Everyone, I promise, I actually do like video games... Anyway, I hope you enjoy this one. Jesse (the dude who edited the fuck out of this video) and I are working hard to get videos out more frequently, so, erm, after you finish this one, get hyped for another one coming out in a few weeks.
youre right sir. when i play games i also dont use the Enhancable items as you call them. I ALSO always "wait for the riiiight moment" but that moment never comes I can just get through the game normally. You always think to yourself "What if something more difficult than this comes and I wont have the item then? Ill just not use it." and shit. I know Minecraft might not be the best example but when I played through the "story" (prepairing for the Journey to The End and killing the ender dragon) I never used the potions you can make at all, Cuz I just didnt need them. Plus when it only lasts a limited time, The effort to get it seems pointless.
Clearly you like video games! That is why you critique them, is it not? I don't know why you would say such a thing. Actually I do. I think there is a bad thought process going around where if you say something you don't like in a game, you don't like games in general.
Looking forward to more thoughtful, creative, well-written, and well-edited content! Thank you for all the hard work you and Jesse do; it really shows.
@@bananaboomer6663 Happened to me once in FFV, the first time I played I thought it was over so I used everything I had earnestly. But then ExDeath comes back to beat the shit out of me, and with my inventory clean I couldn't do much against it :v
BrokenLifeCycle ‘well maybe you can use osmose to steal mana from the foe’ ‘I would but I already did that so much that the enemy ran out of mana’ ‘So that’s why the boss isn’t using their magic anymore’
Alternative options: 1. don't add so many consumables. So many of them provide minor boosts to irrelevant things. 2. Make them reliable to resupply. Having items that recharge when you rest or go to a safe zone or can always be found at a store are easier to use (psychologically) than ones where you never know when you will see the next one.
I hate having a good potion or something in a game, but I can only use it once I use it and then another situation comes along where I would need it even more than I would have earlier
What I hate the most is when consumables are something like "+10% attack speed for 10 seconds". Like I feel like I'm wasting it every second I'm NOT attacking.
I don't know if this is a feature in newer battlefield games as well but Battlefield 4's XP boosts would only tick down during game play, I always liked that.
@@Fatdogg2 ESO and warframe only goes down while you're online, but if you want to relax and chill out and you have say 3 hours left of an 8 hour buff you dont want to play to relax and you might skip on playing the game that time or aggressively farming when all you want is to relax
For years, Skyrim actually trained me to completely bypass and ignore any form of alchemy/herbal gathering system in any game. What broke me of that habit was actually the Witcher 3. That game, IMO did alchemy in the best possible way, and perhaps it wasn't as realistic (potions magically refill themselves on resting) it took the boring chore feeling out of gathering herbs and making the potions. Once you did it once, it was done forever, and you'd always have that potion, only needing to re-gather materials for upgrading the potion.
Had the exact same experience, Skyrim brewing looked so boring, tedious, and unnecessary that I never used it and applied the same thing to my first Witcher play through. It was only on my second, higher difficulty play through that I realized they replenish after meditation (so you don’t have to worry about saving for the next boss) and that they’re actually useful.
this exact situation in games keeps me from liking most games. like your fucked, unless you were saving the game every 5 seconds, which is not fucking fun, you're gonna have to replay the entire thing again, including the boring shit you already did. Its a fatal flaw in basically any game that has consumable items and i hate it. id rather just have an ability that has a 1000 second cooldown or some shit
@@-Zakedodead Polar opposite of how it was in Demon's Souls. Farming moon grass is the reason I never beat it. Bonfires and Estus Flasks were suuuuch a welcome change
Happened a few times, the only thing that happened is that I started paying more attention to the boss ques and I just played better. Would have I used the items if I had them? Yep. But if beat the game until the final boss, you should be able to kick his ass.
i almost never use consumables, because i always fear i need them later. the reason why i used potions and oils so much in the witcher 3 was, because they refill after a rest
Refill after rest is an underused item mechanic, all items should be easily replenished, and limited on the amount you can use between each rest, for fun sake.
@@lo4tr ^^was just about to type this, in ds2 I never touched any healing other than estus and lifegems, because the bigger heals felt like I couldn't get them back (I've played all the souls just felt like ds2 was the best example, as well as my favorite in the series)
Yes, the Witcher 3 handled consumables the best. One-time craft of said item and unlimited* usage. I hate hording crafting materials and I don't usually use consumables.
"This potion makes all of your attacks crits for the next 20 seconds" got it, save that thing forever. "This potion causes you to hallucinate strange colors and you will stumble around in a drunken stupor." glug, glug, glug!
Das me with Skooma "Ugh what is this useless potion. It only gives 25 stamina, just another wine" *Lears that it's super fucking addicting and strictly illegal in the lore* "*GLUG GLUG GLUG GLUG*"
There's something similar in a terraria mod, calamity I think but might be something else. There's a brew that gives you some pretty insane hallucinations so you see a boss or enemy duplicated 4 times, but you get a really good buff
I think, a way games could also address this hesitance to use active consumable items (at least for me), is to always give you at least two of them, especially the first time, so you get the chance to try it out without the feeling of wasting something you might need later, giving you an idea of what it does and when it would be handy, or even just showing you that it’s not the total game changer you need to hold on to for just the right moment.
@@shakeweller Still, Dark Souls strongly engourages hoarding, starting from the moment you realize that an item is gone for good and isn't back in your inventory after you've died. "Oh a new boss. Let's try and learn it's patterns a little bit before I use a resin." [Learns patterns]. "Oh well, I think I can try without help and keep the resin for a later, even harder boss." [Beats game without using any item, ever].
@Sorley Walker At first I was thinking about the nibelungenlied (thats german but it seems it is called the same in english) and how siegfried slayed a dragon in there, but all the sources I could find just now separate the dragon and the treasure. It would have fitted as it is from 1200 and inspired by norse myths that were also tolkiens inspiritaions for lord of the rings. Upon further search I found other stories that contain the concept, mostly from Greece and Norse myths. 1.Beowulf slayed a dragon that horded treasure 2. Fafnir was a human that stole his brothers gold and turned into a dragon to guard it 3.The golden fleece was guarded by a dragon 4. In one of Heracles (hercules) trials he needed to get golden apples that were guarded by a dragon. Admitedly in the geek examples (3 and 4) the dragons are not horders of treasure but guardians normaly assigned by the actuall owner.
I think one major issue is of item scarcity: if you believe you might regret using at that time because you can’t get another one, you will save it for later due to its rarity. You will try to match the rarity of the situation with the item, causing you to always postpone so to never experience that regret
@@dhans9662 an extremely overwhelming majority of games give you an abundance. Dark souls, Elden Ring, Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Dragon Age, Kingdoms of Amulur, Dragons Dogma, Final Fantasy (though in Final Fantasy you actually need them) and more.
Definitely this for me! The scarcity of an item determines it's value, followed by how much I need to use it. I grew up watching my older brother play games and they were always better at them then me. So while they could get through a section in 2-3 attempts and only use a couple of potions, I would need 20 potions/buffs. I always try to avoid fights because "I'm just not good at them" in my thinking, even in games where I actually am good (or at least okay at). Combat is almost always how you make money in games, and if I want to be victorious I "have to" use consumables which cost in game money or a lot of time gathering and crafting. So I end up hoarding a LOT of consumables trying not to use them until I "absolutely need them" because they are "precious necessary items that shouldn't be wasted." Or I'm poor all the time and can't afford the good gear. Some games I end up "saving" them until I beat the game, and some games I end up using all of them at every boss fight and pat myself on the back for being good at saving them up. After I finish a game I'll watch some youtubers or my brothers play through the whole game and almost never touch consumable items which just confirms to me my lack of twitch factor skills, but they usually say something like, "That was really hard and stressful!" while my experience was mostly fun.
@@sonofriggnarok9320 seems like most of games even on hardest difficulties don't make players to use such items in order to avoid death by different reasons: noncritical death or this situations just never happen. Both problems solved in roguelikes, but I don't think adding permadeath or making game much harder are a good way. In most cases it can be fixed by limiting inventory (I like how originally it made in Legend of Zelda serie, you have exact amount of bottles to store potions) or making them virtually infinite through trade, so it's better call them disposable instead of consumable. For offensive items it's much harder, maybe adding some progression, like enemies who attack harder when injured or after each attack, that makes to use everything to kill them faster to avoid undesired difficulties. It works well with "bulletsponges" too, instead of beating it five minutes you just use appropriate item to finish faster.
Here's the thing. Let's say I'm saving a consumable for "when I need it" and I'm fighting a boss. If I use the item but it turns out I didn't need it to win, then I wasted it. If I use the item and die, then I still wasted it! And if I can't beat it with the consumable and now I've run out, I'm going to have to learn to beat it without the consumable anyway, so what was the point? Given that a lot of consumable items are, like, "+5% lighting damage" and that a lot of bosses are just a matter of learning their patterns, by the time you determine whether the consumable would help or not (by fighting and dying several times, presumably) you've probably learnt enough to beat it without the consumable anyway.
Just save if possible before the fight? If you know they are gonna happen... Which is pretty obvious is most games... Then save after if you beat it with the potion l. That way you can try again without the potion and just roll forward if you needed to use it?
"OK FINE I USE ALL MY ITEMS, MIGHT AS WELL BURN THROUGH THEM" spends 10 minutes sifting through the inventory chugs away the best potions desperately while the boss is getting absolutely hammered Boss dies and you don't notice a difference in your inventory because you never really looked inside
Oh, but how do you know it's the last boss? There might still be a second, third and fourth form. And there could be a twist boss at the end. Or a bonus boss that is like 50 times harder than the normal final boss.
It was a huge moment in my gaming life when I realized that, after playing video games for over 30 years, I can pretty safely set the default difficulty to hard mode from start. I did it with God of War and it made my play through WAY more fun. I actually had to think about strategy, whether I was ready for a region yet or not, and how to balance my items. It pretty much single handily fixed the problem he’s referring to in this video. When you are barely getting through areas of a game, you end up using all the resources available to you.
I don't know what inspired me to do it, but the Witcher 3 was the first game were I started on max difficulty, and it was wild how much more fun it was to constantly die and to have to seriously plan out potion use and spell use and stuff
This was me for AC origins, it felt really boring with how easy it was, putting nightmare mode on made it 10x more enjoyable and made the other aspects of the game (stealth, exploration, etc.) Feel more rewarding.
Yeah I always found myself to be super average at games as a kid, but as a teenager I mostly stopped playing and didn't pick it back up till I was an adult, and yet somehow I'm far better than I used to be lol I went from avoiding souls-like games, to actively seeking them out because I got addicted to having a game cause my heart to pound out of my chest with adrenaline lmao you don't get that adrenaline unless a game is demanding 100% of your focus and ability. It raises the stakes, cuz it's so damn hard to sustain 100% focus lol
"Shit, I'm out of my normal heals!" *stares at special heal* "Damnit, no other choice!" *uses special heal, dies anyway* ".....and it's gone. Never again....."
I think for me the most important parts for me are 1. It needs to be necessary, not just convenient. If potions are the only way to get health back or at least the only really effective way then i will use it, if I can instead stand still and regenerate, well i will save that potion to the bitter end. And 2. The source of the item needs to be really really clear. If i can get the item from crafting or an easily available vendor I will feel comfortable relying on it regularly. If it's hard to find vendors, you only sometimes get potions from them and money is really scarce, well no way in hell am I using it, that thing will gather dust until eternity. If it's really clear to me how I will obtain the item and how rare it will be I can plan better and will feel confident I'm using it right.
I know exactly what you mean. In Bioshock 2 I would rather stand in water for a couple of minutes to refill health than use up my potion. In Dishonored I would rather sit to refill my mana instead of using up my potion. Devs need to consider human psychology in their game design.
for final bosses it's not so much the fact that you still have a limited amount, it's more of the fact that you most likely have 500 items left over from not using them and you'd make the final boss a complete pushover
@Backstage Bum Thank you CrossCode for putting both forms of the final boss on the same health bar. (even if it gets reset to half at the beginning of the second form regardless of how much you overkilled the first)
Metal Gear Rising: Hell yeah, I destroyed the Excelsus! Now for the epic endi- *Armstrong comes out and powers up* Me and Raiden: Oh, you've gotta be kidding me! Armstrong: Let's. Go! Me and Raiden: The hell are you thinki- *gets destroyed by phase 1 and 2 Armstrong because all repair nanopaste has been used* Then phase 3 starts... At least the game gives you some healing here! He can still stomp you, though. Then comes Revengeance Difficulty. *Now that is the definition of PAIN* What's tha noise? Monsoon: *MEMES, JACK!* OH NO, NOT YOU AGAIN!!
My mantra when playing through games with big inventory spreads is "If you save the good china for when the Queen comes for dinner, then you're never going to use the good china". Since adopting this mentality i've had more fun ef even just because i have more experience with elements of the game i used to store up for emergencies that... never really came.
I saw a youtuber use an X-Item in a Pokémon battle for the first time to beat a super hard boss in a play through, which was crazy because I always thought they were nothing more than a good thing to sell in the shop.
I don’t use X items because they’re just moves but worse X attack is swords dance but only half as powerful and I can sell it for example Although I never use swords dance either The only stat I care about changing is my enemies health to zero
@@minaashido518what if the x attack is more viable than any of the other attacks you have. Like all of them are less effective than if you did that half dmg x item.
@@notchs0son I’d likely use it but that’s never happened I usually have moves that are more effective, ones that deal damage while altering stats One of the hardest fights I’ve had (Cynthia bdsp) was solved with low kick and bubble
@@minaashido518 You can argue it's a worse swords dance, but it's also a worse swords dance that doesn't require you to keep a moveslot for it. Granted - there's no real enemies in modern pokemon games that REQUIRE you to attack boost to beat them since you'll probably out level them just playing casually, but its nice to have that option
Hmmm. It took me an hour to get here. So if I die, I'll have wasted a lot of time. But this item that can save me is really rare. Hmmm *_Guess I'll die_*
I cant think, off of the top of my head, a single rare item I had in my inventory that would have changed the flow of a fight. IE Fallout3-4-by the time I need a fatman, im surrounded and it would kill me as well.
Matt Voelker I’ve had many rare items actually help, honestly my least favorite consumables are the cheap but useless ones, because lots of games have consumables that I of course save for emergencies, but then when the emergency comes they’re so useless and they take time or effort to use that will seriously raise my chances of losing more than their benefit raises my chances of winning.
Demonmercer that’s why you just buy a million empty bottles, trek to the nearest healing spring, fill all the bottles with magic water, then contemplate your choices when you realize the bottle weigh over double your weight capacity
"Oh, a consumable buff/attack. I'll save that for later" >breezes through early game >mid game boss fight "Let's try this out" >uses consumable attack >weak >uses consumable buff >barely noticeable >dies "Welp, I'm never using those again."
Sometimes it feels like active items aren't worth using, because they take time to play an animation, or take up part of your turn, when you could've just swung your sword again. This is especially true in turn-based games. "Do I cast another fireball for large aoe damage, or use this active item to give my warrior a defense boost to the next attack that hits him?" It sometimes feels like it's not worth the "action economy" it requires to use the items.
