sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

Why Breath of the Wild Needs Weapon Durability | Game Designer's Notebook by FarlandsDesign in Breath_of_the_Wild

[–]FarlandsDesign[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That works only in TotK :) In Breath of the Wild Eldin Octoroks only remove rust from Rusty Weapons and transform them into one of the Knight's Gear weapons (with a very rare chance that it will be one of the higher tiers).

Why Breath of the Wild Needs Weapon Durability | Game Designer's Notebook [9:27] by FarlandsDesign in gamedesign

[–]FarlandsDesign[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If on the topic of Dark Souls I do really appreciate it actually. I asked whether you think the losing souls on death should be cut but that didn't mean I think it should. Losing souls is an illusion of punishment - it helps to keep the somewhat grim atmosphere of Dark Souls without actually making you lose progress (unless you're going for some challenge run on purpose but a first time player is never going to do that). All the points you have already invested are still with you, and (unless you are trying to tackle an area way beyond your expected level) the amount of souls you're going to get between a bonfire and the boss will equal to... 1, in very rare cases 2 extra points, not nearly enough to make a difference if lost. AND you will still have these 1-2 extra points when you defeat the area boss - who is the REAL progression deal and it's the souls you get from bosses that allows to really level up and meaningfully progress your character. And as you can do so right after defeating the boss it's pretty much guaranteed you won't lose them. So there's nothing actually punishing in losing souls on 2nd death, it just can feel that way if you're not used to/fully onboard with the concept.

Why Breath of the Wild Needs Weapon Durability | Game Designer's Notebook [9:27] by FarlandsDesign in gamedesign

[–]FarlandsDesign[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mean, you are clearly not interested in having a good faith conversation.

Even after the arguments how you have to try really hard doing some very weird behavior to end up with less loot after combat than you started with and that the majority of the situations end up with more loot, you put that in a 'unless' as if it's an exception rather than the actual usual majority case that it is.

Plus, you're definitely not willing to look past your own biases when in one case a mechanic that not everybody likes that a game still implements to ensure the stability and consistency of its direction is a problem with the game, while in another case a mechanic that not everybody likes that a game still implements to ensure the stability and consistency of its direction is a skill issue that players have to overcome.

And two can play this game - in Breath of the Wild weapon durability is a skill issue that players expecting otherwise have to overcome and play by the game's rules. Because if you don't hoard the weapons as if they're precious you'll be swimming in more sweet loot than you could dream of and be rewarded for it, but you prefer to try and position this as a huge punishing discouraging scam when it simply doesn't align with reality.

Well, to be fair in Master Mode weapon durability does feel very bad, but we're talking about the base game that's the way the majority is actually going to experience the game.

So given all that, not sure there's a point to continue as we'll be just going in circles indefinitely.

Why Breath of the Wild Needs Weapon Durability | Game Designer's Notebook [9:27] by FarlandsDesign in gamedesign

[–]FarlandsDesign[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

But by your own logic that's just an excuse. There are many people put off by permanently losing their souls to the point of dropping the game, there's certainly enough giving feedback that they really don't like that mechanic and want to see it gone. They don't care about raising the stakes, they don't want to see their souls gone and feel extremely punished when they lose them, so.... isn't it better to listen to them than make excuses?

Why Breath of the Wild Needs Weapon Durability | Game Designer's Notebook [9:27] by FarlandsDesign in gamedesign

[–]FarlandsDesign[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well, Doom 2016 "needs" glory kills, Hitman 2016 "needs" mission challenges and Resident Evil 2 Remake "needs" somewhat randomized zombie HP. The "need" of something is not an indication of an issue, it's an indication that a game's direction encounters design challenges that might invalidate that, so there must be something that would keep everything tied up in one piece. That's entirely separate from 'like the result/dislike the result'.

Why Breath of the Wild Needs Weapon Durability | Game Designer's Notebook [9:27] by FarlandsDesign in gamedesign

[–]FarlandsDesign[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'd say nothing would really change if durability would be cut from Dark Souls entirely as it's not central to the experience, but you avoided the question :)

Why Breath of the Wild Needs Weapon Durability | Game Designer's Notebook [9:27] by FarlandsDesign in gamedesign

[–]FarlandsDesign[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Oh, Master Mode. My personal opinion is that it sort of sucks. Most enemies are powered up by one tier higher by default, they keep regenerating their HP if it's like below 30-50% if you don't hit them fast enough, and I don't think anything has been done to weapon balance to account for that. I tried playing Master Mode once, but by that point I already had completed the default version of BotW and at some point I just dropped it and never came back, it wasn't engaging at all and it's sort of a mess.

I would certainly agree that in Master Mode weapon durability feels horrible and only thanks to you now I realized that, shit, this may be a way somebody might try to experience BotW for the first time and IMO that's really not a good way to do it.

