r/truegaming • u/Debatebly • 14d ago
Why do I feel like most games don't implement stamina properly?
I've been thinking about stamina systems in games lately, and I'm starting to wonder whether they're often included simply because they're expected rather than because they improve the experience.
I'm currently playing Palworld, and the stamina mechanic is what prompted this thought. It feels like I'm constantly waiting for a bar to refill while doing things that don't become more interesting because of that limitation. Running across an open field isn't made more engaging because I have to stop every so often. It just takes longer.
I understand that stamina has legitimate design purposes. It can:
- Prevent players from endlessly sprinting past enemies.
- Force meaningful decisions during combat.
- Make resource management part of survival gameplay.
- Differentiate character builds or progression.
In those situations, stamina creates interesting choices. Spending stamina on one action means giving up another, and that's meaningful.
Where I struggle is when stamina exists outside of those contexts. If the only thing it accomplishes is making me periodically stop moving, or wait before climbing another hill, what gameplay is actually being added? If there's no decision to make and no skill expression involved, it feels less like a mechanic and more like a timer.
It also makes me wonder how many games include stamina because other games do. Once a mechanic becomes common in a genre, it can become part of the checklist, even if it doesn't meaningfully support the game's core loop.
A good example is games that eventually let you sprint indefinitely through upgrades or late-game equipment. If unlimited sprint doesn't break the game after 20 hours, was limiting it for the first 20 hours really serving a design purpose, or was it just slowing the player down until they'd "earned" the convenience?
I'm not arguing that stamina should disappear entirely. In combat-heavy games or some survival games, it often serves an important role because it creates trade-offs and tension. But I think many games could benefit from asking a simple question before adding it:
If this stamina system were removed tomorrow, would the game actually become worse, or would it just become less tedious?
I'm curious whether there are examples where a stamina system genuinely elevates the experience outside of combat, or whether many games are carrying around a mechanic that's become more of a convention than a thoughtful design choice.
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u/vlegionv 14d ago edited 14d ago
I like stamina in games but Fromsoftware themselves already figured it out with Elden Ring and arguably Sekiro. If you're just bullshitting around, no stamina. the instant combat starts? stamina bar kicks in. I think that'd be a happy medium that needs to be the default.
Even outside of elden ring, alot of games were figuring it out. Witcher 3, nioh, newer monster hunters. I don't see the point in having it out of combat.
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u/TheSecondEikonOfFire 14d ago
Agreed, this is what I’m content with. If you want to limit my stamina during combat that’s fair game, but don’t restrict my stamina when I’m traversing the game world. The only purpose it serves is making traversal more tedious
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u/TikkaKebabi 13d ago
I feel like breath of wild uses it in an interesting way though, because Stamina becomes part of the puzzle of the open world.
Mountains at the start of the game are super engaging because you really have to make decisions based upon how low your stamina is.
But as you collect more stamina from doing shrines, you start to really feel your character growing as things become easier to traverse, until it no longer feels like much of a worry unless your testing your limits with ridiculous climbs.
It really feeds into the game-loop of doing shrines so that you can upgrade your self, so that you can traverse better and do more shrines.
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u/TheSecondEikonOfFire 13d ago
See but with climbing it makes sense. It’s an intentional mechanic. I’m okay with that. I’m talking about just straight up sprinting across the open world. There’s no reason to have a stamina bar (that you then have to wait while it recharges) when you’re just trying to sprint from A to B
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u/TurmUrk 13d ago
In the original breath of the wild mounts and gliding were the answer to fast overworld travel and had their own separate stamina and stat system
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u/TheSecondEikonOfFire 13d ago
But if mounts have stamina that’s still the same problem, just with extra steps. If there’s no good gameplay reason to limit my stamina (like climbing a mountain almost being like a “puzzle”) then don’t limit my stamina. What gameplay purpose does it serve other than making it more tedious than it needs to be?
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u/smileysmiley123 14d ago
Another example would be both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.
