system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Rapidly recharging health bars make first person shooters less enjoyable.

To clarify: I am talking specifically about campaigns.  Health that restores quickly makes sense in multiplayer, as it allows each engagement to be somewhat fresh.

For this reason, I mostly emulate N64 shooters and don't play most modern shooters with any frequency or consistency.  As such, I am certain that my perspective is limited, and would like to see why at this point essentially all shooters have rapidly recharging (RR) health as opposed to Long-Term (LT) health.  

I am currently watching a friend play Halo 4, and he is reasonably frustrated by his inability to beat a specific part of the campaign.  His checkpoint is about 3 minutes from when he usually dies, and he ends up redoing the same part constantly.  Eventually he succeeds at that segment with minimal feeling of accomplishment, making it to a checkpoint where the process is repeated.  Then he ends up spending another 10-25 minutes on that 3 minute segment, reliving the same fights and hearing the same speech pods.  This seems unfun to me.  

In contrast, playing a game with LT health means that the segments are around 12 minutes long.  I remember spending a long time over several days trying to beat Perfect Dark's level "Carrington Institute: Defense."  It was neither boring nor frustrating, because with each attempt I played about 12 minutes of unique gameplay and something different happened or I learned something with essentially every attempt until I reached success.  Success eventually came with an exceptionally good run that lasted the lenght of the level, nailing all the parts that needed to be nailed in one go rather than piecemail, one at a time until I got to a checkpoint.  This success carried a large feeling of accomplishment with it, as a difficult challenge was met where I was staring down complex objectives and enemies with shields and high-powered weapons and was able to take about 2 solid hits before I died.  By the time I was able to win, I had a very streamlined process that was precise and required high levels of skill.  I felt like the Perfect Agent the game told me I was.  This level of quality is unachievable with a RR health system, where hits are frequently taken and shrugged off in seconds.  

While Halo at least has in-universe Clarke's Third Law-esque justification, in games like Call of Duty there is the added huge drawback of crushing any sense of immersion in the game.  I find it impossible to suspend disbelief through getting shot until I reach the very near to death stage and then being completely fine a second or two later.  In contrast, the original Deus Ex had a beautiful system where arms and legs could be made useless by enough bullets until the player was able to heal or regenerate them.  Obviously games will always require suspension of disbelief to achieve immersion, but in some settings RR health completely destroys all hope of a quality immersive experience.  

For primarily the reasons of length of game segment that is repeated, a more complete task leading to a greater feeling of accomplishment, and a more immersive experience, I believe that single-player first person shooters are most enjoyable without RR health.  The fact that finding cover undoes all damage previously taken seems to hurt continuity and just feels lame.  Since most games have gone to RR health means the majority of people likely disagree with me.  So, CMV.
gpt
Reading through, your view doesn't seem tied to regenerating health, but rather to the difference between a slow advance with many mistakes tolerated, and a quick advance where few mistakes are tolerated. This issue rather seems to be about a larger scale of game design and the toolset the game gives you.