In previous Zelda games I really loved to pick fights with enemies, especially in The Wind Waker (I love stealing the necklaces from Moblins and watching them be shocked about it).
But in Breath of the Wild I don't bother fighting because my weapons break.
Likewise I won't climb anything too high because it'll likely rain.
I'd also really enjoy shield surfing... if my shields wouldn't shatter into millions of pieces a few minutes later...
Do the mechanics in BotW stop you from playing how you'd like to or even having much fun?
Nope, not at all. I don't care if my gear breaks because it's extremely easy to replace them. Climbing in the rain is also easy to get around, even without Revali's Gale. That's the beauty of BotW; there's always another way to do something, and I can't think of any of these ways that aren't fun.
Yes! Very much so. BoTW's mechanics make playing it a tedious experience.
The stamina meter. I hated this in Skyward Sword and was one of my big complaints. I had hoped they would see the error of their ways and remove the meter. Link is meant to be a mighty hero and should not get out of breath like a granny! But alas it came back in all its annoyingness. In fact apart from the improvements to the world, most of the negative things from Skyward Sword made it in to BoTW.
Another bad thing they brought over from SS was breakable gear. But not only were shields breakable but now bows and worst of all swords as well! I used to like killing enemies and fighting my way through in Zelda but BoTW's weapon Breaking mechanic was so irritating that it led to me not liking to fight as each time I would get into it I would have to pause the action and break immersion in multiple instances to access the weapon menu to select a new one each time the old one broke.
A new annoying mechanic introduced was rainfall affecting your ability to climb. This was totally annoying and there was no special gear you could get to allow you to climb in the rain either which meant waiting for an age for it to stop.
I personally didn’t have a problem with weapon breaking (I would rather it not be a thing, but I was fine with it either way). What really bothered me was the fact that you had such a limited inventory space to hold all of the weapons in, and the only way to increase it is to find a bunch of korok turds by doing some incredibly lame minigames.
My other mechanic complaint was the electricity mechanic. It is SO annoying trying to fight something while dropping your equipment every 5 seconds, and I’d say about 50% of my deaths in the game were due to that.
Other than that I was mostly ok with the mechanics, as I really enjoyed stamina and think it was made even better in BotW, and rainfall never really affected me that much considering most of the time there was another way to get up each mountain.
-The environment system prevents me from using the armor I want.
-The stamina limits me from running and using certain attacks when I want.
-I can't turn off the flurry system.
-I can't "main" a favorite weapon or use whatever weapon I think is best for any given situation.
-I can't launch myself with stasis as much as I want due to durability.
-I can't skip the filler and get straight to the meat of the game.
-I can't steal from people. (Moneymaking in general is very limited, mainly to grinding.)
-I can't kill or even attack people.
There's also many ways the game discourages me from playing the way I want, i.e. being punished for fighting enemies by replacing my current gear with inferior gear. BOTW is easily the second most restrictive Open World game I've ever played, behind Xenoblade Chronicles.
Yeah, that pointless mechanic where the stable owners don't let you keep bears prevents me from playing the way I want to: with my trusty steed, a bear.
I enjoy climbing on every thing in BOTW, divine beasts? Climbed! Mountains? CLIMBED! lynels? climbed, but why the hell is there no climbing mitts to help when it rains, i ain't no city slicker y'know i wanna by grappling up mountain ranges in the stormy weather not slide down them
BotW's idea of "challenge" is "NO! You can't do that!"
Wanna climb a mountain? RAIN! can't do that
Wanna walk in the snow? WRONG ARMOR! can't do that
Wanna use that awesome new sword you worked so hard to get? BROKEN! can't do that
Wanna explore in this direction? ONE HIT KILL! can't do that
Wanna run? OUT OF STAMINA! can't do that...
Weapon Durability.
This killed my enthusiasm for the game more than anything else. I knew it was in the game before playing, but I didn't realise just how constant of an issue it would be. For the first few hours I'd not be able to make it through a fight without everything I had needing to be replaced. It was fine at first because the scavenged weapons I was replacing my gear with were on the same kind of level, but once I started getting better gear from Shrines and rarer enemies each break was a bigger hit, especially when the game was offering me nothing but Bokoblin Clubs, Tree Branches, and Rusty Swords for large chunks of the map.
