RPG has consumables (potions, scrolls, grenades…)
Don’t spend on normal enemies, because there will be bosses
Don’t spend on bosses, because there will be final boss
Final boss: dies in a minute without you spending any
Here we go again
Don’t spend on bosses because I dont want to have wasted a consumable in case I die and have to retry the boss.
I wish crafting an item made it a refillable instead of a consumable. I feel like the cracked pots in Elden Ring were going in the right direction as “refillable containers” at least
By the time you get to the bosses, the shitty potions don’t heal enough anyway.
I appreciate the RPG’s that let you craft better potions from the shit ones, but I still never use them.
The funny thing about this in Elden Ring (since you mentioned it), I never learned to use consumables besides the flasks. I’ve seen speedrunners make great use of some of the greases for example, but every time I use something I end up dying anyway. Really hurts because some of the consumables have limited crafting materials (St. Trina lily for sleep pots iirc?).
I ended up beating the base game without them.
Some of them are restockable on the merchants without any issues, like crabs (20% phys res), fan of daggers etc. Sleep stuff, yeah. The stupidest part that PvPers just dupe them via the cheat engine and nobody gives a fuck. Such a fucking stupid idea to make consumables like that.
I call these things ‘speedrunner tools’ for exactly that reason. If you or I, as a normal player just playing the game, can beat the encounter without the tool but with some practice learning, then using it and wasting it feels bad, so we stop; and by the time we can beat the boss, we don’t need it. We’re also unlikely to revisit that boss.
A speedrunner who has spent hours on a boss and knows the move set and when to punish, though. They can apply fire paper and rip the boss apart in seconds and be at the next boss before the buff wears off.
That’s a very fair take. I played a few play throughs of Elden Ring however and just never learned anyway, even though the items would’ve helped a lot on further NG+. I guess I also learned how to use fowl foots but that’s once a boss has died.
I broke this habit once growing when I decided to finish Mario and Luigi Partners in Time after a break. I had just reached the final dungeon, but before diving in I realized I had more money than I knew what to do with.
I went to the store, got like 99 of all the cool looking items, entered the dungeon, and went to town. Every turn was a question of whether to use a power flower, hammer, or what have you. I mowed through all those end game enemies and the final boss didn’t know what hit em. It was glorious.
One thing that is easing me into using items is watching speedruns, of all things. Hell, I used to be an ammo hoarder for side-scrolling games that had them (Jazz Jackrabbit, Mega Man), nowadays I prefer to blast the powerful stuff
Replaying Bg3 makes me realize how pointless poisons are most of the time.
Anyone beefy who I might like to debuff or DOT is inexplicably immune to poison, blindness or falling asleep. Not even just bosses, feels like anyone I can’t kill in two rounds with Lae’zel is immune to these poisons I lovingly made.
Some elixirs are cool though.
In my first walkthrough of BG3, I think I only ever used healing potions, and even they were situational as I tried to keep Shadowheart stocked on spell slots, and my main character was a wizard (and for a large portion of the game, Gale was in a party too)
Oh, and I straight up didn’t find Lae’zel, Karlach, or Wyll in Act 1, and I lost my chance to add Halsin and Minthara, so I was limited to casters + Astarion anyway. The game didn’t accentuate that I really, really need to look around, and that only struck me in Act 2, by the point I couldn’t return to Act 1. Still, I got Jaheira on my side, which basically turned every melee battle in an enclosed space into a meat grinder for enemies (wizard’s Grease followed by Spike Growth and then cleric’s Spirit Guardian, Astarion shooting from the rear to take down buffier and ranged enemies). Made it a challenge to get Minsc though, as hostile Boo is absolutely destroyed by this grinder too.
Actually, returning to looking around, there’s one gripe I have about most RPGs. They constantly accentuate that you need to complete the main goal ASAP. In BG3 case, everyone is concerned with removing the tadpole before turning into a mind flayer (and constantly nagging about it, making it look like a genuinely time pressing issue), and then with saving the Baldur’s Gate, and it simply feels extremely unnatural to just go about your business, doing all the side quests etc. Dk about anyone else, but saving my life and then, like, everyone in Baldur’s Gate sounds more important than looting another castle or helping a cow find a trinket. So, in my first walkthrough of virtually any RPG, I typically skip like 80% of all the game’s content, and only then on the second one can relax and learn the world.
