Decline Lack of immersion, because of HP mechanic

[gestalt11]

Sounds like it's abstracting more than it should

Well in general what you get a is a sort of collage of abstraction. By this I mean that HP completely abstracts away things like pressure point and nerves and getting stabbed in the kidneys. So a designer adds in "critical hits" to put such things back in.

All in all it makes things into a kind of hodge podge that is usually fairly inconsistent but is often good enough to do what you want and fast enough to not bog down the players.

However I think developers are missing that somethings needed to be fast because D&D was PnP. Having something like a multiple limb system is really not too burdensome for players if you give a decent interface and a decent system. I think they are just stuck. Most of the work is handled by the computer. I would never want to saddle a DM with a multi-limb system but I know that players can deal with it fine and I know that it can even be done in real time. I have known of over a thousand people who did it just fine in Lostsouls and there are some other muds that did some similar thing as well. So its a pretty big sample size.

In Lostsouls a "critical hit" was hitting the head or to a lesser extent the chest (you could choose to aim at specific location but incurred a large accuracy penalty). They really needed no additional abstraction. And when you look at the critical hit mechanics in many RPGs they are complex enough that in reality nothing has actually been simplified but have two more "simple" abstractions. You usually have things like crit % crit multipliers often have extra defenses against crit added in, various stats and itemization doing various things to crit. All of that extra complexity is completely unnecssary with the multi limb system and you wind up with roughly a similar amount of complexity. If you want to attempt to have the equivalent of high crit percent you simply get a lot of accuracy and aim for the head. In the end the complexity is the same but the multi-limb system is actually more elegant and consistent.

So the argument that devs do it for a simpler and more managable abstraction is, IMO, pretty shaky. I think they do it because they are just stuck in the past.

 

[Lagi]

Despite I was born yesterday, I expect that "immersion" and "realism" may cause diarrhea. My bad, shouldnt support my mumbling reasoning with it.

Necessity to expand health system, beyond pool of point and binary alive/dead state is my personal opinion. I didnt like it neither in FPS nor in cRPG.

I dont want neither 100% accurate realistic combat. I agree that too much comlex and realistic system take fun out of game. It wasn't my "clou". (honestly I just want to throw complains out of myself)

====================

Wounds as condition, wear off over time (naturally heal). Its a common debuff. Never meet anyone who have problem with cursing effects of spells. Also it could co-exist with classic HP.

Wounds as thresholds of HP, make you aware of your HP status.
In Darkest Dungeon there are trinkets and quirks that modify your stats based on HP level. It works awsome, pity its not a main mechanic. I never care about my 200 pool of HP in Icewind or Fallout, until I'm close to death.

====================

So we tweaked and tuned the systems for months, only to finally realize combat had become an unmanageable chore in the end.

I didnt find in AD&D nothing better than in D&D3. Everyone house rule pnp rpg, "unmanageable chore" is just your experience probably because you complicate it too much.

CRPGs work on a model that basically has to assume everyone is at full fighting strength. It's difficult enough to balance fights to be reasonably challenging for a mage and a warrior (or a party with many mages vs. one with many warriors), but what if our main hero got crippled in his leg in the very first battle vs. some rats down in the tavern basement and is unable to run for the rest of the game?

Darkest Dungeon; you're never in full strenght. I dont suggest to gain condition with pernament effect for whole game.

The problem with a complex, life like system, in my opinion, is that it will suck the fun out of combat. Instead of a traditional, fun, action oriented and tactical gameplay, you will have a more adventure like experience, where every combat situation is likely to be "game over".

On the basis of my personal expierenced its opposite. Game is more tactical, more fun and less a save/load torment (compare Icewind to PoE).

I think the key to make it more than HP washing on-off is stuff like called shots, wounds, crippling, etc.

Also make healing items cost something - fatigue, or take time to work, etc.

This would be . Healing items should remove effect of wounds (bleeding, stats drop), not replenish HP during combat.

