Hoarding in JRPGs

I'm a chronic hoarder.

But, and hear me out, it's their fault. It's the game that's wrong when I hoard.

• If it's simply an option that doesn't make a huge difference in whether I succeed or fail, I'm gonna hoard by accident;
• if consumables are so uniquely powerful that using them can solely determine success, I'm gonna hoard because you never know;
• if using consumables permanently deprives me of access to that class of consumable, I'm gonna hoard because it feels bad in my brain. I'm getting permanently weaker!

I don't really hoard in, like, Souls games. Or Monster Hunter. Or Sea of Stars. Or Etrian Odyssey. Or Witchspring. Most of them have two things in common:

• you only have access to a pre-selected subset of consumables (unless you're really good at menuing in Souls, I guess; and Witchspring is an exception here);
• and they provide clear ways of getting refills. Sometimes as trivial as Estus, sometimes as "it's made out of those monsters over there".

Part of that is probably just my taste, but I do think that "huge list of every consumable in the game, but with all the really useful ones being permanently or semi-permanently losable" is just bad game design. It incentivizes these kind of behaviours. That's why jRPG hoarding is so common!

Sure, some people will be perfectly fine with the system. But personally, I'm glad that modern games (and some relatively classic ones) often try to reevaluate how to do consumables.