[SUGGESTION] Why the hell regenerating health???

Hi,

First of all, I really like Xonotic in general. Its a great project and I (almost) strongly support it. The thing that scares me off though is its usage of regenerating health. This is not just completely against the old-school theme of the game but also actually adds absolutely nothing to the game. It encourages hiding and just sitting in a corner until health is generated... this directly contradicts the games goal of fast past action.

So my simple question: Why the heck does this otherwise awesome game have regenerating health?

Hello there!

It's simply because of heritage: Nexuiz had this feature since square one, and we decided to keep it. Also, health regeneration is not as fast as you'd think; it kicks in a bit later, and the pace of the regeneration is related to how much you already have, eg. it regenerates faster if you're low, but slows down gradually as you heal up.

Also, the game is fast paced enough to have this feature. In most of the cases, you don't really have time to play hide and seek. Think about it, your opponent knows well you're low on health and time is on your side, so this actually speeds up things, as you're required to be a lot more aggressive on your attacks.

As for sitting in a corner... well, try it

I'd recommend you to watch some recorded matches, you'll see that a lot of matches are really very fast even though health is regenerating. You'll find a lot of (partly commented) matches here: http://forums.xonotic.org/showthread.php?tid=2649

Yes, it must seem weird but it works. If you escape, it gives you some 10hp, some chance against a stacked player.
I'm would also like to know what was the original reasoning for having it in the first place.
If you hide you will deny a frag to the enemy but you will not get any points.

Regenerating health is a bit of a requirement as this game more so than Tribes and Quake has a heavy emphasis on using techniques that cause self damage. It's really just a means to keep everything in motion. Also it's very rare that you can actually rely on it to save you from getting gunned down as this game is a lot faster than Quake and has most of the crazy gun play found in Unreal Tournament creating A TON of ways for someone to take a player down. In the rare event that you actually are able to use it to recover, your score will fall through the floor (unless your in a one on one match).

While it may sound strange to have regenerating health, you must remember that in this game, unlike quake and UT, weapons deal more damage.

So your health regenerates but you're also quicker to die here.
The only game I can think of is CPMA mod for q3a where damage output is high and no health regenerating.

Thinking about it though, it would be very nice to have a cpma style gamemode here with the current physics + q2 style doublejumps, and no health regenerate or different weapon switch times.

While it may sound strange to have regenerating health, you must remember that in this game, unlike quake and UT, weapons deal more damage.

Now that just isn't true actually

They are easier to use though.

To me knowing that this feature exists (health regenerates) makes me want to hunt down my injured enemy before he recovers, so it actually makes me go faster. I almost never hide and camp, unless I'm almost dead and loosing a point and weapons is not worth waiting a while (especially in a team game) but maybe I'm wrong?