This Is Not A Good Idea
In multiple different games now I've seen this: doing nothing recovers a vital resource. In Diablo 2, you stand still and recover your blue stuff. In The Getaway and Enter The Matrix and Wolverine's Revenge, you stand still and recover health. It actually makes some sense for Wolverine, I suppose. I can imagine why people implement systems like this:
- you can avoid putting those immersion-breaking power-ups into the game
- it makes the game easier and thus should appeal more to the casual gamer
- games where resources stay depleted can be problematic at save-time; if you save a game with depleted resources you may never dig yourself out of the hole you're in
Still, haven't people noticed the problems this creates?
- standing still and watching a resource meter recharge is about as fun as waiting for a level to load
- skill becomes almost irrelevant, both at a tactical and strategic level; if you don't need to conserve resources during an encounter, there's no reason to play that encounter intelligently (except that you'll have to spend less time waiting for your meter to recharge - I suppose if we consider a player's patience as a game resource there's still some motivation to be strategic) - and at the strategic level, you never have that choice of "do I keep going ahead with limited resources" or "do I backtrack and try to find some more resource?"
There must be some solution out there that satisfies all these needs...
[BTW: I'm just talking about single player games here. In multi-player games the amount of time a resource takes to recharge (Kohan) becomes a factor in your strategy.]