I quickly got into a rhythm of avoiding combat if I had good weapons in an effort to preserve them for more dangerous enemies, enemies they would inevitably break against. When I went into a Shrine and found a Silver Longsword, I knew I would be using it in one (1) fight and then it would be gone. So I didn't fight things, as much as possible, and when I did I was never happy afterwards. Weapon durability in BotW led to me playing in a way that wasn't fun in the slightest. I'd see a camp and want to clear it out, but didn't because I knew doing so would eat into my weapons too severely and I'd just feel bad because of it. It was a damned if I do, damned if I don't situation. No matter what, I wouldn't be happy.
The lingering wound of this mechanic for me is how easily it could be fixed. @KingPollux brought one solution up before:
It's that simple. Broken weapons stay in an inventory space and you can repair them, either with some tools you carry around (make them limited use for those who enjoy the resource management aspect of weapon durability) or with blacksmiths in villages. I made a post going over ways the weapon durability could be altered so as to not utterly kill the game like it has for so many and I'll include it below. The gist is: 1. Make weapons last a bit longer, 2. Have blacksmiths in villages who can repair broken gear for rupees, 3. Have a 'special ore' item somewhere in the world (hidden behind a puzzle, guarded by an enemy, a Shrine reward, whatever) that can be used to make one weapon of your choice indestructible.
If all, or even just one, of these changes were in the game, my entire experience of BotW would have been dramatically different.
First, increase the amount of hits a weapon can perform before breaking. Simple as that. Weapons in the game were breaking every one or two fights for me. If I saw a group of three or four enemies I knew I'd lose at least one, possibly two, of my melee weapons. I do think some weapons should be more durable than others (rusty swords, for example, make sense to break faster than a soldier's claymore), but all weapons, generally, should last at least a bit longer so they don't feel as disposable.
Second, have blacksmiths located in towns and villages, maybe at the stables, too, who can repair weapons for a fee. It would fit in seamlessly with the world and provide a useful service for the player. This way you could keep weapons you like, at a cost. If a weapon breaks completely perhaps you could keep (or recover) the pieces and have it reforged, a more expensive service but one which, again, would remove the incentive to avoid combat. You're weapons will break, but you can keep them if you have the cash for it. Blacksmiths could also be used to give weapons temporary enhancements, such as sharpening a blade so it does more damage, for example. The blade will dull with use, but it would be an added dimension to combat. This would also make rupees more useful overall throughout the course of the game.
Third, include a special item, some kind of ore found only in one specific place in the world, perhaps tied to a side-quest, that can be taken to a smith and used to make any weapon of your choice indestructible. But only one. Once you've used this ore, it's gone. If the ore is located somewhere difficult to reach, or protected by powerful enemies, or the reward for a late game side-quest, the player will have plenty of time to use a wide variety of weapons before acquiring it (ostensibly the reason for weapon degeneration in the first place) and will have likely found either a specific weapon they like best, or a type, such as axes, or spears. Having one weapon you can always rely on would feel very empowering after a long adventure of weapons breaking and being repaired. And it'd give people like me, who don't like weapon degeneration, a rock to cling to.
Rain
Not as much to say about this one ("Thank god!" - Everyone, 2019). I loved climbing, thought it was a natural and powerful mechanic to include. You can't climb in the rain. And for me it rained a lot. @Azure Sage mentioned in his post that you can just find another way around, but this isn't always practical, and it's also not what I want to do. I want to climb the mountain. Rain stops me from doing that. I had one fight with a Stone Talus in the rain. Climbing on their back is the typical way to beat them, so the rain there made the fight particularly problematic. I quickly came to hate rain because it meant my options were limited. That's its function in the game, to stop you doing certain things. I didn't like it.
A quick fix would be some gear, like a pair of gloves, that can always grip, even in rain. There. I just fixed a major problem with the game a lot of people have. It was that easy. It took me -4 seconds.
The Sheer Size of the World
This one is not as direct as the others, and I appreciate that it will sound very dumb to some people. The sheer size of the game world itself altered the way I played the game in a negative manner. To explain why, I'm gonna steal more of your precious time.
My mate Neil doesn't like games like Oblivion or Fallout. His reason is because the lack of direction becomes an obstacle for him. Give him Halo and he'll be fine. Captain Keyes says get to an escape pod, so off you go. Simple. When he played Oblivion, he said he was fine until he left the sewer tutorial. Standing on the shoreline with an completely optional objective and a huge world where he could go anywhere he chose, he didn't know what to do with himself. So he just went "wherever", and never once felt like he was accomplishing anything or had any purpose. He stopped playing after a short time and avoids open world games.
