Alchemy

Playing Morrowind

make potion usage limited but powerful, don't force the player to farm ingredients.

throwable potion of dance

Playing atelier games.

play some Atelier, son.

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>>384102464

It's basically like a really powerful mage that requires special gear and consumable reagents

End game abilities must include a big Humunculi and explosive attacks.

Ragnarok Online handled the Alchemist class pretty well IIRC

You cant unless you are interested in real life chemistry bullshit.

IRL chemistry can be both fucking complex and simple. Most people dont have the brain nor the interest to past that into videogames if the result, no matter how complex the process is, is: "your HP will regen quickly" or "increased resistance against fire!"

Breath of the Wild got it kinda right.
Atleast that's the only game in my memory where i regularely made potions other than healing and actually used them most of the time.

By turning potions into extremely strong resources to be used in combat. The Witcher series gets pretty close, but due to lore it's basically required that you quaff some potions in any fight that doesn't involve cleaning up trash mobs for the townsfolk. For main satisfaction you would want the alchemical class to be something like "Primary Class: You hurl around alchemy potions(bombs) to do damage and buff yourself/teammates up with potions", or "Secondary Class: You use potions as a means of buffing your physical attack/magical proficiency/speech-craft niggery to new heights"

The main thing to give the gameplay "oomph" needed is that strong alchemy has to be an ace in the hole, along with having some usual utility. You need regular health potions alongside shit that takes forever to craft with a description like "This potion will let you charm the pants off of literally anyone, but maybe you shouldn't use it to get your dick wet with the local bar maid"

>>384102594
Limiting potions is the worst thing you can do, because you're never going to use them, always saving them up incase you might need them in a pinch. Wich 90% of the time never happens.

>>384103205

>blaming the game for you being a hoarder

My friend does this, I think both of you are retarded. Just take some risks and stop being a faggot.

remove the "5% chance to do 50% more damage per attack for 4 seconds" shit

make potions not a commodity where you can carry around 50 of them at once

>Add in a farm where you can grow your ingredients instead of roaming around

>Potential plant breeding to get higher grade materials

>Splashable potions, not just Lol poison or lol health.

>Ability to queue up multiple potions for one throw
I.E. A slow potion, a smoke potion, and a fire potion to make a White phosphorous splash.

Make phials and containers a non-issue.

Design the game so that you need one potion to get through a difficult situation, not twelve. And also make the ingredients rare, including from merchants, even if they aren't expensive.

>>384102464
Farming, make people farm for their ingredient not just scavenge them.

Make plant breeding and shit to make super crop.

Base the entire game on alchemical stuff
Go wholehog. Philosopher's stones, homunculi, get into all the weird shit you can

>>384102464
The real question is how to make poisons useful in combat. They're time consuming to make and it's way simpler to just swing an un-poisoned sword.

>>384103651
Yes, plant breeding, and for all us dirty boys we would appreciate some plant-girls to make sick experiments on, or vivisect to extract sap from their vulva

>>384103416
>lol just play like a retard

Play Pathfinder.

No such thing. Forget TES, evem Atelier, that weeb game dedicated to alchemy, has shit alchemy system. There is no salvation for alchemistbro.

>>384102594
That's the first Witcher but we all know it's bad too. There's no such thing as good alchemy or crafting/

>>384102464
A system akin to Magicka wouldn't be bad. The element mixing system of the game could be repurposed for Alchemy instead of straight up magic.

By making them have permanent effects. This makes a lot of people that would otherwise let it sit in their inventory forever actually use them. Of course, then you add in a potion that lets you undo the effects. For example, there's a potion that lets you breathe underwater, but makes you extremely weak to electricity. Party gets a quest to go get something from a village of mer people, so you chug it of course. Well the next quest has you facing a wizard that got a bounty on him for burning a barn down with lightning. You'll need to either make a potion that gives you rubberized or wooden skin and you'll look like a weirdo, or you can figure a way to reverse the first potion's effects.

To accomplish this, you just implement some kind of crafting system. You don't want to encourage grinding, but DO want to encourage creativity. Having something like
blue ingredient + fuzzy ingredient + sample of iron = potion
is an easy way to give the player a structured formula while still allowing them to be creative.

Play the Arland Plus Atelier Trilogy

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>>384102963
Earlygame Alchemist
>I'll provide helpful potions for me and my teammates to give us an edge in combat!

Lategame alchemist
>MILLIONS ARE DEAD

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>>384102464
>have a homonculus
>could make potion
>have wide arrange of potion
>acid potion
>heal potion
>mana potion
>burn potion
>ice potion

>>384102464
You don't, having to go through the trouble of gathering materials for a one time use item is an inherently shit mechanic. Any game would be better off just focusing dev time on something else.

>>384102464
less sense more scents

>>384102674
>>384102689
I was going to say this. The atelier series is a great example of alchemy being used both to create weapons and equipment and also to create/duplicate specific traits on various items. Morrowind is also a good example, but it's not the focus of the game and I don't like it nearly as much.

>>384104239
The amount of glass needed for this fucking profession

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>>384102464
Make the effects actually matter and make them last more than a minute.

The Witcher had great potions because they lasted a long ass time and gave good bonuses, they weren't overpowered because if you drank too many potions they poisoned you.

As much as I like the idea of mixing potions with different materials in the Elder Scrolls games the potions themselves are one of the worst in gaming, first the game itself is easy so you end up only using health and mana potions and the potions themselves are boring as fuck, 10% fire damage reduction for one minute? BORING.

