My opinion:

You can use potions during combat
If you decide to use a potion, a three-second drinking animation takes place in real time, which means you can get hit when attempting to drink the potion.
If you do get hit, you will drop the potion on the floor and its content will be wasted. Your health will not increase even a bit.
If you do not get hit, the potion will be sucessfully assimilated by your body and your health will increase over time (not instantaneously)

The drinking animation idea sounds good.

It's also important that alchemy should be somewhat balanced in comparison to spells. People have no problem about casting restoration magic mid-battle. To keep alchemy from becoming obsolete, it needs to be equally useful (if with some different strengths and weaknesses). Potions don't need to work ultra-realistically in a world where I can seal sword gashes with a few magic words.

Agreed. Full realism should be avoided as it will tire out the player and alchemy definitely needs to be on the same level as magic... I felt that in Oblivion, it lacked the power that is normally associated with it in fantasy.

i hope not that would be terrible specialty in a exploration driven game. i was fine whit oblivion potion limit.

As long as the drinking animation took the same amount of time it takes to cast a restoration spell in combat I would be fine with that. Although I don't know how usefull it will be in Skyrim when backpedalling speed has been reduced. In OB you could take a few steps back to cast a heal spell and there were times in melee when your opponent wasn't constantly attacking (they might have their shield up to block or moving about). If the flow of battle is about the same as OB then casting or using potions with an animation shouldn't be too much of a big deal, unless you are swarmed with monsters. Mostly that didn't seem to be the case in OB.

As far as alchemy becoming obsolete? If it's like OB there shouldn't be a problem. It seemed quite powerful to me in OB.

I meant that game's difficulty and the simplicity of the combat system made it easy to just spamclick things to death. Not that it was really "flashy". Other than the awesome feeling you get for poking someone with a dagger and watching their body be flung haphazardly across the room in the typical silly ragdoll fashion they always do. Heaven forbid you pick a character with sneaking and skill with the bow. Aim and click... if it miraculously doesn't die in one hit commence the backpeddling and turn the enemy into a pincushion until he falls.



It doesn't make sense? The potions are practically poison. They would kill him if he drank too much. The "meditation" state is probably what allows him to drink more than one potion. That's a system of balance with a good lore reason to fit everything in perfectly instead of just being an unpsoken gameplay mechanic rule.



How can you say "I think having to use potions out of battle sort of defeates the point of them" followed immediately by "They're supposed to be something you stock up on to prepare yourself for battle, it's part of the strategy element of the game." Picking what potions to drink before battle or before where you an expect a battle to be is preparing yourself for battle. Preparing comes before the battle not after or during it.

...not. TES should stay TES.

You do realize that each and every installment of this series dramatically changed major gameplay elements to be completely different than from before? Alchemy wasn't even a skill until Morrowind. Enchanted items no longer permanently destroy themselves once they run out of magic power either. Dice roll attacks have turned into guaranteed hits. Etc. Balancing the potion system to not be as easily exploitable as it is now is hardly series breaking.

This is one more reason to have a hardcoe mode.

That is almost exactly the system I use in Oblivion via mods. Drinking a potion will toggle off run mode for a few seconds (so you can't just run away and regain all your health at the same time, it also limits your combat options so you have to think about timing when drinking potions) and none of the health or magicka potions work instantly. Instead they have a longer duration and a higher total magnitude, but obviously far less magnitude per second. A strong health potion for example gives 12 points for 5 seconds instead of 50 points instantly.

One of the many stupid exploitable game mechanics Bethesda implemented without thinking about it at all imo. Oh...he's going to kill me during the next second. *hotkey potion* *hotkey potion*. Full health, yay! The vanilla combat/magic/alchemy system is so broken that anyone with an IQ higher than 70 should be invincible unless he wants to die.

I don't know the lore of the Witcher, but in TES, potions are not poisonous. That's poison. So it's "Probably" what allows him to magically turn poison into non-poison? Kneeling down does that? Awesome, I'll have to give that a shot with some methylated spirits.



You don't get the potions during battle! You get them beforehand so they can be USED in battle. If you can't use them in battle, there's barely a point. Outside of battle it's just as easy to spam heal spell since there's no need to conserve magicka or you can rest, and as for magicka and fatigue, those regenerate automatically, no need to use them out of battle when you're not trying to survive against an enemy. As for fortify potions, a lot of the time you will end up in a battle before you know you need to drink them. Making sure you have your potions before battle so you can use them in battle is the strategy element. If you can't use them in battle, their purpose is significantly reduced and it just gives mages yet another excessive advantage.

Fallout 3 had the same problem. Combat depends on the amount of stimpaks in the inventory.

In Fallout I did the same thing to Stimpacks because again I was invincible. Deathclaw? What a joke, simply spam stimpacks after each hit!

Since potions aren't exactly hard to find (you can even create them yourself) the amount of potions as the only limit doesn't matter. And in any case you shouldn't be invincible as long as you have any kind of health potions (even low quality) in your backpack, that just doesn't make sense.

I didn't say it's "Probably" what allows him to turn poison into non-poison. I said that's probably what allows him to drink more than one. Great job at putting words in my mouth and missing the entire point.




I don't know what TES games you're playing but I've picked up several potions DURING battle and used them. Looting bodies puts you in a magical time freeze world. As does going to your inventory and selecting the potion. Blitzing to the tables and crates while you're putting space inbetween you and the enemies can also net you some potions depending on the area. Stacking stacks of every kind of potion you can carry isn't strategy. Strategy is planning the perfect time to use them before it's too late. If you can freeze time, go to the inventory screen and casually select the right potion for whatever moment you just got yourself stuck in. That's not strategy. That's just a reaction.