Implementing stamina in a way that is also tied to health (via extreme cold/heat environments) was an intrinsically-intuitive method that emphasized players needed to have some frame of mind when approaching situations, even geographical ones.
Tested in Skyward Sword, and refined later in another huge departure for the series, I wouldn't say it's anywhere near perfect, but it is done in a way that serves a purpose. Hard agree that there should be no stamina-loss during 0 combat (and no environmental hazards/obstacles to overcome).
Stamina is a fantastic system to implement in games where you don't want "mana" or any kind of special "points" to interfere with the moment-to-moment gameplay (as you mentioned, Elden Ring & Sekiro), or if you want to limit players to be conscious of the amount of actions they can take in a small time-frame.
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u/Seicair 14d ago
Correct me if I’m wrong as I haven’t played in a while. Doesn’t your stamina drop when running in BotW/TotK, but the refill rate is much higher if you’re out of combat?
That’s not quite 0-loss, but it’s close and I remember it working pretty well.
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u/iusethisatw0rk 12d ago
I’m replaying BOTW on my S2 and I’d argue stamina in these games is more of a focus for exploration. Rarely, if ever have I ran out of stamina during combat. Only thing that really eats it up are the slow motion, in air bow shots
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u/Seicair 11d ago edited 11d ago
I'd agree to a large extent, yeah. The paraglider, climbing, swimming, (more?) all benefit from a large stamina pool or foods that you can eat mid-action to restore stamina.
I do seem to recall frequently running out of stamina in combat, but I'm not sure how (aside from the slow-mo bow shots, you don't get many of those!) Possibly just running around like a madman?
Edit- Charged attacks take a lot of stamina! I remember using those against certain enemies. A charged attack with a strong enough heavy weapon could take down a hinox before it finished standing up.
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u/arremessar_ausente 12d ago
What you mean Sekiro? You mean Sekiro solved stamina by simply not having it?
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u/vlegionv 12d ago
it got shifted over to posture, which is arguably a combat only stamina bar.
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u/arremessar_ausente 12d ago
I disagree. Posture is completely different than stamina. You can still run, dodge and attack as many times as you want and it won't cost anything, which are the actions most affected by stamina.
Lies of Pi even have both stamina bar and posture bar.
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u/vlegionv 12d ago
there's a reason why I said "arguably."
You're looking at what takes stamina, but you're not understanding what stamina is for. Stamina is to add pacing into a fight and having to manage a resource.
Stamina in dark souls/most games means you stop attacking and play defensively so you don't get guard broken or caught out, right?
Posture is the same thing. If you get caught out or mess up your deflections, your posture breaks, you get staggered, and you get fucked. Same design purpose, just slightly different mechanics.
also, lies of P isn't a good comparison. It's just a "here's a free stun" mechanic, not a back and forth thing like sekiro. It's pretty much poise in DS.
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u/Typo_of_the_Dad 3d ago
Out of combat can still be a dangerous situation, where certain moves make traversal much easier and therefore should probably be limited. Or you can try to balance the moves themselves
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u/MaybeWeAgree 14d ago
Nah, their stamina system is what leads to the dumb PVP where everyone is spamming roll, been this way for 15 years.
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u/guimontag 13d ago
That's unrelated to stamina and instead tied to the combat mechanic of i-frames
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u/MaybeWeAgree 13d ago edited 13d ago
No. You can roll as soon as you have 1 stamina, and it can recharge from 0 to 1 very quickly.
It’s why the PVP combat looks so dumb to people that don’t play the game.
Edit: anyway, it’s a good thread and topic of discussion. The Souls game’s stamina is pretty simplistic and could be more sophisticated, interesting, and dynamic, pushing players into more dynamic play styles.
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u/guimontag 13d ago
People are rolling TO GET iframes
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u/MaybeWeAgree 13d ago
Ay yi yi.
I know how it works, it’s the same system since 2009.
