I almost never use consumables if I don't absolutely have to. Cracks me up when I see max dps things in elden ring as without consumables and temp buffs I can't get half that.
I've had to consciously stop doing this. I noticed that I wasn't really getting the full experience from games because I was being too conservative with items because some games really force you to if you want to beat them.
These days I just use items liberally and if I end up getting stuck in the game because I don't have enough then that's bad design and I just cheat to give myself the item. One of the perks of PC gaming.
7 days to die boot up: it takes 47 bullets to kill a dog.
Me: uhhh ok?
7DTD: here's your gun and 3 bullets
Me: uhhhh ...
7DTD: dog incoming.
(let's game it out "run" logo)
I swear I don't do that nearly enough, and I really need to learn to. The only time I I just straight up nope is early game fallout deathclaws. But I grew up in the days of old school run and gun shooters where you can't really go level up and come back to it, you just go.
I liked that in Expedition 33. It refills all your potions whenever you rest. And you can basically rest any time you want. It even has a loading screen message that says "Use your potions!!”
Also does AP right, encouraging ability use without it just being free.
E33 ruined metaphor refantazio and many other similar jrpgs for me. Why develop a magic system that actively discourages using skills because the access to mana is so limited? I play these games to feel powerful and to live out a superhero-like fantasy. It's hard to do that when you only get resources for 10 spells a day and dungeons with dozens of enemies.
That's true of many classic RPGs. Even D&D has really limited uses for many classes/skills. I think it's more of a balance thing that can be good or can be really bad. I kinda' lean your direction in that unless it's some amazing skill that will drastically trivialize most fights, it shouldn't have much limitation. At least not limitations that require a bunch of BS to work with.
Games should be made to have fun, and having to constantly run back to town (or what ever similarly onerous thing) to replenish mana/stamina/what ever is obnoxious at best and poor game design at worst.
Though sometimes it can fit in with the game design well. Like the old Dragon Warrior (Dragon Quest) games. The only times restoring mana/hp really became an issue is when you were going on a long trip, like exploring randomly, or in to a dungeon that was meant to be a challenge. Of course those games are extremely simple compared to today's games and MUCH smaller, so artificial limitations to up the challenge aren't nearly as onerous.
end of game, stocked full of stuff which can decimate a small town instantly. still won't use them, afterall need to plan for retirement savings to use after I kill the main boss.
I also dislike dnd's spell slots for this reason. Unless you know for certain how the game is going to go, it's really tempting to hold onto them "just in case something really hard shows up".
It doesn't help that in many DND video games, encounters are designed to be won without spell slots, because you don't know if the player is going to get here first or last fight of the day.
Sooo many RPGs suffer from having unreliably-scarce-therefore-necessarily-redundant items. What's the fucking point. Game designers, talk to me, what the hell is going through that thick skull of yours. Either I need the ~~~Item ~~~ to win the fight or I don't, what's the fucking deal.
At least actual D&D has a DM that can pace fights&rests so that spell slots are there when needed and empty when not (ideally). But BG3 isn't clever about rest placements so the only intelligent thing to do is to short rest after every fight, but then what was the point of re-using D&D's combat system?!
Game designers, talk to me, what the hell is going through that thick skull of yours. Either I need the ~~~Item ~~~ to win the fight or I don’t, what’s the fucking deal.
I imagine some people just use items willy-nilly and are happier for it. Since every encounter is designed to be won without using any items, you might as well use them all. But that feels bad, Several kinds of bad. For me, anyway.
A related problem is when you do use the item, and then later it's like "Oh, you used that? Well, now you can't get the ultimate sword you could have traded it for." Also related, "if you open the chest in act 1, you don't get the mega-sword in act 3".
At least actual D&D has a DM that can pace fights&rests so that spell slots are there when needed and empty when not (ideally). But BG3 isn’t clever about rest placements so the only intelligent thing to do is to short rest after every fight, but then what was the point of re-using D&D’s combat system?!
I am strongly in agreement.
I imagine they started out with actual time pressure and limited food supplies, but I imagine then they realized most people hate that. Most people hate timed quests. Imagine being eight hours in, enjoying act 1, and suddenly the game is unwinnable because you ran out of food. There's no human DM to be like "Seriously guys, the necromancer is mere hours away from the macguffin. You can't rest another day", or "You sure? Really? No take backs? Fine. The next morning you are awakened by the sky blackening and blood raining from the heavens. You think maybe the necromancer you were chasing got the macguffin while you were taking a day off."