"The potions are practically poison. They would kill him if he drank too much. The "meditation" state is probably what allows him to drink more than one potion."

Okay, what you said was that drinkign too much causes death, meditation allows him to drink more. The natural assumption is that you mean "drink more without being killed by them". Anyway, it still doesn't make sense that you have to kneel down to drink several potions, or any for that matter.



Well then instead of having some stupid and nonsensical system, maybe they should try and fix their current one in a more logical way, such as not freezing time while looting bodies, not being able to loot bodies during battle, not having a huge excess of potion and general loot availability and not being able to drink 4 at a time instantly, but having to take a few seconds to drink it and not be able to attack in that time like I previously suggested. Strategy doesn't have to be only in battle. Every decision you make in the game is part of strategy, and preparing yourself for battle beforehand should be a big element of this in an RPG (as opposed to a beatemup). I already mentioned the strategic elements that are removed if you can't drink potions during battle and how it unbalances the system.

1. 0,5 second drinking animation with one hand, leaving the other still useful, and you can still walk around. Either add an animation to it or just let it take half a second for the potion to kick in.
2. 2 second duration instead of instant, making it impossible to be immortal as long as you have Hpotions in your inventory.
3. Have a cool down. 10 seconds or so before you can use a potion with the exact same effect as the one you just used.
4. Make the best potions a lot more expensive or have a limited access to them in vendors.



It doesnt change how TES treats potions, just more realistic and less overpowered. It allows for more strategy but still lets you react to unexpected turn of events, such as getting staggerlocked (which is pretty much the only situation that forces me to spam potions).

All of these are good ideas for mods but not for the Vanilla version. If there is a hardcoe mode like New Vegas then you could implement some of these features but not in the regular version. All though I do agree that spaming potions can be ridiculous but look at the alternative. I can guarantee you that if some of these features are added into the regular version it will hurt sales. Not to mention that it will force people to focus on Restoration which that then brings us back to Oblivion's flaws with major/minor skills, and lets not forget about Dragons who knows how hard they will be you may just need those potions in case you can't reach a cave or a house and wait a couple hours for the dragon to disappear
(That's of course assuming the Dragon will move on which we still have no idea if the dragon will leave after a while or if he will just sit outside the cave/house).

Why is it that any suggestion/hope for anything that makes game play move realistic is always met with the same "Don't put this in the game . . . mods can add this." comments?

Do most gamers here really want the default game to be THAT "streamlined?"

Mods allow PC users to enhance their game, such as making healing potions less of a combat cheat. The problem with mods is that, if most gamers are playing these games on a console, the majority will not even experience more realistic game play . . . and users tend to only support the type of game play that they are familiar with. So mods are both a blessing (for PC players) and a curse (for console players) . . . and "streamlined" game play ends up being the norm for TES games . . . because this is what the majority have come to expect.

Balance issues is the main reason, we have no idea how hard Dragons/Other enemies will be and if the character is gimped with a 10 second cooldown on Potions (Assuming they are similar to what was in Oblivion), or a Regeneration period on potions then we might as well as play the game on easy difficulty. I understand the problems with being able to spam Potions but not everybody will want to play under this type of a system. I wouldn't have a problem playing under this system but it will make the game harder, maybe too hard and I would need to focus on Restoration which that right there goes hand in hand with the reason why they got rid of major/minor skills so that you aren't forced to use one particular skill if you don't want to.

I wouldn't say that this game is streamlined I would say that it's easier to use and not as complex as Oblivion where you had to worry about how many minor skills you did in order to get a +5 in a particular attribute.

"easier to use and not as complex" is a big chunk of how I define "streamlined" . . . along with making things less challenging, with less consequences for your action.

If Bethesda follows how this was implemented in Fallout 3 (with stimpaks, in place of healing potions) it won't be balanced at all.

In my opinion, games should be designed in a way that limits spamming/cheats . . . instead of relying on the conscience of the player to not use any available cheats. This is just the some "if you feel Fast Travel is a cheat, don't use it" argument. If it is part of the core game, it is not looked upon as a cheat (even when it is exploited).

All I'm hoping for is the alchemy system to make restore potions a more long term, slow recovery effect, while keeping magic pretty much immediate. magic has the ability to restore your health immediately... It's magic lol.. But taking antibiotics (this is a real world example fyi) needs Time to process. that being said, and myself being aware that it has been like that. there needs to be a better way to limit potion spamming. Idk how, but should be.

I agree completely I hated the fact that you could use Infinite Stimpaks at once instead of having a limit of like 2 or 3 which could easily have been explained in the lore, such as you take too much you get an overdose and possibly die or get severely injured.

I hate exploits too, 100 % in everything isn't fun and gets old after a while. The only problems I see with Potion cooldown is that they won't be as effective and we'll be forced to use Restoration as an alternate heal power which I'm pretty sure everybody in Oblivion used Restoration outside of Atronach users but then that will force us to primarly focus on the Restoration skill and that eliminates other skills that we possibly could focus on.

Restoration could have limits/consequences too.

I truly doubt you've played through the whole thing.

Witcher 2 is a rather difficult game from what I've got in so far, mainly due to the fact that potions are no longer pots. That game is about fighting like a Witcher, where you must dart around your opponents and not let them hit you because you are wearing light armor. In The Elder Scrolls series, you can wear several different types of armor and have a combat system that is less about movement and more about how hard you land a hit. Having pots for a lucky strike from your opponent is extremely useful and can be strategic as well.

Movement and dodging is still very important in The Elder Scrolls Series. There's no need to block your opponents power attack in Oblivion when you could move out of the way.