I can't think of a final boss that was difficult enough to need it. Most final bosses are actually kinda easy. I think the only time I've used a Megalixir was fighting Yiazmat in Final Fantasy XII and that's not the final boss but an optional ridiculous super boss.
It's a shame that this man didn't play Disgaea 5 and used the Maid class whom has the Unique Evility (Evil Ability) called: *Efficient Work* = Once per turn, you get a free item use. This effectively allowed the Maid character to toss an attack item at an enemy, or use 1 item per turn in addition to their main action (up to 2 item uses per turn). The game also made it so that healing items when used will grant EXP to the character that used the item regardless of target which is a steady percentile to the next level. Using 8 items gains the character a *level up* in other words. Furthermore, the Maid would learn common evilities from her own class that buff the range of item usage, doubling the healing effect of items and enhancing the attack items to deal 50% more damage and even making single target healing items to target up to 5 allies in a plus sign (area of effect). This is one of the games that definitely pushes the player to use items IF the player actually figures out and realizes how overpowered this can be.
@@StoneMonkWisdom Reminds me of Divinity: Original Sin 2. In it you can take a perk that reduces the action point cost of using grenades and scrolls by 1 if you have a hand free on the character with the perk. Normally using a grenade item takes 2 action points, so reducing it by 1 is a massive improvement. On one multiplayer run I had with a a few friends I decided to see just how powerful it would be...and then I broke the game in half with firestorm grenades to the point where every trip back to the main hub had me scouring the vendors for needed materials.
reminds me of when i was playing battle cats recently and used a shitload of buff items to take down the final boss of the first world a second time cause it was really ahrd the first but i had gotten so much more powerful at that point that i didnt need them
When I was a kid I only had 2 games. Pokemon Ruby and Pokemon Sapphire. I would grind like fucking crazy to collect tons of rare and powerful pokemon and collect them all in one game. I had a bank that was half filled with rayquaza's. At that point I just knew what the best ways to beat the game were and would use consumables like these to breeze through the elite 4 whenever I got to the pokemon league so I wouldn't have to train. I think the way I made myself do it was just thinking about how many more raquaza's and masterballs I could collect on my main game by winning faster.
Medium D Speaks just pick a favorite Pokémon, it’s not that hard. One play through of ruby/sapphire I gave all my rare items to a random zigzagoon, because I was like this is my main -mon this play through!
Aaaand that's our instinctual behaviour. If you've ever watched a cat scratching a *window* while trying to clean up, maybe you've thought to yourself "why are you compelled to do this irrational task"...
@@BoleDaPole okay lets say you beat a fight that required an item, and you used that item during the fight. then the next fight will be even harder, but now you're out of items that could help you. instead your chances of winning the harder fight drops dramatically because you ran out items. in other words, difficulty shouldn't depend heavily on availability of items.
This is why Hollow Knight is my favorite game. Set difficulty without any items to waste or weapons/armors to choose from, the farthest it goes is 3 spells and easy-to-understand charms. And it keeps it this simple while also keeping it very fun and difficult at times which is just AWESOME.
@@kerstinhoffmann2343 well I think we hoard them because we never really need them. If my shade was in a spot that I shouldnt have been able to get too, I'd probably use Jiji. But the only time I really needed it was my first playthrough when I was so damn lost in the fungal wastes and kept dying without a map and everything. And it was before I knew about Jiji. Coming back to the game after a year-ish break, it baffles me how I ever got lost lol. Was immensely easier somehow
Me: *never uses any spells anyway because what if I'll need the soul to heal* But I don't mind, because playing nail with nail only is still very fun and challenging.
They're only wasted by not using them. I don't even care if consumables are necessarily good the first time I use them, I just wanna experiment and see what they do
are grenades active items? I mostly dont use them because I save them for hard enemies but there are no real hard enemies. I also dont get it why you should start a game in normale, GO HC and get GUD...
I remember when I started playing an RPG called Lord of the Rings: The Third Age at around age 7, there was a very rare item called Morgul Decay. In a game with item overload, this one was special, as it removed the entirety of the armor of an enemy. You got just over a dozen of these across the whole game, so it made them amazingly important for me at a young age.
my personal favorite: 30 second elemental resist elixirs in games where average "first encounter" time is approximately 2+ minutes. looking at you zero dawn.
@@MoonPatch Persona 5 is actually a really interesting example. Of course, early game _really_ makes you think about SP, considering how you barely have any items to replenish it and therefore hesitate to use them unless you're really in trouble. Aside from that, other consumables, (the elemental damage dealing items specifically,) were scarce and not powerful, so I found myself avoiding them almost all the time. That is, until I got cocky and met The Reaper on purpose... Then, the fact that I'd held on to them suddenly mattered immensely. That - coupled with some grinding to craft more of said items, careful Persona leveling/customization and meticulous battle choices - is the only reason I was able to _barely_ scrape by and defeat the hellish menace, even though my party was only somewhere around level 50 - 60 (?) If I remember correctly. In short, I actually found myself glad I saved those items instead of wasting them unnecessarily because they had a hidden, more valuable purpose. This is in contrast to some Final Fantasy games, where a lot of the time I finish the game and I realize I still have all of my elixirs... I had to train myself to use an elixir in a semi-rough situation where it would help because it feels awesome, and it's nice to not finish the game realizing you never touched them.
@@ryo-kai8587 You make an excellent point about Persona 5 (don't really know about Final Fantasy since I've never played it much) Persona also has a different mechanic, being time management, where instead of using consumables you can sacrifice an in-game day to return to a dungeon completely topped up, downside being that you could have used that time to up your social stats, or hang out with a confidant etc. Meaning items are actually best hoarded for tough fights, where you don't have the option to top up mid-fight, and later in the game as you get more items to help you finish palaces with less time wasted, you also gain new confidants you could spend that time on, so it doesn't feel like it's really getting easier, rather it's just changing your priorities. Well...I say that but I pretty much always just forced myself through the dungeon in one go, mostly because I'm stubborn. I'm also a huge fan of Persona 5, so I might be a TEENSY-BIT biased there.
For me the crucial factor is if I know if, where and how I can get replacements. As long as I don't know when I get more of it, I cling to consumeables and rarely use them. But if I know that I need to collect 3 ingredients and I also know where to get them, then I am set. I had a lot of fun with alchemy in Classic WoW where I liked to collect flowers, brew potions and drank tons of them so I was able to fool around in areas that were a bit too high for me unbuffed. Another way to encourage the use of consumeables: Give them an expiration date and/or a stack limit. If I can only hold 10 potions of strength and found an eleventh I can chugg one "for free".
I agree. If I know this specific vendor restocks this potion, I tend to buy it and use it regularly. If a potion is only made from rare herbs, I guarantee I will never use that potion.
My main problem with consumable items is that quite a lot of games have at least one item that is: -Too rare -Too good -The effect is temporary So it's a really good item that i deeply want to use it but i can't for the life of me find another one of it, so i'm too afraid of wasting it when it's not absolutely necessary.
That is a good point, most don't last very long. If you could pop a potion and it lasts the entire duration of a dungeon you are exploring, then you would probably use them all the time. You would probably buy/craft a bunch of stuff, prepare carefully, then use them all when you start. If it lasts 30 seconds, you will never use it.
I usually tackle this by asking myself: 1. Will I probably die if I don't use this item 2. Was the trek all the way to this point longer than a few minutes 3. Do I already have 'enough' (like 3 or more) At that point, it's pretty safe. Games like SMT: Nocturne (especially on hard mode) force you into situations, due to getting unlucky with an ambush or getting critically hit, where you have to use items or you'll perish, and the items can be rare so you feel it haha. The hard decisions make the experience even better. He showed a shot of Pillars of Eternity which, on the hardest difficulty, is pretty hard without utilizing food and potions/scrolls. Not necessary, but they help significantly. Good game design, in my opinion
Dead Samson Good example. I was running PoE on max difficulty, and it was very rewarding being pushed like that, unfortunately my game glitches out and broke the dungeon quest line, I never figured out how to fix it, nor bit the bullet and went back hours to a prior save, so the game got dropped. 😑
Lilitha11 that could be offset by re-using the 30 second duration item every 20-25 seconds, but the problem is that these duration items prevent reuse of the same item or like-use items for 50 or so seconds after you first use it.
Could not relate to that part about burning a humanity in order to get back to full health - humanity is a limited use item, therefore who needs full health when playing dark souls
I seriously can't relate. I played DS3 recently, finished it a week or two ago. It was my first Dark Souls game, but all through it I was a fuckin Charcoal Pine addict. At first I was stingy with Embers but later on I had so many that I popped them like candy, even if I was going to die shortly after. The stamina regen green herb, too, I used in every single boss fight because it felt like it helped recovering from quick combos and dodge rolls. DS3 may be the only game where I fuckin loved consumables. Divine blessings I just used to keep exploring without having to go back and rest.
I'm gonna serve a hot take that Souls games shouldn't have healing consumables AT ALL. You get your Estus flask, and whatever healing spells you equipped. Consumables should be for buffs and throwable stuff only.
I've been needlessly saving consumables in every game for years, but I'm finally getting over it. I'm learning to not fear the thought of running out of that consumable - if a time where I absolutely need to use it actually comes, I'll just find a way to get more, worst case scenario I'll have to backtrack and farm a bit. It obviously depends on the game, but my general rule for enhancing consumables is "use them on bosses and minibosses", after all the game is probably designed to provide you with enough consumables of this type to have a few for every boss. My general rule for sustain consumables is "use them when there is something at stake": E.g. I have enough souls for a level, so I'll cure my poison instead of tanking through it to minimize the chances of losing them.
@@Jamlord2061 Not necessarily, its more grinding for better stats over doing fun missions. You almost forget that its a game and you're meant to have fun. I had this issue with CS:GO, RPGs and other games where rather than do the fun things in the game, I wanted to grind so I can have more fun when I get around to doing the fun things (e.g having better gear so the missions are easier). Grinding is such a bad habit I have and now I purposely play narrative games so I don't fall back into the loop of grinding for XP and gear instead of the story.
@@Jamlord2061 best example of this was ghosts of tsushima. Lethal difficulty, broken armor, fully NOT upgraded sword, taking the ridiculously hard route rather tgan the intended stealth route.
TES games would be improved if they went back to Morrowind's concept, where you can enchant anything so long as the value is high enough. In Morrowind it was possible to make scrolls, so they didn't feel like a limited resource; they simply felt like something a mage would use. In Oblivion and Skyrim the only ways to obtain scrolls were to buy them or find them--and let's be honest, you rarely buy them. That made them feel superfluous. Maybe have the player able to enchant anything, but have the odds of success start fairly low for some things (baskets have a 1% chance, swords have a 66% chance). As the player enchants that type of item, the odds of success increase (analogous to improving a skill through practice). This would create a reward for players who invest in this skill, as well as creating some fun play variants ("I'm going to throw my BASKET OF FIRE at the dragon!!").
I think the most common problem with active items specifically in RPG games is the fact that you usually can overcome the need to use an item by simple level or gear grind. Or just by being good at avoiding being hit. In most cases need to use those acts as in indication of "you need to get stronger to pass" for me. The only time they actually become required when you reach the level-cap of the game where you simply can't get any stronger through permanent upgrades and can't avoid enemy attacks forever. Of course there are exceptions in some games when at some point in the story you can't get any stronger and can't get through the boss without exploiting his weakness to certain item, but those are a few and far in between.
I could spend a turn to use a consumable that doubles my attack stat and then spend another turn to hit twice as hard or I could just hit two times in a row.
If the consummable lasts even 2 turns then you're up in damage. Alternatively you might have a really hard hitting attack that benefits more from a percentage based increase than your basic attack
Mountain Smithy or you could use the item then use all your sp to use your strongest attack doubling the damage of that attack. And double from 7000 to 9999 because of the damage limit.
in terms of Pokemon, there's the PP, you can only use each attack a certain number of times, so you could spend 2 PP over 2 turns to deal 50 damage, or you could spend 1PP and 1 consumable, and still deal 50 damage
Bro, I'm literally just buyed skyrim, spend the last 2 weeks adding 100+ mods, and finally got to start playing. I'm literally doing what you both are doing: I CAN and SHOULD use consumables and enchantments as often as I breath.
Same, was just playing the dark brotherhood questline in ESO where you need to kill the Black Dragon and I got my shit pushed in the first three times and kept worrying about how many soul gems I can use to revive, how my equipment will keep breaking with every death, and how many potions I could use. This tyoe of thinking is what holds me back because if I never would've used one of my equipment repair kits I was hoarding then I wouldn't have gotten past that boss.
Same here, especially in master mode. Monsters take much more damage to kill and you end up breaking weapons faster. I instead found myself using electric and ice arrows more, the former to refill my weapons via disarming enemies and the latter to kill stuff faster, taking advantage of the ice shatter crit. If I hadn't had my 24 amiibo cards, I'd most likely be out of all my arrows at this point.
Haha, yeah. At the beginning of the game stronger weapons are not easy to replenish, and by the time they are I already had the Master Sword, so... ^^; I get what they are going for, but I think they could've handled it better. Maybe make broken weapons temporarily unusable, so players are incentivized to use all their arsenal without fear of permanently losing items / spending their playtime re-acquiring those items?
That is the reason i use Daruks weapon in mastermode only for lynels. Cause i use it for a strong monster and it wont break... sthe bad thing is every lynel empties my arrow bag ;-; (i hope i get master sword soon)
I think the thing that makes me hoard items the most is a vague item description. I try to go into a game blind without looking too much up, and I’ve been burned too many times selling items I needed to craft better items (Horizon Zero Dawn did this to me a LOT). I think BotW does a good job of telling the player what the item can be used for, which also helps decide when to use and when to sell certain items.
I don't know why we still have this problem in 2024, the solution is very very simple. 1. Have different tabs for crafting ingredients and junk. 2. Or make quest items and crafting ingredients non-sellable.
@@thisismyusernow yeah, a lot of the time i only use consumables when going on long journeys or am planning on spending a long time away from safer areas and so i have the stuff i need to do an artificial full heal or two
@Unqiue Keys That's me playing Final Fantasy 8. I have 100 Shells, but only got it off a boss monster, and had to grind Draws like mad to get them! I can squeeze a win out of this.
**has like 70 cappuccinos in Ni No Kuni that restore 70 MP** Friend: AYE LUNA GIVE ESTHER A CAPPUCCINO SO SHE CAN HEAL HERSELF SHE HAS 2 MP Me: bUT I NEED THESE Esther: **falls in battle** Me: GOD DAMMIT ESTHER WHY ARE YOU SO USELESS Friend: **facepalms** Edit: Idk how to type apparently :DDDD
I mean I enjoy trying to figure out how to optimize things in a game, though it does admittedly make some things a little less fun sometimes when you've made it so that everything runs basically perfectly smoothly
Arn't players actively choosing to optimize over fun? Why prevent players from doing what they want to do? Everyone loves abusing rules to get ahead. Its not as fun as playing normally, but there is some serious satisfaction to be found in breaking a game to your own advantage.
