Given that I feel that all the potion systems we’re all thinking about (D2-D3-PoE) have (in my opinion) several issues, I’d like to give my opinion about them and make a proposal:
D2: from 4 up to 16 (4x4, 4-row belt) potion slots. It has the issue of allowing a non-healthy playstyle where you can heal yourself a lot of times in the matter of seconds by repetitively pushing potion buttons. Not just that, you could even fill your inventory with more potions and fight with the inventory open to right click more, making things even more annoying and adding making the inventory space part of your survivavility. Or the optimal Ancients strat for the 1st char, TP-ing in and out Arreat Summit until you fill the ground with potions before the fight and pick them during the combat. Weird to say the least.
D3: after several iterations we got a system with a single cooldown-based potion that you pick once, not needing to collect and save multiple copies of it along with health globes. It solves all the issues above at the price of an ugly cooldown. I’m not the biggest fan of cooldowns, but find it simply annoying having a cooldown in your “panic button”. Also, to me those floating globes in the middle of a supposedly horror game look very weird, fitting more in a Crash Bandicoot-like game than in Diablo.
PoE: a system with 5 flask slots that you can spam 2-3 times each without a cooldown that progressively refill again as you kill monsters, allowing you to push them repetitively up to 15 times (usually way less as some of them are not health flasks, but still too many times) when they’re full. So, even that in a lesser degree than D2, again the potion spam issue. Apart from that, they have prefixes, sufixes, rarity and so on, something that it causes to me way more laziness than excitement, and the method, the relation between killing monsters and some bottles filling is a bit weird to me (yes, I know, we’re in a fantasy world and the gear usually has things like life leech, but I find this still more weird).
My proposal: I’d take a bit from each of the 3 games: the belt from D2, the globes from D3, and the flask refill when killing monsters from PoE, and twist it a bit.
Lets suppose that in the Diablo universe, potions are made out of herbs. Your belt (why did they remove it?, it was cool!) has a glass bottle. When you fight monsters, they drop herbs the same way they drop floating health globes in D3. You pick those herbs on walk like the globes or the D3 gold, so your potion refills progressively. The better the belt, the more that’s able to heal.
This way we avoid potion spam and encourage a more active playstyle encouraging the player to move to the herbs when he’s in danger instead of just “waiting” for the potion to be available again, so he knows that repeatedly looking at the UI won’t change anything, if the potion wasn’t available, it won’t still be available unless he does something to solve it. Also, I believe that an herb in the ground look more accurate than a magic globe floating in the air.
I think that’s a good idea, especially since I thought of the same thing some time ago (and I don’t think I’m the only one ^^ ).
Only thing I don’t really like is the herb element… kind of “meh”. I’d still go for some red globe, like a drop of blood : red makes more sense for filling a health potion. And of course there still needs to be a cooldown.
Anyway, I don’t think it’s necessary. A classic potion system can work all the same, the only thing that needs to be kept in check is how much potions the player can store in his/her belt.
I like the current cooldown system, but if there has to be repeatable potions, they should have diminishing returns if used before the 30 second cooldown, with a delay penalty:
80% heal (30 sec cooldown)
40% heal (+15 sec to cooldown)
20% heal (+10 sec to cooldown)
10% heal (+5 sec to cooldown)
No belt, just better potion choices, some that don’t even heal:
Attack Speed
Resource
Teleportation
Dodge Chance
Molotov Cocktail
Poison
Lesser Heal + Element Damage
Lesser Group Heal
Shields
Summoned Creature
Etc.
This becomes like a universal skill that can support builds. The could even have gear affixes that effect potions:
-2 sec to potion cooldown
10% potion effectiveness
A health potion should just be a health potion.
A mana potion should just be a mana potion.
5 flasks, seriously? How about make the talents and abilities good and require skill to use, instead of 5 redundant flask buffs.
How anyone could play that terrible d2 wannabe failure of a game with it’s redundancy on top of redundancy and pointless 10000 useless talent nodes is beyond me. Kripp did a good job exposing how flawed poe is.
I am not a PoE expert, but from what I know Flasks work in PoE because you are killing so fast even in the endgame. There is also the issue of Flask-spamming in PoE, which many people find annoying.
Have you seen gameplay footage from PoE’s endgame builds? Like the build that just jumps around and kills everything while perma-jumping (like D3’s LeapQuake Barb, just with unlimited Leaps)?
It would be terrible if they would copy something like this into D3 (but I am not a PoE expert so it might not be as bad as I think).
I personally did not like D2’s belt either, since you always had to refill it, which was a mild annoyance, but still annoing.