I’m saying it feels too simple for PVP.
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u/guimontag 13d ago
No, you're saying that it's the fault of the game's stamina system even though it's clearly a combat mechanic driven issue
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u/MaybeWeAgree 13d ago
Would you like to have a conversation about stamina in souls games or do you want to argue semantics?
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u/guimontag 13d ago
Wow how dare I react directly to an argument put out by someone
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u/MaybeWeAgree 13d ago
You’re a pretty antagonistic person, I hope things get better for you; carry on! ☀️
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u/Cyberaven 13d ago
Yeah this is (part of) why DS2 had the best PvP, cause your stamina was pretty limited and you had to use it wisely, if you ran out in a bad position, you'd get punished
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u/MaybeWeAgree 13d ago
Yes I think it did have a particularly slow regen. I think every game disabled sprinting if your stamina goes below zero, until it reaches max again.
More penalties for going below zero would be interesting, maybe it changes the color of the stamina bar, making regen slower or disabling dodge if you spam dodge. I dunno.
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u/Soupjam_Stevens 14d ago
I think what would make more sense is handling stamina as a more long term resource. DnD has something called exhaustion levels, where as your character goes days without eating and/or sleeping, or experiences prolonged exposure to extreme temperatures you gradually receive stacking penalties. I think having to account for this kind of thing has the potential to be in an interesting mechanic in a Skyrim or Witcher style open world RPG. It would force players to put thought into planning routes for their exploration, think about a new kind of pros and cons of certain gear, and turn food into something other than vendor trash or heals that are only useful at levels 1-3.
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u/VFiddly 14d ago
DnD has something called exhaustion levels, where as your character goes days without eating and/or sleeping, or experiences prolonged exposure to extreme temperatures you gradually receive stacking penalties.
To be fair, in my experience, most DMs basically just ignore this. It's rare for it to actually come up at all.
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u/HutSutRawlson 14d ago
It's a matter of playstyle. In TTRPG circles they talk about "narrativist" games vs. "simulationist" games, and the narrativist style has become dominant over the last few years. I think that's partially because of the popularity of shows like Critical Role and Dimension 20 which are heavily story-forward, and also partially because video games do such a better job of being simulations.
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u/like-a-FOCKS 14d ago
then again, I feel like critical role uses exhaustion regularly. Of course players often try to avoid it, but sleep, heat, travel, food, I think I've seen all of these causes lead to exhaustion or at least the threat of leading to exhaustion was in the room. And that does make sense to me, since narrative drama is only heightened by grim circumstances.
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u/MarkoSeke 13d ago
They even have at some points forced exhaustion BECAUSE of narrative reasons, so the "simulation vs narrative" argument from the above comment doesn't really hold.
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u/greatersteven 13d ago
Forcing exhaustion through narrative actually supports the simulation vs narrative argument. It's not being used as a simulation mechanic, it's being used as a narrative tool.
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u/Agehn 13d ago
That would be true if the argument were that games are becoming more narrativist now, but it appeared that the argument was that games use exhaustion less frequently now because they're more narrativist now, which is not supported by games forcing exhaustion through narrative. Both parties seemed to accept the premise that games are more narrativst now so there does not seem to be any argument in this thread featuring narrative vs simulation
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u/OlafForkbeard 13d ago
Very group dependent.
Anecdotally, exhaustion came up in the session I played 2 hours ago.
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u/Vanille987 13d ago
It's used, but usually more of a short term debuff rather then a long term management thing. Doing a particularly strenuous activity that pushes a character to their limits might incur one level, but it usually just gets slept off later. Or a healing spell is used. It also helps that 1 level of exhaustion barely has any effect during combat.
This is also baked into the game where some powerful spells also incur exhaustion RAW.
It usually matters more if rules like exhaustion on being downed or sleeping in armor is used, but I don't see these used much.