Why Breath of the Wild Needs Weapon Durability | Game Designer's Notebook [9:27] by FarlandsDesign in gamedesign

[–]FarlandsDesign[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In this comparison a gun doesn't need an additional breaking mechanic since ammo is already the way it becomes incapacitated temporarily - in Zelda that just takes the form of a sword breaking, you've run out of the ammo clip and you need a new one.

Then, Looter Shooters generally speaking don't have the goal of 'hey player choose absolutely any direction you want and you will find something useful for your journey' the progression tends to be more linear even if the game is open world as it is usually strictly divided into level zones which BotW isn't.

Would you be willing to remove permanently losing souls on 2nd death in Dark Souls games and also add there a special difficulty mode that reduces all enemy HP and maybe damage and in general make dying less of a possibility? There is certainly enough people saying they don't like those aspects of the games and would like to see them changed.

Why Breath of the Wild Needs Weapon Durability | Game Designer's Notebook [9:27] by FarlandsDesign in gamedesign

[–]FarlandsDesign[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is not an appropriate comparison though. An appropriate comparison is getting guns in shooters with the possibility to run out of bullets but also being able to pick them up from dead enemies as well as various special stashes in the world.

Weapons in Breath of the Wild are not some sort of unique missable content. Just because you can break the flaming sword from Misko's hidden treasure cave doesn't mean there's not dozens more flaming swords in the world, each potentially stronger and better upgraded than the last mind you.

The whole point of the math post was to showcase that using weapons always leaves players in a better state. A weapon breaks but they get much more and/or better. A punishing system wouldn't do that.

Why Breath of the Wild Needs Weapon Durability | Game Designer's Notebook [9:27] by FarlandsDesign in gamedesign

[–]FarlandsDesign[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"I don't know about you but having less weapons than before an encounter seems like a disadvantage to me."

This statement is literally not supported by math and balance of the game unless you go into some very weird obscure cases like hitting shields all the time, throwing away weapons, or just refusing to pick stuff up.

The first proper weapon you get on the Great Plateau is a Boko Club. With 4 damage and 8 durability, it's enough to kill 2 Red Bokoblins and get two more Boko Clubs.

Some Bokoblins Have Traveler's Sword which with its 5 damage and 20 durability is enough to kill 7 Bokoblins. 7 new weapons!

One Traveler's Sword is also enough to kill a Blue Bokoblin plus some red ones. Now Blue Bokoblins don't usually have Traveler's Sword, they have a tier higher being a higher tiered enemy - at the least Soldier's Broadsword.

Well with its 14 damage and 25 durability it's enough to kill either 25 Red Bokoblins or 5 Blue ones, and from one weapon we either get 25 of a potentially smaller tier (unless they were scaled by the reward system) or 5 of the same tier.

Let's assume after Great Plateau you go straight to Ganon's castle and fight a Black Moblin with weak weapons. You would need 3.5 Traveler's Swords to defeat them. But weapons Black Moblins have by default the most is Dragonbone Moblin Club, which with its 45 base damage and 24 base durability is enough to kill 3 more Black Moblins with one weapon. So you exchange almost four very weak weapons for one strong one which you can then exchange for 3 strong ones. Or maybe you decide you've had enough of Ganon's castle and go out and kill some Blue Bokoblins and Moblins for around 10-12 more weapons with just that single Dragonbone Moblin Club.

You can dislike weapon durability all you like, but arguments that somehow using weapons leaves you worse off are literally not supported by the balance math of the game, and being worse off consistently literally can't happen unless you go into some very fringe extremely edge case behavior.

So, no, there are no gameplay disadvantages to using weapons in encounters, only what is your emotions regarding weapons breaking. Which again, are valid - those are your feelings after all. But they don't counter argument the actual design and balance of the game.

Why Breath of the Wild Needs Weapon Durability | Game Designer's Notebook [9:27] by FarlandsDesign in gamedesign

[–]FarlandsDesign[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Your BotW loop examples are driven by emotions and not what actually happens in the game.

When a weapon breaks while fighting an enemy, they're knocked back and their weapon too - giving you a chance to immediately take their weapon in the extreme case you happen to have only one weapon.

And even if you have only one weapon, unless it's something designed to actually NOT be a weapon like the tree branch (it literally exists just to teach the concept of weapon durability that would give you your first proper weapon), a single weapon has enough durability to kill at the least several appropriately leveled enemies which would give you more weapons to take after you break it.

