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Forums - Gaming - Weapon Durability, Fanbase Fragility (The Jimquisition)

potato_hamster on 13 March 2017
sc94597 said:
potato_hamster said:

And that lot of treasure was rendered unusable in a handful of fights. It's Nonsense.

If weapons wouldn't break, when you found rare weapons, you could actually use them for more than one fight or two. Instead you're pretty much fighting with whatever your enemies drop, and saving your rare weapons for bigger fights. Will you shower your enemies with arrows? i don't know, does your bow break after you shot a couple? Probably. Will you go from your spear to your sword after your spear breaks? Undoubtedly. Will you pick up an enemy's left arm to try to beat the last enemy to death because you've run out of usable weapons? That's a possibility.

Here's a hint: If you're forced a gamer to do something in a game, that's the opposite of giving the player the freedom to play as they see fit.

You are more worried about spending your arrows than your bow breaking. Bows detorirate much slower than melee weapons. Many of the problems people have with weapon degregation is that they are using the wrong weapons on the wrong enemies. You shouldn't be using swords for hitting shields, in example. That is bound to get your sword broken. You need to use axes or spears to either avoid the shield or destroy it/fling it out of the enemies hands. Then you can switch to a sword if you wish. Certain attacks also instantly break weapons. 

If you follow these (realistic) gameplay rules, you can preserve your weapons longer. It requires planning though. Just as in a survival-horror game you plan to preserve ammunition, the same is true about planning how to use your favorite weapons. Later in the game, great weapons are so common that it isn't a problem, and since enemies scale as you complete things, you never feel like you are wasting weapons on undeserving enemies. 

More of this "this feature isn't broken, people are playing the game wrong!". Tell that to Lair or StarFox Zero. This is an open world game, and now you're telling me the game is just in punishing me for trying to play the game the way I find to be the most fun because it's "realistic". This a game with fucking goblins, and giant pig warlords, and the ability to turn water into huge blocks of ice on a whim. The realism argument does not apply here when it comes to something like weapon durability. I refuse to believe that in this magical world, practically no one can make a sword that doesn't literally shatter apart after a handful of swings. That isn't even the case in the real world.

Besides, if you're going to be touting player freedom in every ad for this game, maybe it isn't a good idea to force the players into playing the game certain ways mostly for no good reason other than to make people do things differently.



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irstupid on 13 March 2017

I think there is only one weapon I have saved in my inventory and not ever used yet.

You got some wooden sword doing a trial in the kakori forest. Well you are forced to use it, but you find another during it. Have yet to use it, but I like it. Afraid to use it, cause as I said its wood. Thus feel like it will break in like 2 hits, lol.
I should probably just hang it up in my house, I have enough diamonds to replace any unique weapon I break.



Metallox on 13 March 2017
sc94597 said:

There are other differences besides attack power. Spears are faster and have the use of keeping an enemy far away. Axes and two-hand swords can be used to get through shields. One-hand swords are general purpose. And all of these weapons have different attacks speeds. The number on the weapon is its attack power not its dps (damage per second.) And then there are issues of what a weapon is made of. A certain boss is easier with wooden weapons and shields, and a certain area is undoable with only wooden weapons and shields (because they burn up.)

Yes, yes. But I'm talking about replacing weapons with their counterparts, like a sword with a sword and an axe with an axe, I don't usually trade certain weapons with other kinds. Plus, I tend to use one-hand weapons exclusively.



My bet with The_Liquid_Laser: I think the Switch won't surpass the PS2 as the best selling system of all time. If it does, I'll play a game of a list that The_Liquid_Laser will provide, I will have to play it for 50 hours or complete it, whatever comes first. 

JRPGfan on 13 March 2017

I agree with him... I dislike weapons breaking that often.



sc94597 on 13 March 2017
potato_hamster said:

More of this "this feature isn't broken, people are playing the game wrong!". Tell that to Lair or StarFox Zero. This is an open world game, and now you're telling me the game is just in punishing me for trying to play the game the way I find to be the most fun because it's "realistic". This a game with fucking goblins, and giant pig warlords, and the ability to turn water into huge blocks of ice on a whim. The realism argument does not apply here when it comes to something like weapon durability. I refuse to believe that in this magical world, practically no one can make a sword that doesn't literally shatter apart after a handful of swings. That isn't even the case in the real world.