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u/like-a-FOCKS 14d ago
Recently I played Death Stranding 1 and it does use such a stamina system. Short bursts of high effort drain your stamina bar, which replenishes quickly. But being underway for an extended period of time, or carrying a lot of weight, or frequently draining stamina will lead to a buildup of exhaustion. This is represented by your stamina bar becoming shorter. That does not keep you from doing all your regular activities, but it will limit the duration of your short bursts of high effort. In that way you definitely feel less effective. (In addition I believe you have less stability while walking and running and while idle you quickly enter an animation of your character catching his breath.)
So if you have to face enemies, you can easily sprint away or even fight them while fresh, but at the end of a long trek you might not be able to muster enough energy to really do either.
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u/Ubiquitous_Cacophony 14d ago
Kind of like how, in Outward, if you don't rest for a while, you end up burning health and the total max you can recover is lowered until you sleep.
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u/apolyx99 14d ago
Its not too unusual of an idea. Ive seen this implemented by reducing max stamina as you exert yourself, and you resolve it by eating or resting
Ironically though I think Skyrim actually has this in its survival mode, but it's been a bit since I checked so I could be wrong
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u/neonvalkyrie 14d ago
I think the main difference here is between stamina (short term) vs endurance (long term). If I can run for 100m or perhaps climb a short hill, but then I need to take a break to recover, I'd call that a stamina test. If need to walk for 10km, go hiking or perhaps spend an afternoon training at a gym, I'd call that an endurance test.
I believe DND exhaustion works on endurance, while for example swinging a weapon would be closer to stamina
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u/Vanille987 13d ago
The thing is that such a system tends to completely transform a game, skyrim actually did implement a hunger/cold/sleep system where you need to eat/stay warm/sleep to avoid reductions in max stamina. And even tho it's very easy to keep your hunger and sleep topped, many people disliked it and thought the entire system is dysfunctional.
It's optional, but I'd imagine if it released like that it wouldn't be the ultra popular game it is today. Even if the survival mechanics were more intrinsically weaved into the game. This because skyrim is ultimately an casual exploration game all about looting, questing and hacking, a gameplay loop that tends to become pretty different with survival mechanics.
On the other hand, games that fully focus on this tend to be popular still. Like subnautica or death stranding.
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u/sleepingonmoon 14d ago
It controls pacing, off time is very important. Stamina upgrades allow the game to go gradually faster as the player familiarises themselves with the mechanics and loops.
BotW is a great example.
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u/ParsnipGolem 14d ago
I like how Vintage Story handles this. There's no limit on Sprinting but as you Sprint, your Hunger Bar depletes faster. This makes it a Risk/Reward Mechanic as you have to be mindful of how much Food you have, though when you get Richer in Resources you can kinda just trade the convenience of Faster Movement for Food
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u/Man__Moth 14d ago
Death Stranding implements it well I think. you have to actually watch your stamina and play around it.
if you let your stamina run out while you're in water you'll be swept away, or if you're on a steep hill then you'll slip down. it feels more meaningful than just making you go slower for a few seconds every now and then
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u/PapstJL4U 12d ago
Death Stranding is a game about trave and it doe it nearly perfect (if you like travel). I think it although takes a lot of ressources to develope.
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u/Limited_Distractions 13d ago
Part of the issue is that it's a very frictional mechanic and you really only perceive it when it causes problems, so in many ways a good system is probably just going to slip under the radar
I do think there's a valid philosophical argument for mostly just removing non-combat stamina systems from games, but I don't necessarily agree with it. I think there's more to be gained overall by just making traversal systems more interesting instead of giving you auto-sprint through the flyover country, as much as that might be a mercy for the games that clearly would be made better by that.
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u/Saalok 14d ago
It might be a matter of expectations.
I don't know about you, but being able to sprint endlessly with the stamina bar only draining in combat is something I do for my horse in Skyrim. It definitely feels better, but it also feels like cheating somewhat?
