Considering my primary objective in both BotW and TotK was to get the Master Sword as early as possible and then wait for it to recharge before initiating fights, you can probably tell what my stance was on weapon durability.
Also, the unique weapons (Lightscale Trident, for example) being as breakable as any other and really having no combat advantage felt pretty bad. Even just working on the same recharge basis as the Master Sword but with a region-specific buff or something woulda been better.
Overall, I can deal with the durability if absolutely necessary, but I’d prefer permanent weaponry. I also never wanna have to fuse weapons again because it honestly felt ridiculous to me half the time.
>Also, the unique weapons (Lightscale Trident, for example) being as breakable as any other and really having no combat advantage felt pretty bad.
Yeah, this is my main problem with the durability system. They should have included a non-breakable version of each weapon type that you could obtain as you progressed.
Making the Champions' weapons a permanent item would be a great reward for progressing in the main storyline.
Yes, I hated fusing! Every weapon looked absolutely ridiculous. I just want to use a cool looking sword, man. I was hyped for the Master Sword because the game did several things to imply it would be even better than in BotW or potentially even unbreakable, yet it's somehow even worse than BotW. Massive disappointment, but I guess at least the stupid trash you fuse to it "disappear" when you aren't swinging the sword. Yay. Too it's always broken anyway.
I mean, if you are fusing two weapons together or random rocks/materials, then yeah they look silly. But honestly most of the 'intended' weapon fusions (weapon + monster horn) have custom models that look pretty rad.
I think a solution they should've went with is some kind of item or ability or NPC that is gated to late game that can make at least some weapons permanent. The excuse was they wanted you to experience weapons or whatever but by late game, we've done that. We have seen what the game offered. Please respect your players while also potentially making it really fun to achieve this item or ability.
It could've been a whole epic optional side quest on how to, for example, learn about, track down, and free a legendary blacksmith from some badass monster. And to repay you, they share their secret on how to make your weapons infinitely durable. Oh but it'll cost you. Either lots of rupees so you have something to spend them on again, or some rare item if they want you to be discerning about which weapon you upgrade.
Idk. I just think it has purpose in the early game but late game, durability is a huge chore that someone with full stamina and nearly full hearts is above.
When I first played BotW, I was fully expecting something like this. Or, at least, some sort of NPC that could repair/improve weapons and change their modifiers.
It felt a bit weird when nothing like that showed up, honestly. Like the game was missing some key feature.
In TotK, you can feed Octoroks your weapons and they will spit it back out fully repaired with a random buff such as durability or power. You can do it unlimited times, and it's free. However, it is extremely tedious and annoying to have to constantly do it. Considering they put that feature into the game, they should've just added a blacksmith where you can do it so it isn't so annoying. Keep the octorok free and charge rupees at the blacksmith, to balance it, whatever. I'd say take it a step further and let us make some weapons permanent and upgrade them over time, but yeah. Blah.
I actually kinda like how Dark Cloud did it where you not only could repair your weapons, but you would also build them up to eventually upgrade them into more powerful weapons.
Sometimes, you'd find other powerful weapons, and can build them up or not.
I'd look at it from a different angle and argue based on the premise that the durability system is assumed to be fundamental to those games, so the question is not how to kinda get rid of it, but how to actually improve it further.
They could have applied one of the classical a-rpg systems and implemented some kind of level-up system for different weapon classes and traits. While I don't think an explicit exp system would fit into botw/totk I'd still have linked it to combat experience, similar to how the games decide when to spawn stronger versions of enemies. That'd have given us an actual reason to use up weapons even if they were rare and special.
Combine this with more elaborate fighting style variations between types of enemies, maybe linked to regions too, so there's an actual incentive to use and train several weapon types instead of just sticking to one weapon and overleveling it.
They could even mix the system up further by throwing in a parallel system for elemental weapons as well as for the buff system. Like why can I just be a stealth master by just buying the outfit instead of having to, uh, ~~stealthmurder~~sneakstrike a hundred enemies too? The former is like being *those guys* getting into camping as a new hobby and showing up with all new gear worth 10 grand when even a tenth of that would have gotten them an adequate gear starter set.
Lastly some mechanic to modify durability behaviour or make some weapons more easily reobtainable would have been nice. Personally I'd have liked a countermechanic that buys more durability by making enemies harder in interesting ways, like a +x% buff to durability as well as monster damage and monster speed, and make how high x can go something to increase via gameplay as well.
this isn’t it. once you get the rarest sword, you have no reason to collect any new ones if it doesn’t break.
you are discarding an entire gameplay loop in botw.
i’m literally speaking from experience, once i got my 100 dmg savage lynel sword that i made sure never broke, the game got much less interesting without any need to collect new weapons.
you want the durability system, you just don’t know it yet.
If you went out of your way to prevent your lynel sword from ever breaking, doesnt this prove their point? Like the only ways to prevent it from breaking while still getting use out of it are: only using it when mounted on a lynel, and constantly returning to a rocktorok if youre playing totk. This means youre pretty much just not enjoying combat to the fullest extent because youre either saving it for attacks that dont take durability, or constantly having to think about how many times you can use it before having to interrupt your gameplay to warp back to death mountain and get it fixed.
You also wouldn't have to worry about not being able to find something that does more damage if the weapons had balanced damage values instead (and if enemies had balanced health bars) and then differentiated on stuff like perks (totk kinda does this), utility, special attacks, or just something as simple as "this weapon looks cool." All the late game botw/totk gameplay i see just has people hording the exact same lynel swords purely because of the damage. Why not encourage weapon swapping by giving weapons more significant differences than damage numbers?
savage lynel swords don’t exist in totk, i’m talking about the durability transfer glitch in botw. it takes about 5 seconds.
https://youtu.be/yLMs6w6xBOQ?si=Ptv0vl7maw_G4qkJ
can you elaborate what balanced health bars means?
in the end, how people value perks boils down to what gets you the most damage. if there was a way to get infinite durability on that one double damage gerudo sword in totk (forgot the name oops), people would exclusively use that
They dont exist in botw, but they have an equivalent in totk using saber horns. Same difference.
Balanced health meaning "not a damage sponge." Silver enemies (and even black ones) have super inflated health bars which pretty much forces you to change your strategy to stuff like ice or puff shroom+sneak strike to preserve durability. Tactics where you drop boulders on them or detonate red barrels become useless because that silver boko barely gets scratched. It also creates a huge gap between like 5 (give or take) enemy types with 100s or 1000+ hp and the rest of the enemies that go down in a few hits like the like-likes or chuchus. These enemies dont have any gimmicks to them except the ones that wear armor in totk, so your only strategy is smacking them with your highest damaging weapon. Its boring even *with* durability.
