Why do we only get health/stamina bars for 'bosses'?

[Panfilo]

One weird thing I realized about this game is that when fighting Quiet, Skulls, and technically Sehalanthropus, there are health bars (and stamina bars for the first two) to let you know how much damage you are doing. This is the only situation where you can tell how effective your weapons are both in killing power and in stunning power.

Are there any mods out there that display health/stamina bars over the regular enemies? It would be nice to know exactly how effective my weapons are in different hit locations without having to eyeball it.

Similarly, your own health/regeneration knowlege is pretty opaque. The game follows the irritating overlay to indicate how damaged you are (in this game it looks like burned film, but I've seen various versions of it in the form of blood splatters/bullet holes/etc). When you are getting hit by stun weapons on nonlethal fobs, your only indicator is the screen starting to fade. Similarly, you can only vaguely judge how much damage you've taken; the only consistent indicators are when 1.) You get critically injured and need to treat yourself (I think bandanna completely prevents this) and 2.) You are about to die and the music and screen changes. Since different armors have different health and regen rates, it would've been nice to actually be able to SEE a bar, percentage, SOMETHING. What's strange is in previous MGS games, they actually did show your health and stamina.

[LoopKat]

That's how every MGS game has worked, normal enemies have no health bars and bosses have health/stamina bars. It's just how they do things.

The only difference with MGS5 is the CoD-esque health regen for the player, which I'm honestly not too fond of. I understand that regenerating health may be more appealing to a wider audience, but I always liked managing my bars, especially in Snake Eater.

[Comrade Brendonian]

Originally posted by LoopKat:

That's how every MGS game has worked, enemies have no health bars and bosses have health/stamina bars. It's just how they do things.

The only difference with MGS5 is the CoD-esque health regen for the player, which I'm honestly not too fond of. I understand that regenerating health may be more appealing to a wider audience, but I always liked managing my bars, especially in Snake Eater.

+1
I miss rations, and I miss collecting animals to eat from MGS3. I think one of the bigger things throwing me away from MGSV is the CoD-esque health, I'd personally prefer rations, cause there would be times where I'd need to run cause I would have 0 rations, now I can just sit behind cover for a few seconds and then charge back out. And boss fights would be a bit better with them (although maybe a bit easier, depending on what gear the player takes)

[ZetaZaku]

I guess you haven't played the older games. But yeah, bosses always head health bars in all MGS games. That fact alone makes the Skulls bosses, despite a lot of people denying it because they're "too easy" and optional.

[Matthew]

Originally posted by LoopKat:

That's how every MGS game has worked, enemies have no health bars and bosses have health/stamina bars. It's just how they do things.

The only difference with MGS5 is the CoD-esque health regen for the player, which I'm honestly not too fond of. I understand that regenerating health may be more appealing to a wider audience, but I always liked managing my bars, especially in Snake Eater.

I think it may be because of the Open World environment, then again, there was some slight health regen in Snake Eater, as long as you kept your stamina meter up. And even then, it was very slight.