>>384104239
Did she made fan of her owl?

ToME did alchemy OK, but it really needs a revamp to be great. You have a golem to deal with all the physical shit, while you sit back and fling potions at the enemy. You can use spells to infuse your potions with different effects. Fighting a soft, fleshy thing? Infuse your potion with Acid. Fighting an Ice Giant? Fire potion go. You can also take the equipment you find in dungeons and smelt them down into gems, use the gems to enhance armor, or use them to enhance the potion? Or maybe gems were a requirement to throw potions, I forget, it's been a while. Anyways, it's a good starting point for an alchemy class, but it does need work or to not be in ToME, since ToME is a chore to play.

>>384103884
>save all potions until AFTER the last boss because "there might still be a hard enemy"
>don't use a single one of them
>could've saved 2 hours of your playthrough by using potions instead of hoarding them like a greedy jew that rather dies and reloads than chug a FUCKING potion
>thinks others are retarded

sure thing pal, sure thing

>>384104594
nope, owl is on her scarf.

Variety helps, depending on the gameplay genre. Having some wacky potions that do crazy things helps offer the player some more choices. Some level of customization is also good. Something similar to Wildstar's crafting mini-games would be a good place to start.

>>384102464
Space Station 13 chemistry is rewarding as fuck.

>>384103884
Get a load of this guy who doesn't use his cooldowns outside of raids in mmos.

>>384102464
Make your own drugs, then cosume them, here, you have fun, or a bad time, depending on your alchemy skill.

Fuck if I know it's the one skill I never max out in TES. Every other skill can be manipulated easily.

>How do you make alchemy fun and rewarding?
Here's the thing with video games, their only job is to be fun, they don't have to be artistic, or deep or rewarding or anything else.

Personally, the alchemy in WoW is the best part of the game, gathering herbs was fun, specially those that spawned in a hard to find spot. Clicking the "create potion" button wasn't as fun but I enjoyed using them and some of them were actually useful, for example I had a speed and an invisibility potion ready in case I got ganked.

>>384105660
I feel like TES can do better with learning and training skills.

In vanilla Skyrim my favorite way to level conjuration was to get a corpse and cast soul trap on it repeatedly.

Cheesing it? Maybe but it also felt like a Necromancer/doctor working with a cadaver to learn the intricacies of Necromancy.

It felt kinda hands on and scholarly in the simplest way possible I suppose. Aside from black smithing it's the most natural way to learn a skill in the game.

I wish restoration was as easy to "study".

>>384102464
consolidate value, make the potions themselves more worthwhile to carry around individually, powerful effects may need drawbacks which is fine
define specific situations in which potions are meant to be usable, dont just throw them into the game as generic buff dispensers and call them good, give them a purpose

strangely enough fallout does this WAY better with their chems than the tes games do with actual alchemy and potioncrafting, albeit the setting of the game limits them to a more consumable niche that could be much more broad in a proper fantasy setting where potions could be crafted and utilized as weapons on their own

>>384104102
This also technically applies to the Alchemist from Torchlight.
>Game 1
>I'll raise an army from my enemies and destroy all those vile beasts who stand in my way!

>Game 2
>I have become the corrupter of life! All bow before my might!

>>384102510
fpbp
/thread

>>384105846
>vita

>>384104094
I want to play the Plus versions on my PS3/4 not on VITA. Handhelds are disGUSTing.

>>384107110
Just get a pstv.

>>384102464
Make them really kick-ass, but make it so that they're pretty rare and you can only use them once every 5 or so minutes.

Spamming potions in the fucking pause menu was gay and felt like borderline cheating. I never used alchemy as a skill pretty much ever because the useful ones were so goddamn plentiful I didn't need to bother.

>>384102464
buy modding it to not be overpowered boring garbage

>>384104550
>and make them last more than a minute
I think this would help a lot. No one is waiting to go back into the menu to chug a potion every 10 seconds but if you know whatever you're brewing up will last you for an entire fight, it's much more motivating to actually make some.
At the same time it should be worthwhile to make them, as in it shouldn't take insane amounts of grinding or farming/gathering, but it definitely shouldn't be easy either.

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>>384102464
POTION
SELLER
THE GAME

>>384103107
You played the game wrong then. Potions had harder to obtain engredients than food, yet had the same effects and lasting time as food. Plus meals gave health bonuses on top of it all

>>384105039
>could've saved 2 hours of your playthrough by using potions instead of hoarding them like a greedy jew that rather dies and reloads than chug a FUCKING potion
Although I got over this with turn based RPGs when it comes to action games like Skyrim or Fallout for example, I generally just forget I even have potions even in the first place besides when a fight is over and need some healing.

Rather than focus on concocting potions it might be worth thinking about how items are used in the first place, maybe worth thinking about some kind of automatic use or some kind of hot key to use them as stopping combat and opening the main menu to instantly down 10 bottles of liquid steroids is pretty jarring.

The Witcher sort of got it right as Alchemy composed self use potions to enhance yourself along with making bomb weapons, stuff like the chaff grenade which stops magic use, the glitter bomb which highlights invisible monsters, maybe some kind of goopy acid pool grenade, smoke bombs.

I dunno make it exciting, banging on a menu to dump my inventory into bottles to make bottles which change a few of my characters numbers is boring.

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>>384105846
Thanks Anon, I might get into it.
>>384102464