Besides, if you're going to be touting player freedom in every ad for this game, maybe it isn't a good idea to force the players into playing the game certain ways mostly for no good reason other than to make people do things differently.

You have a hard time grasping that there need to be constraints in combat in order to make choice meaningful. If everything were equally effective and with equal consequences, then there would be no strategy to the game's combat. "Total freedom" is not the goal here. The goal is a balance of "freedom" with fun so that the choices we make are more meaningful. 

The realism argument is to make it clear that there is no gamey logic here. Everything is intuitive. It is possible for the gameplay to be intuitive without realism, sure, but I wanted to emphasize that it is reasonable to expect somebody to know that hitting a sword on a shield again and again is going to break either one or the other. 



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Wyrdness on 13 March 2017
potato_hamster said:

I have an idea, instead of this work around where you find ways to recover broken weapons that's tedious and annoying, the weapon could just not break in the first place.

How great would that be?

Tbh I don't think people who have this complaint fully understand the goal of the system, everything in BOTW is a resource you use carefully to survive the situation that's the whole point it's resource management. Unbreakable weapons and such breaks the game's balance as some item are heavily abusable like the ice based weapons, items breaking is the limit all players have to adhere to no matter what they pick up with the exception of the Master Sword otherwise the only way to balance the game would be to rduce the effectiveness of a number of items.

To counter balance weapons breaking they made the world full of them, as you progress more and more it becomes less and less of an issue.



irstupid on 13 March 2017
potato_hamster said:
sc94597 said:

You are more worried about spending your arrows than your bow breaking. Bows detorirate much slower than melee weapons. Many of the problems people have with weapon degregation is that they are using the wrong weapons on the wrong enemies. You shouldn't be using swords for hitting shields, in example. That is bound to get your sword broken. You need to use axes or spears to either avoid the shield or destroy it/fling it out of the enemies hands. Then you can switch to a sword if you wish. Certain attacks also instantly break weapons. 

If you follow these (realistic) gameplay rules, you can preserve your weapons longer. It requires planning though. Just as in a survival-horror game you plan to preserve ammunition, the same is true about planning how to use your favorite weapons. Later in the game, great weapons are so common that it isn't a problem, and since enemies scale as you complete things, you never feel like you are wasting weapons on undeserving enemies. 

More of this "this feature isn't broken, people are playing the game wrong!". Tell that to Lair or StarFox Zero. This is an open world game, and now you're telling me the game is just in punishing me for trying to play the game the way I find to be the most fun because it's "realistic". This a game with fucking goblins, and giant pig warlords, and the ability to turn water into huge blocks of ice on a whim. The realism argument does not apply here when it comes to something like weapon durability. I refuse to believe that in this magical world, practically no one can make a sword that doesn't literally shatter apart after a handful of swings. That isn't even the case in the real world.

Besides, if you're going to be touting player freedom in every ad for this game, maybe it isn't a good idea to force the players into playing the game certain ways mostly for no good reason other than to make people do things differently.

If you were playing Fire Emblem and you bitched cause your pegasus lost the fight against an archer, I woudl say your playing the game wrong. If your bitching that your charizard is getting his assed kicked by Blastoise, I would say why not switch to your Venasaur. Those are not the games limiting you, they are mechanics that make the game have strategy.

In this case I will salso say you are playing the game wrong. Do a simple experiment. If an enemy has a shield and I run up to him wiht a sword. It will take I believe 5 hits with that sword to knock him off balance and his shield arm flailing. I then can wail away at him with the sword, finally doing damage. But my sword just took some major damage with those 5 hits on that shield to creat the opening.

Or I could take an axe and break the shield instantly, or use a club and knock him offbalance instantly. Then switch to sword quick and take him out.

That is not limiting your "play how you want" that is just good core game mechanics. If you want to blindly go in hack and slash, play a hack and slash. There are a ton of them and they are good. Bitching about a game not doing what another lest you do is dumb. Might as well complain that if I land on an enemy like Mario they don't squish. I want to play how I want ot play. Let me squish my enemies like Goombas.