I actually can’t tell if the whole “this is urgent you need to hurry” in an open world game is a new trend or not but I see it everywhere too.
Earliest I can think of is Skyrim. Everything was a big emergency. Finish one quest and the character dialogue was like “Another dragon attack! You need to get to this next quest right away! Hurry!”. But it’s supposed to be game designed for screwing around. I can’t help but feel it’s influenced this trend.
Playing Oblivion re-mastered I’m realizing Oblivion wasn’t this way. The stakes were high but much more of the dialogue was like “Ready yourself, take the time you need, and we’ll talk next steps”. There’s important stuff to handle but exploring dungeons was treated as you getting prepared to handle the big bad.
Impending dragon attacks in Skyrim, missing son in Fallout 4, turning into a mindflayer in Bg3. These feel urgent, not conducive to exploration and meeting everyone and crafting potions and shopping for deals on weapons.
All that being said I had the same problem in Bg3. Didn’t long rest enough in the beginning because of it.
Interestingly, Skyrim was exactly the thing I thought of when thinking of this trope’s origin, so there could indeed be something to it.
Recently however, I’ve seen an interesting spin on it in The Blood of Dawnwalker. There, too, you are faced with a time-pressing issue as part of your main quest, but the difference is: it is actually time-pressing. You can fail one of the main objectives of the game by not being there in time. And while it is debatable whether it’s good for the exploration aspect of the game and whether it presses the player too much, at least it is consistent.
I had to actively push myself out of thinking this way. When a game hands something like a consumable to the player, it should be expected that they could use it at any point in time. If that item is non-renewable and certain encounters are designed around needing that item, then you actually playing a puzzle game that lets you permanently destroy the puzzle pieces with no warning.
Yeah, I also slowly come to this realization. Having completed so many games without any consumables at all makes me more confident :D
Besides, this should be worked through game design. If a player uses consumables in battle, chances are it’s already challenging enough. If it is then followed by harder fights and the player is empty, they will likely just ragequit at some point not to come there again, or will constantly switch the game’s difficulty if it’s available, which makes for an inconsistent and cheaty-feeling gameplay.
I think a lot of us have played some super difficult RPG where you get softlocked due to not having enough resources, or punished for using them.
For example, the last game I played, I had the choice of consuming a mushroom for healing. I chose not to and struggled through several boss fights. Later in the game, you can exchange that mushroom for a significant permanent stat upgrade. If I’d used the mushroom, I would have missed out on the upgrade.
Another example; I played a brutally hard tactics game, and I used all my potions and revives on a really hard fight. The next fight was even harder, and I was completely unable to finish the game without restarting. I didn’t keep multiple save files.
Games should stop punishing us for consuming consumables. The reason we hoard everything is because we’ve been trained to do so.
Fully agree!
Toy yetti here we go!
Almost accurate, except the boss is randomly weak to one of the 20 status effects. Also, said boss fight is nearly impossible without exploiting that one status weakness because fuck you.
It’s worse if it’s a status effect only attainable by learning it from a random enemy somewhere in act 2
FFX was so annoying about this, was doing the dark aeons recently and all you can do in those fights is buff yourself and attack, felt pointless unlocking debuff skills at the end of some characters pathways only to never use them.
Looking at you Triple Foul.
The dark aeons are very special end bosses though. I remember just paying Yojimbo 10,000,000 cash and then he would just split them in half…
It felt like the Devs overcompensating for making the actual final boss the easiest one in the series.
Especially when you can get locked out of ultimate weapons if you don’t back track early enough. I replayed recently and was waiting to get the airship before back tracking for missed chests and jecht spheres, and by that point I kept running into Dark Aeon bullshit randomly.
They were definitely trying to be super bosses which the game desperately needed, but a layer or two of additional strategy would have really been nice.
Maybe with shiva you might need to hit her with a fire attack before you could apply debuffs or do damage to her.
Or valefor being immune to non ranged melee attacks as it flies, I dunno just something other than a bigger health bar. Could have been cool.
