Why We Never Use Items in Games
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- Опубліковано 19 сер 2023
- Many video games are filled to the brim with items that we never end up using. From loot being throw at you constantly to gathering crafting materials that you'll never actually craft with, we've all seen it. But why don't we ever use these items? Let's talk about it!
Edited with Gling AI: bit.ly/46bGeYv
Special Thanks to the following:
Video Credit: gameranx, TGN, IGN, Falcmaan, videogamedunkey, Altair Stealth, jghprofhist
Music Credit:
"Distance" by Karl Casey @WhiteBatAudio
"Avenger" by Karl Casey @WhiteBatAudio
"City Lights" by Nomyn - Ігри
You never know when you might need 10,000 cheese wheels when you run out of mana against Alduin!
I like to carry the entire buffet with me just in case something happens
Loving these videos recently. Keep them coming!
Good to hear, and I'll definitely keep at it!
Every time I play first-person shooters I never use grenades and rockets because I'm always saving them for a rainy day. But then I always forget to use them in tough fights because they're not in my muscle memory. When something is not in your routine, you forget about it in frantic fights. I only remember grenades and rockets AFTER I've beaten the tough fight. I'm like "Oh I should have used grenades and rockets to make that fight easier. Oh well I'll try to remember it next time".
one of the reasons I started playing every game on the hardest difficulty for my first run was it's so much immersive and makes encounters so much more impactful, that you really start feeling the world differently. You'll read that book for hints, you'll read the bestionary because you want to know weaknesses, you start using items and feel the difference in real time.
On Normal Mode I often times haven't even used scrolls, potions etc. even ONCE.
Saving all of the difficulty for a "second run" (let's be honest when was the last time you replayed a story based game) is a waste of "fun" for ME
I think that's a decent option to make these systems feel more important. If only all difficulty modes were well designed instead of just having super high damage modifiers applied to the enemies and nerfs applied to the player's abilities.
There's a game called Dave The Diver that "kinda sorta solves" this problem without needing to be survival horror. When you get a certain excess of fish, you can upgrade the amount of money they give you at the shop by giving a certain number of one type of fish to bancho for him to upgrade. Having a system that makes item hoarding in of itself a gameplay mechanic that is useful to you is a pretty good way to sidestep this problem. The reason I say it "kinda sorta solves" the problem is that even Dave The Diver has a problem where sometimes a fish you spent a while hoarding becomes worthless to sell even at rank 10 due to having limited time in the night to serve customers, so you just continue to get better and better fish without actually selling them.
BUT WAIT, now for the reason there's quotation marks around "kinda sorta solves": You later on in the game get access to a restaurant branch where you can offload all your excess stuff you're not using and earning passive extra income. So even that problem sort of solves itself.
If your game is gonna involve capitalism in any form, go full Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale with it if you can. Be the best capitalist item hoarding game you can be. That or you do it the Death Stranding way where items have physical presence on you and must be considered as a result.
It's interesting to think of it from the opposite perspective like that. Instead of trying to make using items more appealing, reward people for hoarding them. Perhaps that's something to be explored.
And yeah I think half-hearting things is why a lot of mechanics in games don't feel impactful.
I blame old jrpgs. Too often I was left without items I needed in a particular fight and ended up stuck or having to go back to grind to get more
That makes sense. The backtracking in older jrpgs to get a party member/item you need could be really tedious.
The ONLY time I really used every item in a fight was helping my little sister with an encounter in Skyrim. She was maybe lvl 15 and ran into vampire necromancers that she was NOT ready for and was getting really upset she couldn't beat them. I used every health, armor and magic buff potion and spell she had, had to bottleneck them into a hallway and use a combo of flames, thuum and a sword. And it STILL took me 4 or 5 attempts.
Probably the most satisfying fight I ever had in that game when I finally won
Haha that's awesome! Yeah I think the more the difficulty pushes us into a corner, the more we try to use everything available to us to gain an advantage.
