to still have a chance at winning. If you don't see a use for health in video games, then that is a conceptual failure on your part.

[seagaia]

The perfect thing to do would be to somehow figure out whether the player is intending to ascend or descend, but, well, that's probably impossible.

The "perfect" thing, from the sound of how it plays, and what you want to achieve, would be to just remove fall damage and add save states.

Thinking about it more, that wouldn't be perfect, I don't think there is a perfect choice. Save states would totally break the flow (I think) that is intended in Fez. So I still think the way it is now (minus bombs) is fine, minus maybe the death animation. It doesn't bother me much, though.

@seagaia -- Well, I go back to what's the point in having it then?  Why die?  If there is no punishment, then death hardly seems the right metaphor to use. Why not a rewinding of time (PoP:Sands of Time), magical savior (PoP:The Forgotten Sands), or something else?  Why must it be death?  

I guess what I'm saying is, we needn't be tied to the constructs of "health" and "death" in videogames, just because they are historically what have been used.  If you don't feel that health or death fit in with the vision/theme of the game, get rid of them.  

OH, I see what you're saying. It is a bit of a strange metaphor for them to choose. I wonder if they thought about that a lot or not. Maybe just out of convenience? Or they didn't think about it a lot? A simple poof or something would have sufficed I guess.

A rewind thing would have been kind of neat, but maybe a lot of work on Renaud's part.

Example:
In Super Mario Galaxy (I forget if it was one or two, but it probably doesn't matter), you can get extra lives, but they don't matter.  They disappear upon leaving the game and they don't offer any real benefit (only taking you back to some midway mark in a level).  So why do they exist?  So that if I run out of them, I'm forced to watch a game over screen?  What's the point of that? Wasting the player's time?  They haven't actually mattered since Mario 2, so why keep them around?

Yeah, they are totally pointless there. I don't get it either. Reminds me of lives in Banjo-Kazooie. Just seemed like an annoyance really to make things feel survival-ish as you approached 0 lives. Health was okay there, with the boss fights I think.

[C.A. Sinner]

Yeah, they are totally pointless there. I don't get it either. Reminds me of lives in Banjo-Kazooie. Just seemed like an annoyance really to make things feel survival-ish as you approached 0 lives. Health was okay there, with the boss fights I think.

Remember when in the late 80s /early 90s almost every game had some kind of "score" mechanic even if it was totally unncessary and superfluous? I don't know anyone who ever played Wolfenstein 3D for score.

The lives are the same thing. Theyre just used because they've "always been there," not for any practical reason.

[Moczan]

Vagrant Story, anyone? The Full-Body health mechanic was real awesome that caused physical performance to drop when a limb was in critical condition that resulted in status effects.

The problem with Health in games that when the character gets hurt nothing really happens. The only true consequence is that you're closer to death with each mishap but soon you become too skilled & that's where my attention span starts to dwindle. Mechanics like "Bleeding" are awesome because its realistic & teaches the player not to depend on just a "-25% HP" hit but the worry that you can eventually bleed to death, causes them to coordinate better.

I've recently played a Flash game about gladiators fight that used similar system. You could cover your body with armor, but as soon as it break and you damage limb directly, it starts bleeding and if it 'dies' your torso health starts decreasing a bit too. The implementation was simple because of the scope of the game, but the idea behind it is great, getting even a single, low damage hit on a limb changes the way you have to play.

[Fallsburg]

The lives are the same thing. Theyre just used because they've "always been there," not for any practical reason.

Agreed. Lives are entirely vestigial in this day in age, for most games.  Even games that should have lives would typically be better served by something else.

i.e. Shmups probably want some sort of high-value, discrete life/health mechanic, but is sometime subverted by making it some sort of auto-bomb/invulnerability that is more interesting (to me at least).

[Alevice]

Usually lives are a measure to determine to what point you roll back when you have pulled all of them. Say you have a moderatedly size level. Losing a life after having passed a checkpoint returns you there. Losing all your lives returns you to the beginning of the level. Kinda uncommon nowadays, but I still see it.

[Lez]

I’m not convinced health is something we need to just get rid of outright. I’m instantly reminded of Devil May Cry 3, on one hand the game might as well kill me in one hit because damage will ruin my chance at a triple S rank most of the time but on the other hand, it’s nice to know I actually have to dodge or die because there is a survival element for people who are not so proficient at the game.

DMC3 was also rather subtle with its health, since the whole no one hit kills but drop you to 1hp system was present in it. Of course it made multi hit enemies the devil.
Health is a resource; it’s just how that resource affects the end condition. You basically have 2 health bars in street fighter before the end condition kicks in. Dark Souls has no end condition really since it has no game over, that sort of makes it scary. Your fear changes based on how much you have to lose, that’s probably something survival horror games need to think about, how much you will actually lose, because a game over isn’t scary it’s inconvenient.

Also that avengers idea you’re talking about is sort of what they did in lost planet. Your energy used to tick down slowly because of the cold and if you took damage your health rapidly regenerated from the energy pool, so running out of energy meant you can’t regen health, it looked silly when you were getting smacked about everywhere. It also used energy when you used certain high powered weapons and mech suits since the suits used energy as fuel and they didn’t regenerate. It was kinda clever.

Also Vagrant story was an awful example of health systems, it’s purely binary on the limbs. They are either alive or dead and have so much HP it’s impossible to kill them without murdering the whole creature. But it’s a nice idea that could work, as bad as it feels to be punished for being hurt.