Few small useless suggestions...

[medierra]

I think the important thing with "potions" is just to include health and energy in the names.

With difficulties, we can get more creative because people don't need to be able to intuitively understand what they do from the name.

[Executioneer]

people would infere why to use health and energy elixirs.

with regards to normal epic and legendary, you could name something along the lines of Dark Age, Enlightment, Industrial...? what do you say?

[eisprinzessin]

Originally Posted by GSGregory

At some point going with conventional names is just generic and boring.

You better have a good reason for inventing new names if not even an advantage over the old ones. I find Elixir - while it is a well established name in video games - that it sounds more magical to me than Potion. Thus I consider it a small win in both areas.

My customers recently went through a re-branding and it left some of them rather confused - desite the emails they received (provided we had their current address and they read their emails) prior to the change. In addition the brand has now a rather unprofessional, counter-intuitive but fancy name. You can do a lot wrong when changing these things.

Edit: Regarding Risen 2 - at first I was confused that liquor refills your Blood (aka Health).

[DragonWolf]

How about Tonic instead of potion? Thats another word to use and honestly it would be amusing to chug down a vial of 'snake oil' to cure my hurts

[yerkyerk]

Originally Posted by eisprinzessin

Edit: Regarding Risen 2 - at first I was confused that liquor refills your Blood (aka Health).

Heh, I didn't know that either, I just read it in a magazine and replacing "health" with "blood" sounded cool. Blood and glory!

Anyway, I think there's an advantage to giving mana pots a different name than health pots.
Say, health elixers and mana essences. Or tonics or spirit or whatever...

Than you can talk about elixers and essences, instead of talking about "pots" and let the reader deduce wether you mean health or mana pots.

[Bouss]

Originally Posted by GSGregory

At some point going with conventional names is just generic and boring.

Perhaps,... but not necessarily. If I was running in circles around a nasty boss monster while chugging a potion in a desperate bid to stay alive, I'm not gonna be thinking "gee, I wish this Health Potion wasn't so generic".

The above scenario is of course in no way indicative of my playing style.

[koovan]

In Diablo, Dungeon Siege, Path of Exile, TQ etc - the health and energy refills all tend to come in transparent containers with health being red in colour and mana being blue. So it seems that everything except the colour scheme and physical representation of these items is superfluous and therefore open to change. Lex, I think that your suggestion is interesting and may increase the level of immersion some players feel as well as positively deepening the ambience.

[KondaImmortal]

Originally Posted by Lex

I'm pretty sure Crate said there renaming Mana to energy

It was always energy, like in TQ. Also, yes, good diction is always important, without it we would all speak Newspeak and be mindless drones. Orwell knesw some things, scary things.

[koovan]

Originally Posted by KondaImmortal

It was always energy, like in TQ. Also, yes, good diction is always important, without it we would all speak Newspeak and be mindless drones. Orwell knesw some things, scary things.

Interesting - what type of energy? Certainly my Ranger in TQ is still able to move quickly and attack consistently when her mana/energy level is zero? She is just unable to utilise specialised talents at that point. Many already active talents/skills or buffs as they are sometimes called, remain active regardless of present energy levels.

[eisprinzessin]

It's the energy type of energy ... highlighted the relevant part in my original reply.

... also see Energy.