How do we the solve potion management mechanic problem in Diablo games?

How do we the solve potion management mechanic problem in Diablo games?

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Just copy the base idea of Path of Exile's flask system. Essentially
>potions don't exist as consumable items. Instead, flasks are an equipment type that you can carry 5 of at once in dedicated slots
>as you kill monsters they gain charges
>pressing the hotkey for each flask consumes charges and gives you the health/mana/whatever effect
>you upgrade your flasks over time just like any other equipment slot
Right now in POE it doesn't work very well because they were balanced for when the game was about taking 30 seconds to kill a monster pack instead of holding Q to one-shot entire screens three times a second, but the base concept is strong.

PoE's flask system is easily the worst part of the game, especially the utility flasks

>Diablo
They are too strong and too cheap. Could be fixed by massively increasing the cost so that players consider other forms of restoration to supplement them.
>Diablo 2
Kind of fixes the issue by making potions drop constantly and healing over time, thus meaning you only need to use them so often. And they made insta-restore potions very rare and expensive, preventing you from spamming them. Also implemented a bunch of other means of restoration instead of potions (life steal, mana steal, Insight, regeneration). Overall, I'd say there isn't really any problem with this system outside of antidote/thawing potion stacking being overpowered yet tedious.
>Titan Quest
I hate this game, but it did potion management perfectly by having them stackable and with long cooldowns. I can't list a single complaint about their consumable system, it was very well done.
>Path of Exile
By far the worst potion implementation of all time. The potion system forces you to play in a specific way (fast) and to constantly re-activate potions. It is like managing five different buffs with 5 second duration. This is the only Diablo game with an absolutely detrimental potion system.

>titan quest gets hate
explain this to me user for I love that game and hold it with the upper echelons as diablo 2

just add mechanics around potions that make them do unique things
buff to healing rates
buff to amount of healing done
bounce effects when consuming like stat buffs
debuffs if you drink a dubious potion

make a brewing mechanic where you go out and gather ingredients for monster drops to make potions that give these buffs making them better than shopkeeper potions

I play CI and thinks it's the best part, I'm just constantly superbuffed all the time with my 14k ES, only plebs care for antiquated trivialities like health and mana potions,

Make your character become addicted to health potions over time so they heal you less and you suffer from withdrawal
make defense worth a damn so you can focus on not beinmg hit

Sounds like lifesteal that you can store for later, sort of.

>potions
They are always a non-mechanic, you might aswell have two buttons that say "HEAL" and "MANA"

I like D3's system.
Infinite health potions, and can be special with additional effects.

you're not allowed to like anything from d3, sorry user

>has viable melee builds
sorry breh it's a better game than PoE

Just like anything else in PoE, flasks have been reduced to
>lol more damage
Most people nowadays only have a single life flask, if they have any at all because the game revolves basically just around leeching or regaining life and turbo speeds. Curiously enough while playing Grim Dawn I bumped into the same shit because at some point enemies scale so hard that you can't really count on defenses so much. I suppose this is an inherent problem with the genre, but it is increased tenfold when now bosses in all these new games take much longer to kill in comparison to the much faster boss fights in D1 and D2

>flask system is the worst
>I got carpal meme from pressing flask buttons constantly
>flasks need to be redone
fuck off reddit, the system has been absolutely fine for so many years now, but you just recently jumped on the bandwagon to hate it because you fucks are too lazy to press more than one button in your already braindead necromancer builds

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Unironically, D3 solved it. One potion on cooldown.

I think the problem is that it's just a non-mechanic, who cares about managing your health and mana when you can just spam buttons and get it right back?

Or just remove health potions, like Guild Wars did.

flask system IS shit though, if your build isn't complete ass then you'll rarely if ever use flasks during mapping and during boss battles you can almost never rely on them. Especially with the new bosses because they're all designed like fucking shit, at least with Uber Elder you could replenish flasks and use them wisely but now it's all "fuck you get dicked without vaseline". Not to mention GGG keeps doubling down on giving people more power creep via new flasks that give shit such as 70% crit chance and insta recovering your life, mana and all other flasks

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It's only a non-mechanic now because player damage is so fucking high and packs are so huge. There used to be a time when you would run out of charges during regular play and a blue pack was a godsend to fill up.

diablo 3 is unironically better than any of the modern diablo clones
>actually fun gameplay
>no pay2win shit, unlike all the clones
>graphics and animations dont look like they were made by some russian hobo

That's the one thing Diablo 3 actually improved on.

I rather just not have them, it makes your playstyle dumber

PoE did a good enough job while it was just hp/mana pots. Copy that.

D3 actually improved on the whole skill/rune system too.
Too bad about everything else.

one potion every X seconds is the laziest design i've ever seen

>nerfing potions in diablo 1
>"okay so the warrior is already borderline unplayable and unfun with the vanilla potions, lets now make him completely useless, and lets also make the sorcerer bad as well"

Who even cares?
It's supposed to give a decent health refill on cooldown, what else would I want from a fucking health potion?

>laziest design i've ever seen
It's drinking a potion to restore your health, it's supposed to be simple and non-spammable, not revolutionary and cuhrazee

How about this: every time you try to drink a potion the game pauses and you have to do a complex QTE. If you do well, you drink it. If you do not so well you drink some and spill the rest on your face and body like a sperg. If you completely fail you gargle to permadeath.

Characters have Max number of potions that can carry.
Potions can only be bought, not found.
Potions should be expensive,limited and heal over time instead of immediately.

There fixed

Better than a shitty tedious system that makes you waste time organizing your potions like an autist.

>Potions can only be bought, not found.
That's the fucking worst idea
>welp, time to stop this combat, the bread and butter of this game, because I have to return to town and restock on potions, AGAIN

Kek

Game being balanced like shit recently doesn't make the idea of equippable replenishable flasks a bad idea.

I think it's mostly fine in d2. Rejus are the emergency button, mana pots so you can spam skills, health pots for instances you just happen to take some small amount of damage.
I wouldn't delete thawing, stamina or antidotes they are special potions that you don't use that often.
Full reju's are perhaps too op, they are nerfed in path of diablo:restore less hp and mana, not full.

Get rid of different potion "potencies", each potion type has a hotkey, the potions stack on that hotkey and don't take up inventory space, and if you want to heal more than whatever the default potion healing rate is, just drink two or three or however many you want. Maybe you can have a stack limit that you can increase with certain items or something as you progress and require more potions to heal back to full health late-game.

PoE + Dark Souls 3 system
>Equippable flask for HP and another for MP
>Replenishes at encampments
>Random chance of an enemy dropping one "use" of either flasks
>Different flasks have different effects

>No healer/Lifesteal/Other healing methods.

Also "bad quality" potions should harm you

Alternatively, nerf monsters. The forced overreliance on potions is poor design. If you don't use potions, the game is virtually impossible, and if you do the game is a pathetic cakewalk since you can fully rejuvenate instantly whenever you want. But the sorcerer deserves to be a lot weaker anyways considering how broken he is.

Weight-limit managing is one of the shittiest things a game can do. I'd much rather deal with space-limited inventories.

>heal over time
Thus removing 99% of the point of having them. Real smart.