Also in real life swords are not as durable as you are led to believe. If you fight like you see in movies or games where sword edges hit against each other, that sword will become unusable very quickly.



potato_hamster on 13 March 2017
RolStoppable said:
potato_hamster said:

And that lot of treasure was rendered unusable in a handful of fights. It's Nonsense.

If weapons wouldn't break, when you found rare weapons, you could actually use them for more than one fight or two. Instead you're pretty much fighting with whatever your enemies drop, and saving your rare weapons for bigger fights. Will you shower your enemies with arrows? i don't know, does your bow break after you shot a couple? Probably. Will you go from your spear to your sword after your spear breaks? Undoubtedly. Will you pick up an enemy's left arm to try to beat the last enemy to death because you've run out of usable weapons? That's a possibility.

Here's a hint: If you're forced a gamer to do something in a game, that's the opposite of giving the player the freedom to play as they see fit.

Do you realize the consequences of your suggestion? Unbreakable weapons would mean that a strong weapon that is found early on makes at least half the game a walk in the park. The only way to prevent that from happening would be the implementation of road blocks (so that the weapon cannot be obtained) which would in turn also limit the freedom of players. Giving players complete freedom for everything would break a game, so restrictions in one form or another are a necessity.

The problem is that you are arguing based on the premise that weapon durability in Breath of the Wild results in lots of mandatory grinding.

It's amazing how finding a grenade launcher in GTA V just ruins that game, or in Dark Swords, when you get the Drake Sword, or Borderlands, or countless other open world games where players can pick up pretty powerful weapons pretty early in the game somehow manage to get by. But for Nintendo, it would just totally shatter the game. Yep. Un huh. I totally believe you.

Just tie the strength of weapons Link can use to the amount of hearts or stamina upgrade Link has acquired. You can even let him use them if he's underleveled, just make them less powerful or difficult to swing if the user chooses to use them. Pretty simple. iI's like hundreds of games have already figured out this problem.

I'm not at all arguing that weapon durability results in mandatory grinding. I'm arguing that weapon durability makes the game fundamentally less fun to play. There's nothing enjoyable about watching your favorite weapon get irreparably damaged at all.



potato_hamster on 13 March 2017
RolStoppable said:
potato_hamster said:

It's amazing how finding a grenade launcher in GTA V just ruins that game, or in Dark Swords, when you get the Drake Sword, or Borderlands, or countless other open world games where players can pick up pretty powerful weapons pretty early in the game somehow manage to get by. But for Nintendo, it would just totally shatter the game. Yep. Un huh. I totally believe you.

Just tie the strength of weapons Link can use to the amount of hearts or stamina upgrade Link has acquired. You can even let him use them if he's underleveled, just make them less powerful or difficult to swing if the user chooses to use them. Pretty simple. iI's like hundreds of games have already figured out this problem.

I'm not at all arguing that weapon durability results in mandatory grinding. I'm arguing that weapon durability makes the game fundamentally less fun to play. There's nothing enjoyable about watching your favorite weapon get irreparably damaged at all.

So it's enjoyable to find a weapon that you won't be able to use until several or dozens of hours later, or to make it less powerful to taunt the player?

I don't  know, do you like it in the hundreds of other games that implement such or similar solutions? Was Ocarina of Time less enjoyable becasuse weapons weren't breakable? How did you manage then?

Here's another idea: keep the current system in place, just make the weapons twenty times more durable and repairable. That way its at least tolerable to those who like to keep things that work for them.



Alkibiádēs on 13 March 2017
potato_hamster said:
Alkibiádēs said:

Nah, I still have some left after 10 or so hours. Helped me a lot at some tough fights though. 

If rare weapons didn't break they wouldn't feel so special. I'm never out of decent weapons anyway, maybe you should try to explore the world you're in. 

Uhh. How does this make any sense at all?

"Look at this awesome sword that just broke after 10 hits! Man I loved that sword. I found another 14 of them off of enemies I killed with that sword, and have my inventory jammed full of them, because they're just that special."

It's quite clear you haven't played the game if you think all weapons break that easily. And I have different rare weapons. A thunder sword, a fire sword, a special fire wand, a Sheikah halberd, etc. 



"The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must" - Thoukydides