Current Events > Breakable weapons are fucking stupid

(+) Yeah! (+)

Lamps aren't stupid.
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The fact that some random hedge knight has a good chance of breaking Excalibur in half will forever keep Final Fantasy Tactics from being the amazing game people claim it to be.
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GeneralKenobi85 posted...

UrCa1988 posted...

Weapon breaking in BotW holds it back from being a great game to me IMO. It adds nothing to the game other than artificially making enemies more difficult by giving them more powerful versions of weapons that will break for you almost immediately so you can't take advantage of them.

Did you actually play BOTW? You get some pretty decent mileage out of the high tier weapons.

Yes, I'm playing through it right now. I don't like the system and even higher tier stuff like dragonbone breaks extremely quickly which makes fighting bokos and moblins seem pointless. It doesn't make me interested to fight things when all it does is take my resources from me to maybe get an improvement. When the majority of the game is littered with little things designed to take your weapons from you and no way to effectively replenish your stock outside of knowing where good stuff spawns, it's not a very good system IMO.
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I know when I play Death Road to Canada I always avoid weapons that break.
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Blackstar110 posted...

I normally hate durability but I actually liked it in BotW. Just the sheer quantity of items meant I never really struggled.

The drop rate in BotW is so high you would be drowning in weapons if they didn't break. I would like to see the durability, don't have to increase or repair, but I'd like to see it.

Generally I do hate durability. It's a mechanic that only works in limited inventories, which is also annoying. Fire Emblem's inventory is less limited, but it still means rare weapons can't be used cause they'll break. They should at least have a good repair mechanic, even if it's expensive.

I think the worst is mystery dungeon and rogue-like games, where limited inventory is a major mechanic and a lot of them make you carry food too. I don't like hunger systems either, BotW did a great job with cooking though. It would be nice if it had a similar weapon crafting/repair system.
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BOTW is perfect

I like it. It makes using your weapon a choice that can have permanent consequences. That helps with gameplay immersion. BOTW started to go downhill for me once they introduced the Master Get Out of Jail Free Sword.

wah_wah_wah posted...

I like it. It makes using your weapon a choice that can have permanent consequences. That helps with gameplay immersion. BOTW started to go downhill for me once they introduced the Master Get Out of Jail Free Sword.

Well as far as the Master Sword goes, it's, optional, and there are plenty of better weapons than it. The fact that it doesn't break isn't all that hyped up, because it does still have a cool down period after using it enough. There are weapons everywhere anyway and it's not that all that great
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UrCa1988 posted...

GeneralKenobi85 posted...

UrCa1988 posted...

Weapon breaking in BotW holds it back from being a great game to me IMO. It adds nothing to the game other than artificially making enemies more difficult by giving them more powerful versions of weapons that will break for you almost immediately so you can't take advantage of them.

Did you actually play BOTW? You get some pretty decent mileage out of the high tier weapons.

Yes, I'm playing through it right now. I don't like the system and even higher tier stuff like dragonbone breaks extremely quickly which makes fighting bokos and moblins seem pointless. It doesn't make me interested to fight things when all it does is take my resources from me to maybe get an improvement. When the majority of the game is littered with little things designed to take your weapons from you and no way to effectively replenish your stock outside of knowing where good stuff spawns, it's not a very good system IMO.

There are so many high quality weapons lying around that the main issue is running out of inventory slots. There were a number if moments where I probably could have filled up my whole inventory with Royal Claymores, but I didn't because I wanted a bit of variety. Still usually carried 3-4 of those. Royal weapons and elemental ones have good durability. Dragonbone and Lynel weapons break faster, but they're still good enough.

I get not liking the concept of breakable weapons, but there are so many good weapons you find in BOTW simply by playing the game.
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As for BOTW, be careful with Royal gear. Some of it is actually quite fragile.

I don't mind durability but sometimes it shows when a game is built around it. BOTW kind of makes you not want to fight unless enemies drop something equal or better. I simply bomb fodder enemies personally. If a nice club drops, I'll take it and break it on the bigger enemies.
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Kinda agree, kinda don't.

Under the right circumstances, it can be great. Under the wrong cirumstances, it can be terrible.

TBH the cases where it's great are purely hypothetical. They always give you unique weapons that degrade, or don't let you grind fir money, or any number of other terrible decisions.
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TheMarthKoopa posted...

Darklit_Minuet posted...

That's one of the reasons I could never get into Fire Emblem. It just has all the shit I hate in gaming, all wrapped up in one package. Breakable weapons, permadeath, split inventories, tons of missable characters.

So would you rather Fire Emblem just be a visual novel? Because strategy games don't work if there is no resource management, no penalty for death, no effort required to get more troops. And I don't get what you mean with split inventories because how would that even work otherwise.

Literally every other SRPG doesn't need those things, or handles them in better ways. Plus, characters being optional and being able to die just makes it so they can't be relevant to the plot - the story has to make sense with or without them. Which is one of the problems I have with FFT actually, all the story characters no longer matter once they join your team. However it's still a great title.

