/v/ - Video Games

I get ya, OP. I'm in the same boat sometimes. Nowadays, if I pick up a potion, I drink it up first chance I get. When a game decides that the potion is needed for a boss just around the corner, it very rarely fucks me over since one can always CHIM their way back in time using save files.

The trick is to have the mindset of someone who doesn't give a fuck.

>I'll save it for the right time

>Oh shit I just beat the game without using it

>mfw elixir-tan is a virgin

>>15586054

I liked the fact that potions in Path of Exile recharged by killing enemies, it means you don't have to worry about not being able to use potions in the long run as you can usually find enough enemies to kill to recharge your potions anyways.

>playing shitty Silent Hill on PSP

>weapons have durability

>hoard the single-use weapons

>final boss

>throw a bunch of tvs, typewriters, and filing cabinets and shit at Satan

>>15586054

I have the same issue.

>Not cheesing the final boss with all the items you accumulated

I think all of you retards have zero brainpower.

>>15586054

Thats nothing compared to my case some time ago.

>Playing Arcanum

>Create a charismatic melee character, who specialize in making technical medicines to buff oneself and my companions.

<Overall in the end I dont use them that much because I have large group of powerful companions (And no, I didnt get the dog), even when I have multpiles medicines & potions.

>>15586337

>implying the final boss is tough enough to warrant any cheese

>>15586054

I know this feel, it's refreshing when you play roguelikes because you generally can't sell them anywhere so come to use them as panic buttons (as you should).

stealth in fps (let alone anything else) is almost always trash

Soldier of Fortune 1 has a stealth bar for some reason

every weapon in every mega man game except the ones that are required to beat wily like bubble in 2

do people really play by switching out weapons all the time? it seems like such a waste of time you could just shoot everything with lemons

Sort of like OP but specifically with blessings and things of that nature. They're hardly ever for anything I'm built toward and the bonus for something I'm not going to use is fairly pointless.

>>15586427

>i'm trash therefore it is trash

You must be some shade of nigger.

Magic

What's the point if you can just beat things with a stick?

It's more fun that way too.

My biggest gripe with RPGs is the overabundance of items. I get why they're there, but it bogs the games down somewhat.

>>15586054

I started having more fun in RPGs after I stopped doing that. Take Morrowind for example. I used to be a compulsive kleptomaniac hoarder. I still have fond memories of trying to acquire every single mug of mead in the entire island of Solstheim, but you know I never drank any of it.

Now I use items constantly, and I leave entire dungeons and corpses barely looted because I realized the trash wasn't worth my time. I stopped staking out rat nest bases that would be filled with sixteen tons of crap I would never ever not ever use and started relying on just what I could carry with me. I crafted potions on the road with what I found, and drank them in the next fight. I picked up a nice attack scroll and used it to kill the same sorcerer who stuffed it into that urn in the first place. It's much more fun and immersive, and it extends the best part of every game: the hobo phase.

>>15586435

>do people really play by switching out weapons all the time?

Yes they do. Most of the time it's to shoot at a certain angle/arc. Other times the enemy is immune to lemons.

One of the fewest RPGs I've found consumable use actually useful was divinity original sin 2, considering you die very easily in that game with just a few hits, healing potions are very valuable, also grenades to Apply statuses to the terrain and enemies, the tea, various buff potions etc…

The game actively encourages the player to use consumables by making almost every encounter a unique challenge.

I hate when there's no thought required for using consumables, because you're free to suck down 20 apples while the game's paused. I have to limit myself to realtime actions to feel like I used some sort of strategy.

Life skills, crafting, economics. I just want to kill shit, I don't have time for things that aren't killing shit.

>>15586739

I LOVE cooking and crafting skills in games. My runescape character back in the day had 99 cooking even though his combat level was only like 60. Especially when it's a multi-stage process where you have to craft intermediary components like pie crust before you can make the pie.

>>15586337

>See boss battle approaching

>Use all potions

>Cutscene

>All potion effects gone before the fight even starts

>Cant use potions during the fight

>>15586550

>Critical HP is so low that even with the extra defense you will still get onehit killed

>Only a very specific build can even make use of this

>This very specific build gets nerfed

I swear to god if a game actually has good design it is most likely because of some oversight or other mistakes.

>>15586054

I have this same problem with consumables. I think its a symptom of being a white man. We like to plan ahead for the winter, so we would rather save and stockpile than use here and now in the moment.

