Contested Health Adjustment Required

Problem:  Contested Health (CH) fades too quickly.  This is a result of several individual issues that, when combined, will exacerbate the problem further.

• Issue 1:  CH by default has a very short window in which it starts to decay.
• Issue 2:  CH by default has a very fast decay rate.
• Issue 3:  CH decay is not paused during grabs, stun locks, knock downs, or knock backs.
• Issue 4:  Contested Health Regeneration (CHR) via damage for certain weapons is underbalanced (e.g. melee attacks).

Comments:  These issues can result in little/no CH being available to recover when the player has control of their character again.  This feels incredibly bad/frustrating to the player base.  You are already punished once by receiving the damage, and then are punished further by being unable to recover even a moderate portion of it.  This is one of the most common problems I have observed being mentioned in forums such as Reddit.  Issue 3 is probably the most prominent issue and needs to be addressed in some fashion, as being chain stunned without an opportunity to parry/block/dodge out of it can frequently result in a player going from 100% Armor and HP to dead from a singular mistake.  Issue 4 mostly impacts Bulwarks, Assaults, and Vanguards, to the point that is often more effective to fire your sidearm off point blank into an enemy than to hit them with your melee weapon.  Melee has the most risk of receiving further damage, and thus should have the most reward.

Solution:  Make Contested Health (CH) and Contested Health Regeneration (CHR) feel better by tackling one or more of the above issues by introducing one or more of the below solutions.

• Solution 1:  Pause CH decay entirely during situations that result in loss of character control, similar to when a player engages in an execution or gun strike.  This should also include the CH decay start window being reset after loss of character control.
• Solution 2:  Increase the default CH decay start window and/or reduce the default CH decay rate.
• Solution 3:  Increase CHR via damage for underbalanced weapons.
• Solution 4:  Introduce Stun Resistance (SR) for players and/or remove SR for enemies. 
• Solution 5:  Rework CH to be permanent; HOWEVER, it will only be a percentage of damage taken.  E.g., CH is set to 50% damage received.  A player takes 10 points of damage.  Their default CH will be 5 points, which will be recoverable with no time limit.  Additional CH will accumulate as damage is taken, so if you take 10 damage, then 5 damage, then 5 damage, you would gain 5, then 2.5, then 2.5 CH.  Perks such as Bulwark’s CH decay rate slowdown can be reworked to increase percentage of CH given (e.g. 50% -> 70%).

Comments:  Solution 1 would likely have the most favorable reception, but is likely harder to code compared to Solutions 2 & 3, which could alleviate some of Issue 3 but not solve it entirely.  However, Solution 2 would be exceedingly easy to adjust, since it’s just modifying values already present in the code.  Likewise, Solution 3 is just modifying existing values as well.  Regarding Solution 4:  Currently enemies will eventually become resistant or immune to stuns after they are stunned a certain number of times.  The system should either work identically for players and enemies, or players should have a slight advantage over enemies.  AI enemies will not get mad about being stun locked (game systems do not need to be fair against them), but players very much will (game systems must be perceived as fair towards the player).  Solution 5 is the most drastic solution, and may or may not be favorably received by the community.  Additionally, it would require rework of several perks.  The benefits would be that you do not have to panic and rush to try to recover as much CH as possible during the narrow window, rewarding more tactical gameplay; however, the downside would be you could eventually be chipped to death, whereas if you are fast enough now, you could potentially always recover max CH.  Solutions 1 through 4 could be implemented into a patch without testing, but Solution 5 would likely require a PTS round or two to see how the community likes the change.

Final Thoughts:  Contested Health (CH) and Contested Health Regeneration (CHR) are core gameplay features, and thus should feel fair and rewarding to use.  Permanent damage should feel earned and not cheap:  “Damn, I missed that parry/dodge and ate a big hit, but at least I got some health back after,” as opposed to “That’s BS, I just got stun locked into oblivion and now I lost all my contested health before I could even try to get any back.”  One feels good… you were able to recover from your mistake because you were granted a fair opportunity to do so.  The other feels bad… it makes you feel like you were cheated out of your opportunity to recover because of a singular mistake that snowballed into multiple, unavoidable hits.

Background:  A little about me as a player... I'm including this to indicate the breadth of my gaming experience, so if you don't care, feel free to stop here.  I have been gaming pretty much my entire life:  One of my earliest memories was playing Super Mario Bros and Duck Hunt in my parents' room on the NES.  I've been gaming ever since, with the majority of my off-duty time involving gaming.  My gaming background involves most genres save for sports and racing games, but heavily focuses on sim-heavy games such as ArmA.  I've been involved in MechWarrior Online and WH40K Eternal Crusade at the community-lead competitive level, or as much as existed at the time.  I have 10,000+ hours in just my 10 most played games, and that's only counting Steam from 2009 when I made the jump from console to PC.

Anyway... if you made it this far, thanks for reading and considering what I believe will help improve the game.  Fenrys Hjølda!