by Lujo on Thu Jan 31, 2013 7:39 am
Yeah - the big thing about these few features we (especially me) can't seem to shut up about is that they create expectations, because of what Bloggorus said.
Once you start prepping these things on every run every boss effectively has less health, or you get used to starting every run with +4-8 damage and practicaly at lvl3 or so. After a very short while HARD dungeons stop feeling HARD - while if you play them purist, outside 4-5 classes, most of them are in fact hard and require a nice ammount of "throw everything at them including the kitchen sink!". How much of this "HARD is just mislabeled NORMAL" and "VICIOUS is actualy MODERATELY CHALLENGING" comes from being pro, and how much just comes from using the potions, trisword, broken-feature-of-the-week, or a few over the top guys is what I'm really wondering about...
I mean, people start feeling like they've learned something, when in fact they just got handed an arsenal of inconspicuous atom bombs. Any fool can use them, and even feel the power, but it takes being pro to actually figure out just how much they stand apart from everything else. And they do, by quite a bit - and also support each other (the Rogue really "breaks out" once you get the Tri-Sword and the potions, stuff that's probably in every locker everywhere and is being prepped on every run, or at least the potions most likely are).
Not to mention that if you use, say, the potions to kill the easier boss, he drops 25 gold and you get levels, which then makes the second boss feel more like jumbo-popcorn than an actual challenge. So if you use STR, Dodge and Reflex, they read: One less boss per dungeon, +X XP at level 5-7, +25 gold (which accounts for the "swimming in gold" stuff that led to merciless CB exploitation on my last playthrough).
And same goes for Rogues, Bloodmages and Warlords (for example) - they create expectations that other classes can't match. You can tell from all the statements like "Rogue has the best hp-to-damage ratio", or "CYDSTEPP isn't so good now that they nerfed it", and so on and so forth. They define "optimal", except it's not optimal so much as "jarringly exceptional". And it's too easy to get used to it.
(The discussion was ment to look at it all from the potions angle - they really do create a big step up in player power once you unlock them - being able to do a tricky PQI run is worth 500 gold, not being handed dodge, reflex and whoopaz for ever after. Maybe.)
I almost got pwned by Shifty Brickwork!