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Wyrdness said: (have to delete this because I don't want to get warned for not cutting out large quotes) |
I'm "fine" with weapon durability, I just don't think it's optimal. You are arguing as if I'm saying that freedom is a be-all-end-all argument, it isn't, I'm just mentioning it because it is very ironic and does conflict with the main point of the game. However it's more to it then that, it's that the consequence isn't very well thought out in how it affects the rest of the game. Part of that is "freedom", but another part of it is that it just isn't very fun. It isn't fun when you spend a large portion of the game looking at a poorly thought-out user interface because you have to switch between weapons, it isn't fun to have something other than skill dictate whether you win a battle or not in an action-adventure title, it isn't fun to stop in the middle of combat constantly. And what you keep misunderstanding despite me mentioning it over and over again, is that i'm not complaining about the fact that I died to a boss, because I didn't, but the fact that the game makes it nearly impossible to beat said boss. One is a consequence on the player, another is a consequence on what the player is able to do. I'm not arguing against the consequence of getting shred to pieces when you aren't prepared, I am however arguing against the inability to do something despite having the means to do it if not for an arbitrary "survival" mechanic.
You didn't address anything I said about why RE2 isn't an applicable example, and doubled down on the ammo point (even though people who are against weapon durability are not complaining about limited arrows, because, you know ... weapon durability and ammo limitations are not the same thing), again mistook this for an argument of whether a boss should be able to kill the player or not (when it isn't), and yet again didn't acknowledge the difference in design between both games that makes one acceptable and another unacceptable. I'm not going to repeat the points I already wrote about the same example more than once, either this example needs to be evolved or it shouldn't be used again.
Mentioning RPGs isn't helping your case, Zelda isn't an RPG and you were the first person to use that as an example.
I'm sorry but I find that a little bit of a silly justification for the weapon durability. You are literally linking exploits of the game to show the "depth" of the combat but then want to say that going to a dangerous area and picking up a high tier weapon is too much of an exploit and needs to be balanced. Huh? I mean ... I don't know about you but finding extremely powerful weapons early on is one of the fun things you can do in open world games, and it works much better as a risk-reward mechanic then weapon durability. This would be especially true for a Breath of the Wild sequel, I mean it's the entire reason why Breath of the Wild videos are about all the cools ways you can exploit or explore the world. The answer to the balance issue is to just make it incredibly hard to get to. I honestly didn't find the area around the castle to be as dangerous as they were made out to be, if weapons didn't have durability i'd imagine that they would just make the area harder. This is an especially weird point because Breath of the Wild stands out as that kind of game where the designers often thought "Players want to do x? So be it. There's no reason to stop it". If Breath of the Wild was made by conventional developers, you wouldn't be able to climb nearly every surface, you would have to walk a very specific path up a hill, you wouldn't be able to beat the game whenever you want, you wouldn't be able to skip the beginning area, but you can do ALL these things because of the philosophy behind the game which apparently now needs to be "balanced out" with weapon durability.
As for the videos, they're cool but they're not really what I'm talking about. Most of those are exploits, not really "mechanics" on their own. Others are incredibly easy to the point where I don't even know how this is used as an argument for "depth" ... you can throw a bomb and use a leaf to blow the bomb under the enemies weakpoint? Yeah, that's pretty obvious and I imagine a lot of people have done it, it's just something that isn't always easy to do depending on where you're standing in relation to the enemy as well as the game's physics, but it's not really "skill-based". You can hit an enemies weak point with the boomerang, even if the weak point isn't facing you? Uh yeah ... those kind of things are what boomerangs have been used for in Zelda games in the past too. Use a glider quickly before doing a falling attack? ... Isn't that kind of obvious? A lot of this can't even be done based in a shrine and is based on open world exploration, which conveniently is where you won't need to put much effort into combat 99% of the time (because the enemies are so easy). Whether or not you can execute these maneuvers is based a lot on where you're at, not your skill. And even in the video a lot of these exploits are mentioned by the video creator themselves as pretty much useless, as they aren't efficient for attack or aren't good compared to normal attack behaviors.
The thing about Breath of the Wild is that, it's design is already very deliberate, which eliminates a lot of the reason for weapon durability already. I feel like in a lot of open world games nowadays don't do a good job of thinking about what items should be where or when the player character should gain which power. Breath of the Wild doesn't have that problem ... everything is already very deliberate about it's world design and where you get powerful items. This is a big reason why the weapon durability mechanic is already pretty unnecessary. Hypotheticals aren't good at making a point but I have to ask if Breath of the Wild didn't have this mechanic would people feel the need for it? And overall, I don't think they would. I don't think there would be a "missing link" between the feeling of catharsis you would get with or without weapon breaking, as there often is with so many games that are missing a necessary feature. If Breath of the Wild's sequel simply has more unique weapons, a more deliberate combat system, and a larger variety of enemies I honestly don't feel it would need weapon breaking as a reason to "balance" anything or to force the use of different weapons.
But look, you do have good points and I don't disagree with everything you say. I just don't agree that any of it means weapon breaking is a necessary mechanic. However I don't have all the answers and I don't think everyone will be 100% happy with whatever decision is made. I do fear that without the mechanic survival elements would be less of a focus in the next game. However, I kind of think that weapon durability is over-stepping the boundary between "action adventure" and "survival" too much in favor of the latter, and simply focusing more on cooking or weather effects could make the next game more survival-based than BOTW already is without needing the durability system. I respect your opinion and I don't even think it would be a massive blow to have the mechanic return in BOTW2, or whatever they call it, especially if they tweak it some more. But currently while i'm not a hater of the mechanic, I'm not a fan, and I'd prefer if it weren't in at all. I don't expect others to agree with me but that's fine.
This is about everything I could possibly say on the matter, so obviously I probably won't comment on it more. At least not in essay format, lol. This is way too long.
