User blog comment:Willbachbakal/Singleplayer Gene Tonics/@comment-3567720-20110703141443/@comment-1330314-20110704191052

Please understand me, I'm not stating my opinion when I'm saying BioShock is a survival game. I'm saying it is because that's what it says on the tin. Sure, the relative commonness of ammo doesn't make that aspect as extreme as it could be, but that's beside the point. No matter how easily, you're still supposed to manage your resources, hence the problem with an infinite health-and-mana dispenser.

I'm having a hard time understanding your second point, though. First of all, this hunter/gatherer dichotomy you came up with doesn't really fit BioShock, since you're supposed to both kill anyone likely to attack you and scavenge for resources. Second, this Tonic presents an immediate advantage no matter what your inclinations are. I'd describe myself as a "hunter", by your standards, but the moment I got the Tonic I just spent my time killing my enemies with Electro-Bolt and the Drill and retreating after every fight to a body of water to resupply, even if I had lost practically no health or EVE during combat, because it was so easy and effortless to do.

What I'm trying to tell you, basically, is that forcing people into complete inaction within a game is not good. You can propose a wide variety of incentives such as get into very risky combat/stealth situations or explore hidden areas in the game, but no game designer in their right mind would want to encourage the player to do literally nothing for extended periods of time. Yet Fountain of Youth, as it is in BioShock 2 is the ultimate incentive to do nothing. It's what's called a game-breaker: it's a function within the game that has the unintended consequence of making the game suddenly extremely easy to play. I don't think the developers at 2K Marin really wanted or expected players to sit in water for too long everytime they wanted to boost their primary resources, but that's what ended up happening. Ergo, the need for a tweak.