People in this thread really hate weapon durability, huh? I thought it was kind of genius, and that TotK introducing a way to repair weapons was really bad for the gameplay loop.
Anon encounters a Switch owner
Submitted 8 months ago by amzd@kbin.social to greentext@sh.itjust.works
Comments
ryven@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
force@lemmy.world 8 months ago
The durability system is just extremely tedious in both BotW and ToTK. It takes a lot of fun out of the game imo. Especially since items have such little durability, they break far too quickly.
I also think the same about ACNH. I have a similar view (probably controversial) about Minecraft, except I think it’d be fine if the tools didn’t permanently break and you could just repair them afterwards. Only if you fix anvils/repairing tho, it’s been totally broken forever, although I guess mending exists as a bandaid. But really I prefer something like Terraria where there’s just no durability period.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
A lot of BotW and TotK’s systems are too damn simple for their own good.
The armor system works by simple addition and subtraction. The numbers correspond to quarter hearts. If an enemy attack was going to do, say, 12 damage, and you have 4 armor, that hit now does 8 damage, with a minimum of 1. Which is why a single trip to a clothing fairy will be the turning point from “everything one-shots me” to “I am made of adamantium.” in TotK especially you’d find boss monsters that one shot you before you can even get a good look at them, later in the game they’re complete pushovers.
Similarly, the weapons actually function more like ammunition than “weapons.” You only have so many shotgun bullets, only so many SMG bullets, and only so many BFG bullets. You can swing this sword only so many times before it breaks. Shields, weirdly, aren’t that badly designed. There’s a use case and an abuse case, if you use a shield correctly it will last. They didn’t implement this with the weapons, like you should use a hammer against hard foes to smash their armor and swords against soft targets. Hitting things with elemental weapons that they don’t counter should break them, like it should be okay to hit ice enemies with a fire sword but normal enemies will wear it out, etc.
You don’t find common weapons you’re willing to break and rare better weapons you wan to take care of, the weapons ramp up basically to match the enemies so at the beginning of the game you spend 3 minutes killing a red bokoblin with a stick, and at the end of the game you spend 3 minutes killing a silver bokoblin with a Royal Highfalutin Claymore.
“Oh, I broke my weapon, guess I should fiddle fuck around with the weird quick menu system to pick out another. This doesn’t slam the pace of the game to a halt at all.”
I kinda like the idea of a weapon durability system that rewards players for understanding the combat system, where if you just hold left stick forward and mash Y you’ll run out of weapons before you run out of enemies, but if you engage with the systems, attacking when the target is vulnerable, using the right weapons on the right enemies, your supplies will last longer. This would support a play model where you prepare for an adventure stocking food and gear, then go out on the adventure managing your supplies. Maybe you find very cool weapons along the way, maybe you manage to live off the land if you’re particularly skilled.
But that’s not what we got, and it doesn’t work very well.
1917isnow@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
Oh wow a gamer who never sleeps who mysteriously has focus issues, I wonder how that works
jkrtn@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
People hate that they removed everything about the Zelda games that made them fun and charming, and left a mid grinding experience. The weapons breaking don’t really bother me much.
Old Zelda: find a temple, new set of enemies, solve puzzles until you get to the new tool, solve puzzles with the tool, fight a large boss that the tool conveniently works really well on.
New Zelda: find a shrine, fight yet another of these little guys. Find a shrine, solve two or three of the same puzzles with the tools you got in the first hour of gameplay. Spend large amounts of time just walking through areas of the map fighting the same campsites and outposts, hoping for a radar beep so you can find a shrine.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Yup, I finished BotW, and only because my kids wanted me to. I would frequently hand them the controller to make me some food or whatever, and I ended up looking up a guide to find the shrines for some special equipment because finding them wasn’t fun. The boss fights were okay, but they got pretty same-y (basically, find the one secret, then smack it a bunch).