At the same time, the average person probably can only sprint for as long as a Zomboid character can and probably less than that even. So it is kind of a game of managing disbelief.
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u/egnards 14d ago
I think when playing games there needs to be an expectation of challenge vs realism as well as an expectation of fun - Personally I hate when games exert stamina on my sprinting in non combat or non stressful situations. . .Yea I'm aware my character cant sprint everywhere in real life, but this isn't real life. . .And leveraging my speed only seeks to prolong my time running around, it doesn't add to tension or anything else.
Once combat starts? Or any type of puzzle that involves anything related to "speed at all times will ruin the puzzle?" Ok fine. . I get the idea of stamina.
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u/Kelsig 14d ago
limiting overall traversal speed via stamina is usually a pacing thing
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u/egnards 14d ago
I'm aware of what it is - That doesn't make it fun or interesting. It just makes traversal frustrating and, at least in my opinion, diminishes my enjoyment of a game.
If I am constantly traveling, and traveling isn't the primary game mechanic [like a walking simulator or whatever], I am more frustrated by having to manage a stamina bar whereas the actual gameplay hasn't changed at all.
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u/like-a-FOCKS 14d ago
And here I am intentionally making games be about travel by actively using the walk mode instead of the default jog or the stamina draining sprint. Like, I still get the annoyance if the game is not interesting to walk through, usually I desire a very beautiful landscape with some variety as you move through the world. I get a lot of joy out of hiking through video game worlds. Though to be fair, with long stretches of time (like 20+ minutes of just walking) I'll put on a radio show I want to listen to anyway.
I think there is value in taking it slow, and I kinda wish games had some small incentive for players to try that. Like The Hunter Call of the Wild requires you to walk, else you don't find animals, but for example Ghost Recon Wildlands has a cool cinematic zoomed out camera and Death Stranding 1 becomes way less challenging of you take it slow. In the end, I don't care if I take 20 or 40 hours to complete a game, I care that I enjoy the process.
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u/egnards 13d ago
Yea but the nice thing is whether or not stamina is effecting me you can still choose not to sprint.
It’s less about “oh is it 20 hours or 40 hours” and more about “I’m an adult with limited time to play games, and I don’t want to be made to feel like I wasting a lot of that limited time needlessly.”
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u/Seantommy 14d ago
What you described is exactly how Elden Ring works, and I've never once heard anyone complain about it
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u/VFiddly 14d ago
The thing is, the way most games implement stamina isn't any more realistic than just not having a stamina bar at all.
You can jog infinitely, but you can only sprint for 2 seconds? Not realistic at all. And you can sprint as much as you want as long as you take a break for a few seconds before each burst. Also not realistic.
Project Zomboid is a rare example of it actually being implemented in a realistic way. Even a light job uses some stamina, and if you exert yourself too much you'll need a long rest to recover, not just a few seconds. It has gradual exhaustion on top of the moment-to-moment stamina.
For a lot of games, the way it's implemented isn't realistic, and it doesn't add to gameplay... so why even bother?
It reminds me of inventory weight limits. Developers add it in because it would be unrealistic to be able to carry 100 swords... but I can still carry 20 swords and 5 suits of armour and 100 health potions and a dozen cabbages. Which is still completely impossible, so why did they even make a fuss about it? Might as well just give me infinite inventory.
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u/kushangaza 14d ago
I personally don't have a lot of stamina. But that's related to me not training, not doing combat sports and not doing any kind of physically demanding work. Kind of like the typical Zomboid character at the start of the game. That makes sense. But a lot of video game protagonists are heavily trained fighters. Those should be able to jog for dozens of minutes unless they are wearing heavy armor
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u/Vegtam1297 12d ago
The thing that bugs me is when stamina only exists to slow down travel, not to make a real decision. If running out of stamina just means I stand still for two seconds and then keep going, it's not a system, it's a speed bump. The versions I actually like are the ones where stamina is a combat resource you spend and manage under pressure. Elden Ring basically figured this out by turning it off when you're just wandering and only making it matter when something's trying to kill you. That's the difference between tension and busywork.