So the argument that devs do it for a simpler and more managable abstraction is, IMO, pretty shaky. I think they do it because they are just stuck in the past.

... with unnecessary complex systems. On the other hand besides "realistic" multi-limb, location system and "abstract" critical, you can have wounds tables (~ Fallout) where game radomly roll extra wound effect (like in pnp WHM); f.ex. your right arm bones is broken (-20% to hit), got struck in liver (stun).

=========================
pnp RPG

Accounting HP is wearing. Litteraly constant strike off, erasing, writing and calculation of HP numbers is an ordeal compare to Fate-like systems, wounds recieving (Deadlands, Neuroshima) or Wound tables. And strikes have no-effect on victim. Despite book keeping WHM wound tables generate interesting results. No wonder D&D games are based mainly about spell-casting.

Crippled character in WHM:
I remember character without leg. He has no major drawbacks besides -10 to Dex or something. Once he get shoot into prothesis leg and get no damage (fall down only).

Other one instead of hand has fixed weapon (shield or blade, can vary). He never suffer from one hand drawback, many times it was advantage because doesnt lose weapon.

 

[Excidium II]

Accounting HP is wearing. Litteraly constant strike off, erasing, writing and calculation of HP numbers is an ordeal compare to Fate-like systems, wounds recieving (Deadlands, Neuroshima) or Wound tables. And strikes have no-effect on victim. Despite book keeping WHM wound tables generate interesting results. No wonder D&D games are based mainly about spell-casting.

Deadlands damage model is p. awesome.

 

[Ludo Lense]

The fundamental problem here is protagonist narratives or expendable narratives.

HP works because it is a system that essentially provides fresh starts from battle to battle and it provides the necessary streamline to the fact that your characters aren't supposed to die. Even in games likes Baldur's gate where 0 means insta death, 99.9% of people reloaded if someone died on their first play through.

More complex systems are good when the experience encompasses gameplay beyond character death. But note that even in this case you can go the route of extreme lethality (X-com) rather than try to diversify the combat. So things like Darkest Dungeon or Battle Brothers work because people are supposed to die.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

First thing I want to comment about is combat/fighting being so common in RPGs and--more broadly--games. The OP mentions this. It's an interesting common trait. I could try to go down a llist of things I think might explain it, but I think I'd fail. So I'll just say I don't know exactly how/why it's this way.

While I cannot explain why/how combat is so common in RPGs, I might try to create a simple definition for games in general. Fundamentally, games are problems. We like to solve problems, or that's all there is? The game gives us different methods to solve them. Depending on things I do not yet fully understand, we may or may not enjoy it.

Consider stories. We like to read stories. Aren't they also fundamentally a problem? A character in a story typically must suffer through some kind of problem. They learn. They develop. We join them in their journey. And so on.

Regarding HP and character stats and realism, I think it's all abstraction, unless you have a complete and perfect replication of hte real world running on your computer. Not likely. Firstly, you'd probably need something the size of the universe....

How much of an abstraction is it? I think that depends on how many factors are at play. The more factors there're, the more stratified or layered it's, and so the less abstract it'll be. And yet here's where a lot of interpretation and confusion can happen. Reality isn't JUST layer after layer of stuff. It's more than anybody understands. So just hierarchy of layers to HP doesn't mean you have something like reality. In principle, it might be less abstract, but in practical terms, its value is highly contentious.

I'll ned to reread the OP later. It's too much to sink into given the few minutes I want to give it right now.

 

[SkeleTony]

In P&P gaming there was Runequest...and everyone else. The HP mechanic of (A)D&D was just the tip of the freaking iceberg of logically inconsistent systems for that game. RQ was way ahead of everyone in that HP were based on physical size and constitution (and I would argue that constitution should have played no role in HP) and in addition to the base HP there were HP for each body area (arms, legs, torso etc.) based on the base HP, so if your leg has 12 HP and you take 15 damage to your leg in one sword chop, your leg was gone or uselessly mangled. Best of all the system did not really slow anything down (for those attention deficit fags who would rather a GM solved all problems by tossing a die and calling odds or evens or some such).