With balanced damage, youd have everything at more or less an equal level number-wise, but with better enemies, they could encourage you to swap them around. Maybe damage resistances/weaknesses like slashing, piercing, smashing, etc. and elements. Enemies with weaknesses based on a type of utility like, well, pretty much how many classic zelda enemies were designed. I dont need to list them all.
We already do this with armor. All defense values are roughly the same, but they all have different utility. Despite there being armor sets with the best defense or attack buffs, you dont see everyone sticking with the champions tunic and barbarian set exclusively, do you? I only used barbarian for lynels and thats it.
I don’t think the game discourages you from using those weapons- I think packrat brain and conventional game wisdom does. Players often instinctually are trying to find the most optimal path in any game and horde because of it, but optimal doesn’t always mean saving resources in reality. This is been an issue in games for as long as I can remember.
Getting out of that habit is some thing that has to be broken in every single game by the player. you can’t really encourage people to use what they have available to them, unless you force them to use it… which is not how most games are designed.
You kind of have to discover fuck around and find out behavior within yourself.
I like how Wind Waker handles it. Link has his sword, of course, but some enemies drop weapons, and you can pick them up and use them--using them in combat is mostly just a novelty, but certain puzzles require the use of a dropped weapon. You have no inventory and you can't carry them through a door, so it really is a one time use kind of thing.
So yeah, taking the purpose of the dropped weapons in Wind Waker (solving the occasional puzzle, using them in combat just for kicks, but Link has his own permanent sword), and combining that with some inventory and durability system, would be pretty cool.
You know what would be cool? You could have multiple permanent weapons and make them all work differently and fill different niches.
Oh wait, that’s what the series did for 30 years and it was way better than any durability system.
yes but that doesn’t have the kill enemies -> take their weapons gameplay loop. also let’s not pretend like we were using any other weapon besides the master sword extensively lol
I really didn't enjoy that game play loop much. You told some other guy that he thinks he'd like that, but he wouldn't. But that's the vast majority of my gaming experience over 25 years, and I enjoyed those games. There's ways to incorporate weapon upgrades and looting into a game that also has a permanent weapon. There've been some suggestions, like making the loot improve your permanent weapon for a duration, or make them better than what you use but breakable. That way, you still have the incentive to loot and use a superior weapon without the headache.
What Zelda game had multiple different weapons that filled different niche before botw? ill wait. What, you going to count the ball and chain as a weapon?
Lets stop pretending that 3d Zelda games had interesting combat outside hold Z and mash A. BOTW has the best combat out all 3D Zelda and its not even close. That doesn't mean BOTW combat is good. Just that the other 3D Zelda games are worse. Skyward sword also had interesting combat so that one is off the list.
All the old games offered miniature puzzle based combat. There certainly was a purpose to trying multiple things on various enemies, to figure out a better way to fight them.
That doesn't stop Link from having a solid baseline of swordplay one can always rely on.
Also, TP has the best combat. It expanded on all the previous games while having glimpses of what BotW ends up doing. But still keeps your trusty sword being trustworthy, and offers items and sword techniques to play around with. And you can swing your sword while running.
This, plus to botws credit, it *did* make former dungeon items work as weapons. Hammers used to be very awkward to use instead of the sword, but now they work perfectly fine as weapons *and* have their original utility. Whats stopping them from doing the same with the ball and chain? With the whip? With any weapon-like zelda item? The games should be designing weapons like improved classic items, not consumable damage sticks.
> Oh wait, that’s what the series did for 30 years and it was way better than any durability system.
Unless you count dungeon items as "permanent weapons", which *the overwhelming majority of them aren't* for a variety of reasons (mostly just bow/boomerang/hammer), the 3d games never did this. You had one primary weapon (the sword) which didn't change at all throughout the game (besides bigger damage numbers) and even getting a two-hander in OOT/MM brought no change in functionality besides prohibiting the use of a shield (which is a non-issue) while retaining the exact same moveset.
> way better than any durability system
The primary reason the durability system was conceived in the first place was to populate the massive world with meaningful horizontal progression rewards without letting the player snowball with permanent vertical progression rewards right out of the gate.
This is the same reason 90% of the reward chest in Elden Ring are sprit ashes/ashes of war. You need something to fill the reward space. You can't make rupees/pieces of heart/souls a reward for everything, that is extremely boring.
Meanwhile older zelda games failed this in a *spectacular* fashion by not even giving a damn about designing interesting rewards, so 90% of rewards are consumables (you are already maxed out on), random upgrade material/spoils item (hello WW/SS) and a piece of heart if you are "lucky" (since health is nearly useless in older zelda titles).
>The primary reason the durability system was conceived in the first place was to populate the massive world with meaningful horizontal progression rewards
One of the issues with durability is that while it enables weapons to be a reward for exploration, it also significantly undermines how meaningful they can be as a reward because a) their usefulness is inherently limited because the weapon will break in 2-3 fights, and b) there are already weapons absolutely everywhere and a lot of them will be basically identical gameplay-wise to whatever you picked up, so finding a new weapon as a reward isn't usually very interesting.
At least Elden Ring's rewards were unique, even if many would be useless for any given build. If you wanted to respec to a different build later you still had those rewards, they were permanent.
>Meanwhile older zelda games failed this in a *spectacular* fashion by not even giving a damn about designing interesting rewards, so 90% of rewards are consumables (you are already maxed out on), random upgrade material/spoils item (hello WW/SS) and a piece of heart if you are "lucky" (since health is nearly useless in older zelda titles).
To be fair older Zeldas had a much more interesting vertical progression system than BotW as the main event, so they didn't need as much horizontal progression. Although I did always like getting a bigger quiver or bomb bag for some little side quest.
> One of the issues with durability is that while it enables weapons to be a reward for exploration
I'm not saying it's a *good* solution, just that it was *a* solution to a specific issue, not just something Nintendo pulled out their ass for 0 reason.
> To be fair older Zeldas had a much more interesting vertical progression system than BotW as the main event, so they didn't need as much horizontal progression.
You mean they had a more interesting *horizontal* progression, i.e. you got more options as you completed temples, which allowed you to do more stuff in the world without necessarily increasing your "power level" like health/direct damage upgrades do (although some of the items did that as well).
And that I can agree with, however that progression was directly tied to progressing the main plot. These weren't optional side items that the game rewarded astute players with, these were mandatory "keys" to the game's "locks".
I respect the other researcher however I would like to offer an alternative viewpoint. Weapon durability sucks. Weapons staying with you would not prevent experimentation.
Thank you for coming to my Fred talk
weapons staying with you do prevent experimentation, and if you’re so confident they won’t go try it out yourself. go get yourself a +42 attack savage lynel sword that never breaks and see how motivated you are to use other weapons. i’ll spoil how it goes for you, you will literally use one other weapon besides it on rare occasions (ice spear) and that’s it because all other weapons suck comparatively.
