Unlabelled True Gaming Alternatives to the health bar/HP number

11/14/2017 06:46:00 am
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True Gaming Alternatives to the health bar/HP number

Alternatives to the health bar/HP number

Posted: 13 Nov 2017 11:01 AM PST

Could there ever be alternatives to the health bar or your HP? Something different. I can only imagine a few ones.

  1. Realistic body parts. If you're stabbed or shot in the head it's gameover no matter how much more hits you can take from anywhere else. If you are bleeding somewhere else you will eventually die as well. Some FPS games have taken these measures before, I think Rainbow Six was like this. So you could really be working down other players shooting their body armor, dropping the armor's protective HP down but then they could easily turn the whole fight around by shooting you in a vulnerable unprotected part of your body like your armpit, neck or somewhere like that. I think with an aim and attack kind of game this will make it more interesting than a simple health bar.

  2. Super Smash Bros/Wrestling Games. In wrestling games there is a health bar but the fight isn't over until you pin the enemy down for 3 seconds so even if you drop their health bar to 0 that just makes it easier to pin but you still have to pull it off, this would allow the opponent to try and use moves that will help him regain health or break out of pins if he plays hard enough. Super Smash uses something similar except instead of a health bar it uses a number percentage. The higher the percentage gets the more easier it's to knock the enemy out of the ring and that is probably the most interesting way of replacing the health bar.

  3. Uncertain indicators of health. So I think I remember there was a PC detective game where instead of a health life you had a heart monitor the kind used in hospitals in the movies with that green screen and a blip on the monitor. I thought it was interesting to use that to check the health of your character rather than a meter or number. Maybe it could even put uncertain strains on it you didn't expect like if you stay out in the cold too long that's bad for your health and it will take uncertain turns on the blip

  4. Food/Water Meter. I think this went on in the older arcade versions of Gauntlet or it could of been the NES rendition of Gauntlet but your HP was also your hunger as in you will slowly lose 1 HP every few seconds while you haven't eaten. That was an interesting take on it. So you didn't just lose health from getting damaged but from just slacking off. I think another game on NES "Hudson's Island Adventure" series also did a similar thing as a platformer. I also like how much 7 days to Live a zombie game does tie food/water with your health meter and puts a lot of strain on you if you don't replenish them.

  5. Susceptibility. You know as they say in Medical practices, prevention is the best medicine. What about instead of having a health meter the game would have lots of ways to inflict a condition on you and if you don't heal that condition you can die? For example if you get an infection from an injury there's a timer in which you have to find a way to clean the wound, disinfect the wound, stitch up the wound then take some antibiotics. If you start bleeding from an injury you have a timer in which you can bleed to death or eventually the bleeding will stop if you put yourself in a resting state long enough, of course other conditions can cause the bleeding to reach new stages that would lead to your death. Getting it close up is important. Then there can be things that effect you and stay on you permanently throughout the entire game so until the end of it you will still have that injury/disease you just survived through it and at any point you could of been hurt and killed further from it for example several severe burn marks could be left on you and getting struck in that area can cause easy bleeding or such. Having a limb being torn off will stay with you throughout the entire game, long as you disinfected and cauterized the stump you can still continue just without an arm which could make or break the game like when climbing a ladder it would prove to be difficult with one arm or heck no arms if you end up having to do it to both arms. It would be very interesting how players can go through certain gameplays with certain conditions on them or find new ways to get rid of those bad conditions. Like maybe someone would use a hot stove to cauterize their wound or find a recipe to cure an illness but still die because they don't have any medical skills to make it or couldn't find a doctor to use it.

submitted by /u/therighttobecool
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What are some of the most overused pieces of video game trivia?

Posted: 13 Nov 2017 06:54 AM PST

Inspired by this thread from /r/Nintendo, I want to expand the idea of overdone video game trivia from Nintendo to the whole game industry. What are some of the most frequent "Did you know?" type facts that come up again and again across the internet?

submitted by /u/razorbeamz
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Why has gathering not been modernized like fighting has?