Take a good look at Final Fantasy Tactics - permadeath gives you a three turn buffer to revive your units, inventories are shared (using Item allows people access to all your potions and such), and equipment breaking can only be performed by abilities which you can null with a passive. If you're worried about losing your Excalibur, you can equip Maintenance and it'll be indestructable. Or stock up a bunch of them from the post game superdungeon. Whatever works for you. There are workarounds to all these problems.

Disgaea has literally none of those things, and yet it's an amazing SRPG series. No permadeath, everyone shares the same item menu, and nothing will destroy your absurdly powerful equipment you create.

Devil Survivor is yet another SRPG series without any of these problems. It does have permadeath but it's plot-based permadeath, if you mess around when you know someone is about to die, they'll die. If you do the right thing, they don't. Deaths in this game have meaning though, as there's only a few characters that can die, it tends to unlock different battles going from that point forward, and locks off certain endings if you don't save certain people. Thus avoiding my biggest problem with games with permadeath, story irrelevance.

In none of these games do you have to restart the entire map because some douchebag got a lucky crit on you and permanently killed off a character. These games all have strategy, resource management in different ways, and do have effort to get new party members up to par or unlock certain characters.

the penalty for letting units die is the fact that it's harder to beat the level when you're low on units
death doesn't have to be permanent to be a hinderance

Illuminoius posted...

the penalty for letting units die is the fact that it's harder to beat the level when you're low on units
death doesn't have to be permanent to be a hinderance

Yeah, this too. You can have consequences without making them permanent.

barrows in runescape handled this perfectly
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Its REAL consequences. Like having to switch to one of your many duplicates.
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I disagree.

If it's a role playing game period I like it.
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DuranOfForcena posted...

breakable? yeah. weapons that can get worn down and need repair or sharpening? that's fine by me.

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Durability really hampered my enjoyment of BotW.

All they had to do was leave the MS unbreakable with no limit at the low 30 for those that didn't want to fuck around with the shit mechanic and got more utility from fucking everything up in their path. It just encouraged you to walk around the enemies instead.

They had a second chance to do this with a fucking paid DLC and they still fucked it up. They made a trial that really required good mastery of the system. The least they could have done after all that was leave out the shitty 10 minute time limit. You know, because it was restored to its fucking full power and shouldn't be limited anymore. Fucked up the lore.

Some people swear the lack of durability would have broken the game because it encouraged you to explore. I was already gonna explore and after realizing early on that chests were pretty much useless, that was never even a factor. They could have filled it up with so many other things and not had the shitty system.
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It works just fine in Dark Souls
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Permadeath actually makes games less deep strategically.

It stops being "uh oh Seth died how are we gonna pull through this fight" and becomes "uh oh Seth died time to reset."

And yes, I picked Seth on purpose lol.
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DevsBro posted...

Permadeath actually makes games less deep strategically.

It stops being "uh oh Seth died how are we gonna pull through this fight" and becomes "uh oh Seth died time to reset."

And yes, I picked Seth on purpose lol.

Ye this too

DevsBro posted...

Permadeath actually makes games less deep strategically.

It stops being "uh oh Seth died how are we gonna pull through this fight" and becomes "uh oh Seth died time to reset."

And yes, I picked Seth on purpose lol.

"My units can be permanently killed, therefore I do not care about playing strategically to keep them alive"

"My units freely come back when killed, therefore I do care about playing strategically"

How does that even begin to make sense

Both BOTW and Dead Rising would be completely different games without durability and both have the same sort of concept as to why it's there. Weapons are a consumable to be used strategically. You're encouraged to use everything from the crappy weapons to use in easy to handle situations and if you're desperate and great weapons for when you need them.

Not every game needs to be a brainless hack and slash when it comes to weapons.

I don't see much point to those gradual repair mechanics in the Bethesda games and The Witcher. They just felt like a nuisance and didn't really encourage me to do anything different outside of making the trip to repair my gear constantly.
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Darmik posted...

Both BOTW and Dead Rising would be completely different games without durability and both have the same sort of concept as to why it's there. Weapons are a consumable to be used strategically. You're encouraged to use everything from the crappy weapons to use in easy to handle situations and if you're desperate and great weapons for when you need them.

Funny you bring up Dead Rising: anyone who played it with any sort of efficiency learned about mini chainsaws comboed with multiple books in order to make them last nearly forever, which didn't detract from the game in pretty much any way. The game was arguably at its best when you could ignore having to pick up weapons because it freed you up to actually explore the important part of the game: managing the time to rescue survivors, kill psychopaths, and advance the story.
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UrCa1988 posted...

