Too much Potion-ness

Halloo,

I had a chance to play a bit in the open beta wknd and had a great time. One thing that did bug me a bit in my playtime(and in watching some gameplay on the youtoobs) is potion availability and the dependence of some classes on them.

To me potion use is a bit of a "crutch" in game design and popping one every 5-10 seconds in tough fights just kinda cheapens the whole experience.

Thoughts?

"

Stevecol wrote:

Halloo,

I had a chance to play a bit in the open beta wknd and had a great time. One thing that did bug me a bit in my playtime(and in watching some gameplay on the youtoobs) is potion availability and the dependence of some classes on them.

To me potion use is a bit of a "crutch" in game design and popping one every 5-10 seconds in tough fights just kinda cheapens the whole experience.

Thoughts?

I don't disagree, but I am at a loss as to how to make these games really work without them. As a melee character you will often have to wade into a pack of mobs to be effective, and without potions (or extreme life leech) you will explode into a pile of gore.

Perhaps if there were some dedicated healing abilities (ala Titan Quest) there would be less need for potion spamming (and more emphasis on team play), but I don't foresee GGG making a big change like that at this juncture.

Noooo leave the flask system alone...it's interesting and can have strategic importance if you have certain flasks with certain abilities.

A few thoughts, in no particular order:

* It's true that potions in many similar games are just a design crutch, but in PoE they are part of itemization, and the quantity and effectiveness of potions available to you can change in interesting ways based on gear. Potions with buffs (or that remove debuffs) can become a pretty significant part of your build. It's not just "buy infinity potions = have infinity life and mana".

* Access to potions is based on killing mobs. The idea is that you can use potions without thinking too much about it while cutting through hordes of baddies, but you have only a fixed quantity of potion charges available for boss fights so you can't trivialize difficulty with MOAR POTS!111.

* Potions are not inherently bad game design; they are a way to eliminate downtime and encourage players to use their spells while playing rather than feeling like they have to save all their mana at all times for emergencies. The fact that mana potions don't cost money to replace also means I'm more willing to try out my cool skills rather than auto-attacking most mobs to death to save on expenses.

* It's true that, despite all that, potions can sometimes feel a bit too powerful (refilling too fast, healing through too much DPS, etc.), but that is a numeric balance issue, IMO, and not a fundamentally flawed design.

I feel like GGG took what was a necessary evil in D2 and many other ARPGs, keep the functionality that makes it necessary (reducing needless downtime between fights and encouraging players to use skills frequently), and elevate it from a tedious money sink to an interesting part of the itemization process. I wouldn't mind seeing potions refill a bit slower overall off normal/'trash' mobs, so it feels like a more sharply limited resource in the short-mid term, but I think the overall design of potion flasks is brilliant.

i actually like the flask system i found a diamond flask that did nothing but increase my critical strike chance to 100% for 3 seconds. I thought this was a neet way for the user to balance how many mana flasks/life flasks/diamond flasks and still have your character be effective.

I agree with this.

My ranger build for the open weekend was dex heavy, but used some very mana intensive attack skills (and one mana reserve skill). Barely needed life pots but needed as much mana as I could get. Wound up using three belt slots for mana, one for mixed and one for life... which was great for ordinary mobs but got a bit dicey on bosses.

Anyway, that's the kind of decision that the flask system imposes on you: your potion slot allocation is part of your build, which is more than you can say for other games in the genre. I thought it worked great :)

To me its not really a design crutch, honestly i feel this system works well on several fronts:

*requires you to kill enemies to get charges rather then buy a stack of 50 from town, meaning that you get to spend more time in the field and you can't just outright win if you have 20 or 30 of them in inventory and keep spamming the use key.

*the fact that if you enchant them with certain traits is interesting, making it part of how you character works, giving them a temp boost in speed, resistance or damage. It also allows for more item choice and making you want to keep the potion even if it is a smaller size for a certain effect.

*since there are only 5 slots it makes you decide how many health and mana you want, take more health and worry about running out of mana for abilities to quickly or take more mana and run the risk of not having a charge for when you health is low.Its another choice that helps define what your character wants to do.

*even with potions the game will still manage to kill you in some places. Also even with a vampire build (say duelist with lost s of kill and hit this and get health and mana) there are still tons of moments that you run into where you can't kill fast enough or just get 1 really big guy.

I enjoy the fact that GGG took something i hated from d2 and other games and made it something i really look at and rethink further then "go to store, hit buy 50, use".

I think the flask system is brilliant. In addition to what others have said, they're a kind of acid test for pushing the envelope on progression. i.e. if you get to a point where flask charges can't keep up with your killing ways, you've found the point where you can't really push any harder and may even have to back off into lower mlvl zones.

Potions are just fine. I have 5 life potions that only get used in very hairy situations or for the stats. Build your class correctly and you will too.