Unfortunately CRPGs never really caught up to the BRP/RQ/CoC system and so we are stuck with 'anti-simulationist' nonsense for no reason other than laziness. People in general want to think as little as possible when playing but they waste no time in writing down all their cool treasure and stat/skill increases and shit.

/rant

 

[Loriac]

I always get really pissed off at how simple buying, selling, mortgaging, and renting out property is made to be in Monopoly. Did the designers never do any of this stuff in the real world, where you need to factor in surveys, legal contracts, paperwork, financing, and so forth? Its almost as if the people playing monopoly are content to engage in a made-up activity that has no relation to reality. Like its a bloody game or something.

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

I always get really pissed off at how simple buying, selling, mortgaging, and renting out property is made to be in Monopoly. Did the designers never do any of this stuff in the real world, where you need to factor in surveys, legal contracts, paperwork, financing, and so forth? Its almost as if the people playing monopoly are content to engage in a made-up activity that has no relation to reality. Like its a bloody game or something.

I suppose if the designers actually did this in real life, they wouldn't need a job developing games.

 

[Telengard]

EPIC TRUE STORIES OF RUNEQUEST

A trio of beginning adventurers go on a their first journey. They meet a single desperate bandit and are told to hand over their jewels. After laughing, since we were armed to the teeth, a fight ensues. In the first attack, a critical fumble from me and I cut off my arm and my friend's head in one swing. Since we were a trio, after finishing off the bandit, since one of us was dead and I was maimed for life, we went home, where I assume I became a beggar.

A group of rough and wilderness-ready adventurers sets out on a journey, and comes to a low cleft that we have to get past (about 5 feet high). Everyone fails repeatedly to climb it, until someone falls and destroys his leg. We decide to go home.

 

[pakoito]

Sperglording in muh codex?

 

[The Glitterdust Golem]

Switch it up to Ho Points, baby. These adventurers ain't nothin' but a bunch of pimps smackin' down their bitches and hos, pimp with no hos left gettin' deleted from these streets.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Dwarf Fortress and NEO Scavenger are the best examples come to my mind.
I kinda liked Lord of the Rings Online's aproach, there was morale instead of HP, hope and dread auras and etc. made much more sense IMHO.

 

[Telengard]

First thing I want to comment about is combat/fighting being so common in RPGs and--more broadly--games. The OP mentions this. It's an interesting common trait. I could try to go down a llist of things I think might explain it, but I think I'd fail. So I'll just say I don't know exactly how/why it's this way.

In the beginning, back when there were dinosaurs, D&D was formed out of strategy games, where the game units spent all their time killing each other, since that was the game's intended purpose. D&D in its earliest form can best be described as a dungeon survival and looting simulator. And if one examines the rules of those early versions, one will see that that is what all of the rules were dedicated and designed for, complete with random dungeon generation. Everything else that people know was tacked on later, and usually tacked on poorly.

On to the general question:

Game units in a number of strategy games had this thing called hit points, or the number of hits a unit could take. That way tough units could be played as being tough. D&D inherited this, and then took hit points (and ThacO) and used them to represent the characters in old adventure stories, the kinds of stories from which D&D drew its inspiration. In these stories, certain fighting men are described as being "worth two regular men," and certain heroes as being worth 4, etc. HP and ThacO thus make those units play in the game exactly as intended, or just as they do in those stories. To do otherwise, to suddenly have the better fighter get a scratch, contract gangrene and lose his leg, that would run counter to the intended purpose of the game. And thus hp does what it was intended to do, which is to fit the gameplay to the intended design inspiration.