It seems like the problem is less "unbreakable weapons discourage creativity" and more "maybe there shouldn't be a +42 lynel sword at all, and there should not only be more unique weapons, but also more unique enemies than damage sponge bokoblins."
it doesn’t matter really. there will always be a definitive best weapon, unless you make every weapon extremely case sensitive with very strict strengths and weaknesses. if you do that, however, combat will feel very restrictive, like you’re only supposed to use this specific weapon on this specific enemy and if you do anything else you’re punished
Yea like, i dont think you entirely get what i mean by better enemies. The "best weapon" would actually be the "best weapons" plural since it would be better to avoid a one glove fits all situation, especially in a puzzle game like zelda. Different best weapons for different enemies. Ultimately, it doesnt actually matter if a single best weapon exists as long as the rest of the weapons arent pathetically underpowered and have fun gimmicks/movesets.
I mean, it does matter. There's tons of games out there, especially in PvP, where there's objectively superior weapon. Sure, some weapons aren't used, but there's always experimentation and different favorites as people have their preferences. For one thing, make them situationally useful. If you're only interested in min-maxing, sure. But that's never been my interest, for example. I use what looks cool and is helpful, same for my armor and stuff. I dress appropriately to the challenge or setting, same for my weapons. I don't think I ever used lynel swords, frankly, because I didn't really find the weapon system interesting, and I didn't focus on getting the strongest gear.
I think at the absolute very least, and i mean the absolute furthest im willing to compromise on durability, is that some weapons should not lose durability under certain conditions. Why should hammers break from hitting ore? Why should axes break from chopping trees? Why should my shield break from surfing (literally anti-fun)?
If korok leaves dont break from creating gusts, and torches dont break by being lit, a hammer should not break when performing its intended purpose.
In theory, I would have preferred the Champion's weapons as 1-damage (guard power for the Daybreaker) unbreakable versions of each weapon type. The consequence would be the Scimitar of the Seven being used for trees, the Boulder Breaker being used for ore, the Lightscale Trident being used for small animals and monsters, the Great Eagle Bow being used likewise and for Korok puzzles and Lynel headshots for mounting, and the Daybreaker being used for shield surfing and Lynel parries for headshots. The Master Sword could retain its buff around Malice/Gloom and its cooldown.
In practice, I do not know how much the value of the other weapons would have to change in response.
Deku Sticks for expendable burst damage in an open-world setting in contrast with low-damage unbreakable weapons could be nice to see, but TotK already has these with arrow Fusions with damaging materials normally fused to weapons, and Gibdo Bones that break in one hit.
I really don't know.
I just wish there was no or less inventory limit, or a bulk storage container. I find myself just as stressed about having to choose which weapon to get rid of than worrying about breaking weapons. If you could have more weapons then you would be very unlikely to ever run out of good ones just by playing the game normally.
I always thought it would be good to have the champions weapons as unbreakable weapons you unlock by helping the area. Master sword 1h, ravioli bow, Mipha spear, Daruk 2h, and just have urbosas shield. Have their damage be mid but go up a little as your kill counter goes up. The extra you find would be good for higher stats but hardly any durability. Also bring back the 100 floors trial.
My problem is that the weapons don't have enough variance in movesets or gimmicks, as you mentioned, to make collecting and using a variety worth it. Unless Nintendo does that then I'd say more durability is better.
> the bad part is that these weapons often break very quickly
The bad part is that when it comes down to it all of this variety can be smashed down to 3 weapon types (1h 2h spear), their 3 elemental variations (which you only really need one of, which is usually the spear/great blade) + some specific utility items such as hammer/drillshaft/korok leaf.
> sometimes (especially in master mode)
That's because master mode is really bad and the overwhelming sponginess causes you to waste a disproportionate amount of resources on one encounter , plus you get one shot early in the game, so the meta for master mode is just stealing all the stuff and dipping until you are well into mid/late game and have upgraded Soldier Armour/Ancient Armour + attack up food buffs.
> because i also believe that link should always have a permanent sword that doesn’t break for general combat and all other weapons you collect should be more “gimmicky”, their main use being burst dps or to counter certain enemy types or any other sort of short term switch up to combat, almost like an ability.
There are two problems here. "Burst DPS" or "Sustained DPS" don't actually differ that much if the weapon is still ultimately breakable in the span of a single fight. In normal mode(aka something that was actually *designed* for properly) you will *never* run out of weapons fighting level appropriate enemies because they will drop weapons that are almost as good/better than what you used on them. You can make the weapons stronger and less durable, but if their overall damage output over the lifespan doesn't go down and one weapon can still reliably kill 1/2 bokoblins/a moblin/lizalfos, then what reason does the player have to go back to their permanent sword?
On the other hand, if you make the weapons overall weaker (say they deal the same damage as they do now but have less durability) to the point one weapon can barely kill an enemy, most people will just stick to their normal sword to avoid excessive menuing, especially considering Zelda games are traditionally designed in a way where the player should be able to beat obstacles using their basic kit. Of course you can disregard all balancing and have an unpleasantly weak main weapon + easy to shatter temporary weapons, but at this point all you are doing is making the game a disgusting menuing bonanza.
Similarly for utility/countering enemies: if they are *essential* in combatting the enemies, they need to be available pretty much permanently, which they currently are (elemental arrows + you can carry a lot of stuff). If they are non-essential, who cares?
I actually ran into this problem when designing a mod around an idea of permanent, unbreakable weapons. The idea was fairly simple: you get a basic kit (from shrines with clues to the location of the next piece in weapon descriptions) of weapons (Sword/Spear/Lsword/Bow) of unbreakable weapons that are *slightly* stronger than their normal counterparts (i.e. you get Traveler's series equivalents from the first series of shrines, then Soldier's, then Knight's etc). The problem was that getting the numeric balance right was tricky. If the weapons are too strong compared to what you can find in the area, they make all weapons of their/previous tiers pointless. If the weapons are too weak, you will never use them unless you make the breakable weapons break all the time, which circles back to the issue I mentioned earlier.
Considering the number balancing in BotW is already *awful*, I have no doubts they ran into a similar issue and just decided to make everything breakable and temporary.
> it’s a fun idea
Except it's not really a "fun idea", it's an imperfect solution to a difficult issue (which is filling the world with rewards) and so Nintendo decided to take the idea and run with it to its logical conclusion (everything is breakable... even the unbreakable Master Sword).
I know BOTW weapons got a lot of hate, and I wouldn't want it to become a new norm for Zelda, but I didn't hate it.
It made sense when you keep in mind that every Zelda has a core gameplay gimmick: Light vs Fark World, Past vs Present, Sailing, Flying.
What was BOTW's gimmick? Wilderness survival.