@@willichtenstein7071 I can't be sure, but i think i heard the quote from Jake Solomon, director of both the XCOM reboot games. In the first game, especially before the expansion, the optimal play was to camp hard, and wait for enemies to walk into your pre-established shooting gallery, and then slowly move up one notch, and start camping again. This is optimal, but obviously not fun. Now many people didn't like the implementation of the timer system in the sequel, but that's probably more of a framing and implementation issue, than it is an issue with making people go faster and take more risks, which is generally good for the game.
@@haldir108 Ever watch the spiffing brit? His entire channel is about breaking games. Kind of like how in Civ 6 you can not only make all military units cost 0 gold (and have a near infinite supply of military), but also sell resources for a lot more money than you costs to buy it back from the AI.
The fun for me is in optimizing it. And optimizing the game in passive ways so that I don't have to go down a forty-line checklist of casting buffs and drinking potions and deploying scout drones. I'd rather have my Ultimate Weapon and know how to handle the game than carry around an entire chemist's shop so that I can beat the Devil with a butter knife and my Mickey Mouse boxer shorts.
@That guy I usually play the end battle twice, the first time without items, when I beat it I load the save and try again using everything to see how much of a beast I am, it's fascinating to see the big bad not being able to put a scratch on you because you OD on potions and one use only items.
And then the time finally comes, you encounter an enemy or a group of enemies that kick your ass 5 times in a row, and you reach for your special supply of buffs and heals, and it does not do a damn thing, except delay your death by a fraction of a second.
i think the Path of Exile approach to flasks is a simple but elegant solution to consumable items. instead of the items being consumed upon use, you just consume what is inside of the flask, but you keep the flask, and it refills automatically as you damage enemies. So, you get to choose which kind of flask your character should carry, and when its best to use them, but you never have to worry about saving them for later or doing excessive recipe hunting/crafting to get more.
In stardew valley I take the ‘save one of everything’ to the next level which results in me having hundreds of fruits and veggies that I’ll never use but I still keep them because you know... jUsT iN cAsE
I was playing mass effect 2. A game I have beaten several times. My friend comes in and gets mad at me for not using the heavy weapons. I tell him it was in case I need the ammo for another fight. He then proceeded to remind me it was the last boss. I realize this is my issue. I never use items because what if. But the what if never happens. IDK how to fix that.
In my opinion that's a game design flaw that game designers should find a way to fix, and not a player's problem, like one of the designers of CIV 3 said "Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game".
Me: But I only have 87 Hyper potions! What if there is an emergency?! My brain: This is an emergency! Me: Uses Hyper potion My brain: Why did you wasted it?!
I am so afraid to use consumable items that when I firt played Minecraft I was using iron pickakes only when I had to mine diamond or gold. Seeing how fast the pickaxe were taking damages was making me wonder "Will I find enough iron when using this iron pickaxe to make it worth it?". So I ended up sitting on dozens of stacks of iron and diamond, almost never using them.
I love games where i can just hit a button in order to take every buff i currently have access to. Terraria does this really well, it's like "oh hey this situation is pretty hard" *hits B* "PERISH YOU MOFOS"
*only when we feel we cannot win without them AND we are fairly certain the item will help win and won't go to waste. The process of figuring out if an item is worth it is often more than the worth it gives, such that people don't bother even if they're good. The "reactive items" he mentioned at the start are the only effective items that convey that.
@@aetherblackbolt1301 Sure they do bother. I beg to disagree because the utility of items aren't just it's utility description. It can also be with how much you can sell it for, the increase of percentage determinants like luck, an increase of survivability or success in a given task, and many more. I do not agree with your sentiment because I believe in the beauty of user preferability and friendliness. If your items were made for a large target market, not just hard core players, saying that just because a general amount of players do not see the utility in playing with items, does not mean it cannot and will not be of use.
Here's the thought process for me when I play games though. *fighting hard boss *dies "Damn maybe I should use a potion, ehh, i did get pretty close to killing him though. Lemme try again"
@@goodtimesgivecancer1 I might use the potion, only if I get it back if I die. Using potion and then dying is just more painful to me, than just trying to get better at the game without potions. I just don't use them, because they're also usually hard to select, find trough the menues.... and I might get in a spot later on in the game where I could really use it. I think if potions exist, they should be self replenishing.
What I immediately thought of was giving some items like potions a decay stat. You would be able to easily make and find them, but it uses up inventory and if you don't use them then after a while they are just gone. It won't encourage everyone to use buff items, but it would tell most that it is okay to use them since they are going soon anyway
Often it's just that using those items isn't fun. Like, take Skyrim for example yeah? You spend so much time in menus. Health potions are in your menus, changing magic is in your menu, enchanting is a menu, blacksmithing is a menu, cooking is a menu, speech is a glorified menu. And getting to any given iten on any menu takes at least a couple clicks. Adding more menu clicks for temporary and sometimes miniscule buffs is the most boring part of Skyrim.
This. Even in Witcher III, using items is entering a menu, and with all the decoctions, the potions section is cluttered af by the end of the game. It just takes away from the gameplay.
I think Skyrim exemplifies bad consumables in video games. “Potion of resist X” is such a bland idea, usually providing negligible damage protection that is only useful against a few enemy types. Skill potions suck in part because they’re percent based, so skills you’re bad at won’t be boosted much at all and skills you’re good at will usually be good enough without the potion. The exceptions are attack potions (short term damage boost, if you happen to get one for your favored fighting style) and crafting potions (since you can exploit the “crafting loop” of making fortify alchemy potions, only to drink them so you can make even better fortify alchemy potions, etc.). Poisons are usually just bonus damage, which is useful but completely unnecessary since it basically just saves you a couple of weapon hits, and the special poisons like frenzy and paralyze are often resisted by tough enemies who you want to use them on. (That said, poisons are my favorite Skyrim consumable and can be a lot of fun). Health potions are ok, but who needs them when you can carry 50 cheese wheels? Magicka potions are great for mages and lame for people who only know the heal and fire spells, but my mages always run out shortly after learning fireball. Stamina potions are decent. With regret, I have to say the worst consumable is... skooma. It restores stamina, and that’s *it*. Really lame compared to the incredibly fun, spamable, and crippling skooma from Oblivion. It was the most memorable and fun consumable in the entire game by far. So I always just sell my potions in Skyrim (with the exception of restorative potions) so that I can buy more soul gems, enchanted weapons and armor, and whatever I can’t steal. And invisibility potions. Invisibility is fun.
@@Jamie-tx7pn Nah. In some NG+'s (like Witcher 3) some enemies literally one shot ya. But in easier games, yeah. Either hold them forever, or sell them to obtain the best gear in the game.
Game: hey, here's a rare resource Me: got it, I'll literally never use it G: no I meant use them sparingly because you won't get many throughout the game :) M: yeah I heard you, don't use it, got it G: please use it you're in an emergency, it's the final boss battle you won't get to use them later M: *n o*
Sure, when they're reactive items for healing, but how often do you honestly see players use the active variety, including the likes of X items or a Dire Hit?
@@wesnohathas1993 Well…. Yeah then that applies. In Nuzlockes, X items are occasionally useful when allowed but mostly banned and Dire hit is decent for Gen 1 speed runs but that’s it. So yeah, you’re right on that.
"Out of sight, out of mind." Without some kind of reminder to use an item, there probably wont be a moment given to consider it when youre being clobbered by a boss
Careful with those words, lest we forget the follies of games like Fable and Ocarina of Time: HEY LISTEN!!! yoUR hEAlth iS LOw, dO yOU hAve aNY pOTioNS oR foOD?!
That's why I like low health reminder in Sacred. You see a red pulse going through the screen, noticable even if you focus on something else than your HP bar - you press space bar or whatever you bound for a health potion.
I hate when dying with a consumable causes it to be gone forever because it just makes me consider how many consumables I could lose instead of just fighting the boss. I'd like to consider the idea that if you die, you try again, not lose your bonus and have to try EVEN harder
This remind me of bombs in schmups. If you are bad enough to get hit, you usually aren't good enough to know you are getting hit so you don't use those bombs and lose a life anyway because if you knew you were going to get hit you wouldn't have gone this way. Only the absolute best players use bombs efficiently because they use it for score or to get out of situations that are impossible to get out without bombs, but for random players like me bombs feel like they are just wasted everytime you use them.
human have always sought to optimize whatever they are working on. We wanted food so we gathered berries and nuts, we want more food then naturally growing plants provided so we developed farming, carrying water from water sources to keep the farms alive was time consuming so we developed irrigation. We wanted plants to grow bigger and more numerous fruits so we began cross breeding and grafting plants. When that wasn't efficient enough we began gene splicing. Though this is one example we as a species have done this for everything we do so why is surprising or "bad" when we do it with games? Its literally why I love the speedrunning community for videogames. They push themselves and the games to find the absolute optimal way to beat the game but that doesn't remove the fun and joy for the game for the speed runners. Plus by playing games in unintended ways sometimes leads to new ways to play the game such as nuzlocke runs for pokemon.
@@scottrauch1261 Your assessment of speedrunning is EXTREMELY generous. Not all games are fun to speedrun, and this can especially apply to games that are fun casually. When tricks are found that optimize completion time, there are often community-wide discussions about whether the technique should be allowed in certain categories or even whether a new category should be created for it; and in these discussions, one of the main concerns is whether the game or category will become "dead" as a result of an un-fun optimization. This can involve extremely difficult tricks, tricks that have a low chance of success due to RNG (especially bad if it's late into the run), or even tricks that are too easy. Like speaking of Pokemon, the any% category for 1st gen is dead, mostly because it's optimized to heck, but also because it's just not even a game at that point since all you're doing is resetting the game to mess up the menu and ACE to the hall of fame and credits. But your bias in thinking speedrunning is fun makes sense, because it's only the fun runs that achieve cultural dissemination. There are whole video essays about this kind of thing.
@@SummitSummit This pretty much hits the nail, and shows the actual "homo economicus" in action: Man is neither about maximizing profit, nor about maximizing fun. It is just that (some) people enjoy to maximize/ optimize; no matter the ( resulting ) cost: Obsession, disguised as reason. ;)
I think another issue with consumables is the small niche that they fill (i.e. +30% Crit Chance for 30 secs or Night Vision for 2 mins.) This only makes situations where the player will store these items just in case but will never need to or even think of using them.
I save them until the final boss and I dump metric tonnes of rebuffs onto them. With so many items, why even attack? I once killed an RPG final boss with nothing but poisons and healing myself.
Ah yes, the "I will probably need it for something more important later" reasoning. After etrian odyssey, no. I just use it immediately. Unless its things that effect the whole party. Then I purposely save those for bosses. Usually not the first few bosses though.
I love Etrian Odyssey for the extremely diverse gameplay system allowing for almost total control over everything. Not to mention the roleplaying aspect of it. Really made the journey feel super personal and as a result, special. Wasn't the same in Persona Q, sadly. Just felt so limited compared to the freedom of EO. Really hoping they figure out how to make it playable on Switch or something.
Besides the classic "too good to use" syndrome that most people experience and you describe here, there's also another reason I dislike using 'active' items in games. It feels like it cheapens my victory, like myself or my character wasn't "good enough" to win without it. This is especially prevalent for me in narrative driven games, where the main character is made out to be this ultra-badass who can take on hordes of enemies, but then my actual ability to play the game doesn't match up. When this character defeats Superhard Enemy, the story will act as though they're just that tough, when in reality I know I had to dope up on all these consumables. It feels contrary to the narrative and so I will rarely use them. If use of consumables somehow linked more to the narrative of a game, like the game with the drug "Joy" that you described, I may be more inclined to use them. If I felt like using them meant something to the story, and to the characters, and wasn't just a way to shore up my sometimes sub-par gaming abilities. This same logic is pretty much why I almost never choose to play on harder difficulties.
This perfectly describes exactly how I feel. If I can’t beat the enemy by myself it feels wrong to use consumables especially if the enemies don’t use consumables themselves.
I agree and disagree. I don't think it's worse in narrative games, I think it's worse in more skill based combat. It's more fun to get better at the combat system until you can win than to just make it easier with an item.
Aaron Reamer it’s especially bad in final fantasy 15 or in other words a game you can avoid nearly all damage by holding the square button ( and timing parries when necessary) only a few attacks of certain enemies can get through this method of avoiding damage ( iron giant’s magnet hands attack samurai enemies can have spikes appear from the ground that can hit you if you are too close even when you do this ( though sometimes this doesn’t matter in the slightest as the boss of the dungeon that gets you the crossbow of the clever can be cheesed if you take control of one of your allies and shoot it with bazooka and sub machine gun fire from way above it out of its reach).
this has a lot of good insight. i've personally found that i minimize my item usage in all games as much as possible, because i have a mentality of being self sufficient, and any usage of an item, even reactive items like antidotes or health potions, is a failure that meant i couldn't overcome an obstacle without it. this doesn't mean that i grind until i can avoid it, just that the goal i work towards is to use as few items as possible because thats the type of gameplay i love, that constant seeking of personal efficiency that leans heavily into min-maxing.
Project X Zone did that. They Healed 10% of HP and you could only carry a max of 20... But if combined with other diverse and plentiful healing items, they surely hit the spot.
I see you trying to make me use my megalixers. It's not going to happen! It will never happen! They are mine! And they will be beautiful and amazing in my inventory, where they belong.... forever.
I just prefer not using consumables bc I say to myself: "don't get used to it, you won't always have these effects," and I rather have permanent abilities.
@@Sweaper yeah but you can still run out. Which is why I use passive abilities or even active, cooldown abilities. That way I have them the entire game with no risk of ever running out.
Oh, did your healer die? Well, too bad. Time to load the previous save because items are useless. Oh you're playing pokemon? Let's not buy repel and fight zubats every 5 steps. Oh, you're low on MP? Let's not use MP recovering items. Are you playing a MOBA? Consumables are useless, let's buy equipment only. Oh gee, you got a 2x attack boosting potion? Let's not use it, I don't mind wasting double the time fighting that boss with massive health pool. Oh, your magic buffs stack with your potions? Well, too bad potions are useless. Hey, I just got a potion that let's you see in the dark or gives 2x walking speed. Nah, useless. Oh, I can use some grenades to get rid of a few enemies in a group inside a room? Too bad they are consumables and I'm better off wasting time and putting myself in risk against 5 at the same time. Optimizing your gameplay for the best result is relying on your brain, don't ignore 1/5 of what a game has to offer, it's just dumb.
I often find myself more willing to utilize consumables on repeat playthroughs of games thanks to having a better understanding of the specific in-game economy and context of when they're at their most useful. You typically can't have this sort of knowledge going blindly into a game. That's where yet another part of the aversion to using consumable comes into play, a fear of the unknown. For this, the item stockpile serves as a veritable safety net for any challenge the game might happen to doll out.
I think difficulty modes selected before game in a menu is a kinda silly way to do it in general. More interesting would be having side areas or optional bosses that are insanely hard compared to everything else. This is why Ruby/Emerald weapon are so iconic to me, they are an example of optional difficulty done right.