This is one thing I liked better in 4E with encounter powers, and drastically better in WoD with scene powers.
I remember trying to explain world of darkness to a DND friend in college. I was like, "you have these cool powers, but it's mostly a question of should you use them or not. Like if you just dominate everyone, that's fucked up and eventually someone will find out and bring you consequences "
He was like, "that sounds totally broken, lol"
It's a different mindset for sure.
This was so bad in BG3, I didn’t even get the full mechanics of using potions until close to the end.
Spare 6 seconds of your day to watch this masterful depiction of this effect: https://youtu.be/rgU4Oum8SLg
(And then spare 6 hours watching the rest of ProZD's skits)
I really didn't think it would only be six seconds
Now imagine how many you need to watch to hit 6 hours.
As it turns out, I lied. The full playlist of his skits is only 1 hour, 52 minutes, 25 seconds according to https://ytplaylist-len.sharats.dev/ . The playlist of skit compilations, instead of each skit being a separate video, is 1 hour, 55 minutes, 25 seconds.
I wonder where those extra 3 minutes came from.
6 hours = 66060 = 21600 seconds
Skits around 12 seconds long +/-6
That's 1800 skits.
If each skit promotes NordVPN! Buy now with your purchase of War Thunder! (~30 secs) and you accidentally watch each skit three times, then that's 200 skits.
If you take a twenty minute toilet and food break every half hour of watching, then that's I dunno, 90 skits?
why are you eating on the toilet? just eat while watching
dont tell me how to live my life
how about eating while watching the toilet? is that a fair compromise from donut holing the porcelain fryer
how about you zip it with the judgement and let a man finish his bowl of jerky on his porcelain throne
i'm just concerned poseidon might kiss his nuggies and that's wasted nuggies
Leave Poseidon out of this! He and I are cool. A sweet whisper at night to his tender lips will see me through
okay okay may all your plops go downward and not up amen
amen
Sorry fairies, you can never leave these four bottles...
Leave the bottle? Over my dead body!
I don't know if I've ever used a single Megalixer in any Final Fantasy game ever
The only time I remember using one was against Emerald Weapon when I was a child. I also learned that mimic will get the item effect without consuming the item.
My potion horde is proof that I didn't need them to beat the game. Ignore the numerous holes where I continuously bashed my head into the wall for hours because I refused to use my potions for something as trivial as a late game boss.
(/s for those who need it)
In total honesty this is exactly why I hoard that shit.
When I was a teen, many many moons ago, I played ff8. It was my first ff game. I used items whenever I needed them but never bothered stocking up because well.. meh.
And then I saved my game right before the end boss, in a location you can’t go back from.
My inventory had a handful of items; 2 phoenix downs, a handful of potions, and that’s about it.
I then proceeded to spend 172 hours trying the end boss over and over and over (roughly 3 weeks of all my free time), different strategies, different patterns, different starting lineups, the works.
And you know what? I beat that bitch. It would have been faster and easier to replay the entire game, but I’m not that smart so.
Ever since then I hoard as much as I can. Do I have 500,000,000 gold? Good, but I still won’t spend it if I don’t have to, other than to have full stacks of every consumable which I probably won’t use. There are games that I don’t use consumables at all, or only for the first couple of character levels..
Using the scroll of fireball I conveniently found after accepting the quest to defeat this overpowered boss?
I'm clearly meant to grind hard until I can beat him with my level 1 sword.
I've never heard a good game design defense of limited resources as a game mechanic. It's lazy, not creative, and it breaks the most important 'rule of fun' as being one of the most unfun things in gaming. There are so many other actually fun ways to handle item rarity - simple would be make them expensive, hard to farm, hard to find. More complex but more fun would be lore related ways to acquire them - like rune arcs in Elden Ring, why not have a repeatable hidden dungeon explaining the source of the item that has one as a reward after a difficult run through it?
The problem is that game design is difficult. One of the most prominent quotes in game design is that:
Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game.
Source: https://www.designer-notes.com/game-developer-column-17-water-finds-a-crack/
Which means, if you make an item farmable, some players will subject themselves to hours upon hours of unfun gameplay, because it's technically more optimal to farm it. And if you make it more tedious, they will just spend even more time on it.
A big part of good game design is just avoiding bad player experiences like:
Giving less skilled players consumables can allow those players to progress when they get stuck.
Not giving an infinite amount of those consumables encourages skilled players to take on somewhat more of a challenge.