Penance has a little more to him, having to deal with the 2 arms as they regen to ensure you don’t get wiped so easily, but he was still just immune to everything and had a big bar.
FFX has something like 44 status effects and super bosses were immune to basically all of them, give me some reason to use these abilities like Triple Foul or Doom (think Auron had an overdrive that could apply break debuffs even to super bosses, but I think that was it).
I’m working my way through the entire Final Fantasy series now. Currently on 5, but never played X. Seems like I need a strategy guide
The end game of X is very long (think the longest in the series) and stuff like character stat maxxing and unlocking ultimate (celestial) weapons is hard without a guide.
Dont feel bad about looking up a guide either, some of the shit you are required to do is super convoluted and/or tedious. Plus you can easily miss one item in an area and semi-permanently lock yourself out of content.
Getting the celestial weapons had a variety of either easy, end-game, or almost nonsense quests.
Nonsense quests that had nothing to do with the characters.
Like Yuna’s and Wakka’s sigil quests made perfect sense to their character, but what does Kimahri, Lulu or Tidus have to do with unlocking their weapons exactly?
Trying not to spoil things for the other dude, but I straight up refuse to do Lulu’s sigil minigame anymore.
Fromsoft: “We will have exactly 2 enemies in the entire game that are weak to this status effect. Everything else will resist the fuck out of it. You can only aquire this status effect by finding a secret hidden boss named “Joseph the Weakling” and defeating him without getting hit. He is the hardest boss in the game.”
“It’s a consumable and you only get 1 shot at this. Enemy is absurdly hard without it. Unfair, even.”
I see this in other games too, and I call it the ‘speedrunner tool’.
Normal players (me) get stomped by a boss a few times until they figure it out and can beat it without the buff (fire paper, lightning grease, etc); Maybe they use them, but then they run out and are never used again…
Some players might use the buff and get an easier win; but if they don’t, then they are wasted and are hard or impossible to replace, so players learn to not rely on them.
Speedrunners use lightning grease to kill the boss in 3 hits and are already halfway to the next boss before the buff runs out and already picked up the right buff item for that next boss. When your victory is all but guaranteed, the item makes it faster - otherwise it’s not really useful.
I think Ethers in FF games as a trope kind of fit here too. Too valuable to waste, but if you can do it without them, then you didn’t need it unless you absolutely needed to kill that boss without using a tent or resting, etc, to save time.
Elden ring was a bit better: Everything is either weak to or completely resistant vs holy, flip a coin
This armor is a gamechanger because it gives me a decent elemental resistance boost to some random element, I’m gonna organize my build around it
Statement dreamed up by the utterly deranged
I will only stay in this one area where this specific type of enemy spawns to get the most out of this resistance. I don’t want to see the rest of the game.
And you find the plate mail with 80% fire resistance not at the end of the water dungeon, but at the end of the fire dungeon. You will never see another fire elemental after you exit here. Fire damage will be completely irrelevant, even in the final boss fight where Satan himself shows up and only uses dark attacks.
Status condition recovery items are even worse, because you have to stock them, just in case there’s ever a fight that you really need them in, but then finish the game without ever having needed even a single one.
In related news I found out much later than I should have the freeze in Pokemon can wear off on it’s own.
There’s fire moves that thaw you when you use them as well
Similarly: Skyrim has other potions than health, mana, and fortify restoriation potions. But no one will be able to tell you what they do.
Game designers, and I’m including tabletop rpgs, love having status effects that freeze, paralyzed, or do a percentage of health of damage; but they always neglect the fact that they’re ineffective against hordes of weak enemies and are overpowered against strong solo enemies.
Really wish they would have more foresight than to just make it have zero effect on bosses. I’d be satisfied with it applying a weakened effect instead of being outright immune.
As a sometimes-DM who enjoys making interesting encounters, the answer is to either avoid solo bosses, or have multi-phase bosses where their tactics/immunities change. Steal liberally from JRPGs, they were absurdly popular for a reason!
Crystal Project does exactly that. The DoT effects do health percent damage, and the stronger enemies and bosses have resistance to it rather than full on immunity.
Play Warframe.
Have a frame with armour stripping.
Armour stripping is a number based on current armour, not base armour, so it doesn’t scale with level.