I had very positive experiences with most higher dificulties I experienced. Bayonetta, Kid Icarus Uprising, Kingdom Hearts, Persona 5 and Persona Q and Q2. Its nice to ease in on normal dificulty and then on the second playthrough try out the harder dificulties which are often more fun. So yeah from what I experienced dificulty settings are great.
Well what do you want from the game other then higher numbers? Do you want them to entirely rework the game mechanics for every difficulty? This is not a practical thing to do and simply a waste of development time.
@@LegDayLas dynamic mechanics are a thing that can exist. General notion of original comment was that stacking HP/Damage is boring, but programming-wise it's usually just as easy to spam more enemies that move faster and shoot more projectiles and action roll more often and borrow other enemy attacks or spells or whatever, bosses become common enemies or anything other than a baseline stat tweak. The benchmark is this: can an onlooker tell that the game is somehow much more difficult than normal, at a glance? If you need to do raw calculation to find you're in hard mode it isn't a well designed difficulty system, usually. Obviously there are exceptions to everything but this holds true for most games.
This is definitely an issue I run into as well. I found myself changing the difficult of games halfway through to a higher setting once I realized I could, and even restarting games where it’s fixed to be harder. I think a game that exemplifies one of the better ways to handle difficulty is Breath of the Wild. Master Mode is legitimately more difficult, especially in the beginning, where they completely eliminate the lowest level common enemies (red bokoblins) and the regenerating health becomes a *legitimate* problem with the static weapon damage and durability. It really forced me to take much more care in approaching situations in unique ways and using those lesser used mechanics like tunes to avoid breaking my best weapons for ME, that were really just essentially Nerf swords to my enemies. Likewise, you can end up hoarding weapons that you don’t want to use until later game and you get much better gear more consistently (why for a long part of the run the Master Swords was basically my “The Master Rock Breaker”) and I found myself using it much more often for its solid damage even before the Trials knowing it would regenerate. Of course, after 250 hours I got to a level of skill where I could consistently beat even golden lynels without taking a hit, but in that early game, skill or no, there are just certain enemies you CANNOT beat.
No, no, no... You wait until breathing on them would kill them then buff yourself to death and kill them three times over in one hit instead of doing that 10 hp necessary. Go DBZ on their ass, you know? It's like the father son Kamehameha or Spirit Bomb route of gameplay. (This was literally the only thing that saw me use Bravely Second in the Bravely games, lol - in BD I even specifically let Edea and Ringabel get KOed just so Tiz and Agnès could finish it up themselves as it began before Seconding with Tiz.)
When I played Fallout or Elder Scrolls I would grab every item in a dungeon. Every. Single. Item. No matter how useless they are. When I finish a dungeon and get outside I drop items until Im not overencumbered then fast travel to my main house and sort the items into storage. Fast travel back to the entrance/exit and repeat until every item is safely tucked in my house. I literally broke the crafting system in Fallout 4 and had everything I needed at all times.
Does increasing the game dificulty will make player tend to use the item. Me : nah i just save and load back in case something happen. Item : what am i to you
"Enemies that aren't hard to beat, just time consuming" I have said so many times that people will say stuff is hard when it just takes a lot of time to do.
Yeah hard is when you have to learn and grow and adapt to the challenge, not sure if you can win. Most people that say something is hard is just because they die a couple times on something they know they can beat and get annoyed by it. Most things are just grindy and not hard
I agree, for example Artorias from dark souls, he have a ton of health but he continue to be extremely hard for me and the same can be said about Manus(THAT thing wasted me 1 entire day, that didnt happened with any other boss, hell, even kamalet was on 1 try).
@@Subpar1224 the definition of skyrims difficulty settings and why i stopped playing on legendary, it just is less fun to have to wait in fights more. Even by going like alchemy to make money to level up enchanting takes a lot of time to grind out op gear to make the difficulty much less difficult and bearable. Not difficult, just time consuming.
Everyone, I promise, I actually do like video games...
Anyway, I hope you enjoy this one. Jesse (the dude who edited the fuck out of this video) and I are working hard to get videos out more frequently, so, erm, after you finish this one, get hyped for another one coming out in a few weeks.
youre right sir. when i play games i also dont use the Enhancable items as you call them. I ALSO always "wait for the riiiight moment" but that moment never comes I can just get through the game normally. You always think to yourself "What if something more difficult than this comes and I wont have the item then? Ill just not use it." and shit.
I know Minecraft might not be the best example but when I played through the "story" (prepairing for the Journey to The End and killing the ender dragon) I never used the potions you can make at all, Cuz I just didnt need them. Plus when it only lasts a limited time, The effort to get it seems pointless.
I love you, mqn.
Clearly you like video games! That is why you critique them, is it not? I don't know why you would say such a thing.
Actually I do. I think there is a bad thought process going around where if you say something you don't like in a game, you don't like games in general.
Yeah! That is kinda the joke I am playing with. In previous videos, people have given me grief for being critical about stuff.
Looking forward to more thoughtful, creative, well-written, and well-edited content! Thank you for all the hard work you and Jesse do; it really shows.
"Yea I could use this item, but what if theres an emergency I need it for?"
*emergency happens*
"BUT WHAT IF THERES A BIGGER EMERGENCY?!"
*reached final boss* BUT WHAT IF THIS ISNT THE END
Finishes the game leaving you being able to do whatever you want before you stop playing:
What if there’s a bigger and stronger secret boss?
Exactly, because in immortal words of Qui-Gon: There's always a bigger fish.
@@bananaboomer6663 Happened to me once in FFV, the first time I played I thought it was over so I used everything I had earnestly. But then ExDeath comes back to beat the shit out of me, and with my inventory clean I couldn't do much against it :v
When that emergency finally comes and you use everything you have and still die
"Take this item traveler, but only for an emergency!"
Me:"never use it, got it."
Ok Ethan
@@goose6189 ok big boi
@@bluethumbbuttoneek9465 ok blue thumb
“Take this item traveler, use it when ever you want because you have almost infinite”
Me:”never use it, got it”
This happened to me in dark souls, I never used the invocation crystal.
So basically:
"I'm out of mana"
"Then use an ether!"
"But you can't buy ethers."
"It's the final battle!"
"But I only have 85 of them."
BrokenLifeCycle ‘well maybe you can use osmose to steal mana from the foe’
‘I would but I already did that so much that the enemy ran out of mana’
‘So that’s why the boss isn’t using their magic anymore’
I love ProZD
Hero
"Save Game" maybe?
@Callum Booth ha! good one Archibald!
Alternative options: 1. don't add so many consumables. So many of them provide minor boosts to irrelevant things. 2. Make them reliable to resupply. Having items that recharge when you rest or go to a safe zone or can always be found at a store are easier to use (psychologically) than ones where you never know when you will see the next one.
I hate having a good potion or something in a game, but I can only use it once
I use it and then another situation comes along where I would need it even more than I would have earlier
Potions could be an ability with a 10 second cooldown or something like that
Or make it worth using with rewards or other valuable things.
Potions that regen slightly on enemy kills
@@vappyreon1176 you should make a game
“ This part is really hard, but I don’t want to use this now, what if I need it later?”
*beats the whole game without using it*
Litterally me in every single fucking game.
same!!!!
Story of my fucking life
more like "Keep one, sells any duplicates"
Every time.
The eternal gaming paradox: Useful, therefore, never use
True
Lol yes
Richard Brink well said
Two question are you14 and is this deep (also I do agree tho lol 😂)
@@somegoodvibes5824 You're sounding younger than 14 mate haha
What I hate the most is when consumables are something like "+10% attack speed for 10 seconds". Like I feel like I'm wasting it every second I'm NOT attacking.
Haha, so true. It gets on my nerves
That hits close to home
(Edit) The exact same thing when I have 'experience boosts' that only last x amount of time. I stockpile them.
This is why I hate using those
I don't know if this is a feature in newer battlefield games as well but Battlefield 4's XP boosts would only tick down during game play, I always liked that.
@@Fatdogg2 ESO and warframe only goes down while you're online, but if you want to relax and chill out and you have say 3 hours left of an 8 hour buff you dont want to play to relax and you might skip on playing the game that time or aggressively farming when all you want is to relax
For years, Skyrim actually trained me to completely bypass and ignore any form of alchemy/herbal gathering system in any game. What broke me of that habit was actually the Witcher 3. That game, IMO did alchemy in the best possible way, and perhaps it wasn't as realistic (potions magically refill themselves on resting) it took the boring chore feeling out of gathering herbs and making the potions. Once you did it once, it was done forever, and you'd always have that potion, only needing to re-gather materials for upgrading the potion.
Wait they refill? I gotta buy the game now, I'm gonna have so much fun with the potions!
I have 40 hours on Witcher 3 and didn't know this as I never use potions lmao
On harder difficulties they don’t refill with rest . U have to gather them again
@@Ayan992 don't think so, I'm or was playing death march and they do, IF I had alcohol when meditading
Had the exact same experience, Skyrim brewing looked so boring, tedious, and unnecessary that I never used it and applied the same thing to my first Witcher play through. It was only on my second, higher difficulty play through that I realized they replenish after meditation (so you don’t have to worry about saving for the next boss) and that they’re actually useful.
>watches video
>Relates to video
>Plays video game
>starts using consumables
>gets to boss fight
>out of consumables
rip
feelsbadman.jpg
this exact situation in games keeps me from liking most games. like your fucked, unless you were saving the game every 5 seconds, which is not fucking fun, you're gonna have to replay the entire thing again, including the boring shit you already did. Its a fatal flaw in basically any game that has consumable items and i hate it. id rather just have an ability that has a 1000 second cooldown or some shit
@@axmoylotl I guess that's the big idea behind estus flask right? souls isn't my style of game but they handle this well I think.
@@-Zakedodead Polar opposite of how it was in Demon's Souls. Farming moon grass is the reason I never beat it. Bonfires and Estus Flasks were suuuuch a welcome change
Happened a few times, the only thing that happened is that I started paying more attention to the boss ques and I just played better. Would have I used the items if I had them? Yep. But if beat the game until the final boss, you should be able to kick his ass.
i almost never use consumables, because i always fear i need them later. the reason why i used potions and oils so much in the witcher 3 was, because they refill after a rest
Refill after rest is an underused item mechanic, all items should be easily replenished, and limited on the amount you can use between each rest, for fun sake.
@@djoxer It's why I always abuse the hell out of Estus in the Souls games but never touch any of the other items.
@@lo4tr ^^was just about to type this, in ds2 I never touched any healing other than estus and lifegems, because the bigger heals felt like I couldn't get them back (I've played all the souls just felt like ds2 was the best example, as well as my favorite in the series)
That's the main reason for me and I was surprised not to find it neither in the video nor in the other comments.
Yes, the Witcher 3 handled consumables the best. One-time craft of said item and unlimited* usage. I hate hording crafting materials and I don't usually use consumables.
"This potion makes all of your attacks crits for the next 20 seconds" got it, save that thing forever.
"This potion causes you to hallucinate strange colors and you will stumble around in a drunken stupor." glug, glug, glug!
Plot twist: that hallucinagenic Potion was needed for The Best Ending imaginable and there's only one in the world. Ever.
@@grantdelosangeles5357 *opens google* ah give 109349949494f2040e0e030300 1 there perfect!
Good News! Wasteland 3, quirk. -20% ranged and melee damage. +50% brawling (unarmed / brass knuckles) damage when drunk.
Das me with Skooma
"Ugh what is this useless potion. It only gives 25 stamina, just another wine"
*Lears that it's super fucking addicting and strictly illegal in the lore*
"*GLUG GLUG GLUG GLUG*"
There's something similar in a terraria mod, calamity I think but might be something else. There's a brew that gives you some pretty insane hallucinations so you see a boss or enemy duplicated 4 times, but you get a really good buff
I think, a way games could also address this hesitance to use active consumable items (at least for me), is to always give you at least two of them, especially the first time, so you get the chance to try it out without the feeling of wasting something you might need later, giving you an idea of what it does and when it would be handy, or even just showing you that it’s not the total game changer you need to hold on to for just the right moment.
Dark souls does this by giving you for example 3 gold pine resin right away.
@@shakeweller Still, Dark Souls strongly engourages hoarding, starting from the moment you realize that an item is gone for good and isn't back in your inventory after you've died. "Oh a new boss. Let's try and learn it's patterns a little bit before I use a resin." [Learns patterns]. "Oh well, I think I can try without help and keep the resin for a later, even harder boss." [Beats game without using any item, ever].
**Has 81/100 hp**
**checks inventory and found 20 hp potion**
Me: That 1 hp is still worth it so I won't use it
omg same
Now you're in dark souls
Do you still not use it?
Hello fellow gamer
@@The-Big-Boss I only have 8 eatus left and I still have to fight 10 enemies to get to the next bonfire so I have to save it.
*dies*
*my pokemon is poisened, paralyzed or burned
Me: let me just run back 3 km. to heal at a center instead of using a full heal
Totally!
If a game has "free" healing spots - I never use HP potions. And it's not a gold/rupees/ect problem.
yeah, and I try to defeat the elite four without using items too
TBF that was really reinforced with the earlier games since you could only earn so much money before you got screwed and couldn't buy anymore things.
Early game I can't spare the money to use an item to fix it, late game I don't have full heals, only full restores, and I'm not wasting those.
@jocaguz18 damn right, and if you can't beat the leader with just one Pokémon, you might as well grind levels in grass until you can.
It's called the dragon complex: hoard everything then sit on it and contemplate
Haha! Oh man that's great!
👏👏👏👏
@Sorley Walker You are aware that the dragon sitting on a pile of gold (or other treasure) is far older then Tolkiens books?
@Sorley Walker At first I was thinking about the nibelungenlied (thats german but it seems it is called the same in english) and how siegfried slayed a dragon in there, but all the sources I could find just now separate the dragon and the treasure. It would have fitted as it is from 1200 and inspired by norse myths that were also tolkiens inspiritaions for lord of the rings. Upon further search I found other stories that contain the concept, mostly from Greece and Norse myths.
1.Beowulf slayed a dragon that horded treasure
2. Fafnir was a human that stole his brothers gold and turned into a dragon to guard it
3.The golden fleece was guarded by a dragon
4. In one of Heracles (hercules) trials he needed to get golden apples that were guarded by a dragon.
Admitedly in the geek examples (3 and 4) the dragons are not horders of treasure but guardians normaly assigned by the actuall owner.
@@Tam_Hawkins Fafnir was a dwarf, right? Smough and the Dwarf prince dude's story is very much inspired by that
I think one major issue is of item scarcity: if you believe you might regret using at that time because you can’t get another one, you will save it for later due to its rarity.
You will try to match the rarity of the situation with the item, causing you to always postpone so to never experience that regret
That’s a terrible argument as only some games do this. Most the rpg’s I play give them to you in abundance.
@@zzodysseuszz Yes, most. Not all.
@@dhans9662 an extremely overwhelming majority of games give you an abundance. Dark souls, Elden Ring, Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Dragon Age, Kingdoms of Amulur, Dragons Dogma, Final Fantasy (though in Final Fantasy you actually need them) and more.