Now, in the broader picture, a number of RPG games have attempted much more detailed versions of health simulations, but outside of survival games (where these truly traits come into their own), these games are rarely remembered fondly (see Millenium's End if you want the full-on pnp version experience). Because while the ideas of realism may seem good in concept, in a game where one gets in a fight every five minutes instead of like once or thrice a year tops (like a real life warrior), what happens is contracting gangrene and infection, not to mention trench foot, becomes a constant thing. And thus, instead of being a simulation of combat and adventure, the game becomes a simulation of medical office busywork, where you are constantly loading up your inventory and going through your medical stash in order to click on one of the same remedies over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. Not to mention, constantly stocking medical supplies.

 

[Lagi]

stop badmouth with realism, you putting it in absurd;

"Oh you recieved a scratch, get infected and need to spend 2 weeks in bed if you want realism. How cool is that?"

stop that bullshit, we (naggers about old HP) know its a fucking game & over-complicating is no-fun. Change the word "Realism" for "something to be believable or sensible".

======

Game units in a number of strategy games had this thing called hit points, or the number of hits a unit could take. That way tough units could be played as being tough. D&D inherited this, and then took hit points (and ThacO) and used them to represent the characters in old adventure stories, the kinds of stories from which D&D drew its inspiration. In these stories, certain fighting men are described as being "worth two regular men," and certain heroes as being worth 4, etc. HP and ThacO thus make those units play in the game exactly as intended, or just as they do in those stories. To do otherwise, to suddenly have the better fighter get a scratch, contract gangrene and lose his leg, that would run counter to the intended purpose of the game. And thus hp does what it was intended to do, which is to fit the gameplay to the intended design inspiration.

In strategic or miniature battle game "heros" unit has 2 or 3 HP, instead of 1 (thats sensible). You can not say its sensible comparable - 1 level pawn soldier with 6 hp, vs 20 lvl heros with 200 HP (esp. if weapon deal ~k8+1 dmg).

"intended design inspiration" heros adventure long & tireless, because they dont recieve wounds, because they dont get hit - in books and movies contrary to games.

Now, in the broader picture, a number of RPG games have attempted much more detailed versions of health simulations, but outside of survival games (where these truly traits come into their own), these games are rarely remembered fondly (see Millenium's End if you want the full-on pnp version experience).

PnP RPG + "more detailed versions of health simulations" "rarely remembered fondly" (warhammer, shadowrun, fate, deadlands) I think you mean some specific, realistic, medical accurate wound simulators (like mentioned by you Millenium's End).

...where you are constantly loading up your inventory and going through your medical stash in order to click on one of the same remedies over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. Not to mention, constantly stocking medical supplies.

open whatever RPG you plaing now and see how many items in your backpack heal, de-curse or give you protection. No clicking on one of the same remedies at all.

What are you do, when your HP drops? you spam with Healing potion. What you do when get poisoned? you drink cure posion potion. What you do when you get sick - drink cure disease potion. Drink stupid potions sounds like some naive retards who are buying homeopatic medicaments, with at most Placebo effect.

Renewing HP during fights, breaks the combat system. How would you like, if you bring your opponents into few HPs and then they start drinking potions, regain 100%? Cheep design for longer combats? Player are using this cheesy tactic through whole game.
Pool of H-points should still exist (I would like it to work more like stamina/mana), but shouldnt be replenish during combat.

=====
Does nobody see advantage of no need to Save/Load with other wound system? Party member instead of dying, will get eliminated just from current combat. (in classic DD-like there is Ressurection anyway, (even despite jarring death desecrating, that take a lot from the game IMO) trips to cities is just bothersome)

 

[mondblut]

The core of RPG are simulation of worlds similar to ours.

Stopped reading right there.

"The core of RPG are simulation" of playing AD&D with your buddies, except without these losers around.

 

[Androv]

Sometimes one should just be happy health regen haven't fully made it's way into RPGs as it has corrupted the Shooter genre.

 

[gestalt11]

Stopped reading right there.

"The core of RPG are simulation" of playing AD&D with your buddies, except without these losers around.