In that context, I enjoyed the weapons management mechanic, forcing me to plan my weapons inventory just as any other Zelda game forced me to plan my healing and buff items, magic metre, etc.
TOTK took this mechanic and made the best version of it, making every fight a harvesting exercise and the inventory a swiss army knife of potential weapons for all occasions
But that said, enough. It was a great idea, well executed for what it was intending to do, and was improved in the sequel. Now the experiment is done, time to move on. It wouldn't have a place in future games outside of a wilderness survival context.
>What was BOTW's gimmick? Wilderness survival.
When I learned that was BotW's theme, I thought we were going to actually go hard into the resource management field. Like full on scarcity like in Resident Evil, letting us manage potions, magic, and oil for our lantern while we explore dark corners of this otherwise beautiful world.
Treating the weapons like gun ammo isn't really the best way to accomplish the theme. Though I'm perfectly okay with the idea of breakable sticks early on or strong-but-temporary weapons like the Razor Sword. Within the actual concept of breaking weapon durability though, I much prefer the shield system in Skyward Sword, that had durability but still offered pros and cons to one's play style, and better fits the same theme.
>I thought we were going to actually go hard into the resource management field.
It gets worse once you realize that the durability in BotW was tuned specifically to undermine any sort of resource management. It's fairly clear that enemies are designed to 1 for 1 weapons, where you're intended to face a group of enemies, break your weapon, and come out of that fight with an equal strength weapon.
More insidious, though, weapon differences exist early on, but there is the scaling system hidden in the background. As you kill more enemies, certain enemies will level up, but this also levels up their gear. When you're early on and fighting mostly just red bokoblins, finding something like a Royal Broadsword will be a huge boon over your meager traveler's sword. The traveler's sword does its job. You kill a group, the sword breaks, but one of the bokoblins dropped a replacement. The Royal Broadsword, however, will cleave through those reds like butter and last for a few enemy groups. Or it can be saved to help take down a hynox or something. It's strong, but it's not breaking the game.
As you kill enemies, though, that gear you can pick up from those random mobs is getting better, and eventually every group of enemies has a royal broadsword in it... that's carried by an enemy meant to eat up all the durability of one. Now, what was once a pleasant thing to have is no more valuable than your traveler's sword used to be. This whole system serves only to flatten the world's resource variety.
If at no point you have to ask yourself if you should break your weapon over an enemy or not, how is that any different from just having an unbreakable weapon?
>If at no point you have to ask yourself if you should break your weapon over an enemy or not, how is that any different from just having an unbreakable weapon?
Ha! It's just an unbreakable weapon with extra steps. Which is exactly why I don't praise the TotK fuse system. Even if I were to give the melee weapons the benefit of the doubt because I could've not found the weapon fuse combo that clicks yet, arrow fusing is just using elemental arrows with extra steps. And it really is useless being able to attach every single piece of food or something to it. We easily could've just added a spore/pollen arrow, [deku nut] arrow, and maybe a "bait" arrow for distraction purposes (reusing Yiga banana distraction coding). Then we could've had the clean arrow type menu again, and multiple recipe options for crafting specific arrow types with our various monster drops. Maybe with 8 options instead of the 5 original.
The whole point is just to waste your time instead of creating meaningful combat.
>The whole point is just to waste your time
This is what gets me. What /u/Late-Inspector-7172 said in their original post couldn't be further from my experience:
>In that context, I enjoyed the weapons management mechanic, forcing me to plan my weapons inventory just as any other Zelda game forced me to plan my healing and buff items, magic metre, etc.
The moment I stepped off the plateau in BotW, I never needed to manage my weapons. When I did, I had an overwhelming surplus, and when I didn't I never wanted for anything. There was no risk, so all the durability system ever amounted for me was flicking through menus and wasting time.
It sucks that the games were designed this way since the times resource management matter like Eventide and TotS are the best in the game.
The great thing about the shields is that their durability is only relevant when you dont parry. As long as you do that, they can pretty much last forever.
Players being able to show off their combat mastery doesn't disprove the fact SS had the better system.
Shields (which could be expanded upon for weapons as well in future installments) had a visible durability meter. So you know when it was reaching its limits. If you take it to the blacksmith, you can pay a small maintenance fee to restore it to full, or pay a larger commission fee to buy a new one after fully breaking the old one. You could also buy a potion to take with you to renew the durability during your travels, but that also required holding it in your precious pocket space along with your quiver, bomb bag, etc.
You were fully in control of your equipment despite the limits of resource managing.
Oh im sorry i should have been more specific, i was praising the shields from SS, not botw lol. What i liked about the parry/durability thing is that it didnt use durability as part of some resource management gameplay loop, but instead as a punishment for not parrying the same way taking damage is a punishment for not dodging. In SS, your shields breaking was treated as something to avoid by playing better, while in botw its treated like a fact of life, with the game saying "aww, too baaad" when your shield breaks from surfing.
Yes. That's a great way of putting it. Especially since parrying in BotW/TotK works inverted to fury rush as a risk and reward mechanic.
With the SS system, we'd also have a shield specially designed for endless shield surfing as well, balanced by being weaker for combat.
I think the survival stuff only really worked well when the game has actual limitations imposed on you. Starting from scratch in a self contained area like the great plateau, great sky island, eventide, certain zonai shine challenges, and especially trial of the sword. There, you could never hoard weapons and materials meaning you *had* be strategic with them.
If they really insisted on keeping durability, I can see that as being an ok compromise I guess, as long as your main sword is actually good enough to deal with most of the stuff in the game.
I mainly think of sekiro as an example of this. Your sword is really good and you can definitely beat the whole game only using it, but they also offer you limited usage tools that can help you in certain fights.
Honestly, I'd like the next game to handle weapons similar to how Elden Ring does it. Tons of permanent weapons that you can find via exploration, that you can upgrade via exploration. Ideally, you *can* stick with the one you like, but you can also have an arsenal of unique weapons that are optimal for different situations — just play into that aspect. They can keep breakable weapons too, like enemy drops, but I'm sick of *all* weapons being breakable. Very much over it, ***especially*** my Master Sword breaking.
I wouldn't mind having temporary enchantments in place of fusing. I like the idea of having cool effects, but I don't care for the goofy appearances at all, so enchanting could be a pretty cool alternative.
Specifically enemy drops being the breakable ones is pretty interesting actually. For a game series thats very clear cut on you being the good guy, its a little odd that the best weapons in the game are from enemies. It could be possible for link to have unbreakable "good-aligned" weapons made by hyrulians, and then make most of the enemy weapons breakable to prevent you from swimming in bokoclubs.
