they should make the combat more arcade like, that would probably make it harder.

Yes! I want them much much harder, bordering to sadistic. And the bosses too, in TP they were a joke! They really should add an easy and a hard mode for veteran players.

Again: Second Quest would fill all your needs and considerably more.

Is the only difficulty you care about in combat?

hell whats so hard to get ?
You're all talking of extra content in shape of harder quests, thats not the friggin point of the thread.

All it says to make COMBAT harder, Noone cares what is the basic element of Zelda in this thread Khuutra, its about COMBAT.
and COMBAT has been too easy in the last 2 or 3 games AND it would take NO effort to change some damage stats, it wont affect your so praised gameplay, just for THOSE WHO WANT a little mor challenge in combat.
and YES, taking more damage would increase difficulty of pattern based fights, because you have to find the pattern faster and be more careful.

At the moment you say Zelda draws its fun out of puzzling, exploring - thats CORRECT, but it's not a positive point when it could draw fun out of puzzling and combat as well.
for many players like I am fighting in Zelda has become a tedious thing.
thats what this thread is about, not about changing patterns or recreating puzzles.

All it needs is Normal, and Hard

Combat is no easier now than it was in Ocarina.

Combat would not make the game appreciably harder, like I said, and inncreasing enemy damage and health would not make the combat appreciably harder.

Khuutra you seem to block the very possibility of more than one difficulty, man, wahts wrong with you.

'and inncreasing enemy damage and health would not make the combat appreciably harder.'

oh i think if you increase damage and decrease health enough you can make a worm a hard enemy, wtf man.
the claim is that combat gets an option to really become hard for those who want ( i repeat this the 4th time in this thread ).
and sorry guy, if the puzzles were what made TP hard for you, well then ... no comment, those 'tasks' havent deserved the word puzzle.
saying Zelda games only draw difficulty out of puzzling is ridiculous false, I have more memories of dying in hard fights than not being able to solve puzzles ( only one popping into my mind is water temple in Oot )

its about making a seperate part of the game more enjoyable for a peculiar crowd. man, thats not even an argument, that is logic, please dont try to counter this.

The standard procedure for adjusting difficulty, even for combat, wouldn't really help Zelda though. What could they do? Add more enemies, give existing enemies more health, have enemies deal more damage, but these things should not vex a Zelda player at all. Once you know how to beat the enemies, you can generally beat them without too much trouble. To make Zelda-style combat harder, they would have to re-design the enemies, or re-design their behaviors. Something that could be implemented with a second-quest, but something that could concievably break the game from a design standpoint if they were trying to re-impose these new enemies in the same scenario on a different difficulty setting.

So you're saying you died in combat in Ocarina of Time? That's great and all, but it's more of a reflection of your skills at the time of your playthrough. Twilight Princess is no easier than Ocarina when it comes to combat. In some respects it may even be harder.

And no, you have to understand that the economy of difficulty in 3-D Zelda is very different from the economy of difficulty in God Hand, or even the 2-D Zeldas (and even then, only the first two). The thing about pattern-based enemies is that increased difficulty only matters until you learn the pattern, which takes at most thirty seconds for even the most complicated enemy (including the bosses). So you get thirty seconds where you have to avoid attacks (or hold R so you don't lower your shield), and then thereafter you're right back to square one, wherein you will probably never be hit.

Increasing the difficulty of fights is not enough. If you want to go all-out then like I said, you would need to place harder enemies earlier into the game and make new enemy types altogether for the end-game, or otherwise change the behavior patterns for the enemies that already exist, which would ultimately make combat tedious.

"Normal" and "Hard" would not do anything here If you want a new difficulty then they woudl need to go all-out and design new dungeons and enemies around the idea.

How about DLC adventures only available to those who finish the initial quest.

Mike from Morgantown