By the time you get to the bosses, the shitty potions don't heal enough anyway.

I appreciate the RPG's that let you craft better potions from the shit ones, but I still never use them.

The funny thing about this in Elden Ring (since you mentioned it), I never learned to use consumables besides the flasks. I’ve seen speedrunners make great use of some of the greases for example, but every time I use something I end up dying anyway. Really hurts because some of the consumables have limited crafting materials (St. Trina lily for sleep pots iirc?).

I ended up beating the base game without them.

That is indeed a curious mechanic

Maybe also having more consumables in the world and less fitting in your inventory would be a good thing? So that the player feels they'll just waste it if they don't use it, and it's not that rare anyway.

I like that. Anti-hoarding mechanics, I guess. I can't remember which game it was, but one I played recently recharged your mana/energy/mojo or whatever between fights, so you were encouraged to actually use the abilities instead of tediously avoiding it for most of the game. "How do I best use the total available mana for each battle" is a bit more fun than "Better pretend I don't have these abilities most of the time."

This is similar to why I actually came to like the rapidly breaking weapons in the Switch Zelda games. Once my mindset became "don't bother hoarding good weapons, just use whatever you want because you'll just find new ones all the time" it stopped being annoying and instead kept things fresh.

That's the reason that consumables and money don't carry over between levels in Thief: The Dark Project. No point in hoarding stuff, you might as well use it. Except of course that if you're good, you don't need to use any items at all - not even the blackjack.

Shattered pixel dungeon has an interesting approach: everything is unidentified, including potions. If you want to identify them, there are scrolls of identification (once you figure out which ones they are, though I believe most classes auto id them) but most of the time it's experimentation. Drink it and see what happens. Took me a bunch of runs to even realise that was something I should do (because you don't need to identify potions for them to just sit in your bag for future use, but I figured "fuck it" and tried one, which made me float, and I realized what I needed to do to get to chests in rooms full of traps without using all my hp and waiting to heal).

In my first walkthrough of BG3, I think I only ever used healing potions, and even they were situational as I tried to keep Shadowheart stocked on spell slots, and my main character was a wizard (and for a large portion of the game, Gale was in a party too)

Oh, and I straight up didn't find Lae'zel, Karlach, or Wyll in Act 1, and I lost my chance to add Halsin and Minthara, so I was limited to casters + Astarion anyway. The game didn't accentuate that I really, really need to look around, and that only struck me in Act 2, by the point I couldn't return to Act 1. Still, I got Jaheira on my side, which basically turned every melee battle in an enclosed space into a meat grinder for enemies (wizard's Grease followed by Spike Growth and then cleric's Spirit Guardian, Astarion shooting from the rear to take down buffier and ranged enemies). Made it a challenge to get Minsc though, as hostile Boo is absolutely destroyed by this grinder too.

Actually, returning to looking around, there's one gripe I have about most RPGs. They constantly accentuate that you need to complete the main goal ASAP. In BG3 case, everyone is concerned with removing the tadpole before turning into a mind flayer (and constantly nagging about it, making it look like a genuinely time pressing issue), and then with saving the Baldur's Gate, and it simply feels extremely unnatural to just go about your business, doing all the side quests etc. Dk about anyone else, but saving my life and then, like, everyone in Baldur's Gate sounds more important than looting another castle or helping a cow find a trinket. So, in my first walkthrough of virtually any RPG, I typically skip like 80% of all the game's content, and only then on the second one can relax and learn the world.

Yeah, I also slowly come to this realization. Having completed so many games without any consumables at all makes me more confident :D

Besides, this should be worked through game design. If a player uses consumables in battle, chances are it's already challenging enough. If it is then followed by harder fights and the player is empty, they will likely just ragequit at some point not to come there again, or will constantly switch the game's difficulty if it's available, which makes for an inconsistent and cheaty-feeling gameplay.

Fully agree!