It has little to nothing to do with the Zelda games I love, so I didn’t bother getting TotK since I’ve heard it’s largely more of the same. Instead, I bought Link’s Awakening and Skyward Sword and had a really good time. Those are great Zelda games, BotW was kinda meh.
aido@lemmy.world 8 months ago
TotK didn’t introduce a way to repair weapons, it reduced their durability to near nothing then gave you a way to buff them.
ryven@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
It did. In TotK only, put (almost) any weapon on the ground in front of a Rock Octorok and let it inhale it and spit it out. You’ll get back the same base weapon, with the same fused item, at full durability, but with a rerolled modifier.
daltotron@lemmy.world 8 months ago
It’s mostly just that it doesn’t make any fucking sense, most especially after the beginning of the game. None of the weapons are mostly diverse enough that the frequent changing created by durability encourages you to really play the game any differently, usually you have a stockpile of extra weapons anyways so you don’t really even need to pick up new stuff, and most of the hard enemies drop the weapons that deal higher damage, meaning you’ll want to use the high damage weapons on those enemies, so there’s not much decision-making going on there. After fighting enough hard enemies later in the game, you get enough high damage weapons that it’s not even really worth it to interact with most of the random bokoblin camps. Not that doing so was super interesting to begin with, outside of like the first couple hours of gameplay.
TotK solves some of these problems with the fusion mechanic and having increased enemy variety, but it’s still not great, and most of what it does serves to assuage the shittiness of the system rather than provide a reason for it to exist in the first place.
LucidNightmare@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Yeah. Weapon degradation in a video game that isn’t trying to go for a realism vibe is absolutely fucking garbage. You’ve got arrows that light on fire, turn to ice, or have lighting as soon as you pull them out of the quiver, but yeah. Totally makes sense that my Master Sword needs a lil sleepy time to become usable again. Just fucking garbage.
PlantDadManGuy@lemmy.world 8 months ago
You know I absolutely hated it at first until I realized, they just did it so that we would get to experience the full range of weapon options in the game. Otherwise you just stick to the one you find early on that works the best and completely ignore everything else they give you.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
It forces resource management, decision making, and engaging with the full array of tools you have at your disposal. It also means you never run out of the need for more good weapons.
kemsat@lemmy.world 8 months ago
The entire system was trash from the get go. I don’t care that weapons break IRL; I’m playing a fucking video game, get that shit out of there.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
It isn’t about realism, but creating a resource-management gameplay loop. Need better gear? You have to regularly work for it. It also encourages using weaker weapons in weaker areas, which makes the difficulty more consistent and fresh.
Rinna@lemm.ee 8 months ago
I think I’d be fine with it if they buffed durability with everything, and had a system that told you how much durability is left that isnt just its last few hits. It just feels way too low for me imo.
Thcdenton@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
It’s completely true. I like to call this the Halo effect. It’s a pretty mid game that’s entirely alone on it’s platform, and therefore is massively popular and stands out.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t some fun features, like great physics, but that doesn’t mean it’s a truly great game.
jose1324@lemmy.world 8 months ago
No way you just said Halo was mid
sanpedropeddler@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
As someone that has no nostalgia for the series, I have to agree with them. Halo was mid
daltotron@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I have played halo 1, 2, 3, and 4 front to back on legendary. It is one of my only accomplishments as a gamer, I have completed almost no other games. No ODST or Reach for me though, because I am unlucky.
Halo is a shooter from a pre-call of duty, pre-titanfall, pre-brink, pre-mirror’s edge era. It doesn’t have really any interesting movement mechanics, and the . The grappling hook in infinite is maybe a response to this other, better variety of FPS, but I still think it kinda comes up flat. It has basically no interesting cover mechanics. Post-doom, quake, unreal tournament, and boomer shooter, though, and those had good movement, so who fuckin knows what their deal is.
No, halo’s much slower. Halo, you have a slower walk speed, your enemy projectiles are supposed to move much slower since they’re all plasma based and you’re usually offered the opportunity to have hitscan weapons. So your movement still matters, it’s just less interesting. Most of the appeal of halo comes about as a result of this slower movement speed affording more easily made levels, with more interesting level design, and more easily made enemy AI with more interesting behaviors. Basically, where other shooters make the core gameplay as fun as possible, on the player’s side, making the player a more interesting character to control and use, Halo would rather make everything else as fun as possible, everything around that core.
Most FPS’s just have like, open spaces, and then corridors, and then big rooms, and that’s basically it, because they can’t make the level geometry super complicated without screwing up the player’s movement options, or over-complicating everything since the player can either look at enemies or look at the level design and usually not at both at the same time, which is also why they mostly always try to keep you moving towards the enemies, or why unreal tournament relies so much on you memorizing the arenas.