Posted: 13 Nov 2017 01:28 PM PST

In many older games, every action was done through a casting bar. You clicked to do an action and just waited for it to be done. Nowadays, combat is beautiful. Any mmo without action combat sounds unappealing to me. Gathering is unappealing to me in the same way. It is boring. Many games with beautiful combat relies on this archaic click-a-button and wait system. Why has it not been replaced with something more interactive?

While I don't have the answer to that question, here are some solutions I have in mind.

  • Give gathering a face. Basically, tie whatever you want to be gathered into a mob. Even just letting you use your abilities on inanimate objects instead of just clicking would suffice. Let the player chop a tree like they would chop a bandit. This would take advantage of already existing systems. This doesn't necessarily solve the problem as much as just get rid of it.

  • Quick time events. This seems like the bare minimum system for allowing players an input. Anything higher than QTEs essentially turn into...

  • Minigames. This would allow you to give each type of gathering/crafting a distinct feel. You could sort of emulate how you would perform the action in real life. This could also allow a heightened skill ceiling to exist outside of combat, ie. the better you are at the minigame the better your results are.

submitted by /u/Engastrimyth
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Player Control and Freedom in Games

Posted: 13 Nov 2017 01:20 PM PST

One of my biggest pet peeves in games is artificially restricting the players ability to do something. for example. say you don't want a player to get over a certain wall, you could put an invisible wall there or you could make the wall too high to jump over. it seems lazy to me to just stick invisible walls there.

also stuff like giant holes in walls only enemies can get through but you cant, doors that cant open until your scripted ai guy opens it for you (the doors in bioshock that seem to be magically locked until the scripted event going on on the other side finishes) instead of having the door magically open maybe the scripted event could make the window smash so you could get in, just an idea.

perhaps for a locked door you could have a guy with a special lockpick or tool or magic power or something so it makes sense that You cant. (although even that is kind of annoying)

I think getting this type of thing right helps hugely with immersion and makes it feel a lot less gamey I'm not sure how many people agree with me though or if im just being pedantic

submitted by /u/BastillianFig
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Bigger fonts

Posted: 13 Nov 2017 08:20 AM PST

As a visually impaired gamer, I have had this problem for years. It is so frustrating to try to play a game that i can't see from my chair which is directly in front of the computer I can't even use screen magnification software. I really got soured on pc gaming when a salesperson said that there were bigger fonts on thebsimsv4...NOT the case unfortunately

submitted by /u/Godsmichelle
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Posting Out of Curiosity and Gathering Opinions

Posted: 13 Nov 2017 10:58 AM PST

Why is that people have a bigger problem with the grind in Battlefront than the (in my opinion) massive grind in GTA: Online?

submitted by /u/halo3man585
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Ads in $60 games vs microtransations

Posted: 13 Nov 2017 12:31 PM PST

Ok so I know there already some games that have ads in them but mostly they are barely noticeable. What if there was a ad system built into some games where they played them over the loading screen? Nobody likes ads but they are a better option than microtransations in my opinion. Also there could be an ad free version where you pay an additional $10 and you would get no ads. Just like some phone apps. This is just an idea. I think microtransations are ruining games. Does anyone think something like my idea could work. Devs and publishers have been saying they need more and more money to make current gen games. Why not get it from other companies like tv and YouTube instead of manipulating their own customers into paying for loot boxes that ruins games like battlefront, cod, gears, halo, shadow of war, fallout 4, overwatch and many more?

edit- So I see this is not a good idea. Sorry. I just hate what games are turning into and was just thinking of a way to make it better. if you know the solution let me know.

submitted by /u/jake010011
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My idea for a gang/mafia game, using elements from other sandbox games

Posted: 13 Nov 2017 02:05 AM PST

I had this idea while playing Saints Row 2 (aka the best one, I mean c'mon, Septic Avenger. I actually like 3 and 4, probably because of Laura Bailey, Troy Baker, and Nolan North, but I really didn't like Gat Outta Hell for the hour or so I played it). I started thinking about how it'd be cool if you could work your way up the ranks of the gang, either lying, murdering, and cheating your way to the head of the Saints, or forming alliances with key characters and helping them reach the top and becoming their second-in-command, kind of like Shadow of Mordor/War. But that wasn't the train of thought that inspired me to make this.

