The problem with consumables
Hi, I have been thinking about Shatterd's consumables recently and have come to the conclusion there is too many of them. What do I mean by this?
1) Too many items doing the same thing
There is a total of 6 scrolls in the game you can use to stop multiple enemies from attacking you (lullaby, amok, terror and their exotic variants) and if this isn't enough, there is also a potion of paralytic gas and a frigid brew. Do you to incapacitate just a single enemy? There is a stone of affection, potion of snap freeze, paralytic dart, dreamfoil dart and dreamfoil seed. And the same applies to many other consumables. While different consumables have different caveats or cannot be used against certain enemies because of resistances, they ultimately serve the same purpose. This makes many consumables feel unnecessary while filling player's inventory and can confuse new players who might not know the difference between similar sounding effects like freeze and paralysis.
2) Too many items feeling useless
I have already said many items are too similar to others that might do the same thing better. I also believe many items are only useful in specific situation or with specific build and mostly useless otherwise. Potion of purity is only ever useful when you decide to use a harmful gas against your enemies since gas attacks are really rare and you can often simply run away. Aquatic blast is just completely pointless if you don't have any items synergizing with water. Scroll of recharging offers little help to builds not relying on wands. Many enhanced bombs just feel like a bomb and another item packed together for convenience offering no unique effects. And while Evan's balance patches made certain items like a scroll of lullaby or a potion of levitation more versatile, he also added many new ones that feel useless most of the time.
3) Too many items filling player's inventory
Since Shattered's release, 1 potion, 1 scroll, 10 tipped darts, 11 runestones, 11 thrown weapons (if you count them as consumables) and a blandfruit have been added, all of which can be found in the dungeon and occupy inventory space. And while the player now starts with one bag and can put more items into them, inventory management is a big problem. Alchemy system just lets you turn certain consumables into different ones that take the same amount of inventory space.
TLDR: While there are a lot of consumables in shattered PD, they are often too similar to other items or only useful under specific circumstances. The player often feels overwhelmed by many different items and doesn't know which one to use while having his inventory almost constantly full.
Proposed solution
In my opinion, the best way to solve this problem would be to reduce the number of consumables while making the remaining ones more useful and unique. I won't go into details which consumables are OK, which need to be changed and which should be removed as I know Evan likely already has different plans for them.
What is your opinion about this problem? Please vote or leave a comment.
Posted May 12, 2020, 11:59 PM UTC · edited
Coincidentally, this is something I plan to improve on in 0.8.1. I'm not keen on removing any of the core consumables (potions/scrolls, and their direct variants), but fully admit many could have better functions, and that alchemy is currently not doing its job when it comes to inventory management. Improving the usability of various consumables and the power of alchemy will likely happen iteratively over many updates, but I want to try and take some serious steps towards alleviating inventory clutter in 0.8.1.
EDIT: it's also worth noting that it's perfectly fine for some consumables to have niche functionality, one of the points of alchemy (which, again, should be doing its job better) is to allow for these more niche items to exist, and players can either choose to not craft them, or use them as crafting ingredients.
Have you ever considered making seeds produce specific potions as a way of discovering potions at the cost of seeds? Seeing as how seeds always have a set functionality it makes sense to me that certain seeds in combination should always produce a given potion.
Would this make the game too easy? The logic in my brain has always been bothered by this. Am I missing something?
Seeds already do this, but it's chance-based unless you use all three of the same seed. I actually tweaked things in 0.8.0 to also auto-id the potion if you use 3 of the same seed.
Ahh ok thanks, Im just now returning after almost a year and havent fine tooth combed through the changes yet