It's funny cause most consumables in games in my experience are just kinda bland and simplistic they don't offer anything
Definitely this for me!
The scarcity of an item determines it's value, followed by how much I need to use it.
I grew up watching my older brother play games and they were always better at them then me. So while they could get through a section in 2-3 attempts and only use a couple of potions, I would need 20 potions/buffs. I always try to avoid fights because "I'm just not good at them" in my thinking, even in games where I actually am good (or at least okay at). Combat is almost always how you make money in games, and if I want to be victorious I "have to" use consumables which cost in game money or a lot of time gathering and crafting.
So I end up hoarding a LOT of consumables trying not to use them until I "absolutely need them" because they are "precious necessary items that shouldn't be wasted." Or I'm poor all the time and can't afford the good gear.
Some games I end up "saving" them until I beat the game, and some games I end up using all of them at every boss fight and pat myself on the back for being good at saving them up.
After I finish a game I'll watch some youtubers or my brothers play through the whole game and almost never touch consumable items which just confirms to me my lack of twitch factor skills, but they usually say something like, "That was really hard and stressful!" while my experience was mostly fun.
"But what if I need it later?"
The bane of consumables everywhere.
If you are asking yourself this question, you must then ask yourself "would i have needed it now if I was playing on a harder difficulty?"
@@raulsalcedo8332 it's the same thing on harder difficulties, I seem to always have this issue then the beat the game without using said item.
@@sonofriggnarok9320 Try Nuzlocking your playthrough then.
Like a ProZD skit...
"I'm out of mana"
"Use and Ether!"
"They're a finite resource..."
"It's the final boss!"
"I only have 87 of them..."
@@sonofriggnarok9320 seems like most of games even on hardest difficulties don't make players to use such items in order to avoid death by different reasons: noncritical death or this situations just never happen. Both problems solved in roguelikes, but I don't think adding permadeath or making game much harder are a good way. In most cases it can be fixed by limiting inventory (I like how originally it made in Legend of Zelda serie, you have exact amount of bottles to store potions) or making them virtually infinite through trade, so it's better call them disposable instead of consumable. For offensive items it's much harder, maybe adding some progression, like enemies who attack harder when injured or after each attack, that makes to use everything to kill them faster to avoid undesired difficulties. It works well with "bulletsponges" too, instead of beating it five minutes you just use appropriate item to finish faster.
Here's the thing. Let's say I'm saving a consumable for "when I need it" and I'm fighting a boss.
If I use the item but it turns out I didn't need it to win, then I wasted it.
If I use the item and die, then I still wasted it! And if I can't beat it with the consumable and now I've run out, I'm going to have to learn to beat it without the consumable anyway, so what was the point?
Given that a lot of consumable items are, like, "+5% lighting damage" and that a lot of bosses are just a matter of learning their patterns, by the time you determine whether the consumable would help or not (by fighting and dying several times, presumably) you've probably learnt enough to beat it without the consumable anyway.
This
A good way to remedy this would be with semi-consumable items. It has either a cooldown or you can only use one.
Oh wait.
Those are just called buffs.
I swear the +5% lighting damage and +2% bleeding effect always piss me off. So I never use them.
Just save if possible before the fight? If you know they are gonna happen... Which is pretty obvious is most games... Then save after if you beat it with the potion l. That way you can try again without the potion and just roll forward if you needed to use it?
So you have no reason not to use the item is what your saying
**On the last boss**: this item is too good and expensive, I'm not going to waste it now
But maybe the game has a secret final boss that I might stumble upon... only to then never use the item on the secret boss and hoard it forever
@@2102082 What if I need it in New Game Plus!?
"OK FINE I USE ALL MY ITEMS, MIGHT AS WELL BURN THROUGH THEM"
spends 10 minutes sifting through the inventory
chugs away the best potions desperately while the boss is getting absolutely hammered
Boss dies and you don't notice a difference in your inventory because you never really looked inside
Oh, but how do you know it's the last boss? There might still be a second, third and fourth form.
And there could be a twist boss at the end. Or a bonus boss that is like 50 times harder than the normal final boss.
@@Sercil00 that was me for a very long time xD
It was a huge moment in my gaming life when I realized that, after playing video games for over 30 years, I can pretty safely set the default difficulty to hard mode from start. I did it with God of War and it made my play through WAY more fun. I actually had to think about strategy, whether I was ready for a region yet or not, and how to balance my items. It pretty much single handily fixed the problem he’s referring to in this video. When you are barely getting through areas of a game, you end up using all the resources available to you.
Alien: Isolation *recommends* hard mode on the difficulty select screen.
I don't know what inspired me to do it, but the Witcher 3 was the first game were I started on max difficulty, and it was wild how much more fun it was to constantly die and to have to seriously plan out potion use and spell use and stuff
This was me for AC origins, it felt really boring with how easy it was, putting nightmare mode on made it 10x more enjoyable and made the other aspects of the game (stealth, exploration, etc.) Feel more rewarding.
Yeah I always found myself to be super average at games as a kid, but as a teenager I mostly stopped playing and didn't pick it back up till I was an adult, and yet somehow I'm far better than I used to be lol I went from avoiding souls-like games, to actively seeking them out because I got addicted to having a game cause my heart to pound out of my chest with adrenaline lmao you don't get that adrenaline unless a game is demanding 100% of your focus and ability. It raises the stakes, cuz it's so damn hard to sustain 100% focus lol
Yeah I suck, so i run out of my consumables in Zelda constantly lmao
Not prozd: use an elixir.
Prozd: But u can't buy elixirs.
Not prozd: it's the final battle.
Prozd: but I only have 85 of them.
Ayyyy ProZD
I like how you actually credit the joke
As soon I read the title of the video, this popped up in my head.
Ayeeee ProZD is best
Now he's the voice of Fl4k in Borderlands 3, great to see a voice guy/video game RUclipsr in a game himself (and a protagonist at that)
"Shit, I'm out of my normal heals!"
*stares at special heal*
"Damnit, no other choice!"
*uses special heal, dies anyway*
".....and it's gone. Never again....."
thats why i never used divine blessing on dark souls
or divine grass on sekiro, always too precious cause the game is hard enough.
That’s why I die in terraria
@Jeff Also the fact that you can only carry one.
@@avik9661 sees nurse...
But then you didn't made it in time to press the heal button....
D4rk St34mpunk3r YESSSS!!
Game: Ok, here's an item, you have a limited supply so make-
Player: Alright, never use it
Game: wait, n-
Player: Hoard like a dragon, loud and clear.
finally someone who understands me
Tumblr: Hey, this is my joke
Jacob Glynn: This is your joke?
Tumblr: Yes
*Tumblr Leaves*
Jacob Glynn: *This is my joke*
BOTW is the only game I use elixers(potions)
@@mrpie2429 I don't even make elixirs other than stamina and endurance for horses
I think for me the most important parts for me are 1. It needs to be necessary, not just convenient. If potions are the only way to get health back or at least the only really effective way then i will use it, if I can instead stand still and regenerate, well i will save that potion to the bitter end. And 2. The source of the item needs to be really really clear. If i can get the item from crafting or an easily available vendor I will feel comfortable relying on it regularly. If it's hard to find vendors, you only sometimes get potions from them and money is really scarce, well no way in hell am I using it, that thing will gather dust until eternity. If it's really clear to me how I will obtain the item and how rare it will be I can plan better and will feel confident I'm using it right.
I know exactly what you mean. In Bioshock 2 I would rather stand in water for a couple of minutes to refill health than use up my potion. In Dishonored I would rather sit to refill my mana instead of using up my potion. Devs need to consider human psychology in their game design.
"It's LITERALLY the final boss!"
"But i only have twelve of them..."
"But...but...what if it has multiple phases?!"
good ol ptozd
But what if I die 12 times to that boss?
**uses one**
**dies**
"Well no point in me using more, I could die 11 more times and then be stuck on the boss with none of them left!"
for final bosses it's not so much the fact that you still have a limited amount, it's more of the fact that you most likely have 500 items left over from not using them and you'd make the final boss a complete pushover
Final Boss. Gotta save.
BUT!
Are you the final boss? There might be a FINAL final boss.
That feeling when you'd actually rather play a Sonic game because forced Super Sonic always means true final boss.
@Backstage Bum Thank you CrossCode for putting both forms of the final boss on the same health bar. (even if it gets reset to half at the beginning of the second form regardless of how much you overkilled the first)
Like Bloodborne.
Metal Gear Rising:
Hell yeah, I destroyed the Excelsus! Now for the epic endi-
*Armstrong comes out and powers up*
Me and Raiden: Oh, you've gotta be kidding me!
Armstrong: Let's. Go!
Me and Raiden: The hell are you thinki-
*gets destroyed by phase 1 and 2 Armstrong because all repair nanopaste has been used*
Then phase 3 starts... At least the game gives you some healing here! He can still stomp you, though.
Then comes Revengeance Difficulty. *Now that is the definition of PAIN*
What's tha noise?
Monsoon: *MEMES, JACK!*
OH NO, NOT YOU AGAIN!!
gravity rush 2
My mantra when playing through games with big inventory spreads is "If you save the good china for when the Queen comes for dinner, then you're never going to use the good china". Since adopting this mentality i've had more fun ef even just because i have more experience with elements of the game i used to store up for emergencies that... never really came.
Another way to see it is “when will it feel the best?”
Is the enemy in Par with your skill?
Absolutely CRUSH THE TINY BUG.
same.. emegancy storage which is never used hahaha
I have this problem irl too, I always want to save things for a "special occasion" but somehow every occasion isn't special enough
My mentality is, if you're not gonna use, sell it and make more money.
Better save these Max health potions for boss battles!.....wait why are the credits rolling?
I saw a youtuber use an X-Item in a Pokémon battle for the first time to beat a super hard boss in a play through, which was crazy because I always thought they were nothing more than a good thing to sell in the shop.
I don’t use X items because they’re just moves but worse
X attack is swords dance but only half as powerful and I can sell it for example
Although I never use swords dance either
The only stat I care about changing is my enemies health to zero
@@minaashido518what if the x attack is more viable than any of the other attacks you have. Like all of them are less effective than if you did that half dmg x item.
@@notchs0son I’d likely use it but that’s never happened
I usually have moves that are more effective, ones that deal damage while altering stats
One of the hardest fights I’ve had (Cynthia bdsp) was solved with low kick and bubble
@@minaashido518 You can argue it's a worse swords dance, but it's also a worse swords dance that doesn't require you to keep a moveslot for it. Granted - there's no real enemies in modern pokemon games that REQUIRE you to attack boost to beat them since you'll probably out level them just playing casually, but its nice to have that option
Games where basically everything is consumable give me anxiety.
Last of Us I am loking a you
Any game with weapon specific ammo... halo 2
420BootyWizard halo where pistols are more useful then a good portion of primary weapons
@@MrCrackbear my comment was mainly a joke but I'm the guy who only uses needler and sniper because I suck at aiming XD
@Callum Booth I like games with percent heal items and percent damage items / effect items because those can be useful all game
Hmmm. It took me an hour to get here. So if I die, I'll have wasted a lot of time. But this item that can save me is really rare. Hmmm
*_Guess I'll die_*
I cant think, off of the top of my head, a single rare item I had in my inventory that would have changed the flow of a fight. IE Fallout3-4-by the time I need a fatman, im surrounded and it would kill me as well.
I follow the unless it’s needed for a story or advanced item later it’s not worth keeping around.
Flashbacks from Dragon's Dogma
Matt Voelker I’ve had many rare items actually help, honestly my least favorite consumables are the cheap but useless ones, because lots of games have consumables that I of course save for emergencies, but then when the emergency comes they’re so useless and they take time or effort to use that will seriously raise my chances of losing more than their benefit raises my chances of winning.
Demonmercer that’s why you just buy a million empty bottles, trek to the nearest healing spring, fill all the bottles with magic water, then contemplate your choices when you realize the bottle weigh over double your weight capacity
"Oh, a consumable buff/attack. I'll save that for later"
>breezes through early game
>mid game boss fight
"Let's try this out"
>uses consumable attack
>weak
>uses consumable buff
>barely noticeable
>dies
"Welp, I'm never using those again."
Ah, the sheer amount of truth in that!
That's the real truth
That's true. The number of times I've been disappointed by buff attacks and consumables is probably too high. Especially in RPGs
@@DantesInferno96 And then there is games like Persona 5 where you better be buffing for the boss battles or you are in for a long slog.
Sometimes it feels like active items aren't worth using, because they take time to play an animation, or take up part of your turn, when you could've just swung your sword again. This is especially true in turn-based games. "Do I cast another fireball for large aoe damage, or use this active item to give my warrior a defense boost to the next attack that hits him?" It sometimes feels like it's not worth the "action economy" it requires to use the items.
" Potion seller, I need your strongest potion "
" You can‘t handle my potions, traveller"
-So is this the part where a random person continues the script, and then after 15 comments someone else ruins it?-
@@Josuh you ruined it before it started
I don't even know what the script was
Enough of Jokes, Potion seller!
I'm going into battle and
I need only your *STRONGEST POTIONS* !
You cannot handle my strongest potion traveller
Potions are like shrimp
B:USE THE POTION
A:WHAT IF WE NEED IT FOR LATER?
B:THIS IS THE FINAL BATTLE YOU HAVE 99 OF THOSE AND WE HAVE 1 HP!
A:BUT WHAT IF WE NEED IT FOR LATER?
Sometimes the boss has an unexpected final final form.
@@Gloomdrake haha absolutely the same thought.
Parcel Form yeah you don’t know, maybe the game is tricking you into thinking it’s the final boss but in reality you’re halfway through
I can't think of a final boss that was difficult enough to need it. Most final bosses are actually kinda easy. I think the only time I've used a Megalixir was fighting Yiazmat in Final Fantasy XII and that's not the final boss but an optional ridiculous super boss.
B: PLEASE IM DYING!
I’m more conservative on my items than real life money
I also do the same with master balls in Pokemon
That's okay, all you need now to catch a legendary is a normal pokeball on the first turn
LeviathanLP is this true?
Alex Knowlton I think he’s being sarcastic about how easy Pokémon is.
Alex Knowlton only with one Pokémon in sword/shield and it’s before you could even get the master ball
Master Balls are for box legendary's in my opinion. :)
Seeing him play west of loathing was great, it’s such an underrated game and I’m glad to even see someone highlight it for 3 seconds.
indeed, another west of loathing enthusiast
Me: uses item to gain a buff to fight tough enemy
Enemy: dies quickly
Me: "Did I really need that?"
It's a shame that this man didn't play Disgaea 5 and used the Maid class whom has the Unique Evility (Evil Ability) called:
*Efficient Work* = Once per turn, you get a free item use.