Low lto mid evel enemies die too easily from conventional attacks to even bother casting armour strip.
High level enemies have way too much armour, requiring to spend more time and casting energy to strip their armour than just using a conventional weapon with the correct element.
That’s not really up to date information, now is it? Most armor strips in Warframe are percentage-based, with only a few remaining that aren’t.
Yeah, and they’re mostly the older Warframes. Mag feels rather forgotten.
Pretty sure she can 100% armor strip now. She got a tune up a while ago
Mag is insanely strong but lots of people just don’t read her kit. I certainly didn’t for a while until someone said Mag was shit… So then I checked out WarframeFlo’s video on her and realised she melts everything if you play her correctly. Just capture any enemy you want in a magnetic bubble and any other enemy who walks into the bubble, just disappears in a swarm of bullets. The bubbles stay for quite a long time too, and you can make many of them. Another skill just leaves shards of shrapnel or something that also dissolves enemies around the map. Pull is fairly useless if you aren’t host, so switch that out with Nourish or something. And the other skill is a decent emergency offensive skill which restores all your shields instantly. She most likely does more that I didn’t mention, but that’s how I understand her kit and I always have fun playing her.
If your weapon is weak, she might not be so good, so use an incarnon weapon or a weapon with lots of multishot etc.
Probably not as useful with some bosses maybe, but I try to avoid warframes shitty bosses for the most part.
Hate to agree with an anon but that was always my exact experience playing any RPG outside of Pokémon. Between that and not having any indication how much stat-boosting moves actually boosted my stats, it trained me to never use anything other than offensive skills.
Laughs in Shin Megami Tensei.
A bit like the Elden Ring of jrpgs (well, it’s not that hard)
Play Etrian Odyssey where status effects are an integral part of every encounter.
Including the ability to cheese curse to do obscene damage if I remember right.
I’ve always felt this about Pokemon, there’s so many moves that affect stats, cause status effects, or do something interesting, but I always just go for whatever deals damage. Even on my current run, I’ll keep a move around because it sounds fun, but won’t use it.
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Yeah, I can’t believe that there is actual “competitive” scene of Pokémon. At the end just wins the one with the bigger rock, paper or scissors.
Rock paper scissors level 1 rattata
People are downvotung but I love this hot take hahaha
The competive strats are diverse use these mechanics. And romhacks that actually focus on harder fights might lead real strategy in a fight and needs good team building
Try pokemon colosseum or XD: gale of darkness (both for gamecube), they both almost exclusively have 2v2-battles which actually have strategic depth as opposed to just matching types and going ham. They also serve a bit of a twist on the normal games, since you capture your pokemon mostly as shadow-pokemon from other trainers.
I did play both of those when they first came out, I don’t remember a whole lot of the gamepkay outside of, no actual travel outside of town, for XD you can only capture dark Pokemon, don’t remember for Colloseum, and they both have the same, rather obvious, twist of who the villain is. That said, I enjoyed them both a lot when I had my GameCube.
In Pokemon, a lot of stuff exists to throw against you, the single player, which are you not expected to really use yourself. The single-player game is NOT expected to be balanced or fair. Heck, in most of the games there are only 2 NPC’s with a full party: one of which will.be a fisher with 6 Magikarp, the other is the champion and final.boss of the game.
This is why there are a ton of pokemon that suck. They are not intended for you to use and GameFreak just made a mistake: they are intended to allow GameFreak to throw easy encounters at you.
Poison used to tick down your Pokemon’s health with every step outside of battle. Persistent status effects are there to wear down the player’s resources across a routewith several trainer battles and probably wild encounters, nkt to wear down the player over the course of a single battle.
ffxi, we gave Bard a song that deals damage over time. Everything is immune to it.
To be fair to them, they EXPLODED ffxi because it was so shit.
I think you mean ffxiv?
Oh right. For some reason I thought that was Xi but that thing still has servers up. That’s nuts.
Persona 4, where the first 5 or 6 first bosses are weak to an element, but if you use it they get a shield against it.
Almost worse to me is when you’re railroaded to only using the latest acquired buff and everything else is useless once you progress. Like beating the boss is just hoping you land the special attack enough times to beat dps before it runs out. Mostly in TBS games I suppose.