However, D3’s Cooldowned Potions were not the best solution either. If the Health Potion had 3 Charges with a recharge time of 15 seconds each, that would have been much, much better and a very good middle ground between the belt system and a Cooldowned Potion.
I personally liked the idea of Health Globes, but currently in D3 they are irrelevant for the most part, at least in my experience. And although some people might disagree with me on that, I still would like to seen them return in D4, but better implemented.
So overall I personally would like to see
Health Poitons with 3 charges
each Charge has a Recharge Time of 15 seconds
each Potion Charge regenerates 20% Life instantly and 10% Life every second over the next 3 seconds, for a total of 50% health restored
Actually that was one of the ideas tested by the D3 team before 2008 : it didn’t work. ^^
I don’t think there is any solution for potion spamming : it’s just a bad system.
A perfectly valid system but I do like the principle of picking up those charges. Could even be classic potions, as long as you have a strict limit of how much you can store.
It’s still a good way to refill life after a fight in GR, and sometimes it can even save you life, but clearly it’s a very secondary system compared to auto-healing.
And that’s not bad at all. Much better than when Globes were the prime source of healing in D3V : rellying on randomness for such a critical system was terrible.
I do like the mechanism of Globes, just not for replenishing Life. It would work better as a way to refill Energy imo, and that’s something they seem to be exploring right now in D4.
This might be heresy here, but I don’t like the idea of recharging potions in combat at all. Not via killing monsters or via cooldown.
I would prefer that you have a limited number of potions equipped, and that you have a limited number of charges of each when you leave town. You can have shrines in the field that can refill charges if desired, but you can only refill charges by going back to town. You can keep the D3 town portal system as is, so if you can manage to portal out mid fight you can refill charges, but doing so requires not taking damage while portaling out.
As to the limited number of potions equipped, at a minimum I think you should allow 2 types of potions to be equipped, defaulting to health and resource recovery. You could have the option to then swap to other potions like bombs or buffs if desired.
By preventing recharges mid combat, you avoid potion spam issues entirely. You can also avoid the difficult to explain recharging mechanic lore-wise. Adding the idea of shrines that restore potion charges also allows you to provide a restore point outside boss arenas if desired.
These are not mutually exclusive.
The 3 Charges could mean that you can only drink 3 Potions in a row. You still can have 100 Potions or whatever stacked in the inventory.
Yes, I agree with what you said.
Definitely. They certainly are a very neat mechanic to have as a secondary source of healing. I really like them as well.
There also already were Mana Globes in D3, but they were removed before the game released.
Imo it would work perfectly for a Necromancer, but instead of a Mana Globe, it would be a Lingering Soul that replenishes Essence when you walk over it. It thematically makes perfect sense. If a Necromancer comes as a class in D4, then something like this could be one of his Unique Class Mechanics (one out of several, as well as corpses).
There is at least one Youtube video about this where a dev is talking about it. Maybe tit was a GDC Talk, dunno, but the issue with that diminishing returns idea for potion efficiency was that people were then bashing the Potion Button several times in a row even harder to get more healing out of the potions in a dangerous situation.
Short answer : it didn’t work because it lead to players drinking more instead of drinking less !
What do you mean “in a row” ? I don’t think you should be able to drink more than one potion at a time, unless the system allows for several potions types equiped at once.
Not sure I understand, does “potion” means “PoE flask” like a useless item in you inventory if not equiped ?
Yes, I was very disappointed when they abandoned this idea. I guess it was because of the implementation of class-specialized energies, but still, it would have worked well for some of them, like the Necromancer you’re talking about.
Class specific energies would have had nothing to do with removal of mana potions since they could have been named for what ever resource your currently played character used.
In Diablo 3 Classic, there were no Legendary Potion and you could have up to 100 normal Health Potions stacked on each other. You also had a Cooldown on the Potions of 30 Seconds like in RoS.Everytime you pressed the button for drinking a Health Potion, you would consume one potion and the Cooldown would start.
What I am suggesting is to replace the Cooldown with 3 Charges (and each Charge has a recharge time of 15 seconds). Everytime you drink a Health Potion, you consume a Health Potion and you also consume a Charge. That means you can only consume 3 Health Potions in a row and then you have to wait for the Charges to recharge.
I hope that made sense.
It could have worked for all of them.
Every class could ahve gotten different amounts of resource, or it could have worked like Reapers Wraps.
Named yes, colored no. And energies don’t work the same for each class, so a single mechanic wouldn’t work well.
But it’s not strictly impossible you’re right, there must have been other reasons.
There a much more than Health and Mana flasks in PoE… much more than 5 different types actually, not even considering unique versions.
I’m not a big fan of their system but it’s far from being redundant.
