I don’t like durability mechanics when its clearly there just to waste your time or money or whatever. Any game that makes you do more hiking to repair benches than fighting is either getting a thumbs down or I’m going to download a mod.
Breath of the Wild is generally pretty good about letting you explore your own way. For example, the exposition ghost at the start explicitly acknowledges you could go straight to the final boss after leaving the tutorial area if you want, and there are plenty of ways a determined player can reach areas faster than the typical progression routes would take them.
But my goodness the pitiful weapon durability made me want to avoid combat. I distinctly remember coming across a white lionel relatively early and determining I shouldn’t bother trying to fight simply because I didn’t have enough weapons to get through its health bar.
Yup. I played through BotW always holding onto things I thought were good because the stupid durability mechanic made me hoard stuff.
When I started TotK I decided to turn durability off and see if I enjoyed more and I absolutely did. Made the game way better. The only thing that broke was some balancing around crafted weapons. For example you can take a stick and slap a horn on it and get a very powerful, but brittle, weapon. With durability off it just becomes a very powerful weapon, which pretty much matches or beats any proper weapon you can find. If you think that’s too hacky you can just make a rule for yourself not to craft things like that.
Many games have gone through this and time and time again scarcity makes people not use things. In Witcher 2 you had to craft potions manually by collecting all the ingredients each time. In Witcher 3 they just replenish after a rest if you have alcohol on you. 2 is more realistic, but the work involved (and the fact that you had to drink them before combat started) made them too much of a pain and I just went without. In 3 you can simply use them and not worry.
I played BotW with 4x durability mod and it was soooo much better.
I expected to do the same for TotK, but the fusion system made things infinitely more durable than the breaking garbage weapons of BotW, so I didn’t have to mod durability in.
It is a fine line, like in Minecraft durability obviously makes sense, so it makes sense that other games try to emulate that. But then look at Stardew Valley, one of the most popular mods is the one that stops fences from degrading because repairing them is tedious.
Can you make fences out of stone or metal, or just wood, in SV? Because I recall Harvest Moon DS allowed you to make stone fences, which were a lot more likely to survive hurricanes and snowstorms
I don’t like durability mechanics when its clearly there just to waste your time or money or whatever. Any game that makes you do more hiking to repair benches than fighting is either getting a thumbs down or I’m going to download a mod.
Breath of the Wild is generally pretty good about letting you explore your own way. For example, the exposition ghost at the start explicitly acknowledges you could go straight to the final boss after leaving the tutorial area if you want, and there are plenty of ways a determined player can reach areas faster than the typical progression routes would take them.
But my goodness the pitiful weapon durability made me want to avoid combat. I distinctly remember coming across a white lionel relatively early and determining I shouldn’t bother trying to fight simply because I didn’t have enough weapons to get through its health bar.
Yup. I played through BotW always holding onto things I thought were good because the stupid durability mechanic made me hoard stuff.
When I started TotK I decided to turn durability off and see if I enjoyed more and I absolutely did. Made the game way better. The only thing that broke was some balancing around crafted weapons. For example you can take a stick and slap a horn on it and get a very powerful, but brittle, weapon. With durability off it just becomes a very powerful weapon, which pretty much matches or beats any proper weapon you can find. If you think that’s too hacky you can just make a rule for yourself not to craft things like that.
Many games have gone through this and time and time again scarcity makes people not use things. In Witcher 2 you had to craft potions manually by collecting all the ingredients each time. In Witcher 3 they just replenish after a rest if you have alcohol on you. 2 is more realistic, but the work involved (and the fact that you had to drink them before combat started) made them too much of a pain and I just went without. In 3 you can simply use them and not worry.
I played BotW with 4x durability mod and it was soooo much better.
I expected to do the same for TotK, but the fusion system made things infinitely more durable than the breaking garbage weapons of BotW, so I didn’t have to mod durability in.
It is a fine line, like in Minecraft durability obviously makes sense, so it makes sense that other games try to emulate that. But then look at Stardew Valley, one of the most popular mods is the one that stops fences from degrading because repairing them is tedious.
I would totally be up for requiring more resources to craft a tool to not have it degrade ever.
Can you make fences out of stone or metal, or just wood, in SV? Because I recall Harvest Moon DS allowed you to make stone fences, which were a lot more likely to survive hurricanes and snowstorms