>>15586751

I don't think 55 monks ever became totally useless in Guild Wars. That was my favorite "defense higher with low HP" mode because it was so technical. Monks had protection spells that reduced damage taken to a % of total HP, and healing spells that restored a flat HP amount per second. If they min-maxed and cut their own HP down as low as it could go, the % of total HP ended up being like 1 damage, which was totally negated by the flat regeneration healing.

i generally did the same with trade goods in wow

sure i COULD spend an hour posting everything on the auction house, but why bother, gold hardly means anything

>>15586578

>tfw you never got ALL of them at least because probably 20 were stuck in the map because Elder Scrolls.

>>15586785

>bag filled with junk people can use

>want it empty but don't want to spam trade chat or have my mail box filled up when the auction inevitably fails

>post all that crap slightly below the going price on auction

>tons of asshurt faggots, probably chinks, report me

>get caught in the autoban system

>quit game

>>15586054

I can be the same way but in puzzle games. Like a key-holding situation for example. For the key(s) I have now, which and how many will I need for the massive treasure room with a skud missile upgrade, being leagues better than my bare fists. Am I going to need a key for hidden paths? Which door is going to be the end room door and prevents me from exploring the rest of the level? THIS MATTERS A LOT IN RANDOM CHANCE GAMES. LOOKIN AT YOU, BINDING OF ISAAC. CERTAINLY NOT FUCKING LIMITED TO THIS. DOORS THAT LOCK UPON ENTERING OUTSIDE OF A CINEMATIC ARE CANCER

>>15586054

Depends on the game and if you can readily craft/upgrade potions. Odin Sphere for instance winds up making heavy use of alchemy as supplement, be it additional damage types, effects (freeze, burn, blow), healing, curing, and buffing. And while rank 9 ones take a fair bit of bolstering to make (combine potions and/or higher ranked flasks), it's not as if you can't readily remix one.

While on the topic of potions or healing items, I don't really get why more games don't go the percentage route. A basic, say, "Heals 30%" retains its effect regardless of how high a character's health tops out endgame, leaving them still desirable to find or buy at endgame, compared to how statically increasing items see the lower rank ones quickly wear out their welcome and become either "out of danger top-off" tier or vendor trash tier by a certain point and beyond that just clutter the inventory.

>>15586550

>>15586751

Increasing evasion alongside, say, critical chance/armor ignorance would be better. Call it "Desperation" or something. I mean, obviously a character that low on health would want to reduce any further damage, but trying to avoid taking more altogether, and/or seeking to finish the foe faster would be more fitting.

Or in another style, something like WA3 with the "Valiant" Arcana, buffing with which adds the difference between the affected character's max health and current health to outright damage, making it better for them to maintain a lowish health than be healed much. Combined with Permanence buff (removes all time limits from existing buffs for the duration of combat/until death), and you can try to keep up the risky vs reward as long as possible, assuming you can maintain still being badly hurt but not enough to die. This still has the penalty of draining Vitality by a bunch for post-combat recovery though (points out of 100 per character, each consumed restoring 1% health, automatically ending when at 100% health or Vitality is 0, and regained as you explore or use an inn) and short of that, either getting into battle to use Arcana to heal (could be risky if at low health on its own), or blowing through some of your stock of health restoratives which aren't sold (and have to be either found or the ability to be grow unlocked), but it does make that sort of playstyle have a good value.

>>15586785

In the old days it was useful. Stacks of shit for people who are too lazy to farm themselves, and can be bought from others in town, along with vendor bought shit needed to make what they're looking for, adds up to a convenience fee many are willing to pay. Though I suppose it also speaks to demand towards bot farming/gold selling, as well as a lack of leaving town for the greater world for increasing amounts of time on the buyer's end. Even with Runescape, I remember making decent money as a low level non-member farming feathers to sell to directly sell to fishers and off-world members that took them home to fletch with.

>>15586917

>Tents (although these items may be exclusive to the old tales games)

No they are not exclusive to the series, and even then in-series (and I'll admit could be remembering wrong here, and am speaking of entries with English options) I think as a consumable field item, they might actually be exclusive to Vesperia and Tempest, at least as far as what's in English. Most Tales allow for readily casting healing spells outside of combat (beyond sole-CC ones and ones with flow-chart style combat), leaving TP more of the issue in such cases (which the sole-CC ones obviously don't have). By Act 3 in Vesperia, the best use for them is to try to change the regional weather/time of day to get specific monsters to hunt, and in Tempest if I remember they're used as some pseudo-skit prompt of the characters talking around their fire, as opposed to simply restoration.