Yeah D&D wasn't a simulation. It was an abstraction. Really many various abstractions that hung together in varying degrees. The whole attraction of D&D and why it was more popular than some systems is because it abstracted many things away. A simulation is almost the exact opposite.

 

[Excidium II]

I think the core of the problem are many RPGs that have combat as pretty much two waddle dolls hitting each other until the guy who goes to 0 HP first dies. No wounds, no crippled limbs, no representation of stamina or fatigue, nothing.

P. much.

Its even worse for these RPGs who still use crap like armor giving THACO instead of a decent armor system - the idea that more armor = more dodge makes me angry.

TBH AC as it works makes some sense in the context of auld D&D because it's a very abstract game. For modern editions it's the kind of thing that is kept due to the strong association with the brand

 

[Lagi]

I think the core of the problem are many RPGs that have combat as pretty much two waddle dolls hitting each other until the guy who goes to 0 HP first dies. No wounds, no crippled limbs, no representation of stamina or fatigue, nothing.

the idea that more armor = more dodge makes me angry.

Well maybe not dodge, but deflection its quite accurate. The plate pieces are sloped to deflect incoming blows and that why f.ex. maces has spikes on it, to improve weapon grip in contact with slope armor and transfer more impact into victim. Hmm... still its rather damage reduction and armor piercing.

TBH AC as it works makes some sense in the context of auld D&D because it's a very abstract game. For modern editions it's the kind of thing that is kept due to the strong association with the brand

Agree, but you shouldn't discard D&D3 yet, its nice system with sensible armor mechanics (armor limiting defense), as you said burden of the brand prevent makers (who are aware of some flaws) from creating new quality.

Variant Reduction (link)

character can wear armor and benefit from its damage reduction while relying on his defense bonus for a higher Armor Class.

This forces characters to make a tough choice between having a high AC and having damage reduction.

Variant Defense

In the standard d20 rules, a character’s skill at attacking gets better as he goes up in level—but not so his skill at avoiding attacks. Characters rely on armor and an ever-growing collection of magic items to protect them in combat.

Targos again
If you wonder how D&D3 with damage reduction works. IWD2 mod pack, most handy is Non-linear Teleporting (speed-travel), refrain from Randomized Treasure and Forgotten Armors (break game I didnt like it). Game is enjoyable until you get bloated with HP (~10 level or maybe the plot is not so appealing?). There are nice new tactic to dress your mage with heavy armor when he's low on HP or go out of spells, goblins hit him, but deal none or few points of damage.

 

[Bigg Boss]

Immersion is the last thing I care about in a video game. I'm not trying to live in some fantasy world. I actually find the usage of the word in this context fucking annoying. I wish the word could be removed from the vernacular of every internet user.

 

[Excidium II]

Immersion is the last thing I care about in a video game. I'm not trying to live in some fantasy world. I actually find the usage of the word in this context fucking annoying. I wish the word could be removed from the vernacular of every internet user.

#wordshurt

 

[belowmecoldhands]

I randomly went back looking for the decline thread and saw this by accident. Now, something about it strikes me. I can't put my finger on it. I like tactical/strategical/survival games, so this HP topic is close to home for me. The kind of games I like are tense and high expectation. Tension is like immersion. This draws me into the OPs discussion.

(Note this is the second time I've been to this thread.)

So I set out to first get a feel for what the OP is saying:
(Skippable?) Points:

RPGs are simulations of worlds similar to ours
Emphasis is on combat, not mating
All games have rules to solve problems; how to kill opponent
Stories justify slaughter​

Main Points:

Game design is loosely based on realistic assumptions about human body and damage to it
Games inevitably give contrary impressions; heal potions extremely common and available
To increase immersion it must eliminate contradictions, so add proper wound conditions
Proper wound model is resistance to specific factors; it's less linear
In continual damage, experience should render one less healthy over time instead of more healthy​

....the rest confused me. In general, HP becomes stamina and damage model tries to be interesting.