Yes, and now he’s playing Hearthstone lol ^^
From what I’m seeing he’s become a sellout but what are his criticism against PoE anyway ?
Ok, so if I understand correctly the “charges” system is to replace the cooldown, giving the player the ability to use three potions in 15s. It’s interesting with your not too powerful 3s regen potions. I’d just add a 3s CD so the player wouldn’t accidentally use several charges at once (like I did too often in PoE ^^ ).
That would be ok, though still a little bit imbalanced because classes replenish their energy differently.
Yes, and each Charge had a recharge time of 15 seconds, so if you consume all 3 charges immediately, you would have to wait 45 seconds for all of them being recharged.
The point is that you can spam them to a certain degree in a dangerous situation.
It is intended to be a middle ground between spamming them and a cooldown.
If there would be a cooldown, it would be maybe around 0.5 seconds to prevent accidental double spam, but not anywhere near 3 seconds.
If each charge gives you 20% Max Life immediately and you are in a dangerous situation where your health is down a lot, then using just one potion might not be enough to get out of the immediate danger, since the remaining 30% Max Life take 3 more seconds to restore.
If you use all 3 charges, you regain 60% Max Life immediately, but an access amount of health would eventually be lost. It is a good and balanced way of having to manage your resource I would say.
What I mean is a Barbarian could get 10 Fury from a Resource Globe, a Wizard could get 20 Arcane Power, a Monk could get 40 Spirit, a Witch Doctor could get 300 Mana, etc.
The numbers can be adjusted individually for each class, similar to the Templars Passive that gives each class a bonus to resource generation or resource regeneration.
I watched that video segment. The numbers they chose were destined to fail. 25% penalty every 8 seconds isn’t enough, any person who can do basic math will tell you the net gain is too beneficial:
100% + 75% + 50% + 25% = 250% with an 8 second wait time between each penalty.
No wonder their testers spammed it – the potion was doing 250% health every 32 seconds…
Spam every 32 seconds = 250%
Spam every 24 seconds = 150%
Spam every 16 seconds = 75%
Spam every 8 seconds = 25% (basically 3% hp per sec regen)
I picked more logical numbers, you drink your potion 4 times in a row, and you gain: 150% health, but you cannot use it again in the same capacity for 1 full minute.
Diminishing returns is supposed to correct over usage, if people use potions too much, then you reduce the benefits and add more penalty.
Here is another example that is more punishing, you only get 5 second window to spam your potion after the first use off cooldown, but each use within that 5 seconds adds to the overall cooldown. (you can get locked out of using your potion, if you miss the 5 second window)
60% (adds 30 sec) → 25% (adds 15 sec) → 15% (adds 10 sec) → 10% (adds 5 sec) = 110% gained for mashing it all at once.
Spam 4 in a row: 110% health, but 60 second cooldown until next use
Spam 3 in a row = 100% health, but 55 second cooldown until next use
Spam 2 in a row = 85% health, but 45 second cooldown until next use
Hit once = 60% health and 30 second cooldown until next use
I dunno… I hope they learned something over the last decade.
It is not just about about the numbers, but about the concept itself that is problematic.
If you give players the option to use their potions that way (aka unlimited spam, but with Diminishing Returns), regardless of how punishing it is, they are still gonna spam it in a situation of panic/severe danger - they gonna mash the panic button.
The first example I cited wasn’t unlimited spam, it was 1 key press per 5 seconds for regen like effects, it won’t save you when enemies hit you in succession for 10-15% of your life.
The second example is not unlimited spam either, it’s up to 4 uses at once, but you gotta wait 60 seconds to start that process again, assuming you pressed it 4 times already.
Potions must have minimum cooldown otherwise you will have spam game play.
Oh… that very different ! I thought you got all 3 charges at once in 15s. So the idea is to be able to use several potions very fast if needed… clearly, a 3s CD between potions wouldn’t work with that design. ^^
Not sure I like it that way, imo one potion alone should be enough to save the player from death in most situation (but not all…)
Then yes, I meant that for the Reaper’s Wrat flat bonus… but even this would be ok, I’m just nitpicking. ^^
If they were all gauges, which was not the case at some point in the development (Fury orbs, Instability…)
You’re probably right but in all honesty I don’t think it’s a matter of number. The point of a potion system is to regenerate life. Designing it so it doesn’t regenerates life (or not as much as needed) is just defeating the purpose.
If you have to wait to get the full benefit, it’s basically the same as having a CD, just with the possibility of falling into a trap : “use your potion too soon and we’ll ruin it for you…”
Also, what Blizzard learnt from that experience is that it goes against player instinct. No matter how punishing the design, it’s not something you can win.