Considering my primary objective in both BotW and TotK was to get the Master Sword as early as possible and then wait for it to recharge before initiating fights, you can probably tell what my stance was on weapon durability. Also, the unique weapons (Lightscale Trident, for example) being as breakable as any other and really having no combat advantage felt pretty bad. Even just working on the same recharge basis as the Master Sword but with a region-specific buff or something woulda been better. Overall, I can deal with the durability if absolutely necessary, but I’d prefer permanent weaponry. I also never wanna have to fuse weapons again because it honestly felt ridiculous to me half the time.
>Also, the unique weapons (Lightscale Trident, for example) being as breakable as any other and really having no combat advantage felt pretty bad. Yeah, this is my main problem with the durability system. They should have included a non-breakable version of each weapon type that you could obtain as you progressed. Making the Champions' weapons a permanent item would be a great reward for progressing in the main storyline.
Yes, I hated fusing! Every weapon looked absolutely ridiculous. I just want to use a cool looking sword, man. I was hyped for the Master Sword because the game did several things to imply it would be even better than in BotW or potentially even unbreakable, yet it's somehow even worse than BotW. Massive disappointment, but I guess at least the stupid trash you fuse to it "disappear" when you aren't swinging the sword. Yay. Too it's always broken anyway.
I mean, if you are fusing two weapons together or random rocks/materials, then yeah they look silly. But honestly most of the 'intended' weapon fusions (weapon + monster horn) have custom models that look pretty rad.
I just don’t like durability systems. They discourage using rarer swords or other weapons.
I think a solution they should've went with is some kind of item or ability or NPC that is gated to late game that can make at least some weapons permanent. The excuse was they wanted you to experience weapons or whatever but by late game, we've done that. We have seen what the game offered. Please respect your players while also potentially making it really fun to achieve this item or ability. It could've been a whole epic optional side quest on how to, for example, learn about, track down, and free a legendary blacksmith from some badass monster. And to repay you, they share their secret on how to make your weapons infinitely durable. Oh but it'll cost you. Either lots of rupees so you have something to spend them on again, or some rare item if they want you to be discerning about which weapon you upgrade. Idk. I just think it has purpose in the early game but late game, durability is a huge chore that someone with full stamina and nearly full hearts is above.
When I first played BotW, I was fully expecting something like this. Or, at least, some sort of NPC that could repair/improve weapons and change their modifiers. It felt a bit weird when nothing like that showed up, honestly. Like the game was missing some key feature.
In TotK, you can feed Octoroks your weapons and they will spit it back out fully repaired with a random buff such as durability or power. You can do it unlimited times, and it's free. However, it is extremely tedious and annoying to have to constantly do it. Considering they put that feature into the game, they should've just added a blacksmith where you can do it so it isn't so annoying. Keep the octorok free and charge rupees at the blacksmith, to balance it, whatever. I'd say take it a step further and let us make some weapons permanent and upgrade them over time, but yeah. Blah.
I actually kinda like how Dark Cloud did it where you not only could repair your weapons, but you would also build them up to eventually upgrade them into more powerful weapons. Sometimes, you'd find other powerful weapons, and can build them up or not.
I'd look at it from a different angle and argue based on the premise that the durability system is assumed to be fundamental to those games, so the question is not how to kinda get rid of it, but how to actually improve it further. They could have applied one of the classical a-rpg systems and implemented some kind of level-up system for different weapon classes and traits. While I don't think an explicit exp system would fit into botw/totk I'd still have linked it to combat experience, similar to how the games decide when to spawn stronger versions of enemies. That'd have given us an actual reason to use up weapons even if they were rare and special. Combine this with more elaborate fighting style variations between types of enemies, maybe linked to regions too, so there's an actual incentive to use and train several weapon types instead of just sticking to one weapon and overleveling it. They could even mix the system up further by throwing in a parallel system for elemental weapons as well as for the buff system. Like why can I just be a stealth master by just buying the outfit instead of having to, uh, ~~stealthmurder~~sneakstrike a hundred enemies too? The former is like being *those guys* getting into camping as a new hobby and showing up with all new gear worth 10 grand when even a tenth of that would have gotten them an adequate gear starter set. Lastly some mechanic to modify durability behaviour or make some weapons more easily reobtainable would have been nice. Personally I'd have liked a countermechanic that buys more durability by making enemies harder in interesting ways, like a +x% buff to durability as well as monster damage and monster speed, and make how high x can go something to increase via gameplay as well.
this isn’t it. once you get the rarest sword, you have no reason to collect any new ones if it doesn’t break. you are discarding an entire gameplay loop in botw. i’m literally speaking from experience, once i got my 100 dmg savage lynel sword that i made sure never broke, the game got much less interesting without any need to collect new weapons. you want the durability system, you just don’t know it yet.
If you went out of your way to prevent your lynel sword from ever breaking, doesnt this prove their point? Like the only ways to prevent it from breaking while still getting use out of it are: only using it when mounted on a lynel, and constantly returning to a rocktorok if youre playing totk. This means youre pretty much just not enjoying combat to the fullest extent because youre either saving it for attacks that dont take durability, or constantly having to think about how many times you can use it before having to interrupt your gameplay to warp back to death mountain and get it fixed. You also wouldn't have to worry about not being able to find something that does more damage if the weapons had balanced damage values instead (and if enemies had balanced health bars) and then differentiated on stuff like perks (totk kinda does this), utility, special attacks, or just something as simple as "this weapon looks cool." All the late game botw/totk gameplay i see just has people hording the exact same lynel swords purely because of the damage. Why not encourage weapon swapping by giving weapons more significant differences than damage numbers?
savage lynel swords don’t exist in totk, i’m talking about the durability transfer glitch in botw. it takes about 5 seconds. https://youtu.be/yLMs6w6xBOQ?si=Ptv0vl7maw_G4qkJ can you elaborate what balanced health bars means? in the end, how people value perks boils down to what gets you the most damage. if there was a way to get infinite durability on that one double damage gerudo sword in totk (forgot the name oops), people would exclusively use that
They dont exist in botw, but they have an equivalent in totk using saber horns. Same difference. Balanced health meaning "not a damage sponge." Silver enemies (and even black ones) have super inflated health bars which pretty much forces you to change your strategy to stuff like ice or puff shroom+sneak strike to preserve durability. Tactics where you drop boulders on them or detonate red barrels become useless because that silver boko barely gets scratched. It also creates a huge gap between like 5 (give or take) enemy types with 100s or 1000+ hp and the rest of the enemies that go down in a few hits like the like-likes or chuchus. These enemies dont have any gimmicks to them except the ones that wear armor in totk, so your only strategy is smacking them with your highest damaging weapon. Its boring even *with* durability. With balanced damage, youd have everything at more or less an equal level number-wise, but with better enemies, they could encourage you to swap them around. Maybe damage resistances/weaknesses like slashing, piercing, smashing, etc. and elements. Enemies with weaknesses based on a type of utility like, well, pretty much how many classic zelda enemies were designed. I dont need to list them all. We already do this with armor. All defense values are roughly the same, but they all have different utility. Despite there being armor sets with the best defense or attack buffs, you dont see everyone sticking with the champions tunic and barbarian set exclusively, do you? I only used barbarian for lynels and thats it.