This effectively allowed the Maid character to toss an attack item at an enemy, or use 1 item per turn in addition to their main action (up to 2 item uses per turn). The game also made it so that healing items when used will grant EXP to the character that used the item regardless of target which is a steady percentile to the next level. Using 8 items gains the character a *level up* in other words. Furthermore, the Maid would learn common evilities from her own class that buff the range of item usage, doubling the healing effect of items and enhancing the attack items to deal 50% more damage and even making single target healing items to target up to 5 allies in a plus sign (area of effect). This is one of the games that definitely pushes the player to use items IF the player actually figures out and realizes how overpowered this can be.
@@StoneMonkWisdom But if the items are over powered was it really me winning tho?
@@StoneMonkWisdom Reminds me of Divinity: Original Sin 2. In it you can take a perk that reduces the action point cost of using grenades and scrolls by 1 if you have a hand free on the character with the perk. Normally using a grenade item takes 2 action points, so reducing it by 1 is a massive improvement. On one multiplayer run I had with a a few friends I decided to see just how powerful it would be...and then I broke the game in half with firestorm grenades to the point where every trip back to the main hub had me scouring the vendors for needed materials.
reminds me of when i was playing battle cats recently and used a shitload of buff items to take down the final boss of the first world a second time cause it was really ahrd the first but i had gotten so much more powerful at that point that i didnt need them
I don't think I've ever actually used an Ether or Elixir in pokemon just due to their sheer rarity.
When I was a kid I only had 2 games. Pokemon Ruby and Pokemon Sapphire. I would grind like fucking crazy to collect tons of rare and powerful pokemon and collect them all in one game. I had a bank that was half filled with rayquaza's. At that point I just knew what the best ways to beat the game were and would use consumables like these to breeze through the elite 4 whenever I got to the pokemon league so I wouldn't have to train. I think the way I made myself do it was just thinking about how many more raquaza's and masterballs I could collect on my main game by winning faster.
Medium D Speaks just pick a favorite Pokémon, it’s not that hard. One play through of ruby/sapphire I gave all my rare items to a random zigzagoon, because I was like this is my main -mon this play through!
And then sun and moon happened and their farm made leppa berries so common ethers had no reason to even exist
@@joule400
To be fair though, you could farm Leppa Berries ever since Ruby & Sapphire, it was just more tedious
But has anyone ever used an x speed/x defense/x attack etc?
I never use them because it just FEELS like I’ll always be in a situation where I need them and won’t have them.
Aaaand that's our instinctual behaviour. If you've ever watched a cat scratching a *window* while trying to clean up, maybe you've thought to yourself "why are you compelled to do this irrational task"...
other games: "good job beating that enemy! here is a special consumable that will help you!"
fallout: *you have become addicted to buffout*
"I should save this for another fight when i need it"
"Ok i should keep saving for a future fight"
"For another fight...."
"Another....."
It's because you're playing the game at too easy a level
@@BoleDaPole okay lets say you beat a fight that required an item, and you used that item during the fight. then the next fight will be even harder, but now you're out of items that could help you. instead your chances of winning the harder fight drops dramatically because you ran out items. in other words, difficulty shouldn't depend heavily on availability of items.
This is why Hollow Knight is my favorite game. Set difficulty without any items to waste or weapons/armors to choose from, the farthest it goes is 3 spells and easy-to-understand charms. And it keeps it this simple while also keeping it very fun and difficult at times which is just AWESOME.
yeah but I still hoarde rancid eggs
@@kerstinhoffmann2343 rancid egg. trade to jiji i must.
*forgets to trade them to jiji for the rest of the game*
And then there's me, who never uses spells avoiding consuming energy
@@kerstinhoffmann2343 well I think we hoard them because we never really need them. If my shade was in a spot that I shouldnt have been able to get too, I'd probably use Jiji. But the only time I really needed it was my first playthrough when I was so damn lost in the fungal wastes and kept dying without a map and everything. And it was before I knew about Jiji. Coming back to the game after a year-ish break, it baffles me how I ever got lost lol. Was immensely easier somehow
Me: *never uses any spells anyway because what if I'll need the soul to heal*
But I don't mind, because playing nail with nail only is still very fun and challenging.
I almost never use “active items” because I’m always too scared of wasting them
Same
Same even when i beat the game
*my terraria world with chests full of potions*
They're only wasted by not using them. I don't even care if consumables are necessarily good the first time I use them, I just wanna experiment and see what they do
are grenades active items? I mostly dont use them because I save them for hard enemies but there are no real hard enemies.
I also dont get it why you should start a game in normale, GO HC and get GUD...
I wish I were as stingy with my bank account as I am with consumables
Supported! I'm so stingy in games yet so frugal in real life... it's weird
@@frealms Frugal means the same thing as stingy, think you meant careless?
@@boletarianbread7349
Was meant to be frivolous but somewhere the wires crossed and everything went to shit. Thanks for spotting it, mate!
Simon WoodburyForget Tell that last line to a room full of investors and they’ll laugh you out of there.
Razbuten talking about BotW: "Nothing's too precious to hold onto forever"
Me with 10 royal claymores: *visible confusion*
Pretty much, you always use the weaker items and as such always keep the same good weapons.
I think I had over 400 bomb arrows at one point but refused to ever use them even when I found myself in a difficult fight.
Me with my 4 sheikah longswords that NEVER SPAWN AGAIN: ...
@@nakkipatukka123 The windcleavers? You can get more of them from the Yiga Blademasters when they randomly attack you.
@@jamesfilms_ No I meant the Edge of duality. I only have four and don't know if they respawn anywhere...
I remember when I started playing an RPG called Lord of the Rings: The Third Age at around age 7, there was a very rare item called Morgul Decay. In a game with item overload, this one was special, as it removed the entirety of the armor of an enemy. You got just over a dozen of these across the whole game, so it made them amazingly important for me at a young age.
Me: *runs out of health potions* "Aw damn it! I'm out of useful health potions!"
All other potions: Am I a joke to you?
my personal favorite: 30 second elemental resist elixirs in games where average "first encounter" time is approximately 2+ minutes. looking at you zero dawn.
"Am I a joke to you?"
Yes, you are, nighteye; yes, you are.
@@KarmasAB123 I use Nighteye by going to the options menu and turning up the brightness. :D
all the generic potions are useless,cuz... stamina comes quickly and energy also does that
@@Known_as_The_Ghost Pro gamer move.
You gotta save all the items possible for one reason only: insane secret post-game boss who you’ll probably need them ALL to beat!
And you’ll still beat it without using them because you assumed you’ll need it later.
Undertale is a good example, "holy shit that was a hard fight, Welp time to face the final boss, just gotta get rid of this gu-" GET DUNKED ONNNNNN
*Cries in Persona 5*
@@MoonPatch Persona 5 is actually a really interesting example. Of course, early game _really_ makes you think about SP, considering how you barely have any items to replenish it and therefore hesitate to use them unless you're really in trouble. Aside from that, other consumables, (the elemental damage dealing items specifically,) were scarce and not powerful, so I found myself avoiding them almost all the time. That is, until I got cocky and met The Reaper on purpose... Then, the fact that I'd held on to them suddenly mattered immensely. That - coupled with some grinding to craft more of said items, careful Persona leveling/customization and meticulous battle choices - is the only reason I was able to _barely_ scrape by and defeat the hellish menace, even though my party was only somewhere around level 50 - 60 (?) If I remember correctly.
In short, I actually found myself glad I saved those items instead of wasting them unnecessarily because they had a hidden, more valuable purpose. This is in contrast to some Final Fantasy games, where a lot of the time I finish the game and I realize I still have all of my elixirs... I had to train myself to use an elixir in a semi-rough situation where it would help because it feels awesome, and it's nice to not finish the game realizing you never touched them.
@@ryo-kai8587 You make an excellent point about Persona 5 (don't really know about Final Fantasy since I've never played it much)
Persona also has a different mechanic, being time management, where instead of using consumables you can sacrifice an in-game day to return to a dungeon completely topped up, downside being that you could have used that time to up your social stats, or hang out with a confidant etc.
Meaning items are actually best hoarded for tough fights, where you don't have the option to top up mid-fight, and later in the game as you get more items to help you finish palaces with less time wasted, you also gain new confidants you could spend that time on, so it doesn't feel like it's really getting easier, rather it's just changing your priorities.
Well...I say that but I pretty much always just forced myself through the dungeon in one go, mostly because I'm stubborn.
I'm also a huge fan of Persona 5, so I might be a TEENSY-BIT biased there.
And now I shall quote the ancient texts.
"I should save these for an emergency."
(Gets in an emergency)
"*WHAT IF THERE'S AN EVEN BIGGER EMERGENCY!?*"
And then it goes to I bet I can do it without this
To solve this problem I would try doing a no death play through on the highest difficulty. Makes me really prioritize staying alive whatever the costs
😂😂my exact thought process😂😂
It really do be like that
For me the crucial factor is if I know if, where and how I can get replacements. As long as I don't know when I get more of it, I cling to consumeables and rarely use them. But if I know that I need to collect 3 ingredients and I also know where to get them, then I am set. I had a lot of fun with alchemy in Classic WoW where I liked to collect flowers, brew potions and drank tons of them so I was able to fool around in areas that were a bit too high for me unbuffed.
Another way to encourage the use of consumeables: Give them an expiration date and/or a stack limit. If I can only hold 10 potions of strength and found an eleventh I can chugg one "for free".
I agree. If I know this specific vendor restocks this potion, I tend to buy it and use it regularly. If a potion is only made from rare herbs, I guarantee I will never use that potion.
My main problem with consumable items is that quite a lot of games have at least one item that is:
-Too rare
-Too good
-The effect is temporary
So it's a really good item that i deeply want to use it but i can't for the life of me find another one of it, so i'm too afraid of wasting it when it's not absolutely necessary.
That is a good point, most don't last very long. If you could pop a potion and it lasts the entire duration of a dungeon you are exploring, then you would probably use them all the time. You would probably buy/craft a bunch of stuff, prepare carefully, then use them all when you start. If it lasts 30 seconds, you will never use it.
I usually tackle this by asking myself:
1. Will I probably die if I don't use this item
2. Was the trek all the way to this point longer than a few minutes
3. Do I already have 'enough' (like 3 or more)
At that point, it's pretty safe. Games like SMT: Nocturne (especially on hard mode) force you into situations, due to getting unlucky with an ambush or getting critically hit, where you have to use items or you'll perish, and the items can be rare so you feel it haha. The hard decisions make the experience even better.
He showed a shot of Pillars of Eternity which, on the hardest difficulty, is pretty hard without utilizing food and potions/scrolls. Not necessary, but they help significantly. Good game design, in my opinion
Dead Samson Good example.
I was running PoE on max difficulty, and it was very rewarding being pushed like that, unfortunately my game glitches out and broke the dungeon quest line, I never figured out how to fix it, nor bit the bullet and went back hours to a prior save, so the game got dropped. 😑
If you played in the hardest difficulty they would be "absolutely necessary" way more often.
Lilitha11 that could be offset by re-using the 30 second duration item every 20-25 seconds, but the problem is that these duration items prevent reuse of the same item or like-use items for 50 or so seconds after you first use it.
"I may need this for later"
*reaches the final boss*
"I may need this for later"
I may want to keep it for coolness' sake
Would rather die in dark souls than “waste” a divine blessing potion
Could not relate to that part about burning a humanity in order to get back to full health - humanity is a limited use item, therefore who needs full health when playing dark souls
I've literally never used a divine blessing in any of the 3 games
I seriously can't relate. I played DS3 recently, finished it a week or two ago. It was my first Dark Souls game, but all through it I was a fuckin Charcoal Pine addict. At first I was stingy with Embers but later on I had so many that I popped them like candy, even if I was going to die shortly after. The stamina regen green herb, too, I used in every single boss fight because it felt like it helped recovering from quick combos and dodge rolls. DS3 may be the only game where I fuckin loved consumables. Divine blessings I just used to keep exploring without having to go back and rest.
@@MikeDep Humanity can be farmed, blessings can't; I use humanity casually if I'm out of estus.
I'm gonna serve a hot take that Souls games shouldn't have healing consumables AT ALL. You get your Estus flask, and whatever healing spells you equipped. Consumables should be for buffs and throwable stuff only.
I've been needlessly saving consumables in every game for years, but I'm finally getting over it. I'm learning to not fear the thought of running out of that consumable - if a time where I absolutely need to use it actually comes, I'll just find a way to get more, worst case scenario I'll have to backtrack and farm a bit.
It obviously depends on the game, but my general rule for enhancing consumables is "use them on bosses and minibosses", after all the game is probably designed to provide you with enough consumables of this type to have a few for every boss.
My general rule for sustain consumables is "use them when there is something at stake": E.g. I have enough souls for a level, so I'll cure my poison instead of tanking through it to minimize the chances of losing them.
Well said!
"why waste ammo shooting [insert enemy] when you can punch them to death?"
Metro Exodus?
Resident evil 4, can I kill it with my knife? I will kill it with my knife.
it makes sense when u've had to kill a final boss with a knife b/c u ran out of ammo
My experience with BioShock
I did this when I was 7 playing ratchet and clank 3 lol. I almost got past the 2nd level. And then I gave in and used guns.
"Given the chance, players will optimize the fun out of a game."
Such as beating a game without armour or accessories or generally ‘required’ equipment such as weapons or a ‘key’ item that makes things easier
@@Jamlord2061 Not necessarily, its more grinding for better stats over doing fun missions. You almost forget that its a game and you're meant to have fun. I had this issue with CS:GO, RPGs and other games where rather than do the fun things in the game, I wanted to grind so I can have more fun when I get around to doing the fun things (e.g having better gear so the missions are easier). Grinding is such a bad habit I have and now I purposely play narrative games so I don't fall back into the loop of grinding for XP and gear instead of the story.
Credit your quote! Mark, from GMTK (Game Makers Tool Kit) said this 💕
it's not about optimizing. why would i use something i don't need? not pressing a button is easier than pressing it.
@@Jamlord2061 best example of this was ghosts of tsushima. Lethal difficulty, broken armor, fully NOT upgraded sword, taking the ridiculously hard route rather tgan the intended stealth route.
Every time I found a scroll in Skyrim: “cool ! Now let’s hide that in my house...”
Me too!! To this day I have never used a scroll. I have played Skyrim so many times it’s embarrassing
TES games would be improved if they went back to Morrowind's concept, where you can enchant anything so long as the value is high enough. In Morrowind it was possible to make scrolls, so they didn't feel like a limited resource; they simply felt like something a mage would use. In Oblivion and Skyrim the only ways to obtain scrolls were to buy them or find them--and let's be honest, you rarely buy them. That made them feel superfluous.
Maybe have the player able to enchant anything, but have the odds of success start fairly low for some things (baskets have a 1% chance, swords have a 66% chance). As the player enchants that type of item, the odds of success increase (analogous to improving a skill through practice). This would create a reward for players who invest in this skill, as well as creating some fun play variants ("I'm going to throw my BASKET OF FIRE at the dragon!!").
i dont think scrolls are good so i hoard them in my house with my cheese
Yeah I got hooked on Skooma my first playthrough. Yet never used buff potions or scrolls.
Really? Scrolls? I didn’t realize people actually considered using those.