>Items that do elemental damage, like flare/frost/thunder/earth/light/dark crystals, again what's the point when i can just cast a spell that does 10 times the damage of one of those? Most of the time those items are rare drops too and can't be bought anywhere so they're no good even in a low level run or something like that.

WA3 at least utilizes them well. While you can swap mediums mid-combat to give your main caster access to elements not in what you have as his "standard" build (you can only have three mediums per character and thus up to 12 arcana at once), enemies killed by arcana drop a gem containing the essence of the equivalent spell and usable by anyone, the effectiveness of which still depending on the user. Thus you can cast spells usually set to your worse casters with someone better without a need to always switch everyone's builds up. Only downside is that Extension (a force power of said caster) doesn't work on them, while Mystic (an original for a character with mid rank casting ability) does. But again, the draw there is that everyone in the game has ability to cast, but with various effectiveness, rather than having one character designated for spells (in which they likely have wider elemental coverage without need to use items as substitutes).

>"use this in battle and get a 50% boost for a whole 30 seconds"

Using it in conjunction with something you can't use real often to better maximize effectiveness? That is assuming it stacks with other buffs, or that the ability you want to use benefits from the increase to begin with. Strikes me as better value than just trying to use it for run of the mill stuff due to short duration. Though if it's also a low cost to use self-buffing ability (as opposed to an item you might have to farm/buy), you might as well use it whenever you feel it might make enough difference.

I almost never use items in RPGs period. The fact of the matter is that that the vast majority of RPGs are incredibly easy with item usage, so I always have a much more interesting time not using them at all. Tales of games are some of the few exceptions, refusing to use gels or poison remedies early on can be a quick ticket to gameover.

>>15586054

>>15587086

I'm going to say that Legend of Dragoon did potions/consumables well.

The most important part of this is that you could only hold 32 items.

With the exception of the repeatable-use items (more on that later), you could buy every item *somewhere* in the game. Moreover, healing magic (and magic in general) was really expensive, so you'd want to use your items instead of magic to heal. Of course, you could always pitch your turn to guard (recovering 10% HP), but then you're pitching turns.

You had a lot of attack items, but they were really kind of sucky compared to the healing potions, so you'd often just throw one out just to get rid of it during a mid-boss fight (so you'd have space for a healing item for the real boss fight). So you never felt bad about using items that were consumable.

You also had a small pile of repeatable-use items that you could use once every fight. These usually required some effort to get, and the best one you could just spam for giga-huge damage. Most of them were just buffs, though. Holding onto one of these took up an item slot, though, so you had to be sure you actually wanted the buff for later battles if you wanted to keep holding onto the item.

I think this is almost as good a system as you can have for potions.

>>15593616

Never got that. Either you pull some bullshit where you never get hit, which would make the game trivial anyway, or it is only useful on monsters that cannot hurt you anyway.

>>15586337

I did this with Persona 5. I was on whatever the hardest difficulty was called, and so my guys were all about 10 levels lower than they normally would be due to lower exp gains. If I didn't have a bunch of full party hp/mp heals lined up that encounter would have been impossible. My team ran through about 3 mp bars in the fight just because it took so long and I had to have enemy attack down/ally defense up active throughout the whole thing. Regardless of how the game went to shit at the end, my 30 minute battle with the final boss was pretty memorable.

>>15593617

It can be pretty good if you use it right. For instance if common enemies usually take 2 hits to kill and the damage increase is enough to make them one hit kills, then you can go from having a preemptive attack + a trade to just the preemptive attack thus cutting out getting hit yourself. Alternatively you can go for survival increases that keep your life at max for example evasion + life steal. It's also good if you want to be the glassest of cannons and die in one hit anyways, then you've got 100% up time regardless.

>>15593659

There aren't any recipes

You get a modifier by destroying an item and you can put that on other shit.

>>15593666

but i hoard all my weapons because i don't want to destroy it.

Anything that's limited use, I tend to stay away from unless it recharges automatically. If it's something you find in the environment, I'll hoard it - but never really use it. Especially buff/debuff items, because I'm always confident I can get through the current situation without them - and I want them to be there in case I do need them later on… which usually never comes, especially these days with how piss easy games are.

>>15586755 (checked)

That's actually very insightful, and you see Asians do it as well because they're also adapted to hard winters, but you rarely see shitskins stockpiling anything.

>>15586550

When ever a game does this i normally take a few seconds to stare and wonder what the dev was probably thinking when he put that in.