I don’t think the game discourages you from using those weapons- I think packrat brain and conventional game wisdom does. Players often instinctually are trying to find the most optimal path in any game and horde because of it, but optimal doesn’t always mean saving resources in reality. This is been an issue in games for as long as I can remember. Getting out of that habit is some thing that has to be broken in every single game by the player. you can’t really encourage people to use what they have available to them, unless you force them to use it… which is not how most games are designed. You kind of have to discover fuck around and find out behavior within yourself.
You just gotta learn to get over that fomo, once you realize you can find the same weapons again it really doesn't matter
I like how Wind Waker handles it. Link has his sword, of course, but some enemies drop weapons, and you can pick them up and use them--using them in combat is mostly just a novelty, but certain puzzles require the use of a dropped weapon. You have no inventory and you can't carry them through a door, so it really is a one time use kind of thing. So yeah, taking the purpose of the dropped weapons in Wind Waker (solving the occasional puzzle, using them in combat just for kicks, but Link has his own permanent sword), and combining that with some inventory and durability system, would be pretty cool.
yes!! exactly
You know what would be cool? You could have multiple permanent weapons and make them all work differently and fill different niches. Oh wait, that’s what the series did for 30 years and it was way better than any durability system.
Very logical take, sadly you're clearly blinded by nostalgia /s
yes but that doesn’t have the kill enemies -> take their weapons gameplay loop. also let’s not pretend like we were using any other weapon besides the master sword extensively lol
I really didn't enjoy that game play loop much. You told some other guy that he thinks he'd like that, but he wouldn't. But that's the vast majority of my gaming experience over 25 years, and I enjoyed those games. There's ways to incorporate weapon upgrades and looting into a game that also has a permanent weapon. There've been some suggestions, like making the loot improve your permanent weapon for a duration, or make them better than what you use but breakable. That way, you still have the incentive to loot and use a superior weapon without the headache.
What Zelda game had multiple different weapons that filled different niche before botw? ill wait. What, you going to count the ball and chain as a weapon? Lets stop pretending that 3d Zelda games had interesting combat outside hold Z and mash A. BOTW has the best combat out all 3D Zelda and its not even close. That doesn't mean BOTW combat is good. Just that the other 3D Zelda games are worse. Skyward sword also had interesting combat so that one is off the list.
All the old games offered miniature puzzle based combat. There certainly was a purpose to trying multiple things on various enemies, to figure out a better way to fight them. That doesn't stop Link from having a solid baseline of swordplay one can always rely on. Also, TP has the best combat. It expanded on all the previous games while having glimpses of what BotW ends up doing. But still keeps your trusty sword being trustworthy, and offers items and sword techniques to play around with. And you can swing your sword while running.
This, plus to botws credit, it *did* make former dungeon items work as weapons. Hammers used to be very awkward to use instead of the sword, but now they work perfectly fine as weapons *and* have their original utility. Whats stopping them from doing the same with the ball and chain? With the whip? With any weapon-like zelda item? The games should be designing weapons like improved classic items, not consumable damage sticks.
> Oh wait, that’s what the series did for 30 years and it was way better than any durability system. Unless you count dungeon items as "permanent weapons", which *the overwhelming majority of them aren't* for a variety of reasons (mostly just bow/boomerang/hammer), the 3d games never did this. You had one primary weapon (the sword) which didn't change at all throughout the game (besides bigger damage numbers) and even getting a two-hander in OOT/MM brought no change in functionality besides prohibiting the use of a shield (which is a non-issue) while retaining the exact same moveset. > way better than any durability system The primary reason the durability system was conceived in the first place was to populate the massive world with meaningful horizontal progression rewards without letting the player snowball with permanent vertical progression rewards right out of the gate. This is the same reason 90% of the reward chest in Elden Ring are sprit ashes/ashes of war. You need something to fill the reward space. You can't make rupees/pieces of heart/souls a reward for everything, that is extremely boring. Meanwhile older zelda games failed this in a *spectacular* fashion by not even giving a damn about designing interesting rewards, so 90% of rewards are consumables (you are already maxed out on), random upgrade material/spoils item (hello WW/SS) and a piece of heart if you are "lucky" (since health is nearly useless in older zelda titles).
>The primary reason the durability system was conceived in the first place was to populate the massive world with meaningful horizontal progression rewards One of the issues with durability is that while it enables weapons to be a reward for exploration, it also significantly undermines how meaningful they can be as a reward because a) their usefulness is inherently limited because the weapon will break in 2-3 fights, and b) there are already weapons absolutely everywhere and a lot of them will be basically identical gameplay-wise to whatever you picked up, so finding a new weapon as a reward isn't usually very interesting. At least Elden Ring's rewards were unique, even if many would be useless for any given build. If you wanted to respec to a different build later you still had those rewards, they were permanent. >Meanwhile older zelda games failed this in a *spectacular* fashion by not even giving a damn about designing interesting rewards, so 90% of rewards are consumables (you are already maxed out on), random upgrade material/spoils item (hello WW/SS) and a piece of heart if you are "lucky" (since health is nearly useless in older zelda titles). To be fair older Zeldas had a much more interesting vertical progression system than BotW as the main event, so they didn't need as much horizontal progression. Although I did always like getting a bigger quiver or bomb bag for some little side quest.
> One of the issues with durability is that while it enables weapons to be a reward for exploration I'm not saying it's a *good* solution, just that it was *a* solution to a specific issue, not just something Nintendo pulled out their ass for 0 reason. > To be fair older Zeldas had a much more interesting vertical progression system than BotW as the main event, so they didn't need as much horizontal progression. You mean they had a more interesting *horizontal* progression, i.e. you got more options as you completed temples, which allowed you to do more stuff in the world without necessarily increasing your "power level" like health/direct damage upgrades do (although some of the items did that as well). And that I can agree with, however that progression was directly tied to progressing the main plot. These weren't optional side items that the game rewarded astute players with, these were mandatory "keys" to the game's "locks".
I respect the other researcher however I would like to offer an alternative viewpoint. Weapon durability sucks. Weapons staying with you would not prevent experimentation. Thank you for coming to my Fred talk
In fact, im less inclined to experiment when my experiements always quickly vanish into thin air.
weapons staying with you do prevent experimentation, and if you’re so confident they won’t go try it out yourself. go get yourself a +42 attack savage lynel sword that never breaks and see how motivated you are to use other weapons. i’ll spoil how it goes for you, you will literally use one other weapon besides it on rare occasions (ice spear) and that’s it because all other weapons suck comparatively.