I think the most common problem with active items specifically in RPG games is the fact that you usually can overcome the need to use an item by simple level or gear grind. Or just by being good at avoiding being hit. In most cases need to use those acts as in indication of "you need to get stronger to pass" for me. The only time they actually become required when you reach the level-cap of the game where you simply can't get any stronger through permanent upgrades and can't avoid enemy attacks forever. Of course there are exceptions in some games when at some point in the story you can't get any stronger and can't get through the boss without exploiting his weakness to certain item, but those are a few and far in between.
I could spend a turn to use a consumable that doubles my attack stat and then spend another turn to hit twice as hard
or
I could just hit two times in a row.
If the consummable lasts even 2 turns then you're up in damage. Alternatively you might have a really hard hitting attack that benefits more from a percentage based increase than your basic attack
Mountain Smithy or you could use the item then use all your sp to use your strongest attack doubling the damage of that attack. And double from 7000 to 9999 because of the damage limit.
in terms of Pokemon, there's the PP, you can only use each attack a certain number of times, so you could spend 2 PP over 2 turns to deal 50 damage, or you could spend 1PP and 1 consumable, and still deal 50 damage
@@DisKorruptd pp is rarely a consideration in Pokémon, only ever becoming a problem against walls.
use you item, then use an attaque that deal double of damage but don't allow you to attaque next turn.
you deal 4x the damage, for the cost of 3 turn.
i often forget about items until i get destroyed by some enemy and in anger notice that i can buff my self up
Richard Mayer That’s how I am in Skyrim. I always wonder why I’m so weak and then remember potions and enchanting exist
Bro, I'm literally just buyed skyrim, spend the last 2 weeks adding 100+ mods, and finally got to start playing.
I'm literally doing what you both are doing: I CAN and SHOULD use consumables and enchantments as often as I breath.
Same, was just playing the dark brotherhood questline in ESO where you need to kill the Black Dragon and I got my shit pushed in the first three times and kept worrying about how many soul gems I can use to revive, how my equipment will keep breaking with every death, and how many potions I could use. This tyoe of thinking is what holds me back because if I never would've used one of my equipment repair kits I was hoarding then I wouldn't have gotten past that boss.
7:00 I'm actually one of those botw players that still never uses strong weapons because I don't want them to break. Boss monster? I'll grab my stick!
Same! And It realy frustrate me a lot!
Same here, especially in master mode. Monsters take much more damage to kill and you end up breaking weapons faster. I instead found myself using electric and ice arrows more, the former to refill my weapons via disarming enemies and the latter to kill stuff faster, taking advantage of the ice shatter crit.
If I hadn't had my 24 amiibo cards, I'd most likely be out of all my arrows at this point.
Haha, yeah. At the beginning of the game stronger weapons are not easy to replenish, and by the time they are I already had the Master Sword, so... ^^;
I get what they are going for, but I think they could've handled it better. Maybe make broken weapons temporarily unusable, so players are incentivized to use all their arsenal without fear of permanently losing items / spending their playtime re-acquiring those items?
Easy solution: collect weapons until every weapon is your strong weapon. Then you can use whatever you want without worrying!
That is the reason i use Daruks weapon in mastermode only for lynels. Cause i use it for a strong monster and it wont break...
sthe bad thing is every lynel empties my arrow bag ;-;
(i hope i get master sword soon)
I think the thing that makes me hoard items the most is a vague item description. I try to go into a game blind without looking too much up, and I’ve been burned too many times selling items I needed to craft better items (Horizon Zero Dawn did this to me a LOT). I think BotW does a good job of telling the player what the item can be used for, which also helps decide when to use and when to sell certain items.
I don't know why we still have this problem in 2024, the solution is very very simple.
1. Have different tabs for crafting ingredients and junk.
2. Or make quest items and crafting ingredients non-sellable.
I haven't watched yet, but my reason is: I don't like to depend on things that can run out.
essentially the same for me, a lot of the time i feel like im taking the easy way out or even sorta cheating by using consumable items
@@thisismyusernow yeah, a lot of the time i only use consumables when going on long journeys or am planning on spending a long time away from safer areas and so i have the stuff i need to do an artificial full heal or two
Those are called Girlfriends
So true. I use the renewable resources. Things like mana. Also I replant every tree in Minecraft
Usernamewastaken The Heavy. While rapid-firing $800 bullets.
"u've a lot of that item, u cant grab that one on the ground"
*Uses one and grab that one one the ground*
THIS IS WHAT I DO
What and just leave it on the ground. OK.
@@thirdcoasthustle yes and come back later if you need it.
@@murray821 what if it despawn
My apex legends constant sentinel charge strat
*has 13 megalixers*
Party: Use a megalixer, we're nearly all dead!
Me: BUT YOU CAN'T BUY THEM ANYWHERE!
@Unqiue Keys That's me playing Final Fantasy 8. I have 100 Shells, but only got it off a boss monster, and had to grind Draws like mad to get them! I can squeeze a win out of this.
I think my Final Fantasy tactics (no pun intended) should have me on an episode of "Hoarders."
**has like 70 cappuccinos in Ni No Kuni that restore 70 MP**
Friend: AYE LUNA GIVE ESTHER A CAPPUCCINO SO SHE CAN HEAL HERSELF SHE HAS 2 MP
Me: bUT I NEED THESE
Esther: **falls in battle**
Me: GOD DAMMIT ESTHER WHY ARE YOU SO USELESS
Friend: **facepalms**
Edit: Idk how to type apparently :DDDD
Me in Dragon's Dogma, but I use them because most things you can buy.
You literally hit everything on the nail every time. Perfect explanations.
Designer talking to other designers: "Your players will optimize the fun out of your game, if you let them"
I mean I enjoy trying to figure out how to optimize things in a game, though it does admittedly make some things a little less fun sometimes when you've made it so that everything runs basically perfectly smoothly
Arn't players actively choosing to optimize over fun? Why prevent players from doing what they want to do? Everyone loves abusing rules to get ahead. Its not as fun as playing normally, but there is some serious satisfaction to be found in breaking a game to your own advantage.
@@willichtenstein7071 I can't be sure, but i think i heard the quote from Jake Solomon, director of both the XCOM reboot games. In the first game, especially before the expansion, the optimal play was to camp hard, and wait for enemies to walk into your pre-established shooting gallery, and then slowly move up one notch, and start camping again. This is optimal, but obviously not fun.
Now many people didn't like the implementation of the timer system in the sequel, but that's probably more of a framing and implementation issue, than it is an issue with making people go faster and take more risks, which is generally good for the game.
@@haldir108 Ever watch the spiffing brit? His entire channel is about breaking games. Kind of like how in Civ 6 you can not only make all military units cost 0 gold (and have a near infinite supply of military), but also sell resources for a lot more money than you costs to buy it back from the AI.
The fun for me is in optimizing it. And optimizing the game in passive ways so that I don't have to go down a forty-line checklist of casting buffs and drinking potions and deploying scout drones. I'd rather have my Ultimate Weapon and know how to handle the game than carry around an entire chemist's shop so that I can beat the Devil with a butter knife and my Mickey Mouse boxer shorts.
Why use that powerful potion to make my life easier when I could sell it for 2 gold?
Smart tbh
but what if you need it later so selling it is just a disadvantage.
@@a-drewg1716 what if I need 2 gold? There no right decision.
@That guy I usually play the end battle twice, the first time without items, when I beat it I load the save and try again using everything to see how much of a beast I am, it's fascinating to see the big bad not being able to put a scratch on you because you OD on potions and one use only items.
but what if you can sell it for more later?
And then the time finally comes, you encounter an enemy or a group of enemies that kick your ass 5 times in a row, and you reach for your special supply of buffs and heals, and it does not do a damn thing, except delay your death by a fraction of a second.
i think the Path of Exile approach to flasks is a simple but elegant solution to consumable items. instead of the items being consumed upon use, you just consume what is inside of the flask, but you keep the flask, and it refills automatically as you damage enemies. So, you get to choose which kind of flask your character should carry, and when its best to use them, but you never have to worry about saving them for later or doing excessive recipe hunting/crafting to get more.
I never use them because "i might need them later", and then the game ends while i have 99 potions...
I try to break a way from such stupud habits becuse Persona 5 showed me how amazing consumable Items are.
I say to my self "You have them. Use them."
Pathetic. I finished with 100 potions.
In stardew valley I take the ‘save one of everything’ to the next level which results in me having hundreds of fruits and veggies that I’ll never use but I still keep them because you know... jUsT iN cAsE
I was playing mass effect 2. A game I have beaten several times. My friend comes in and gets mad at me for not using the heavy weapons. I tell him it was in case I need the ammo for another fight. He then proceeded to remind me it was the last boss. I realize this is my issue. I never use items because what if. But the what if never happens. IDK how to fix that.
Me neither. I am the dude that will pick up a rocket launcher in Halo and literally never use it. We should start a support group.
I'm sure the hoarders support groups will accept us.
Me and borderlands man
In my opinion that's a game design flaw that game designers should find a way to fix, and not a player's problem, like one of the designers of CIV 3 said "Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game".
@@DOOMSLAYA99 What if I need that Rocket launcher later!
Me: But I only have 87 Hyper potions!
What if there is an emergency?!
My brain: This is an emergency!
Me: Uses Hyper potion
My brain: Why did you wasted it?!
Alucard Santra Di deus
Why did you *wasted* it
@@dehydratedculture9126 wOW yOuRE sO SMaRt
Me in fallout
Me: I'm at low HP but i dunno if i wanna use one of my 2043 stimpacks!
Also me: *Eats 100 irradiated cabbages*
Omg same.
Even if I hack I don't use like Full potions
Me: reloads previous save to spare it.
I am so afraid to use consumable items that when I firt played Minecraft I was using iron pickakes only when I had to mine diamond or gold. Seeing how fast the pickaxe were taking damages was making me wonder "Will I find enough iron when using this iron pickaxe to make it worth it?". So I ended up sitting on dozens of stacks of iron and diamond, almost never using them.
"This potion gives you +0.5 attack if you use it!"
Me: *WHAT IF I DON'T WANT TO?!*
Me: That shit is weak sauce. I’m not using that fucking shit.
@@Dibol1987 Better off selling it at that point
Yeah, most active items are basically shinier salvage.
Biggest issue with consumables: pausing gameplay to navigate disruptive menus
This and also in my case, being afraid of wasting it/using it when i dont really need to.
@@capralmarines4043 i never feel like using an item was worth it (unless it replenishes something essential like Health or Mana)
I love games where i can just hit a button in order to take every buff i currently have access to. Terraria does this really well, it's like "oh hey this situation is pretty hard" *hits B* "PERISH YOU MOFOS"
@@QuantumFluxable Another situation is when the game is so easy that you don't have to use items, not like in terraria where you have to use them.
That's one of the biggest reasons I hated Breath of the Wild. You can't go 30 seconds in that game without pausing to change your gear or use an item.
It's simple: we use items only when we feel we cannot win without them.
*only when we feel we cannot win without them AND we are fairly certain the item will help win and won't go to waste.
The process of figuring out if an item is worth it is often more than the worth it gives, such that people don't bother even if they're good. The "reactive items" he mentioned at the start are the only effective items that convey that.
@@aetherblackbolt1301 Sure they do bother. I beg to disagree because the utility of items aren't just it's utility description. It can also be with how much you can sell it for, the increase of percentage determinants like luck, an increase of survivability or success in a given task, and many more. I do not agree with your sentiment because I believe in the beauty of user preferability and friendliness. If your items were made for a large target market, not just hard core players, saying that just because a general amount of players do not see the utility in playing with items, does not mean it cannot and will not be of use.
Here's the thought process for me when I play games though.
*fighting hard boss
*dies
"Damn maybe I should use a potion, ehh, i did get pretty close to killing him though. Lemme try again"
Of course after the 100th try, dont wanna waste the possibility of beating that boss without wasting pots
@@goodtimesgivecancer1 I might use the potion, only if I get it back if I die. Using potion and then dying is just more painful to me, than just trying to get better at the game without potions. I just don't use them, because they're also usually hard to select, find trough the menues.... and I might get in a spot later on in the game where I could really use it. I think if potions exist, they should be self replenishing.
What I immediately thought of was giving some items like potions a decay stat. You would be able to easily make and find them, but it uses up inventory and if you don't use them then after a while they are just gone. It won't encourage everyone to use buff items, but it would tell most that it is okay to use them since they are going soon anyway
Dragon's Dogma does exactly that with food items.
Often it's just that using those items isn't fun. Like, take Skyrim for example yeah? You spend so much time in menus. Health potions are in your menus, changing magic is in your menu, enchanting is a menu, blacksmithing is a menu, cooking is a menu, speech is a glorified menu. And getting to any given iten on any menu takes at least a couple clicks.
Adding more menu clicks for temporary and sometimes miniscule buffs is the most boring part of Skyrim.
Or you can use a healing spell in one hand like me
This. Even in Witcher III, using items is entering a menu, and with all the decoctions, the potions section is cluttered af by the end of the game. It just takes away from the gameplay.
Of course it’s a menu. Lol wtf
@@SnoConeWars wait I thought you can't drink potions that arnt in your hot bar during a fight or am I wrong?
I think Skyrim exemplifies bad consumables in video games. “Potion of resist X” is such a bland idea, usually providing negligible damage protection that is only useful against a few enemy types. Skill potions suck in part because they’re percent based, so skills you’re bad at won’t be boosted much at all and skills you’re good at will usually be good enough without the potion. The exceptions are attack potions (short term damage boost, if you happen to get one for your favored fighting style) and crafting potions (since you can exploit the “crafting loop” of making fortify alchemy potions, only to drink them so you can make even better fortify alchemy potions, etc.). Poisons are usually just bonus damage, which is useful but completely unnecessary since it basically just saves you a couple of weapon hits, and the special poisons like frenzy and paralyze are often resisted by tough enemies who you want to use them on. (That said, poisons are my favorite Skyrim consumable and can be a lot of fun).
Health potions are ok, but who needs them when you can carry 50 cheese wheels? Magicka potions are great for mages and lame for people who only know the heal and fire spells, but my mages always run out shortly after learning fireball. Stamina potions are decent.
With regret, I have to say the worst consumable is... skooma. It restores stamina, and that’s *it*. Really lame compared to the incredibly fun, spamable, and crippling skooma from Oblivion. It was the most memorable and fun consumable in the entire game by far.
So I always just sell my potions in Skyrim (with the exception of restorative potions) so that I can buy more soul gems, enchanted weapons and armor, and whatever I can’t steal. And invisibility potions. Invisibility is fun.
I usually say “I’ll save this potion for a boss fight” and then forget about it for the rest of the game until the credits roll.
This is why I like New Game+
@@Known_as_The_Ghost So you can horde double the potions until the credits? c;
I wouldn't even use oils in witcher 3 if there wasnt auto apply oils mods lol. I just find wasting time finding what potion i need
@@Jamie-tx7pn Nah.
In some NG+'s (like Witcher 3) some enemies literally one shot ya.
But in easier games, yeah.
Either hold them forever, or sell them to obtain the best gear in the game.