I'm almost 99% certain that when a dev does this the stat isn't actually there just looks like it is

Devs probably do this to fill some state qouta set by their boss and by doing this they can mark something off as being done without doing much at all.

Atleast that's my theory anyway, theres literally no other reason i can think of as to why that stat would ever exist.

>>15593640

It really isn't that complicated, but it does look complicated.

This is especially true when most combat in the game can be done by just holding left click and chuging potions anyway.

I used to hoard shit like that, then I realized who gives a fuck and use em freely when I feel the need. Maybe I'll keep one or two in reserve in case of a really bad situation, but generally I try to freely use them whenever needed after hoarding so many valuable items through so many games and never actually using them, that's dumb.

>>15593616

Good when you're grinding or re-clearing areas, speeds things up.

>move slower, gain more defense

Never. If a game doesn't allow the player to avoid and control their own movements on their own terms, I probably wouldn't want to play it. The first thing I do in a lot of cases is just strip everything off I don't need. I also tend to use items almost as soon as I have an excuse so they don't clutter my inventory.

>>15586054

grenades it just seems like a waste of time and thought that could go to something more important.

>>15586054

Well, not potions but I rarely use stat boosters. Especially if it's battle only stat boosters. Permanent boosts, yes…but temporary stat boosters? That's just vendor trash to me. Or in Digimon World 2? I never use the R-Cannon or the Z-Cannon. For one, they just clog up the inventory (better save those for Missile Gun ammos so I can shoot Rocks and Electro things). Never use the R-Cannon because really, the ammo are situational at best and the Z-Cannon's ammo aren't very strong damage wise (and there's barely any noticeable elemental weakness in Digimon World 2)

>>15593771

I've got something even worse than that

>hoard your ammo for the final boss

>"Hey anon you're about to fight the final boss! Take this Cockblaster 9000 which I conveniently couldn't give you until now! It's way better than all your other weapons and has infinite ammo!"

>>15593837

A well designed game will reward you for using the longer ones. Ways to do this:

>more style points

>game does not allow you to do infinite ground/air/ground/air loops, and you're done after the air combo finisher/groundslam, so an extended ground combo does more damage

>longer combo breaks guard or gives you a better launcher

A badly designed game won't punish you for using the same combo forever obviously.

>>15593836

>save everything for the final boss

>final boss is a QTE cutscene

>>15593635

In well-designed games the idea of that dynamic is to make lethal easier and faster to pull off to give it a balance. Most skip that part.

>>15586371

Play Etrian Odyssey. You can poison and curse bosses to death. It's actually super effective.

>>15586757

600/smite was the best one, but then they nerfed Spell Breaker and Holy Wrath. I'm still really fucking mad about that, to this day. It was such a fun farming build but they killed it and left all kinds of gay shadow form shit intact.

>>15586613

I dislike how you're limited in obtaining consumables. Sure you can find plenty of opportunities to use consumables, but you're going to have to go around town every hour buying up all the potion bottles and mushrooms if you want to have potions ready. You should be able to buy stuff in greater quantities.

>Extremely short-range melee attack with no invincibility frames

>Enemies and bosses deal contact damage

>Using this attack almost guarantees that you'll take a hit as well

>The damage you deal only outpaces the contact damage you receive if the enemy/boss is weak against it

>>15594152

>19031hp damage over 13 minutes

Sounds like death to me

>>15594159

But it's got electrolytes.

>>15594152

been playing torchlight 2 again recently, I wish the game got more support from runic and we didn't have to get our "balance changes" from modders that overdo everything, elite is fun tho

Sometimes I'm actually rewarded for my hoarding because a lot of RPGs have a large difficulty spike in the endgame and those consumables you've been hoarding make a difference.

>>15594177

>Wanting a -500% to electric resist

>>15586435

This. There are only extremely rare cases where I can bring myself to use any weapon other than P outside the boss fight. I think I remember using Top Man's weapon to get over some platforming section with some little jumping dudes or something that would kill you not by doing a lot of damage, but by knocking you into the pits. This is literally the only time I would use the weapons to defeat enemies who could otherwise be defeated. There are also times when you can use weapons to get into special areas and stuff. Can't risk missing out on that.

Any time there's a game with weapons that have ammo, but then one weapon that has infinite ammo, I have to use the infinite ammo unless it literally won't work for the task.

And yeah like OP, I can never use any consumables. I can't sell them either. Even in Pokemon where you have an item like Nuggets where the only purpose is selling it. My goal is to have a complete collection of all items you can possibly collect. This includes money, so I also can't spend any money that isn't required to be spent. Though of course that would be pointless because it's not like I'm using consumables.