And genuinely just limiting rather than allowing farming prevents players from optimizing the fun out.
Ultimately, it's significantly less of a problem when skilled players don't use their limited consumables, than any of these other scenarios.
Having said all that, a genre where having limited resources actually works well, is roguelikes. Knowing that all your consumables and whole character might be gone, if you don't use some of your consumables in a dangerous situation, works wonders.
Of course, the downside here is that you likely exclude less skilled players.
Well that's a pretty good defense, gotta admit.
Also you had me at Roguelikes, definitely agree there. Absolutely my favorite genre of game partly because it 'solves' a lot of those problems of balance and such that no other genre can.
I'm not a huge gamer; what is the difference between a limited resource and one that is hard to find?
The difference is that one is freely useable without worry that you'll have permanently wasted it, and the other weighs heavily on your mind that you've wasted it permanently.
Hoarding behavior in video games has a lot do with players feeling like they've found a key for a special lock, but not knowing where that lock is. And part of the blame for that can be laid on game designers for not putting any appropriate locks in. There's a reason why, though: limited, wastable resources being keys to anything means players can soft-lock themselves out of content.
Limited, wastable resources make quite a bit more intuitive sense in, say, Roguelikes, where runs are short and death is frequent enough that having a special, death-saving antidote as a key does actually fit the problem of you dying constantly.
There's also the added effect that these resources are powerful, meaning that if you did save them for a boss fight or something, you might feel like you were skipping the fight instead of using your wits to overcome a difficulty. It lacks satisfaction.
All that said, I don't really agree. Recognizing that these resources are, by nature, superfluous and counterintuitively low-value means that I should use them flippantly, and that has actually made them way more fun.
[edit] Actually, one more point: You can think of limited, wastable, powerful resources as having a kind of negative inflation. That is, they become more valuable the longer you hold onto them. If they get you past a difficult fight, well, the next fight will be more difficult, so shouldn't you use it there? Much like with real currencies, this creates a system in which people are punished for spending, so they won't spend.
Really good rundown and I agree the most from my own personal preferences (as a completionist hoarder) with the last point you edited in. And states the point I was trying to make better than I did because - it doesn't create more fun, it actually can keep you from having fun with all the things they included.
Yeah, but I tend to see this as players failing to meet the game on its own terms. Not that a lot of them know they're failing to, but still.
What's a good example of this...
I got an older coworker of mine to play Inscryption. That game has a safe puzzle with a 3-digit combination. He told me, after he'd played as much as he could bare, that he really wished games would stop doing that. A 3-digit combination is not secure enough; you can sit there and try every number in about 5 minutes. Which is what he had done. He had sat there for 5 minutes trying every number.
This really puzzled me. Not that I disagreed. I saw the same safe, I recognized I could probably crack it whenever I wanted. But rather that he was willing to actually sit there and do it, knowing it wasn't fun, knowing this probably wasn't "intended," only so he could complain about it later. I think that I had more fun with this safe because I was willing to let the game tell me when I had the solution, and let it work me into this eureka moment it obviously wanted me to have once I'd put two and two together.
Could the safe have used a few more digits to force him down the same path? I mean... maybe? I guess so. But, I think that it's important as players to recognize that all games are some form of this safe puzzle. You can install CheatEngine and modify any game's health and bonus numbers to make yourself invincible whenever you want, it's not even difficult to do, but invincibility is not what makes a game fun. The game must impose limits on your freedom so that your skill has something to overcome.
Too many Megalixirs would trivialize any Final Fantasy battle. Too few would never let you punch above your station. If you can recognize that a game is giving you items you're not using, I think that you should just use them. It's either a bit of fun that you're missing out on because you're optimizing your play too much, or as Ephera explained, it may just be a catch-up mechanic for less skilled players. But in either case, you don't really gain anything by refusing to use them. This is a self-imposed prison people lock themselves into.
42 Elixir left after credit roll
42 Grand Moontouched Elixers of Strength & Sorcery, they sell for 1,000 gold a piece.
And you're constantly short on gold.
Hey, if I can get through without it, I obviously didn't need it. Might as well save it until I can't.
pulls at collar going "nngyah" while looking at 20+ rune arcs in my back pocket and a completely unused Flask of Wondrous Physick, despite hundreds of hours in and (I think!) finishing the main stories of both ER and Erdtree
You do know that the Flask refills at Sites of Grace, right?
lol I did not! I was too afraid to even try it and lose the ingredients!
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