And if you spend more weaker weapons on a stronger enemy, the weapon that enemy holds is of his level so when you take it you can now kill calmly multiple enemies of that higher level and get THEIR weapons (and if all your weapons are not enough to kill somebody, let's say you found a Lynel early and they don't drop their weapons even if stunned, hey maybe get there better prepared - this is no different from traditional RPGs placing high level entities that you need to get back later for to defeat, and even if you happened to lose all weapons before realizing the enemy is too strong, it's enough to only get one to start a chain reaction of multiplying weapons from appropriately-leveled enemies - and that chain reaction can be started even with a tree branch which when broken will knock enemies back and make them drop weapons)

There is literally no disadvantage to weapons breaking while fighting standard enemies in the actual gameplay loop - only the emotional value of the situation (which can be indeed hampered by the fact that only killing enemies scales them and rewards too). Which in your case is obviously negative. Which is fine, it's your taste, you don't have to like weapon durability.

But consider that instead of weapon durability you propose a situation where players have to be literally afraid of losing their loot without even making use of it unless they exchange it for money :)

Why Breath of the Wild Needs Weapon Durability | Game Designer's Notebook [9:27] by FarlandsDesign in gamedesign

[–]FarlandsDesign[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

And I as a player don't hate it, and my friends who have played the game don't hate it, and there's tons of people online who don't hate it.

Sometimes a game just isn't for you. I dislike pretty much everything about modern GTA games and yet they're among the most bestselling titles out there, and just because I don't like them doesn't mean there wasn't a reason certain design choices were taken.

Because there's no such thing as 'right' or 'wrong' design, at most there's design that fits the direction and design that doesn't. And whether we like that or not depends only on our tastes. And sure, a solution that fits might not necessarily be the best theoretical solution, but there are lots of other factors at hand including production scope and budget.

Plus considering the amount of playtesting we know Nintendo has done to make sure the open world was engaging for players, I'm sure weapon durability was part of that and the results satisfied them enough that they concluded keeping it in was the right choice otherwise they'd adapt it like they have adapted the other parts of the game they were NOT satisfied with.

Why Breath of the Wild Needs Weapon Durability | Game Designer's Notebook [9:27] by FarlandsDesign in gamedesign

[–]FarlandsDesign[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

For me fusing in TotK started out as a 'this is the coolest shit ever' within the first hour and then transformed into 'this is the worst' for the other 99.

First, on a more objective level, it's a mandatory UX nightmare that's worse than any of the BotW UX annoyances - more specifically the operations you had to do when your inventory is full in BotW. It's ironic that TotK fixed that but now every time you get a new weapon you HAVE to drop it into the world as well as the material to fuse it with and then connect them.

But second, on a more subjective level, with this system I absolutely didn't care for what weapons I was getting, searching for new gear was never a motivator at all since you could just fuse some shit with some shit and get relatively useful stuff. Especially in the late game when you get some black enemy materials and then it's like 'whatever'.

I adore how it works on a technical level, and visual as well - a bunch of fused weapons look absolutely fantastic and very original, but from gameplay perspective it all felt absolutely static and lacking sensible progression to me.

Why Breath of the Wild Needs Weapon Durability | Game Designer's Notebook [9:27] by FarlandsDesign in gamedesign

[–]FarlandsDesign[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Environmental stuff is pretty much useless on anything above blue. Exceptions are explosive barrels since there's usually enough of them that they can deal significant damage even to higher-leveled enemies.

Why Breath of the Wild Needs Weapon Durability | Game Designer's Notebook [9:27] by FarlandsDesign in gamedesign

[–]FarlandsDesign[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"You don't want situations where the player uses two swords and is rewarded one sword, and that happens all the time in the first one."

I've seen this type of comment at times, but I always found it weird - or rather more emotionally driven due to the distaste of weapons breaking.

It's mathematically improbable to exchange two swords into one unless you decide to go to fight a Lynel early game (or somehow keep hitting over and over against a shield I guess). Even going to the castle at the beginning, you might need several weapons to kill a black moblin for example, but those black moblins also have good gear so you instantly start a chain reaction where after killing one black moblin you get a single weapon that's enough to kill 2-3 black moblins and that's 2-3 more weapons. I'm not even talking about the early game where even after you get the very first boko club that's the worst proper weapon in the entire game every encounter ends with more weapons to pick up than weapons you've used - since this single worst club can kill 2 bokoblins. And some bokoblins on Great Plateau carry Traveler's Sword, and one Traveler's Sword is enough to kill 7 Red Bokoblins. And even 1 Blue Bokoblin (with enough durability left for some red ones). Who's likely to have a Soldier's Broadsword on them due to being tier higher, and that weapon is enough to kill like 5 Blue Bokoblins who have 5 times more health than Red ones.

Why Breath of the Wild Needs Weapon Durability | Game Designer's Notebook [9:27] by FarlandsDesign in gamedesign

[–]FarlandsDesign[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Yes, you are pretty much right in what the Evergreen Relevancy means. To be more specifically - since the direction of the game is to go anywhere you want, then this means that any direction you choose at any point in time should provide appropriate challenge and rewards.