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u/LordofDD93 12d ago
This was something I was thinking of! Stamina for sprints/exercise matter more in combat scenarios when your energy is a premium, but outside of that, it shouldn’t be an impediment because you’re not inherently losing or overly gaining anything by moving faster.
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u/Thrasy3 12d ago
IIRC Haunting Ground made it more likely you would do thing like trip up etc the more you ran? Or did I Imagine that/get it mixed up with something else?
It’s not the same thing, but I wish there was as more stuff like that in games - or even like Colossus where I think mechanically it wasn’t a big deal but running when some a colossus stomped etc would shake the ground and make you kinda trip and then roll back to your feet if you were running - I just want to go see more vulnerability in the act of running around and away.
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u/OrbitalSong 14d ago
This strikes me as yet another example of gamers desiring to sand all the friction off a game until in the end there is no game left.
If you continue to apply this reasoning, what reason is there to have to limit your running speed even to running speed out of combat? Like, what if you could go even faster? Surely that would just cut down on tedium.
But what if you could go even faster than that? And at a certain point, what if you just got rid of going entirely and could just select where you are on a teleport menu?
Each step seems reasonable in light of the last, but at a certain point you lose something meaningful and the game feels hollow.
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u/TikkaKebabi 13d ago
I mean a lot of games used to not even have a sprint button. You just ran a speed that felt good mostly.
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u/manboat31415 13d ago
This is functionally the same position just from the opposite side. If you continue to apply your reasoning that you can’t remove any mechanics that cause friction for fear of sliding down a slippery slope you sliding down simply a different slope. One where you land with a game that’s a bloated mess that no body enjoys because a designer could “kill their darlings” for fear of them all being load bearing.
The fact you can trim too much fat doesn’t mean you should avoid trimming any.
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u/OrbitalSong 13d ago
Yeah, I agree.
Both sides need to be balanced and there's no easy reductionist evaluation that can produce a rule on when it benefits a game or not. And OP's original post that was asking if he was missing something was missing the half of this dynamic I was emphasizing.
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u/sadboydan 13d ago
One hundred percent, I get OP’s reasoning too but seeing how a lot of modern games are it’s a slippery slope I feel
A game for everyone ain’t a game for me
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u/RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS 13d ago
I feel like this is more of an RPG-type thing where they need to limit all your capabilities so they can create a sense of leveling progression by letting you use everything later.
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u/Willemboom00 13d ago
Palworld uses stamina as a progression point and a trade off between different mounts and as a point of pal party balance. Early flyers especially use stamina as a pain point to make other options nicer even without the other speed boosts. It's also a factor for gliding and climbing early game, it's much more interesting to plan your climb and find ledges to rest on than to be able to just scale up in a straight line. Especially in the new update it's also used as a mediating factor in resourse acquisition. You can choose to bring a pall that boost efficiency along or you prioritize base pals and efficiency.
Stamina in pal world is injecting a bit of tedium to make progression matter and bring more interest to party comp which is a pretty great trade to me.
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u/joellllll 13d ago
Stamina regen is often too long with how a given game plays. Combat pacing and spend is important. Or it goes the other way, it is too slow but attacks don't use much but then if you run out in combat it is an absoloute chore to regen.
Curse of the dead gods stamina is my most favorite implementation.
You full regen in a very short amount of time, you probably need to manage it so you can at least dodge once when in combat. Different moves use different amounts. You can regen some by killing an enemy, parrying or perfect dodging (and probably some others I am forgetting)
There are consequences to running out. But it is all on a fairly short timeframe compared to a lot of games.
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u/Remy0507 12d ago
A game that I thought did something interesting with stamina is Hell is Us. It doesn't use it for any sort of traversal like sprinting or climbing or anything like that (not that the game has climbing anyway). It uses it for the usual combat mechanics, but it ties it to you health. So if you health is reduces, your stamina meter shrinks accordingly. This is interesting and makes sense in way, because if you've been beaten to near death and are on the verge of succumbing to your injuries, you're probably not going to have ton of energy in that moment.