I think this means that when most people evaluate Halo, they’re doing so by measuring it against other shooters, and against this other philosophy, and Halo obviously ends up as pretty mid when measured against that. It also doesn’t help that Halo can be pretty hit and miss with this philosophy, since this relies more on very consistently interesting changes in level design and enemy variety to keep things spicy, and this novelty tends to wear off as the series inevitably chugs along. It also doesn’t help, the number of mid shooters which followed in Halo’s wake, or are reminiscent of halo specifically because of this lack of mechanical complexity, this minimalism, but without understanding what made Halo good, was that they made up for it with a lot more hard work poured into the rest of the game.
I don’t think it would be a major mistake to call halo mid, especially on the average, and especially as the series chugs along, and there’s really just less and less to do in order to make it interesting, both in the story and in the basic design. At the same time, the series does have some pretty high highs, and probably Halo is one of the most interestingly designed first person shooters I’ve seen, because it’s so hard to see the depth at first glance.
samus12345@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
I did, and I stand by it.
Trev625@lemm.ee 8 months ago
I’ve been playing through the Halo series recently as I missed the craze growing up because I had a PlayStation and I’m not really getting it. I’m guessing it’s just something you had to be there for? My first game was Super Mario World on the SNES and I loved COD4 when it dropped but trying to play Halo now is just not doing it for me I guess.
NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 8 months ago
What board did OP post it on
NotMaster@lemmynsfw.com 8 months ago
/totkswitchnopcallowed
Estiar@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
You can’t tell me how to have fun.
morphballganon@lemmy.world 8 months ago
If TotK is mid then what’s a great game in the same genre?
If you say BG3 it will be obvious you didn’t read the italicised part.
RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world 8 months ago
TotK and BotW both share the same problem IMO, though TotK fares far far better. Theyre not Zelda games, they’re open world Ubisoft games with the Zelda name and way less bugs.
Both are locked to a console that can’t even properly run them. Playing on PC with better framerates and weapon durability disabled definitely help them feel more fun, but ultimately they give about as much fun as a game like Far Cry 5 or 6.
Once I completed the main quest I just haven’t ever gone back to them, and I probably never will. But I have replayed through Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time, and Twilight Princess at least 5 times each.
caseyweederman@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
Haha, what.
Zelda 1 was open world.
Breath and Tears are more true to the franchise than any game since, but you’ll not see me tossing any of them into the bin out of some arbitrary genre loyalty.MacNCheezus@lemmy.today 8 months ago
Downvote me if you must but I finished AND enjoyed both Far Cry 5 and 6.
fsxylo@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Pretty much any open world game, including Ubisoft ones.
In botw I realized once I disabled weapon durability that there is very little reason to explore the world once I got a decent weapon; that part of the game is contrived exclusively to justify weapon durability. So the open world sucks.
Then the “dungeons”, the core and lifeblood of a Zelda game, are just one puzzle room that that takes 10 minutes. So it’s a bad Zelda game.
And I know it’s subjective but I just found the game boring. There was nothing interesting, or novel about it other than the glider, which other games have copies since then, so it’s no longer unique. Compared to other open world games it was extremely bare bones. Even open world games before it had more stuff to do, and certainly more engaging combat.
It felt like a tech demo more than a game, and it’s only impressive in the condescending way a console game can be called impressive. “Oh you made this game to work on a potato battery? Wow! Good for you!”
On top of that, I never appreciated Nintendo’s business model of forcing me to buy a $300 console on top of $60 just to play the Mario, or the Zelda.
MY_ANUS_IS_BLEEDING@lemm.ee 8 months ago
What was even original about the glider? Gliding / parachuting mechanics have been around forever. Just Cause had them ages ago. Even Spyro games in the 90’s had them.
SacralPlexus@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I’m so glad to have read your criticism as it summed up how I felt about BotW. For context I am NOT a huge Zelda nerd but I played Twilight Princess back in the day and loved it. BotW got such press and rave reviews everywhere I turned that I finally pulled the trigger and bought a Switch just to play it. I played a few hours and was like… I can’t do this it is so boring.
Prunebutt@slrpnk.net 8 months ago
Pretty much any open world game, including Ubisoft ones.
Sorry, you can’t really gompare a game like Zelda to spreadsheets with todo-items.