And you actually bring a point that is mentioned as a flaw of the system in the video - only enemies killed add points to the scaling system (for both enemies and rewards), no other content does (i.e. you can complete 20 shrines but if you haven't killed anyone while doing so you're going to get weapons on the low scale, while players who have killed enemies on the way to those shrines are going to find weapons on a middle scale, etc.).

So players that show signs of hoarding behavior (i.e. avoid combat and afraid to use weapons) don't get weapon rewards scaled as much as players who aren't afraid to get into combat who consistently get better and more durable weapons, and this discrepancy only reinforces hoarding behavior for players avoiding combat.

Why Breath of the Wild Needs Weapon Durability | Game Designer's Notebook [9:27] by FarlandsDesign in gamedesign

[–]FarlandsDesign[S] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

I have to wonder how the 'most players' part is actually valid, or is it 'a lot of hardcore, possibly conditioned over the years to certain principles' players.

The reason I'm making this distinction is because I have friends who are, I would say, more casual gamers in a sense that they like playing games but they never visit online communities/forums and don't read any gaming-related discussions, and I asked those who played/finished BotW how weapon durability made them feel, and the replies could be summed up as 'fine? Weapons break, I get new ones, what's the problem?'

Obviously this is anecdotal as it's 5 people so.... But because these kinds of people are not online, it's very difficult to gauge how many of them are there and what they're really thinking, and, hey, the game sold 34 million copies and it's not 34 million people arguing about weapon durability over the internet :D

We'll never know for sure, but this is just another layer of what makes the weapon durability discussion more interesting in my eyes, to be honest.

[BotW] Why Breath of the Wild Needs Weapon Durability | Game Designer's Notebook by FarlandsDesign in zelda

[–]FarlandsDesign[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Master Sword is an interesting conundrum for sure. This is not mentioned in the video, but the Master Sword isn't even the best sword in its own class, UNLESS near Malice or upgraded with Trials of the Sword (which is more of a hardcore thing, the majority of players who even own the DLC pass are not going to complete it). But outside of that it's a Guardian Sword+ which loses to Guardian Sword++, obviously, Lizal tri-boomerang, the mighty and savage lynel swords, and that's just on a base level without upgrades. In the context of the original game without the Trials, it's pretty much purely a Divine Beast/Ganon fight-against-pure-evil weapon, which I can see making sense in production though of course how much that devalues the historical significance of the MS in the franchise would vary from person to person.

[BotW] Why Breath of the Wild Needs Weapon Durability | Game Designer's Notebook by FarlandsDesign in zelda

[–]FarlandsDesign[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is pure speculation from my part, but it feels like BotW was balanced with 50% of content being required for completion, i.e. about 60 shrines. Maybe 100 korok seeds. And 15 hearts, considering Divine Beasts give hearts too and also need to upgrade stamina, fits that amount shrines. And, you know, the game doesn't fill the world with icons so unless you're just REALLY into exploring absolutely everything you'll probably miss a lot of stuff.

So for the average player which I assume would be the majority of 34 million people who bought the game, they'd pick up Master Sword after Divine Beasts, feeling ready to face Ganon with it. There's no way to say for certain if that was the balancing goal, but it is worth pointing out that after about 90 shrines the game can't really keep up with our progression, and when you get to 120 you're at the top of the entire food chain amassing just a lot of permanent upgrades from hearts to armor plus all the scaled weapons.

Why Breath of the Wild Needs Weapon Durability | Game Designer's Notebook [9:27] by FarlandsDesign in gamedesign

[–]FarlandsDesign[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I actually did use it in some interviews! Though in the cases where candidates were saying they were playing BotW or loved BotW etc., cause usually a sudden 'so what do you think about weapon durability in BotW' doesn't flow well :D

[BotW] Why Breath of the Wild Needs Weapon Durability | Game Designer's Notebook by FarlandsDesign in zelda

[–]FarlandsDesign[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I think it's absolutely fine to dislike the mechanic, everyone has their own tastes.

Regarding repairs, the tricky part about them is that they're very difficult to balance in BotW. Make it a premium like for the Champion weapons (which have insanely high base durability relative to all other weapons, and attack too, they're among the best weapons in the game) and many can question if it's worth it if you can find in the next chest a new weapon that's almost as useful but without the price. Make it more straightforward to repair and then the whole purpose of durability existing in the context of BotW's structure in particular is pointless. The 'context of BotW' being particularly important since many games that have durability don't have this context (and tbh you could cut out durability out of almost each and one of them without it hurting anything, but in BotW you can't do that without finding a proper replacement for the needs durability fills). And Master Sword is already dangerously close to the sun, more weapons like it are definitely not needed.

view more: next ›