Ok well the OP is a strange one. What do I do?

There's a poll thread on here somewhere where we vote for things we like in RPGs, such as:
1 Story
2 Exploration
3 Combat
4 Systems
5 Choices & Consequences
(link: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/poll-what-type-of-fag-are-you.99821/)
Note: That's the actual order of the popularity of each

Now the reason I put that there is because I think far too often on this site we all lump each other together, acting as though everyone is the same and plays the same games. The problem is we're not the same! RPGs aren't the same even if they're the same genre. We don't play the same games! More specifically, we want different things from the game we play. We respond differently to the things in the game. We're not duplicates of each other.

I'm sure ther're generic game design rules one can follow when making a game. I'm also sure there's a large number of players who fit into a certain profile. For exa,ple, in the linked thread above, most players voted a high number of times on Story/Exploration/Combat. So if you're a game designer you want to make sure you have a lot of that. BUT that's just the beginning... The devil is of course in the details. You can design your game to favor less popular things, like systems and C&C. Or you can have a different ratio of story/exploration/combat. Figure out what your audience is and produce.

Ok so WTF do I have to say about this thread? I'll address these 3 main points the OP makes:

Game design is loosely based on realistic assumptions about human body and damage to it
Games inevitably give contrary impressions; heal potions extremely common and available
To increase immersion it must eliminate contradictions, so add proper wound conditions​

The problem here is it's LOOSELY baed on realistic assumptions. This means there'll probably be contradictions. You can't eliminate them without reproducing our universe completely. The task is noble, but it's fraught with peril...

Many people in the thread rightly state abstraction makes these games GAMES. There're lots of things in reality which would not fit well into a game. Would I, for example, want to crap on a toilet in a game? No. I don't like to crap on a toilet in real life, so neither in a game. But what if crapping on a toilet was fun? Well, maybe. For example, maybe if tetris blocks were poop and filling up the screen gives you a high score? It's an abstraction of crapping, but it'd be fun to play.

HOWEVER, some of us like less abstraction in the systems. It can add flesh, depending if it's implemented well. Additionally, some of us like there to be less gap between death and life in the game. The survival genre of gaming attests to the popular of tight high-expectation systems. One can simulate this effect by playing on the hardest difficulties, but it's a hack job. Moreso, RPGs can sometimes have more (or less) of this survival aspect, depending on the designers and what they wanted to make. (Genres aren't perfect and they can oftentimes have blurry bits of others in them.)

I still think there's something to this thread. Something subtle. It's like the holy grail, maybe.

I'm going to stop now. If I think of other things I'll post again.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

The problem with a complex, life like system, in my opinion, is that it will suck the fun out of combat. Instead of a traditional, fun, action oriented and tactical gameplay, you will have a more adventure like experience, where every combat situation is likely to be "game over".

Never encountered this "fun" thing you're talking about when fighting in HP-tank cRPGs.

On the other hand encountered a lot of fun in UFO: Enemy Unknown and Jagged Alliance 2.

 

[Animal]

I never said ufo and ja2 aren't fun.

They don't strike me as very realistic either.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

Played hte right way, JA2 could be very demanding and tense. I think that's what gave it its "realism". I know not everybody agrees JA2 is hard or tense or demanding, but for me and my time playing it, it seemed to be.

But by that measure, even Tetris can be realistic, if it's tense/demanding/etc.

EDIT: When I played I never reloaded. If I died, I quit that savegame altogether. I still managed to make some progress. In one of my attempts I was eaten by a large hungry pack of those cats. It was a much larger pack than normal.

I tried a few times. My last attempt I dug too far into a sector with too many unknowns. I heroically retreated but lost many of my best mercs and limped back home. I later died in a last gasp attack with poorly trained mercs.

I did eventually come to the conclusion death was invariably certain, unless you know everything about the game 100%. There're just too many random/unknown things which can happen. I played on the expert setting. Vanilla.