>>15586819

>Which door is going to be the end room door and prevents me from exploring the rest of the level?

THIS SHIT. Doesn't have to be a literal door. More often it's "which direction will activate the cutscene?" I'll try to look at which way looks like "the wrong way" to go and deliberately go that way to look for secrets and stuff, but sometimes you guess wrong, get a cutscene, and have to hope the game doesn't autosave when the cutscene activates.

Also, if the game has any missable content whatsoever, and I find out I missed it, I have to just stop playing. Even the slightest branching path will completely kill a game for me, unless it's different enough to warrant a completely different playthrough. GTA IV and V had this and it caused me to not complete either one, despite 100%ing all the PS2/PSP ones.

ITT: BRAINLETS

>>15594881

Thanks for another great post, cuckchan

>>15586054

>>15586578

That Morrowind example is why I try to limit my carry weight significantly in TES games, coupled with mods that add bags that increase carry weight. Helps to not try to take every single item possible along and preserves that precious bit of immersion from not carrying a ton of weapons if you don't have the straps and bags for it.

>>15594897

Fuck off cuckchanner

>>15594959

>be disgruntled game programmer working overtime at 2 AM wishing you could see your wife and kids again

>have to satisfy quota of adding 500 spells to the game every day

>just do +0.00005% SPD over 15ms spells

>"All done boss! Can I go home now?"

>>15594982

Makes you wonder if all those bugs and glitches these days are small rebellions from disgruntled workers, alongside the usual incompetence, anxiety, fear and overwork.

>>15586550

>he hasn't seen Danger Mario

>>15594997

Speaking as someone that works in a software house, no. Even decent programmers often make logical mistakes that are easy to miss. Time and money are scarce so we usually just shrug and call it a known bug and move on to do other stuff.

I imagine for big game companies, they do the same thing. They're more interested in baiting the whales than making something genuinely great.

>>15586551

This guy gets it

>game has 10 different temporary stat boosting potions

>never use any of them

>difficult fight appears

>use all 10 of them at the same time to become and unkillable god of chaos and destruction

>in the end, don't even know which chem in the cocktail I should start using more often

>>15586551

Unless that stick is made of silver, can't hit a ghost with it.

>buffs are useless

That's why you should play Shin Megami Tensei

>>15594448

Super guard makes sense. The timing is tighter, but it blocks all of the damage instead of just blocking one point of damage. That already makes it better against any enemy that deals more than one point of damage per hit. It also deals 1 point of damage in return to the attacking enemy, which can be valuable against enemies that can't normally be attacked by either jump or hammer (the spike parabuzzy and bristle enemies are the only two I can think of)

>>15586179

ah yes the syllable of royalty

Bombers in ww2 flight sims. Who the fuck enjoys flying them?

>>15595496

>Who the fuck enjoys flying them?

Muslims?

>>15586293

>never use Red Essences in SMRPG

>blow them all on Smithy

>roll over him with god mode

Sometimes being a hoarder pays off.

>>15593893

>>15593836

>>15593771

>Hoard ammo

>Cutscene happens and you are captured

>all weapons and ammo taken from you

See, Deus Ex did this the right way: you can break into the storage room and get literally everything in your inventory back, down to the upgrades you had on your guns and the ammo you were carrying for them. Most other games fuck it up.

>>15598788

>Most other games

The enemy taking your inventory and putting it in a chest is pretty common though. Right off the bat I can think of Dishonored, Dragon Age Origins, Pathologic, DXHR missing link, even Hollow Knight if I recall correctly.

Conversely, the only game I remember where inventory is taken forever is LISA.

>>15595008

danger mario is the only example I can think of where this works

I didn't really bother with gems in xenoblade because the crafting system was really weird and you constantly had to shuffle gems around whenever you changed your equipment. They just never really felt necessary, and even when I did use them, I never really noticed any effect.

>>15598844

I do not remember this happening in Hollow Knight unless you count the flashback or fake bank bitch, who better have my money when I find her bitch ass. I also don't count LISA because if you could get your shit back it wouldn't be a meaningful choice, so having it all gone for good is the correct thing to do. I think that the game where it kicked me in the nads the hardest was Half Life 1, especially because you get a whole bunch of good shit right before it all gets taken away. It also happens in Serious Sam at one point, which is a huge dick move because that's the kind of game where ammo hoarding for tough spots is the name of the game because you never know when the next 100-strong Kleer horde is going to round the corner.

>>15586054

I'm the same with most magic systems.