I agree with most of the examples besides Witcher 3, on the highest difficulty you NEED those oils and potions to absolutely prepare for each and every monster, it truly makes you feel like a witcher.
Someone else mentioned that, it seems like I need to crank the difficulty to the top next time I play
I love the insights in the previous videos. Please keep them coming. 🙏
Will do!
Fire video you deserve more subs
Appreciate it!
I've been a big culprit of this gaming sin, though I've recently overcome it. Not nill use things as frequently as it makes sense to get even a fractional increase to my power or not have to reload. My thinking is that item < my time spent without it's usually.
FF16 also handles potions in an interesting way as both regular & high potions are restocked on defeat even if you went into that fight with less than maximum quantity, just make sure you smartly use your buff potions as they don't respawn for you.
I like that way of thinking. It's better to use up all your items than waste your time indeed.
In Cyberpunk, I took every items on ennemies to sell those and buy cars.
But then after I finished buying all the cars, they decrease the prices of cars in the game
I was like 😑
Makes it feel invalid almost. You gathered all that stuff to gain money and they randomly decided to change the value of the cars.
Great Vid 👍🏾👍🏾👍🏾👍🏾
Thanks!
Also guilty of hoarding everything. Only time i actually used items was some rare games and cases where teh benefit was massive like BP souls and seeds in trails and octopath items given concoct and bp system in place. Sometimes devs discourage using items a whole playthrough too like Scarlet Nexus has an achievement for beating the game without using a single item. Scarlet Nexus Very hard no items is no joke either especially when dodging requires melee levels of precision and accuracy with timing your dodges.
It's weird how games flood us with items to make them seem important, but we only actually feel the need for them in niche cases in a handful of games. And I might have to try for that no item run in Scarlet Nexus...
Because Pokemon blue with the damn masterball....thats why
This is why I need 80 ultra balls at all times
Just finished Baldur's Gate 3 with easily 100 health potions and DOZENS of scrolls I never even used lmfao
Case in point haha
me too man, me too
Why use not it?
That is the question indeed
Hog Rider
so that why im a hoarder
Yep
If you ever try the Witcher 3 on the death march difficulty you WILL use every single thing to your disposal, hopefully after researching the bestiary well before the encounter. At that level your thought process throughout the game is so different that it makes it feel as if you legitimately are a Witcher
It seems like I'll need to try that when I do another playthrough.
It's 50-50, I guess.. I think it's an old gamers' habit due to the bad checkpoint system of the past.. However, the blame also goes on the game itself for not utilizing "Player Psyche" to its advantage and punishing the gamers when they hoard items..
Yeah, in games where you actually have a finite inventory, you spend a lot more time thinking about what to actually keep in there.
Items are always tough to balance right. They need to be good enough to justify using, and not so rare that you won’t worry about needing that item later and being without it. Limited inventory is generally the best way to handle that in my experience. Shin Megami Tensei V has no limit to how many different items you can hold (that I know of), but individual items you could only hold a set number of - sometimes as low as 3 max. This encourages me to use them because I was at risk of having too many elemental block items or whatever next time I picked one up. This also impacts battles because no matter what you do, you can’t cheese a boss with like 20 of a good item. But most RPGs, unless I can easily buy it in a shop or it drops from every third enemy, items tend to be a last resort for in a pinch. And if the game isn’t difficult enough or the items aren’t better that moves my party has, they won’t even be used then.
I like SMT V as an example. Despite being able to buy items freely, that cap of 3, especially for super important items, really reminds you of their value. I was always consciously refilling items every chance I got bc I was so worried I would need all 3 in a fight.
Notes taken. Will make some items that can kill boss in one shot. 😃
Correct takeaway lol
RPG elements is the worst thing to happen to majority of the video games. Absoluty grindfest. They make sense for a well crafted true rpgs where you have so many choices and outcomes.
I dislike how they get forced into games that would've been so much better being a more focused linear experience.
nakeyjakey lol
He's one of the GOATS