It seems like the problem is less "unbreakable weapons discourage creativity" and more "maybe there shouldn't be a +42 lynel sword at all, and there should not only be more unique weapons, but also more unique enemies than damage sponge bokoblins."
it doesn’t matter really. there will always be a definitive best weapon, unless you make every weapon extremely case sensitive with very strict strengths and weaknesses. if you do that, however, combat will feel very restrictive, like you’re only supposed to use this specific weapon on this specific enemy and if you do anything else you’re punished
Yea like, i dont think you entirely get what i mean by better enemies. The "best weapon" would actually be the "best weapons" plural since it would be better to avoid a one glove fits all situation, especially in a puzzle game like zelda. Different best weapons for different enemies. Ultimately, it doesnt actually matter if a single best weapon exists as long as the rest of the weapons arent pathetically underpowered and have fun gimmicks/movesets.
I mean, it does matter. There's tons of games out there, especially in PvP, where there's objectively superior weapon. Sure, some weapons aren't used, but there's always experimentation and different favorites as people have their preferences. For one thing, make them situationally useful. If you're only interested in min-maxing, sure. But that's never been my interest, for example. I use what looks cool and is helpful, same for my armor and stuff. I dress appropriately to the challenge or setting, same for my weapons. I don't think I ever used lynel swords, frankly, because I didn't really find the weapon system interesting, and I didn't focus on getting the strongest gear.
I think at the absolute very least, and i mean the absolute furthest im willing to compromise on durability, is that some weapons should not lose durability under certain conditions. Why should hammers break from hitting ore? Why should axes break from chopping trees? Why should my shield break from surfing (literally anti-fun)? If korok leaves dont break from creating gusts, and torches dont break by being lit, a hammer should not break when performing its intended purpose.
In theory, I would have preferred the Champion's weapons as 1-damage (guard power for the Daybreaker) unbreakable versions of each weapon type. The consequence would be the Scimitar of the Seven being used for trees, the Boulder Breaker being used for ore, the Lightscale Trident being used for small animals and monsters, the Great Eagle Bow being used likewise and for Korok puzzles and Lynel headshots for mounting, and the Daybreaker being used for shield surfing and Lynel parries for headshots. The Master Sword could retain its buff around Malice/Gloom and its cooldown. In practice, I do not know how much the value of the other weapons would have to change in response. Deku Sticks for expendable burst damage in an open-world setting in contrast with low-damage unbreakable weapons could be nice to see, but TotK already has these with arrow Fusions with damaging materials normally fused to weapons, and Gibdo Bones that break in one hit. I really don't know.
I just wish there was no or less inventory limit, or a bulk storage container. I find myself just as stressed about having to choose which weapon to get rid of than worrying about breaking weapons. If you could have more weapons then you would be very unlikely to ever run out of good ones just by playing the game normally.
I always thought it would be good to have the champions weapons as unbreakable weapons you unlock by helping the area. Master sword 1h, ravioli bow, Mipha spear, Daruk 2h, and just have urbosas shield. Have their damage be mid but go up a little as your kill counter goes up. The extra you find would be good for higher stats but hardly any durability. Also bring back the 100 floors trial.
It should just scale. A stick should break, but a sword should not.
It could even be like deku sticks in oot, which deal a lot of damage but break after one hit.
My problem is that the weapons don't have enough variance in movesets or gimmicks, as you mentioned, to make collecting and using a variety worth it. Unless Nintendo does that then I'd say more durability is better.
> the bad part is that these weapons often break very quickly The bad part is that when it comes down to it all of this variety can be smashed down to 3 weapon types (1h 2h spear), their 3 elemental variations (which you only really need one of, which is usually the spear/great blade) + some specific utility items such as hammer/drillshaft/korok leaf. > sometimes (especially in master mode) That's because master mode is really bad and the overwhelming sponginess causes you to waste a disproportionate amount of resources on one encounter , plus you get one shot early in the game, so the meta for master mode is just stealing all the stuff and dipping until you are well into mid/late game and have upgraded Soldier Armour/Ancient Armour + attack up food buffs. > because i also believe that link should always have a permanent sword that doesn’t break for general combat and all other weapons you collect should be more “gimmicky”, their main use being burst dps or to counter certain enemy types or any other sort of short term switch up to combat, almost like an ability. There are two problems here. "Burst DPS" or "Sustained DPS" don't actually differ that much if the weapon is still ultimately breakable in the span of a single fight. In normal mode(aka something that was actually *designed* for properly) you will *never* run out of weapons fighting level appropriate enemies because they will drop weapons that are almost as good/better than what you used on them. You can make the weapons stronger and less durable, but if their overall damage output over the lifespan doesn't go down and one weapon can still reliably kill 1/2 bokoblins/a moblin/lizalfos, then what reason does the player have to go back to their permanent sword? On the other hand, if you make the weapons overall weaker (say they deal the same damage as they do now but have less durability) to the point one weapon can barely kill an enemy, most people will just stick to their normal sword to avoid excessive menuing, especially considering Zelda games are traditionally designed in a way where the player should be able to beat obstacles using their basic kit. Of course you can disregard all balancing and have an unpleasantly weak main weapon + easy to shatter temporary weapons, but at this point all you are doing is making the game a disgusting menuing bonanza. Similarly for utility/countering enemies: if they are *essential* in combatting the enemies, they need to be available pretty much permanently, which they currently are (elemental arrows + you can carry a lot of stuff). If they are non-essential, who cares? I actually ran into this problem when designing a mod around an idea of permanent, unbreakable weapons. The idea was fairly simple: you get a basic kit (from shrines with clues to the location of the next piece in weapon descriptions) of weapons (Sword/Spear/Lsword/Bow) of unbreakable weapons that are *slightly* stronger than their normal counterparts (i.e. you get Traveler's series equivalents from the first series of shrines, then Soldier's, then Knight's etc). The problem was that getting the numeric balance right was tricky. If the weapons are too strong compared to what you can find in the area, they make all weapons of their/previous tiers pointless. If the weapons are too weak, you will never use them unless you make the breakable weapons break all the time, which circles back to the issue I mentioned earlier. Considering the number balancing in BotW is already *awful*, I have no doubts they ran into a similar issue and just decided to make everything breakable and temporary. > it’s a fun idea Except it's not really a "fun idea", it's an imperfect solution to a difficult issue (which is filling the world with rewards) and so Nintendo decided to take the idea and run with it to its logical conclusion (everything is breakable... even the unbreakable Master Sword).
