Elixirs: good or bad?

[mouseman]

Many of you noticed that the gameplay video had elixirs on them. Those of you who haven't played the original Diablo, elixirs were potions that permanently give +1 to one stat.

The restrictions were in Diablo 1:

Level requirement 25. With max. level 50, it made sure that you couldn't equip uber gear with elixirs before you had beaten the game on normal.

They cost 5,000 gold (one gold stack), but you couldn't buy Elixirs of Vitality. Even if they were available at the witch, there wasn't many of them at the same time.

Because you didn't have skill trees in Diablo 1, the system lead to the conclusion that the last levels were usually not important, because you had already maxed out your stats using elixirs. It doesn't have to be like that with Diablo 3, because levels are most important because of the skills.

I support elixirs because finding them is always such a thrill. I'm not sure that players should be able to buy them from shops, but if they could, it would be one hell of a money sink and could tie the economy around gold/elixirs, which would be an improvement in my opinion.

There should still be a pretty harsh level requirement for drinking them. I think you should be able to find elixirs just on nightmare/hell modes or the respective modes in Diablo 3. You could reward the people playing the game instead of running act bosses by disabling elixir drops on bosses. So you could only find them killing normal monsters.

The most important thing why I support elixirs is this: It makes all the builds different. Now you take enough strength to carry your gear and put the rest to vitality or if you want max. block, then enough on dexterity. It's same on all of the classes and, frankly, it's boring. The fact that we have so many completely identical characters running in D2 is ridiculous. Elixirs would allow a large variety of builds stat-wise and also reward the casual gamers, if elixirs could be found more often just by playing the game than grinding act bosses.

[devildriver]

I've got a feeling elixers will be some how exploited as time goes by.

[Rcuhljr]

I'd assume elixirs in d3 will be temporary boosts to the stats, since it's hard to balance against permanent increases. I loved the fact that if I was picking up a piece of gold in d1 at the same time I picked up an elixir from my belt, presto two elixirs :P

[Remy]

If elixirs were + permanent stats, then we would just see "Max stats for $10" on various websites after a week of D3.

Making elixirs drop on random world mobs and not bosses doesn't reward the average player. It just makes the job easier for the farmers that do it for real world money.

Elixirs that increase stats permanently is a terrible idea, because it would be impossible to balance the game. Everyone will quickly become overpowered, or at least more so than originally planned. Bots, hacks, dupes, and farmers also make everything 500 times worse. Balance will go to hell in less than a month of D3's release.

[Erwwwd]

I like the idea that stats are increased because of experience and playing the game instead of them being handed out as freebies.

[Merick]

There's no way a modern online game is going to offer an item with permanent stat increases. It's just another type of potion, don't read into it too much.