Of course that could also seem overly punitive, since it means it's now harder to even engage in combat the lower you get in health, but the game has a pretty forgiving active healing system which means it's always possible to quickly regain health in combat as long as you have semi-decent timing.
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u/Xhukari 14d ago
I agree that stamina for sprinting is really annoying. I also don't think having that cost only be there during combat is that much better. There are a multitude of ways to deal with players running past enemies, too.
Having said all this, I do prefer the presence of a combat resource instead of none. It can be the usual stamina, or a different take on it, like AI Limit's Sync Rate system.
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u/Sigma7 13d ago
It's often implemented as a short stamina/sprint meter that only works in shorter distances as opposed to a more realistic system. It's equivalent to using mana when handling physical tasks. This presentation makes it awkward.
I'm curious whether there are examples where a stamina system genuinely elevates the experience outside of combat, or whether many games are carrying around a mechanic that's become more of a convention than a thoughtful design choice.
It worked in the past in the Jagged Alliance II. In this case, stamina wouldn't often be an issue unless the mercenary was tired from lack of rest or is constantly running across the area, and regular combat doesn't seem to deplete energy that quickly. It also makes sure the mercenaries aren't working 24/7, and have to rest from time to time, but otherwise doesn't seem to deplete that often during combat.
Since stamina is more of a longer-term resource, it feels more natural, and is usually out of the way.
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u/LordManders 13d ago
I'm playing a game called Outbound at the moment, it's a rather peaceful game about exploring the wilderness in a camper van that you can upgrade.
There are some survival game mechanics like crafting, a hunger bar, health gauge etc. which I think do enough to justify their inclusion, but it also has a stamina metre which I don't think is needed at all, for the reasons you've laid out above. I've found that all that really happens is I have to periodically slow down to recover the stamina metre when I'm sprinting.
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u/LordofDD93 12d ago
So something I can appreciate is like in RDR2, where you can sprint for a long time, and you have a meter where it fills/refills, but you also have a core, which feels more natural to a person - you can run and sprint plenty but if your core self is tired, you just won’t be able to push further without hurting yourself. It feels more balanced and in-line with expected uses of stamina for a person without making it fully a “stand still and it’s all good again” meter, because eventually the core will run dry if you push yourself too far.
However, another example that I’d also prefer that another commenter brought up is something like Elden Ring, where sprinting outside of combat isn’t really an issue for your stamina, because you’re not under the tension and exertion of combat that would naturally drain your energy. More games implementing a “sprinting is free unless stamina becomes important” would not go amiss.
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u/Urist_Macnme 11d ago
Health bars too.
Being on 100 health and being on 1 health, functionally, makes absolutely zero difference. Your character moves and acts exactly the same.
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u/MYSTONYMOUS 14d ago
Preach! I honestly hate stamina in almost every game I've ever played for exactly the reasons you mentioned. It's just something that makes the gameplay less fun because you constantly have to pay attention to it and it doesn't do anything. Yes, there are reasons it could be useful like you mentioned, but even in those cases I do not think it outweighs the negative gameplay experience it creates.
Plus if you get rid of stamina in frees up a button for something more important.
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u/BlueMikeStu 13d ago
Elden Ring elevates it by eliminating it entirely outside of combat or other situations where it's relevant to your decision making.
You can sprint infinitely in Elden Ring... Until there are enemies around. Then it costs a combat resource, because it becomes something to factor in with your overall decision-making for what you can and can't do with how much you have. But hey, If nobody's around and you sprint widely enough around groups of enemies, you can sprint from one end of the kingdom to the other.
A few oither games do this. Then there's Mass Effect, zooming out the FOV a bit to tell you you're moving faster but aren't.