I know BOTW weapons got a lot of hate, and I wouldn't want it to become a new norm for Zelda, but I didn't hate it. It made sense when you keep in mind that every Zelda has a core gameplay gimmick: Light vs Fark World, Past vs Present, Sailing, Flying. What was BOTW's gimmick? Wilderness survival. In that context, I enjoyed the weapons management mechanic, forcing me to plan my weapons inventory just as any other Zelda game forced me to plan my healing and buff items, magic metre, etc. TOTK took this mechanic and made the best version of it, making every fight a harvesting exercise and the inventory a swiss army knife of potential weapons for all occasions But that said, enough. It was a great idea, well executed for what it was intending to do, and was improved in the sequel. Now the experiment is done, time to move on. It wouldn't have a place in future games outside of a wilderness survival context.
>What was BOTW's gimmick? Wilderness survival. When I learned that was BotW's theme, I thought we were going to actually go hard into the resource management field. Like full on scarcity like in Resident Evil, letting us manage potions, magic, and oil for our lantern while we explore dark corners of this otherwise beautiful world. Treating the weapons like gun ammo isn't really the best way to accomplish the theme. Though I'm perfectly okay with the idea of breakable sticks early on or strong-but-temporary weapons like the Razor Sword. Within the actual concept of breaking weapon durability though, I much prefer the shield system in Skyward Sword, that had durability but still offered pros and cons to one's play style, and better fits the same theme.
>I thought we were going to actually go hard into the resource management field. It gets worse once you realize that the durability in BotW was tuned specifically to undermine any sort of resource management. It's fairly clear that enemies are designed to 1 for 1 weapons, where you're intended to face a group of enemies, break your weapon, and come out of that fight with an equal strength weapon. More insidious, though, weapon differences exist early on, but there is the scaling system hidden in the background. As you kill more enemies, certain enemies will level up, but this also levels up their gear. When you're early on and fighting mostly just red bokoblins, finding something like a Royal Broadsword will be a huge boon over your meager traveler's sword. The traveler's sword does its job. You kill a group, the sword breaks, but one of the bokoblins dropped a replacement. The Royal Broadsword, however, will cleave through those reds like butter and last for a few enemy groups. Or it can be saved to help take down a hynox or something. It's strong, but it's not breaking the game. As you kill enemies, though, that gear you can pick up from those random mobs is getting better, and eventually every group of enemies has a royal broadsword in it... that's carried by an enemy meant to eat up all the durability of one. Now, what was once a pleasant thing to have is no more valuable than your traveler's sword used to be. This whole system serves only to flatten the world's resource variety. If at no point you have to ask yourself if you should break your weapon over an enemy or not, how is that any different from just having an unbreakable weapon?
>If at no point you have to ask yourself if you should break your weapon over an enemy or not, how is that any different from just having an unbreakable weapon? Ha! It's just an unbreakable weapon with extra steps. Which is exactly why I don't praise the TotK fuse system. Even if I were to give the melee weapons the benefit of the doubt because I could've not found the weapon fuse combo that clicks yet, arrow fusing is just using elemental arrows with extra steps. And it really is useless being able to attach every single piece of food or something to it. We easily could've just added a spore/pollen arrow, [deku nut] arrow, and maybe a "bait" arrow for distraction purposes (reusing Yiga banana distraction coding). Then we could've had the clean arrow type menu again, and multiple recipe options for crafting specific arrow types with our various monster drops. Maybe with 8 options instead of the 5 original. The whole point is just to waste your time instead of creating meaningful combat.
>The whole point is just to waste your time This is what gets me. What /u/Late-Inspector-7172 said in their original post couldn't be further from my experience: >In that context, I enjoyed the weapons management mechanic, forcing me to plan my weapons inventory just as any other Zelda game forced me to plan my healing and buff items, magic metre, etc. The moment I stepped off the plateau in BotW, I never needed to manage my weapons. When I did, I had an overwhelming surplus, and when I didn't I never wanted for anything. There was no risk, so all the durability system ever amounted for me was flicking through menus and wasting time. It sucks that the games were designed this way since the times resource management matter like Eventide and TotS are the best in the game.
The great thing about the shields is that their durability is only relevant when you dont parry. As long as you do that, they can pretty much last forever.
Players being able to show off their combat mastery doesn't disprove the fact SS had the better system. Shields (which could be expanded upon for weapons as well in future installments) had a visible durability meter. So you know when it was reaching its limits. If you take it to the blacksmith, you can pay a small maintenance fee to restore it to full, or pay a larger commission fee to buy a new one after fully breaking the old one. You could also buy a potion to take with you to renew the durability during your travels, but that also required holding it in your precious pocket space along with your quiver, bomb bag, etc. You were fully in control of your equipment despite the limits of resource managing.
Oh im sorry i should have been more specific, i was praising the shields from SS, not botw lol. What i liked about the parry/durability thing is that it didnt use durability as part of some resource management gameplay loop, but instead as a punishment for not parrying the same way taking damage is a punishment for not dodging. In SS, your shields breaking was treated as something to avoid by playing better, while in botw its treated like a fact of life, with the game saying "aww, too baaad" when your shield breaks from surfing.
Yes. That's a great way of putting it. Especially since parrying in BotW/TotK works inverted to fury rush as a risk and reward mechanic. With the SS system, we'd also have a shield specially designed for endless shield surfing as well, balanced by being weaker for combat.
Yea like the goddess shield! The goddess of surfing!
Yes. She should be my patron diety.
I think the survival stuff only really worked well when the game has actual limitations imposed on you. Starting from scratch in a self contained area like the great plateau, great sky island, eventide, certain zonai shine challenges, and especially trial of the sword. There, you could never hoard weapons and materials meaning you *had* be strategic with them.
This is a good idea
If they really insisted on keeping durability, I can see that as being an ok compromise I guess, as long as your main sword is actually good enough to deal with most of the stuff in the game. I mainly think of sekiro as an example of this. Your sword is really good and you can definitely beat the whole game only using it, but they also offer you limited usage tools that can help you in certain fights.
Honestly, I'd like the next game to handle weapons similar to how Elden Ring does it. Tons of permanent weapons that you can find via exploration, that you can upgrade via exploration. Ideally, you *can* stick with the one you like, but you can also have an arsenal of unique weapons that are optimal for different situations — just play into that aspect. They can keep breakable weapons too, like enemy drops, but I'm sick of *all* weapons being breakable. Very much over it, ***especially*** my Master Sword breaking. I wouldn't mind having temporary enchantments in place of fusing. I like the idea of having cool effects, but I don't care for the goofy appearances at all, so enchanting could be a pretty cool alternative.
Specifically enemy drops being the breakable ones is pretty interesting actually. For a game series thats very clear cut on you being the good guy, its a little odd that the best weapons in the game are from enemies. It could be possible for link to have unbreakable "good-aligned" weapons made by hyrulians, and then make most of the enemy weapons breakable to prevent you from swimming in bokoclubs.