Auto Potion Pickup

[Dominus]

I voted yes, but that would be a no if the system is similar to TQ because your inventory would flood in no time. When it comes to potions, I'm in favour of:

1) a single, scaling health potion that improves healing/recharge based on player level or also certain skills/talents
2) a limited amount to be carried on the 'belt' or whatever, which could also be dependent on player class or points in a skill/talent
3) cooldown between uses to prevent spamming.

Bottom line is if the game allows me to just carry around 500 health/mana potions, there's really no incentive to ever play the game skillfully or tactically, just spam spam spam

[Skorpion_King]

Originally Posted by medierra

We have auto-gold pickup... is this the next logical step?

I tend to be a bit reserved when it comes to the idea of auto-picking up items but potions are something that you ALWAYS want. Is this going too far or would it be a welcome relief from excess clicking?

well, potions are a different situation.. they need free holes in the bag, and you earn few money if you sell them at high levels, so if i have enough potions in my inventory (what happens most of times) for the travel, I choose not picking potions in order to stay with more free space in my big to pick more valuable items for selling.

So, I am against the idea of auto potion pickup, because potions are not allways needed.

P.D. reading some post..
maybe a solution could be auto potion pickup for only the first.. ¿20? potions of healt/energy ? and if you allready have 20 potions in your inventary the auto potion pickup system turns off by itself.. if you have 19 potions the auto potion pickup system can only take one potion from the ground.. if the game works something like this I suposse I would vote "yes".

[Harlequin]

After pages of discussions I would like to hear what the devs think now. (In case that I missed a comment of them, sry)

[ogge]

Potions take space, and you shouldn't be forced to pickup things that do so. I do think that there potions on the ground should stack (like: "pickup: potion x 2"), though. Maybe there should be a "pick up all potions" key or something...

[Sile]

It's already been said really, but I'll give my opinion anyway.

Auto pickup on pots is a great idea. However, I personally get annoyed when I'm in a level where the difficulty is changing and two types of pots are dropping. Health pots and Greater health pots for example. There comes a time when I don't want "health pots" but rather, the "greater" ones. Auto picking up all pots would just fill my inv space full of unwanted pots.

Making 1 type of pot scale with your character seems like an awesome idea, or, having pots stack in large numbers would also help, and I'd just have to sell the pots I didnt use.

[p0!n7|3las7]

How about a generic system to autopick certain types of items!

Straight off the head the following 2 things come to my mind...

When you hover on any item in your inventory you could maybe click a small mini button next to the icon which popups up or maybe a checkbox or something in the inventory screen which enables auto pickup of that type of item... would work great for charms or potions... and moderate usefulness for other item types...

.... when you don't want any more just switch it off.

Also not sure how it would seamlessly fit in the usability but it would be great if specifically for the potions we could specify a number to limit how many of the potions to auto pick-up. These could also be small additional +/- buttons which show on hover somewhere so you can increase decrease, hell, how about sub classing the functionality for the potion item and replace the auto pick up toggle with the plus/minus buttons???

It gives you a way to not bother about picking stuff up all the time or have to press a certain key to first show only specific types of items, look and pick and lets you micro to an extent where you are in control!!!

A small notification on the HUD somewhere of what all you picked up would also be cool.

Maybe am going way over my head, but these features are something which personally would make the game more enjoyable for me and I believe it shouldn't be hard to implement!!!

[medierra]

The first idea sounds like it could be an elegant solution if we decide to allow for auto-pickup of more than just gold and potions. Although, at this point, I think we will keep it limited to that.

I don't think anyone is likely to reach the point where they don't want to pick up anymore potions. Potions drop rather infrequently and they sell for a good amount of money relative to their size. I seriously doubt anyone will accumulate more than one stack of health potions unless they're also buying a ton of them or make it through the game without using one.

[PinkFrog]

One funny thing about the orbs in D3 (or other games that use that system) is, that if you look at it, it's practically the same as if the monsters would deal less damage:
You just give hp's to the player for free that he has lost a second ago.

So, why not just reduce the dps from enemy mobs and get rid of the orb-system

Well, for one, the orbs force the player to move in the area (to pick them up when needed). This makes gameplay more dynamic.
Secondly, as long as the orbs remain on the floor without going *poof* after a few seconds, there is a tactical element of timing when to walk over them. The player has to decide whether to break a fight to get health or to try to finish the monster off first. This can be an interesting decision.

Thirdly, if you link the drop-rate of the orbs to the kill-death/ratio of the player, you can implement a pretty subtle way of balancing the game for the player. Weak or badly equipped players can still beat the game, they just need to walk over more orbs. The player can tell if he's performing well when there are almost no orbs dropping at all.

BUT, i still think, it's silly. The monsters should not give the player the hp's back that they just took from him. At least not as simple as that.

It would be different, if there would be some sort of skill that the player needs to activate in order to make orbs drop (much like vampirism) or if they only drop with crits (making character-development having to choose between high damage, crit chance (+ orbs) or better defense for example)

Potions, on the other hand, have the issue, as described above, that they tend to neglect the difficulty of any monster: any increase in dps from mobs is countered in gulps of red potions. Thus making the game "harder" is really not as easy as it sounds.
And if you then, in this scenario, restrict the potions, or make the more expensive, then the player feels nothing but frustration.

The only way out, in my opinion, is to give the player various tactics to avoid as much damage as possible. Basically removing the need for any orbs, potions etc. (GuildWars for example does that and if works very very well, alas only for groups with a dedicated healer, another example from an mmo is The Chronicles of Spellborn, where playerskill and various class-based abilities made damage-reduction one of the most exciting part of the combat (the game didn't have a "healer"-class)). Now, in an arpg you cannot avoid damage, at least not totally. So, how can you reapply it without potions?

Each class should have certain skills that give the player back some hp's. This can be either over time via regeneration or instantly. Or via vampirism (hp-gain through successfull attacks) or successfull blocking. Or through indirect effects like skills that "flip" a healer from the enemy to heal you instead of his fellows... tactical stuff like that. There are plenty of ways to give the player hp's through active skills.

Like this you can give the player a choice to rely more on quick killing rather than prolonged killing + better self-healing. And you can much better make the game harder by increasing the dps (or reducing the abilities for self-heal).

So, bottom line: i vote for no potions at all!

[p0!n7|3las7]

I agree somewhat for players who like to micro, but what about the pure barbarian types who just want to hack and slash away?!?! Using skills is an integral part I guess but for the some people it is just as much satisfying to have a bad ass build of weapons and armor.

For some reason I have mixed feelings about no hp based potions although if present life steal based skills in any game are my favorites, too bad they don't work on the undead ^_^

[eisprinzessin]

Originally Posted by PinkFrog

It would be different, if there would be some sort of skill that the player needs to activate in order to make orbs drop (much like vampirism) or if they only drop with crits (making character-development having to choose between high damage, crit chance (+ orbs) or better defense for example)

I like this idea.