Game: hey, here's a rare resource
Me: got it, I'll literally never use it
G: no I meant use them sparingly because you won't get many throughout the game :)
M: yeah I heard you, don't use it, got it
G: please use it you're in an emergency, it's the final boss battle you won't get to use them later
M: *n o*
That is really dumb. I need to try to break with such stupid habbits.
I'm out of MP.
Then use an Ether.
But... you can't buy ethers.
It's the final battle!
But I only have 89 of them
Ah, yeah rare candies do feel like that.
Me with midir
@@blunderbus2695
Nice reference
And then there’s Pokémon-Style games where the “I need to use this” moment actually comes.
Sure, when they're reactive items for healing, but how often do you honestly see players use the active variety, including the likes of X items or a Dire Hit?
@@wesnohathas1993 Well…. Yeah then that applies. In Nuzlockes, X items are occasionally useful when allowed but mostly banned and Dire hit is decent for Gen 1 speed runs but that’s it. So yeah, you’re right on that.
"Out of sight, out of mind." Without some kind of reminder to use an item, there probably wont be a moment given to consider it when youre being clobbered by a boss
Careful with those words, lest we forget the follies of games like Fable and Ocarina of Time:
HEY LISTEN!!!
yoUR hEAlth iS LOw, dO yOU hAve aNY pOTioNS oR foOD?!
That's why I like low health reminder in Sacred. You see a red pulse going through the screen, noticable even if you focus on something else than your HP bar - you press space bar or whatever you bound for a health potion.
@@nekoshey "Hero your willpower is low, watch that" is forever engrained in my mind
I hate when dying with a consumable causes it to be gone forever because it just makes me consider how many consumables I could lose instead of just fighting the boss. I'd like to consider the idea that if you die, you try again, not lose your bonus and have to try EVEN harder
This remind me of bombs in schmups. If you are bad enough to get hit, you usually aren't good enough to know you are getting hit so you don't use those bombs and lose a life anyway because if you knew you were going to get hit you wouldn't have gone this way. Only the absolute best players use bombs efficiently because they use it for score or to get out of situations that are impossible to get out without bombs, but for random players like me bombs feel like they are just wasted everytime you use them.
9:10
Reminds me of a quote by Soren Johnson:
"Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game."
But, but, "optimizing the fun out of the game" is FUN!
This is so true, and even though I'm aware of it I still fall into the trap.
human have always sought to optimize whatever they are working on. We wanted food so we gathered berries and nuts, we want more food then naturally growing plants provided so we developed farming, carrying water from water sources to keep the farms alive was time consuming so we developed irrigation. We wanted plants to grow bigger and more numerous fruits so we began cross breeding and grafting plants. When that wasn't efficient enough we began gene splicing. Though this is one example we as a species have done this for everything we do so why is surprising or "bad" when we do it with games?
Its literally why I love the speedrunning community for videogames. They push themselves and the games to find the absolute optimal way to beat the game but that doesn't remove the fun and joy for the game for the speed runners. Plus by playing games in unintended ways sometimes leads to new ways to play the game such as nuzlocke runs for pokemon.
@@scottrauch1261 Your assessment of speedrunning is EXTREMELY generous. Not all games are fun to speedrun, and this can especially apply to games that are fun casually. When tricks are found that optimize completion time, there are often community-wide discussions about whether the technique should be allowed in certain categories or even whether a new category should be created for it; and in these discussions, one of the main concerns is whether the game or category will become "dead" as a result of an un-fun optimization. This can involve extremely difficult tricks, tricks that have a low chance of success due to RNG (especially bad if it's late into the run), or even tricks that are too easy. Like speaking of Pokemon, the any% category for 1st gen is dead, mostly because it's optimized to heck, but also because it's just not even a game at that point since all you're doing is resetting the game to mess up the menu and ACE to the hall of fame and credits.
But your bias in thinking speedrunning is fun makes sense, because it's only the fun runs that achieve cultural dissemination. There are whole video essays about this kind of thing.
@@SummitSummit This pretty much hits the nail, and shows the actual "homo economicus" in action: Man is neither about maximizing profit, nor about maximizing fun.
It is just that (some) people enjoy to maximize/ optimize; no matter the ( resulting ) cost: Obsession, disguised as reason. ;)
I think another issue with consumables is the small niche that they fill (i.e. +30% Crit Chance for 30 secs or Night Vision for 2 mins.) This only makes situations where the player will store these items just in case but will never need to or even think of using them.
I always say that I will save it for a tougher fight, even on the final boss...
Hey, maybe there's a secret Super Boss. Who knows?
I save them until the final boss and I dump metric tonnes of rebuffs onto them. With so many items, why even attack?
I once killed an RPG final boss with nothing but poisons and healing myself.
Ah yes, the "I will probably need it for something more important later" reasoning.
After etrian odyssey, no. I just use it immediately. Unless its things that effect the whole party. Then I purposely save those for bosses. Usually not the first few bosses though.
Oh god. Etrian Odyssey made EVERY SINGLE CONSUMABLE NECESSARY. I just had a wild regression.
Etrian Odyssey isn't a game for filthy casuals. Damn, this series is hardcore.
I love Etrian Odyssey for the extremely diverse gameplay system allowing for almost total control over everything. Not to mention the roleplaying aspect of it. Really made the journey feel super personal and as a result, special.
Wasn't the same in Persona Q, sadly. Just felt so limited compared to the freedom of EO. Really hoping they figure out how to make it playable on Switch or something.
Besides the classic "too good to use" syndrome that most people experience and you describe here, there's also another reason I dislike using 'active' items in games. It feels like it cheapens my victory, like myself or my character wasn't "good enough" to win without it. This is especially prevalent for me in narrative driven games, where the main character is made out to be this ultra-badass who can take on hordes of enemies, but then my actual ability to play the game doesn't match up.
When this character defeats Superhard Enemy, the story will act as though they're just that tough, when in reality I know I had to dope up on all these consumables. It feels contrary to the narrative and so I will rarely use them.
If use of consumables somehow linked more to the narrative of a game, like the game with the drug "Joy" that you described, I may be more inclined to use them. If I felt like using them meant something to the story, and to the characters, and wasn't just a way to shore up my sometimes sub-par gaming abilities. This same logic is pretty much why I almost never choose to play on harder difficulties.
This perfectly describes exactly how I feel. If I can’t beat the enemy by myself it feels wrong to use consumables especially if the enemies don’t use consumables themselves.
I agree and disagree. I don't think it's worse in narrative games, I think it's worse in more skill based combat. It's more fun to get better at the combat system until you can win than to just make it easier with an item.
Aaron Reamer it’s especially bad in final fantasy 15 or in other words a game you can avoid nearly all damage by holding the square button ( and timing parries when necessary) only a few attacks of certain enemies can get through this method of avoiding damage ( iron giant’s magnet hands attack samurai enemies can have spikes appear from the ground that can hit you if you are too close even when you do this ( though sometimes this doesn’t matter in the slightest as the boss of the dungeon that gets you the crossbow of the clever can be cheesed if you take control of one of your allies and shoot it with bazooka and sub machine gun fire from way above it out of its reach).
this has a lot of good insight. i've personally found that i minimize my item usage in all games as much as possible, because i have a mentality of being self sufficient, and any usage of an item, even reactive items like antidotes or health potions, is a failure that meant i couldn't overcome an obstacle without it. this doesn't mean that i grind until i can avoid it, just that the goal i work towards is to use as few items as possible because thats the type of gameplay i love, that constant seeking of personal efficiency that leans heavily into min-maxing.
I have also another problem. I'm not using early game potions until i need potions in lategame but then they heal me for 5% of hp.
Project X Zone did that. They Healed 10% of HP and you could only carry a max of 20...
But if combined with other diverse and plentiful healing items, they surely hit the spot.
I see you trying to make me use my megalixers. It's not going to happen! It will never happen! They are mine! And they will be beautiful and amazing in my inventory, where they belong.... forever.
I just prefer not using consumables bc I say to myself: "don't get used to it, you won't always have these effects," and I rather have permanent abilities.
Exactly.
Yeah, i always choose passive skills over activated, cooldown, time sensitive ones for the same reason.
Consumables give you permanent status if you keep chugging them 24/7, plus they can be broken in some games.
@@Sweaper yeah but you can still run out. Which is why I use passive abilities or even active, cooldown abilities. That way I have them the entire game with no risk of ever running out.
Oh, did your healer die? Well, too bad. Time to load the previous save because items are useless.
Oh you're playing pokemon? Let's not buy repel and fight zubats every 5 steps.
Oh, you're low on MP? Let's not use MP recovering items.
Are you playing a MOBA? Consumables are useless, let's buy equipment only.
Oh gee, you got a 2x attack boosting potion? Let's not use it, I don't mind wasting double the time fighting that boss with massive health pool.
Oh, your magic buffs stack with your potions? Well, too bad potions are useless.
Hey, I just got a potion that let's you see in the dark or gives 2x walking speed. Nah, useless. Oh, I can use some grenades to get rid of a few enemies in a group inside a room? Too bad they are consumables and I'm better off wasting time and putting myself in risk against 5 at the same time.
Optimizing your gameplay for the best result is relying on your brain, don't ignore 1/5 of what a game has to offer, it's just dumb.
I often find myself more willing to utilize consumables on repeat playthroughs of games thanks to having a better understanding of the specific in-game economy and context of when they're at their most useful. You typically can't have this sort of knowledge going blindly into a game. That's where yet another part of the aversion to using consumable comes into play, a fear of the unknown. For this, the item stockpile serves as a veritable safety net for any challenge the game might happen to doll out.
I have a problem with hard mode, most of the games it's just artificial difficulty, like just raising enemies HP and damage.
I think difficulty modes selected before game in a menu is a kinda silly way to do it in general.
More interesting would be having side areas or optional bosses that are insanely hard compared to everything else.
This is why Ruby/Emerald weapon are so iconic to me, they are an example of optional difficulty done right.
I had very positive experiences with most higher dificulties I experienced.
Bayonetta, Kid Icarus Uprising, Kingdom Hearts, Persona 5 and Persona Q and Q2.
Its nice to ease in on normal dificulty and then on the second playthrough try out the harder dificulties which are often more fun.
So yeah from what I experienced dificulty settings are great.
Well what do you want from the game other then higher numbers? Do you want them to entirely rework the game mechanics for every difficulty? This is not a practical thing to do and simply a waste of development time.
@@LegDayLas dynamic mechanics are a thing that can exist. General notion of original comment was that stacking HP/Damage is boring, but programming-wise it's usually just as easy to spam more enemies that move faster and shoot more projectiles and action roll more often and borrow other enemy attacks or spells or whatever, bosses become common enemies or anything other than a baseline stat tweak. The benchmark is this: can an onlooker tell that the game is somehow much more difficult than normal, at a glance? If you need to do raw calculation to find you're in hard mode it isn't a well designed difficulty system, usually. Obviously there are exceptions to everything but this holds true for most games.
This is definitely an issue I run into as well. I found myself changing the difficult of games halfway through to a higher setting once I realized I could, and even restarting games where it’s fixed to be harder. I think a game that exemplifies one of the better ways to handle difficulty is Breath of the Wild. Master Mode is legitimately more difficult, especially in the beginning, where they completely eliminate the lowest level common enemies (red bokoblins) and the regenerating health becomes a *legitimate* problem with the static weapon damage and durability. It really forced me to take much more care in approaching situations in unique ways and using those lesser used mechanics like tunes to avoid breaking my best weapons for ME, that were really just essentially Nerf swords to my enemies. Likewise, you can end up hoarding weapons that you don’t want to use until later game and you get much better gear more consistently (why for a long part of the run the Master Swords was basically my “The Master Rock Breaker”) and I found myself using it much more often for its solid damage even before the Trials knowing it would regenerate. Of course, after 250 hours I got to a level of skill where I could consistently beat even golden lynels without taking a hit, but in that early game, skill or no, there are just certain enemies you CANNOT beat.
"I will save my items for the final boss"
*Final boss appears*
"I m a real men dude i dont need items"
No, no, no... You wait until breathing on them would kill them then buff yourself to death and kill them three times over in one hit instead of doing that 10 hp necessary.
Go DBZ on their ass, you know? It's like the father son Kamehameha or Spirit Bomb route of gameplay.
(This was literally the only thing that saw me use Bravely Second in the Bravely games, lol - in BD I even specifically let Edea and Ringabel get KOed just so Tiz and Agnès could finish it up themselves as it began before Seconding with Tiz.)
I was so powerful by the time I got to Sephiroth, my squad only needed ONE turn.
Me:Oh my goodness I have to save these item when I’m fighting the final boss
After defeating the final boss*
Me:Oh wait I never even use the item
Yuuuuuuuuup. *le sigh*
"brad is overjoyed" was so funny to me for some reason
I just mainly have an issue with hoarding
Me: I need this
Game: you don-
Me: I n e e d this
That's me with guns. I always use like 3 or 4 yet have almost 10 or so
Me too. Always end up giving myself infinite carry weight in skyrim because of that.
When I played Fallout or Elder Scrolls I would grab every item in a dungeon. Every. Single. Item. No matter how useless they are. When I finish a dungeon and get outside I drop items until Im not overencumbered then fast travel to my main house and sort the items into storage. Fast travel back to the entrance/exit and repeat until every item is safely tucked in my house. I literally broke the crafting system in Fallout 4 and had everything I needed at all times.
@@carsheaven Gamers scavenge anything, regardless of usefulness, that is not nailed down. Then they get out the bolt cutters.
Me when i first started playing skyrim and i picked up all the buckets, bowls, tankards, etc...
Does increasing the game dificulty will make player tend to use the item.
Me : nah i just save and load back in case something happen.
Item : what am i to you
Fkd up the meme boi
Item : Am I a joke to you?
ftfy
im not worth to make meme
Item : what am i to you?
Me: spare change used to get better items.
But what if you can save/load? Like in roguelikes it always better to drink heal potion now because death is permanent.
@@TheDendran Your version sucks.
"Enemies that aren't hard to beat, just time consuming"
I have said so many times that people will say stuff is hard when it just takes a lot of time to do.
Yeah hard is when you have to learn and grow and adapt to the challenge, not sure if you can win. Most people that say something is hard is just because they die a couple times on something they know they can beat and get annoyed by it. Most things are just grindy and not hard
being patient is hard
Hit sponge. Is not hard only takes longer to kill.
I agree, for example Artorias from dark souls, he have a ton of health but he continue to be extremely hard for me and the same can be said about Manus(THAT thing wasted me 1 entire day, that didnt happened with any other boss, hell, even kamalet was on 1 try).
@@Subpar1224 the definition of skyrims difficulty settings and why i stopped playing on legendary, it just is less fun to have to wait in fights more.
Even by going like alchemy to make money to level up enchanting takes a lot of time to grind out op gear to make the difficulty much less difficult and bearable. Not difficult, just time consuming.
I like how in fallout 4 with higher difficulty you also increase your chance of rare loot drop so it gives you incentive
Chems in fallout 4 are the meta but no one seems to use them.