While doing the Brotherhood weapon shipment mission (fuck that thing), I started thinking about a critique that Yahtzee had for SR3;

...there's not a great sense of progression. How your sandbox crime game is traditionally supposed to work, is that you wash up in the lowliest gutter of whatever today's thinly-disguised version of New York is and from holding up liquor stores with sharpened lollipop sticks you gradually gain better resources and climb the ladder until you're gazing down at the city from your penthouse apartment, swirling brandy around the skull of a rival gang leader's favorite clarinet teacher. In Saints Row 3, you're given access to helicopters, a penthouse H.Q., and Modern Warfare-style guided missiles in the first few missions of the game.

How Saint's Row 2 handles this is that you start in a radically changed Stilwater. Your character barely even recognises "the Row" when they first see it. Your first objective is to buy some new clothes at Sloppy Seconds. Your options aren't the best. You get some shirts, jeans, sneakers, and that's basically it. After beating the first couple of levels, you get your first bases, or "cribs". A shitty apartment in the Red Light district, and you have to kill some rival gang members and hobos to get a dirty, empty, desolated hotel that sank beneath the ground during an earthquake, and a now just-as-desolated church has been built over it. So yeah, kinda shit. The way you get the aforementioned penthouse apartment lofts is that there are multiple properties scattered around Stilwater that you can buy and customise. The more high end ones can get pretty damn pricey, with the most expensive costing $50k. Considering that you can get 5k per mission at the most (fight club level 6) (In which I do a story mission after writing this that earns me 25k. Guess you can consider this point redundant), that's pretty damn pricey. But if you can earn that money yourself, you know you deserve that Mega Condo. And it's satisfying. Sure, it gets waay easier, considering you earn more hoods at the end of almost every story mission which gives you money stored in a safe in the crib, but that still means you've worked your way out of the Red Light district and made yourself a pain in the ass to the other gangs.

So what if there was a game where you could fully customise your character (R.I.P my dreams to make a 1950s style tommy gun-wielding insurance-dodging gangster), customise what you want your gang to be like, and actually did have to full on work your way out of the slums by committing petty crimes until you have enough money and resources to either start your own gang, or make a name for yourself in an already existing gang?(and not in the Skyrim "Archmage when you have Novice lightning" way) What if there was a sense of progression as you gain more and more resources, can become bolder and bolder, better guns, more vehicles at your disposal, but always had to be wary of police (kind of like Mafia 2)?

What if it had the freedom of Breath of the Wild?

Now bear with me for a moment. That sounds dumb, I know, but hear me out. One of the reasons people loved BotW so much was because you had freedom. Anything you wanted to do, you could probably find a way to do it. That's also what people love about law-breaking sandboxes. Drive anywhere you want, shoot anyone you want, with any gun you want. But there's more we can draw from. For you unlucky bastards who haven't played it, Breath of the Wild has you start by using tree branches (which break if you look at them too hard) to fight enemies who could very easily one-shot you (fuck Lizalfos). As you progress, you find stronger and more durable weapons until you're ready to storm Hyrule Castle with your Soldier's Set and inventory filled with Savage Lynel Crushers/Shields (and then breeze through that because it's piss-easy with that gear...). But that got me thinking too. Another appeal of Breath of the Wild is that you can go to Hyrule Castle and fight Ganon within 12 minutes of starting the game, but unless you know what you're doing you'll get your shit rocked. Why not have that kind of goal here? Have a major bank you want to clean out, a corporation you want to become CEO of or topple. Something that motivates you, not your character, you, to grow, to get better resources, to earn that penthouse. Of course, you could run into the corporation's HQ, attempt to storm the CEO's office and shank him with a broken biro, but you'll probably resemble Maero's girlfriend by the time his security team is done with you.