BotW was the first time I had ever experienced that feeling for myself. I was impressed with the Great Plateau. The game makes it clear this is only a small portion of the world, yet it felt quite big, big enough to explore. When I got the sailcloth and left the Plateau for the first time, got my first proper look at Hyrule and just how expansive it is, the very first thought in my mind was:
"I am never going to 100% this game."
That thought was a seed that germinated over the next few hours of play. Each time I did a tower, each time I spent twenty minutes crossing a plain or climbing a mountain, only to look behind me and see the world stretch on and not stop, the seed grew. I am never going to go everywhere in this game. I am never going to see everything. There were too many directions to go, too many landmarks I wanted to visit, and the amount of choice made it all but impossible to make a choice.
Unconsciously, this influenced my decisions and responses. I wanted to make the 'right' choices. Since I was only ever going to see a portion of what the game contained, I wanted that portion to be brilliant. So every time it wasn't, it became a major blow. Every time I found a cool place only to find out it was just another Shrine, just another Korok seed, just another chest with a weapon I won't use, it was like I was getting more distressed, like I was running out of game to play. I felt this constant pressure to go to the 'right' places and do the 'right' quests, and because of that I couldn't enjoy any of it.
I understand that this might make no sense. The game is designed to create pretty much the exact opposite felling, the feeling of endless freedom and infinite decision. But for me, it was almost claustrophobic in effect. The only respite I got from this was Zora's Domain. The approach was a slog I didn't enjoy one damn second of, but the actual location itself was spectacular. It was beautiful, interesting, there were actual NPCs I could actually talk to, there was some narrative direction. It buoyed me (hurr hurr, because water, geddit?) and kept me in the game for a while longer.
Vah Ruta was the nail in the coffin. Dungeons are my favourite thing in Zelda. I didn't like Shrines because they were like individual rooms from dungeons but spread out across the map and all looked the same, boring way. I hoped the Divine Beasts would give me the dungeons I so sorely missed. Even with just four, that would be fine. Majora's Mask only has four and it's my favourite Zelda. But Vah Ruta was just a Shrine, a Shrine with a different colour scheme and an extra floor. That damn elephant was when I stopped playing. I couldn't go through the feeling of BotW for another twenty-five hours in the hope that the Gerudo town would be as entrancing as Zora's Domain, not while I knew it would take me to another glorified Shrine where any sane designer would have put a dungeon.
I had this gigantic, beautiful, enticing world, but I knew by this point that not only was I never going to see it all, there was nothing to see. So I stopped. And here we are, two years later, and I'm still disappointed about it.
Yeah, remind me again why can't we pet the dogs? Nintendo was cruel to make those pups so adorable yet withhold the ability for us to show our affection to them .
On a serious note, this discussion is raising a question for me: where is the line between a good limitation that the game imposes as a challenge, and a limitation that is simply tedious or annoying?
I'm sure the answer will vary from person to person, but it's interesting to see how many limitations people are upset with, given that BotW is the most free and open Zelda ever. The amount of stuff you can pull off with the physics and chemistry engine in this game leads to an incredible sandbox experience. Most of the time if you wanna try something in this game the answer is "yes." In fact, some people assert that the game is too open/free and not constrained enough. So it's interesting to see some of these same people turn around and then criticize the areas of the game where it does say "no," or at least imposes some limitations.
So again, I'm curious, what makes for a good limitation vs. a bad one? Where is the line between too much freedom and too much constraint?
On a serious note, this discussion is raising a question for me: where is the line between a good limitation that the game imposes as a challenge, and a limitation that is simply tedious or annoying?
1) What can the developer do with this limitation?
2) What did the developer do with this limitation?
Rules and limitations are the fundamental building blocks of games. They are tools that the game maker can use to make a game more fun. Sometimes limiting freedom is necessary, but adding limitations need not limit freedom. Indeed, it can enhance it. For example, by using barriers, you can change the free roam environment into a series of paths. Each path can potentially lead to the same destination. Each path has its own trials and rewards. By letting the player choose one of these paths, you add rewards and consequences to their freedom and thus enhance it.
With something like durability, you can utilize it in several ways, including adding survival elements to the game or creating a money sink. A money sink is good when money making is fun and a common reward. BOTW doesn't utilize durability as a survival element nor a money sink. The developers put it in there simply because other Open World games use durability, it serves no real purpose for the game, and needlessly restricts freedom.
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