Potions/food spamming from inventory

[Pendragon]

I get it, the game is clearly trying to replicate a lot of the mechanics of oblivion/skyrim... but this in particular is something that I really would like to see gone...

I am fine with food being an over time heal and potions being instant heal/buffs, but they should both have a cooldown, even if short.

I think it will trivialise the game because just like with bethesda games, finding/creating new consumables and stockpiling them is way too easy.

Being able to spam them, especially from the inventory with the game being effectively "paused", makes the difficulty level you are playing at basically irrelevant, only more time consuming.

If anything rework their effects/potency, especially for characters that may want to specialise in production skills.

It's one of the things I disliked the most about Skyrim.

As a last resort perhaps allow it at lower difficulty levels and disable it at hard+?

Thoughts?

[Chaosolous]

I think it's fine, you can use or "not abuse" mechanics in a game as much as you want.

It's a very Skyrim/Oblivion esque game, with some sprinkles of Elden Ring and Bloodborne, maybe a pinch of DOOM as well.

A decent alternative may be an replenishing flask system akin to how the FromSoftware games work.

IDK though, it doesn't much bother me. Not sure how the modding scene for this game will be but I can this mechanic being focused on by modders a fair bit, as they all customize it to their liking,

[SzargontheCultured]

my personal fix would be a 5-10 second cooldown on food dependent on difficulty and menu no longer pauses when on harder difficulties so it becomes far more dangerous

[Pendragon]

Both of your suggestions would also work, to be honest I would probably be happy with anything but the current situation where you are allowed to do anything you want with consumables from the safety of your inventory, while human npcs you are fighting can only use one at a time and they are stuck into a drinking animation that is pretty much giving you free time to whack at them meanwhile, giving you an advantage.

They should at the very least follow the same rules and have them use them instantly... or we should follow the same rule as them...

IDK at the moment it feels wrong... and sure I can "choose" not to abuse a mechanic, but if it's there, and it's usable, it makes me think that the game has been balanced and designed around such possibility, which makes it subconsciously harder for me to justify not making use of such a mechanic if available to me.

[Mad Engineer Kikoumaru]

The best solution for me would be to also make potions heal over time (just quicker than food), and not allow to stack them, so you need to wait for the previous potion to finish before taking a second one. And instead of making +1, +2 etc. potions you craft heal more, they heal faster, so a master of alchemy would be able to spam potions, but only at high levels after investing a lot of time leveling the skill.

[Pendragon]

Your solution is also good enough for me, although I do think that perhaps higher quality potions should still have a degree of instant heal to differentiate them from simple food. Perhaps a lower fixed amount of heal + HOT but faster than food?

And yes as I also mentioned I wouldn't mind if specialising in alchemy allowed you to do more with them, including spamming them, stronger effects, cheaper to make, quicker to drink down (lower the cooldown etc).

I think it would make the use of consumables and deciding when to use them more tactical if our own character also had a drinking animation when using a potion, but I can see how this wouldn't make some folks happy. Perhaps on higher difficulty levels only? (or as someone else posted in a separate thread, making it an option that can be toggled?)

[Lawrence]

Food even at max cooking is pretty underwhelming. I think it would have been better to have interesting recipes with interesting temporary buffs, like max health, mana cost reduction, stamina regen, etc. There's really not an incentive to invest into cooking currently, just spam cook 1-ingredient recipes and mukbang them.