The standard for these games is that you get better because you get missions that cause more chaos to gangs. In Saints Row 2, you start messing with the Sons of Samedi by killing some drug dealers and stealing their product, and the last mission ends with you killing The General, the Samedi leader. You are growing, but at the rate the game wants you to grow. But what if, while running around, you found a rival gang's drug lab, and decided to destroy it and steal the product of your own volition. This draws some attention to you, but the Lieutenants still have larger concerns. Soon, destroying drug labs doesn't get you any more attention, so you have to use your resources to hit harder, until you reach a point where the leader sends his right hand man after you. These can be handled like the Adventure Log in BotW. The primary mission is to rob the bank or topple the corporation, and the equivalent of the Divine Beasts is dealing with the gangs.

I could keep going, but I have exams soon so I should probably do some actual work. If I think of any more mechanics that would be really cool, I'll come back and write them down. Will a game like this ever be made? Not likely. It's incredibly ambitious, but I'd play the shit out of it if it was well executed.

submitted by /u/LordCharco_iii
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Games using one hand!

Posted: 12 Nov 2017 08:32 PM PST

I'm recovering from a car accident, and only have one good hand at the moment. I've mostly been using my phone. Aside from maybe Hearthstone and Mario Run, any good one handed games you recommend? Thanks!

submitted by /u/JazzyWaffles
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Great article re: Cupheads aesthetic inspiration

Posted: 12 Nov 2017 06:08 PM PST

Link: https://unwinnable.com/2017/11/10/cuphead-and-the-racist-spectre-of-fleischer-animation/

Great article exploring a few mis-steps Cuphead had when attempting to translate Fleischer animation style into modern times, while attempting to shed racial baggage.

Yussef Cole was both non-accusatory, calm, and spot on in assertion that Cuphead's adaptation of classic animation was NOT COMPLETELY without problems.

He even called the game beautiful. But I agree with his assertion that it does have some problematic thematic elements that call back to Fleischer animation's minstrel origins.

submitted by /u/p3ll1n0r3
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We need a good skater.

Posted: 12 Nov 2017 06:49 PM PST

I'm missing games like Tony Hawk's American Wasteland and Skate 3; I'm willing to bet I'm not the only one. Pro Skater 5 was a failure with a lot of missed potential, and as far as I know it's the most recent skater in a while.

It'd be great to have the customization and park builder previous THPS games have had, and a solid multiplayer free-skate (hell, cross-platform it while they're at it).

Unless I've been living under a bridge and there are in fact recent games like this. In which case, let me know.

submitted by /u/Turmoil_Engage
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Unlocking cosmetic items near end of the game.

Posted: 12 Nov 2017 05:14 PM PST

So let me first start saying what I mean by the post title.

So you play a game, you keep unlocking cool cosmetic items. You finally have that armor piece you wanted for many hours but soon the game is ending. No more cutscenes with with your favorite armor on, no more things to do in the game/game world.

I am currently playing Assassin's Creed Syndicate. I finished the main campaign. I look up online that there is very cool looking armor piece I can unlock for one of the characters, only downside is that by the time I actually unlock it, I think I will be finished with the game.

Anyone else find this bit frustrating? Hopefully I explained it clear enough by what I mean

submitted by /u/xylitol777
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Desk/Gaming Chair Recommendations

Posted: 12 Nov 2017 06:04 PM PST

Hey there,

I've been looking for a Desk/Gaming chair for quite a while but I have no idea what to choose. Has anyone here some recommendations? Keep in mind I'm like 200cm/6'5" tall.

Thanks a lot

submitted by /u/Coldphan
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