"Your Magic Is Now Loading"

Regenerating health bars are a great idea. They allow players to take more risks while still discouraging strings of mistakes. I’ve already talked about this in detail, but there is a flip side that has come to my attention: regenerating energy.

Let’s take Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion as an example. There is a health meter, a stamina meter and a magical energy meter (of course, all of these meters really just represent numbers, but that isn’t important in this context). The Health bar is static, while the other 2 fill at a constant rate. This makes reasonable sense, since stamina just represents the need to sit down every few minutes and magic can behave however the developers want it to. The system also works very well in the context of normal action gameplay. It requires players to manage their resources during combat without demanding long term planning. The problem comes when combat ends and the player is free to do whatever they want.

Regenerative health bars usually fill quickly, requiring only a few seconds to work. This is NOT true of energy meters. So, in the Oblivion example, once combat ends the player is encouraged to stand around waiting for their stamina and magic to replenish. This can sometimes take upwards of 30 seconds and a game should NEVER encourage doing nothing for 30 seconds. The problem is actually compounded by healing spells. Players not only have to wait for their magic to replenish, but they also have to use that same energy to replenish their health. This can extend the waiting time well beyond a minute and it’s all terribly frustrating for the player.

The most immediate solution to this problem is to have the player’s stats regenerate when there are no enemies nearby. This is functional, but it removes the player from the experience of the game. The problem is confounded in Sci-Fi games where plausibility becomes more of a factor. Many futuristic weapons rely on recharging instead of reloading and standing around for your gun to reload is just boring. Half-Life is notable for featuring a weapon like this in the “hornet gun” which reloaded its 8 shots very quickly.

Another solution lies in actual level design. By either lowering the need to use energy, or adding ways to replenish it, developers can do away with regenerating energy altogether. This has its own drawbacks in that it places a lot of constraints on level design and can also cause patterns (such as: we need to have an energy pack for every 10 enemies). It could also remove the layer of difference between energy and ammo based weapons. That said, there are some interesting scenarios to implement in this way (such as a solar based weapon that instantly recharges in sunlight).

There is one other solution that I can think of. It requires a lot of integration and may not be suitable for all situations, but it also isn’t frustrating or unrealistic. Imagine the player didn’t sit idly by while their energy replenished, but could instead interact in order to achieve the same effect. That would solve the problem while adding an extra layer of game mechanics. So, let’s imagine that we have a laser with a rechargeable battery which requires a hand crank (In the future we have very efficient lasers). A minigame could be implemented that involves recharging the gun. During downtime, it provides something to speed up the process while giving the player something to do. During combat, the player is suddenly presented with strategic decisions about when to recharge. It also follows in the trail of Gears Of War’s “active reloading” mechanic, since it gives the player the ability to influence how fast the reloading occurs. On top of that, the player can decide to only recharge a few shots instead of the maximum capacity. The only drawback of this mechanic is that it has to be implemented differently for every application.