Funny you bring up Dead Rising: anyone who played it with any sort of efficiency learned about mini chainsaws comboed with multiple books in order to make them last nearly forever, which didn't detract from the game in pretty much any way. The game was arguably at its best when you could ignore having to pick up weapons because it freed you up to actually explore the important part of the game: managing the time to rescue survivors, kill psychopaths, and advance the story.

Well it did in a way. It made the game overall piss easy and it meant you had no reason to use any of the other hundreds of weapons. But it was a hidden technique that required some work to earn. Most players wouldn't figure it out themselves.
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LordMarshal posted...

I hate the realism argument because in those games it usually means im carrying a bunch of weapons. Yeah its realistic im carrying around 5 broadswords....

Also yeah, I hate durability too :<
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Darmik posted...

UrCa1988 posted...

Funny you bring up Dead Rising: anyone who played it with any sort of efficiency learned about mini chainsaws comboed with multiple books in order to make them last nearly forever, which didn't detract from the game in pretty much any way. The game was arguably at its best when you could ignore having to pick up weapons because it freed you up to actually explore the important part of the game: managing the time to rescue survivors, kill psychopaths, and advance the story.

Well it did in a way. It made the game overall piss easy and it meant you had no reason to use any of the other hundreds of weapons. But it was a hidden technique that required some work to earn. Most players wouldn't figure it out themselves.

The game itself was already easy given you had the right weapons (again, mini chainsaws), the books just made it so you didn't need to go back to pick them up over and over. There's nothing broken about making the weapon last forever, it just made you detour less. Even before people learn about stacking books, it's obvious the chainsaws are far better than any other weapon, even more so because the game respawns them infinitely when you leave the screen so you could just take a few minutes to fill your slots with them and accomplish the same thing (albeit less efficiently).
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UrCa1988 posted...

The game itself was already easy given you had the right weapons (again, mini chainsaws), the books just made it so you didn't need to go back to pick them up over and over. There's nothing broken about making the weapon last forever, it just made you detour less. Even before people learn about stacking books, it's obvious the chainsaws are far better than any other weapon, even more so because the game respawns them infinitely when you leave the screen so you could just take a few minutes to fill your slots with them and accomplish the same thing (albeit less efficiently).

Sure. I do think the game was most fun just using whatever was lying around in the environment but most bosses were a bit frustrating like that. The first game wasn't really balanced that well weapon wise.

But the sequel made it so that you could made a whole bunch of combo weapons instead. There was no uber weapon that was way better than everything else. Which was overall the better system I think.
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Darmik posted...

But the sequel made it so that you could made a whole bunch of combo weapons instead. There was no uber weapon that was way better than everything else. Which was overall the better system I think.

Knife gloves? Easy to make using materials available right outside the safehouse, last a ton of hits so as long as you aren't wasting them. The game gives you the combo for those within the starting segment of the mall and most people end up using them the entire game because of how easy they are to acquire through normal gameplay. Even though it did have "fairer" weapon degradation, the system was better because it didn't burden you with trying to replace your weapons; it had conveniently marked spots on your map that might as well have said "go here for a cool weapon that deals a lot of damage."
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UrCa1988 posted...

Darmik posted...

But the sequel made it so that you could made a whole bunch of combo weapons instead. There was no uber weapon that was way better than everything else. Which was overall the better system I think.

Knife gloves? Easy to make using materials available right outside the safehouse, last a ton of hits so as long as you aren't wasting them. The game gives you the combo for those within the starting segment of the mall and most people end up using them the entire game because of how easy they are to acquire through normal gameplay. Even though it did have "fairer" weapon degradation, the system was better because it didn't burden you with trying to replace your weapons; it had conveniently marked spots on your map that might as well have said "go here for a cool weapon that deals a lot of damage."

I had a few I cycled around IIRC. Even the nailed baseball bat was quite good. And I spent my time collecting weapons trying to build new combos.

Dead Rising 3 made it worse when they just fed you the combo weapons in safe houses. Ruined a lot of the appeal of them. I think DR4 does the same thing to the point where you can't even pick up random crap anymore. Sometimes it was fun just tossing a pie in a zombies face.
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Darmik posted...

I had a few I cycled around IIRC. Even the nailed baseball bat was quite good. And I spent my time collecting weapons trying to build new combos.

I always had knife gloves on me for psycho killing, they were just too damn good at it to not always carry a pair. Workbenches being so common also helped keep your stockpile of weapons up since, like I said, it might as well be a "good weapon here" sign.

Darmik posted...

Dead Rising 3 made it worse when they just fed you the combo weapons in safe houses. Ruined a lot of the appeal of them. I think DR4 does the same thing to the point where you can't even pick up random crap anymore. Sometimes it was fun just tossing a pie in a zombies face.

For me, DR3 wasn't ruined by having safehouses dispense weapons, it sucked because they all but eliminated survivors and psychopaths so you had practically nothing to use them on. For a zombie game, DR has always been interesting in that the zombies never particularly mattered, so when the main use of the weapons was to kill pointless mooks, that's where the appeal was lost for me.
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