Smaug the Golden

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

I wonder if the Ring wasn't as powerful back then.... All through the Hobbit I honeslty thought the ring was cool.

When Tolkien was writing The Hobbit, it wasn't yet the Ruling Ring in his mind. Only after publication did Hobbits and Bilbo's ring make it into his larger mythos, through his "branching acquisitive" approach to fiction (note the oblique reference to this in Leaf by Niggle). This will explain any discrepancies there may be between its role and treatment in the two books.
Of course the (almost certainly unintentional) result of these discrepancies is to make the reader see the Ring as Bilbo would have seen it throughout the story of his adventure, but as Frodo saw it in his.