The exploration mechanics alone were masterfully done in a way that only Nintendo had both the budget and the courage to experiment with.
Most other open worlds just shit all these icons with busywork on your map, while Botw actually fostered exploration and curiosity.
Miaou@jlai.lu 8 months ago
But weapons are a reward for exploring, because exploration is the game.
BedbugCutlefish@lemmy.world 8 months ago
What, the open world genre? Maybe Elden Ring, but tbh ot would have been better had it not been open world.
I just don’t really get BotW and TotK, and fwiw, I am that, ‘played emulated with settings pumped for free’ person. They both just seem so repetitive, worth like, 5 hours of fun.
towerful@programming.dev 8 months ago
Huh, lots of opinions on BOTW and “if I disable a mechanic on PC, the game is not fun”.
I’ve enjoyed both botw and totk, but not to completion.I do feel like they are both tech demo iterations.
Botw introducing actual physics and creativity as puzzle solving possibilities. Totk introducing “everything is physics” and relying on creativity for puzzle solving.
Botw story was mid. Totk story was better.
Botw dungeons were terrible. Totk dungeons were better, and some had a bit more girth/depth to them.I feel like now that they’ve cracked the “everything is physics”, and iterated dungeon designs… The next one will hopefully feel a lot more Zelda.
At least, I hope so.But, same genre…
What do you class totks genre as?fsxylo@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
“if I disable a mechanic on PC, the game is not fun”
To be clear, disabling weapon durability made the game more fun.
The mechanic itself was ass. I wouldn’t have played further without disabling it.
bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
I haven’t played TOTK, but I tried BOTW and the entire time I was playing it I wished I was playing Just Cause.
Zehzin@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Speaking of sequels that are good on they’re own right but are disappointing because of what they could have been: Just Cause 3 and 4
kender242@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Tunic?
Taleya@aussie.zone 8 months ago
Eh, it is mid and i say this as a fan. Zeltik was bang on with his ‘disappointing masterpiece’ . None of the obsessive replayability of BOTW
exocrinous@startrek.website 8 months ago
If TotK is mid then what’s a great game in the same genre?
Breath of the Wild
rickyrigatoni@lemm.ee 8 months ago
The main difference is Switch owners have never played a real game, only nintenshit.
EnderMB@lemmy.world 8 months ago
What’s a real game?
I own a PS5 and a Switch, and I’d say my Switch gets the most use because of the sheer amount of great indie titles available. The new Sony and Microsoft systems still don’t have truly killer games, and they’re in the second half of their lifespan…
rickyrigatoni@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Bad Rats
someguywithacomputer@lemmynsfw.com 8 months ago
But muh cutesy graphics, surely that is more important than gameplay and not getting ripped off.
Prunebutt@slrpnk.net 8 months ago
Lol, imagine thinking that Mario games don’t have awesome gameplay.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Nintendo games are fantastic, and I say this as a primarily PC player. My main issues are:
- BotW is mediocre, and I’ve heard TotK is more of the same
- games are expensive
- graphics kinda suck
But gameplay is always great, I’ve never been truly disappointed with a 1st party title.
hal_5700X@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
PCMR is an thing for a reason.
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 8 months ago
I played it on a PC and I love it. There’s a shitton of detail and interaction. If TOTK is mid, what’s truly a masterpiece? 🤨
Psythik@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Majora’s Mask
rab@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
That’s the only Zelda game I can’t get to click for me, I first played it at release and I’m still trying to like it lol
The time limit thing just isn’t fun for me
imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Link’s Awakening
Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
Everything to do with the story is excellent, but the gameplay is frankly lacking imo.
tfw_no_toiletpaper@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Yeah it was very fun, I just missed the shader setup I had on the Wii u emulator for botw. And also, since I already knew the world it didn’t feel as “fresh” explorations wise except underground and the sky island. But other than that, good 7/10, would recommend others but not replay.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
I really like A Link to the Past.
That said, I haven’t played TotK, but I felt BotW was pretty mediocre so I didn’t bother with the sequel.
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 8 months ago
That’s a fair assessment. I also found BOTW pretty sub-par. But TOTK makes BOTW look like an alpha build of a tech demo. It’s the game I expected BOTW to be. I only put like 20 hours into BOTW before I just went and defeated ganon to finish the game; I am still playing TOTK and I got it a week or so after launch.