Treyarch Reveal New Details About How the New Health Regen System Will Work in CoD: Black Ops 4
Call of Duty developer Treyarch have revealed further details about how the new health regeneration system will work in the upcoming Black Ops 4 title.
A detailed explanation was posted on the Black Ops 4 Reddit page on May 18th, a day after the new system was initially introduced during the Community Reveal Event.
For the first time in Call of Duty history, the players’ in-game health will no longer automatically regenerate after taking damage.
Instead, players will now have to manually trigger their health to replenish, similar to a weapon needing to be reloaded once it runs low on ammunition.
- Read More: First Look at Live Multiplayer Gameplay and New ‘Contraband’ Map of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4
In their Reddit post, Treyarch explained that the reason behind this new feature was to add a whole new tactical layer to combat and to break out of the classic “gameplay loop” that has become stale over the years.
The “gameplay loop” refers to the cyclical process of spawning into the game, engaging in combat, dying, and restarting the process all over again.
The post goes on to break down the new healing process, which will require players to press a dedicated button to initiate the health regen.
However, in order to limit the potential for this to become too overpowered and too much of a bailout, there is a standard 8 second cooldown before the health regen can be triggered again.
Players will be given the chance to shorten this to 4 seconds by adding the STIM PACK in the Gear slot in Create-a-Class.
–
The entirety of Treyarch’s explanation of the new Health Regeneration System can be viewed below or on the Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 Reddit page.
First and foremost, a big thank you to everyone that tuned into yesterday’s reveal and made it a tremendous success!
Coming out of yesterday’s reveal event, we noticed that there are questions around Health regeneration and how it works.
We got answers, but let’s start with a little context first . . .
Understanding how Health works in Black Ops 4 MP boils down to two parts of our design philosophy: the gameplay loop and the drive to create a more tactical gameplay experience.
You often hear us talk about the “gameplay loop,” which is: spawn into the game, engage in combat, die, restart. Our motivation for the change to Healing mechanics is to extend the most fun part of the gameplay loop which is combat.
Initiating your own heal introduces tactical gameplay decision-making opportunities: players can disengage from combat and heal up or players can rush an unsuspecting opponent who may be healing himself. These are things that introduce a more tactical pace to the game, where instead of simply losing to the person who shoots first, you may be able to survive a gun fight with smart maneuvering.
Players manually trigger their healing process with a dedicated button.. This becomes as second-nature as reloading your weapon. Note that the button works on a cooldown, so you won’t be able to heal yourself immediately, you’ll need to wait until you’re powered up again. This takes 8 seconds and then you can heal again. That goes down to about 4 seconds if you select the STIM PACK in your Gear slot in Create a Class.
As a disclaimer, we are currently pre-alpha in development and all game tuning can and will change between now and game launch.
Hope that helps – please keep the questions and the feedback coming. In the future, we’ll look to reply to questions like this on studio livestreams, as well as on our social channels (Twitter: @Treyarch).
– Treyarch