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[NotLiquid]

I can't say I agree with these additions, they seem like a little too much extra tedium. I'm not really sure how they're supposed to design a Hard Mode in a good way without redesigning certain elements of the game. Having said that,

Sounds annoying as hell. Just make Link take a lot more damage and make items less effective.

This sounds just boring in comparison. You can makeshift your own difficulty by wearing less advantageous armor, so what's the point of just making a hard mode "take more damage", especially if we're supposed to be paying for what is just damage multipliers?

 

[Slythe]

People really don't want this to be a Zelda game huh

Assuming the recommendations here are regarding a challenge mode, how would this change the base of what the game is? Most of what I see in here is pretty reasonable brainstorming for a hard/survival mode. It would still be Zelda... but more difficult.

If the standard is making it like a "Zelda game" then Breath of the Wild would've never been made in the first place.

Edit: Also, a "hit harder" mode would be very disappointing. If I'm playing the game through again on a hard mode I want to have to account for new challenges other than slightly higher damage intake. This is the lazy way of increasing difficulty, and is not particularly engaging or interesting.

 

[maxcriden]

Hard mode: parry uses stamina meter, some enemies now come in packs, one or more new enemy types introduced that are spread around the world map (let's say darknuts and wizzrobes), enemies have double health.

Aren't

Spoiler

wizzrobes the fire and lightning rod jumping dudes?

 

[SatoAilDarko]

I'm not sure how much hard mode being paid content will expand its feature set.

It isn't like hard mode is purchasable on its own. It's only one part of a $20 pass the big portion of which is the new content in Winter.

Nintendo could simply view hard mode as a bit of a bonus like the starting, cheats, Cave of Trials and new map feature.

I mean hard mode is listed after the Cave of Trials on the Expansion pass graphic.

 

[sanstesy]

Hard mode should nerf bomb arrows/arrows in general hard. You can easily cheese the whole game because they do so much damage.

 

[SmokedMeat]

Thank God some of you don't design games.

I don't want a thirst meter or stamina bar for every little action.

 

[Boem]

I agree op. We have inns for sleeping and no reason to use them. Half the food we eat raw cause there's no reason not to.

People who want a "hit harder" Hard mode are missing the point.

I think nobody here just wants a 'hit harder' hard mode, considering they're asking money for it. People are suggesting alternative ideas - just enemies doing more damage wouldn't be enough for me to pay up, and having hunger/sleep cycles just sounds tedious to me and wouldn't get me to buy it either.

The people that are missing the point according to you don't exist in this thread as far as I can see. People want something a bit different, just perhaps not the exact idea explained in the OP.

 

[ahoyhoy]

Do I really need to answer this? You can't just warp to a shop and buy arrows/supplies on a whim, you have to improvise in the field. Can't teleport to a pot so you have to burn your food on a campsite and barely scrape by after an enemy encounter goes sideways.

Not to mention just getting to know the map better itself, planning/marking routes on the map. It's a huge world with a million ways to traverse it, it's a shame that it's so easy to completely bypass most of it once you have plenty of warp points.

I know it probably sounds tedious to some, but like with survival mode in Fallout 4, it can totally change the way you experience the world for the better, and with a game with so much interactivity with the world I think it's a pairing that would work wonders.

The problem is that this sounds less like "Hard Mode" and more like "Tedious Mode".

I don't think the world is really that jam-packed and traversal is fast enough to really justify removing fast travel. I think there are plenty of other changes you can make to eliminate some of the problems you listed, like limiting the amount of ammo sellers in town, getting rid of pots near Warp points, limiting the amount of Warp points in general, making it so you can only save at Warp points etc.

 

[ViolentP]

I support this. Game is shines in its exploration but lacks greatly in its challenge.

 

[Boem]

I'm not sure how much hard mode being paid content will expand its feature set.

It isn't like hard mode is purchasable on its own. It's only one part of a $20 pass the big portion of which is the new content in Winter.

Nintendo could simply view hard mode as a bit of a bonus like the starting, cheats, Cave of Trials and new map feature.

I mean hard mode is listed after the Cave of Trials on the Expansion pass graphic.

You'll be able to buy the dlc packs on their own as they come out. The $20 option is the only one right now, which is what the first bonuses are for. It's a season pass, not the only way to buy the DLC. They're two separate products and buying both gives you a bonus, it's not one product. Considering the second pack adds a new dungeon, new story and new challenges I'd expect a bit more from the first pack than just more damage from enemies.

I should say 'hope' instead of 'expect'. Which is why, right now, I'm only planning on buying the second dlc pack until we know more about the first one.

 

[Forkball]

One of the things I like about BotW is that it implements survival mechanics, but doesn't make them the principal obstacle. You have to utilize the environment, manage temperature, and cook food for buffs, but you don't starve to death every five minutes or spend most of your time collecting resources just to make it to the next step. It distills the fun part of survival games without all the baggage. I know there are some people who like brutally hardcore survival experiences where your save file is at risk if your character sweats himself into dehydration, but for me none of that is appealing.

 

[Gotdatmoney]

Do I really need to answer this? You can't just warp to a shop and buy arrows/supplies on a whim, you have to improvise in the field. Can't teleport to a pot so you have to burn your food on a campsite and barely scrape by after an enemy encounter goes sideways.

People do this? This game does not require much resource management. You remove fast travel all it does is extend the game in extremely annoying ways. It doesn't make the game harder.

Not to mention just getting to know the map better itself, planning/marking routes on the map. It's a huge world with a million ways to traverse it, it's a shame that it's so easy to completely bypass most of it once you have plenty of warp points.

Fast travel doesnt exist in these big open world games to make it easier. It exists because there gets to be a point where back and forth navigation is tedious.

I know it probably sounds tedious to some,

It is tedious.

but like with survival mode in Fallout 4, it can totally change the way you experience the world for the better, and with a game with so much interactivity with the world I think it's a pairing that would work wonders.

You don't have to use fast travel if uou think it ruins the game. But it doesn't make the game harder. Zelda's core is not so difficult that this is anything but annoying.

 

[Neoweee]

There is already a thread for discussing Hard Mode, but Hunger/Thirst/Sleep are such completely and utterly trivial to manage that adding meters for those three things that need to be sated.

The problem is eating TOO MUCH, not too little.

You can already make fire anywhere to pass time, too.

 

[three_muffins]

Pretty sure Nintendo is going to limit the ability to save almost always.

 

[BGBW]

Do I really need to answer this? You can't just warp to a shop and buy arrows/supplies on a whim, you have to improvise in the field. Can't teleport to a pot so you have to burn your food on a campsite and barely scrape by after an enemy encounter goes sideways.

Not to mention just getting to know the map better itself, planning/marking routes on the map. It's a huge world with a million ways to traverse it, it's a shame that it's so easy to completely bypass most of it once you have plenty of warp points.

I know it probably sounds tedious to some, but like with survival mode in Fallout 4, it can totally change the way you experience the world for the better, and with a game with so much interactivity with the world I think it's a pairing that would work wonders.

As someone who has regularly walked from one corner of the map to another, this sounds like a horrible idea.

Sometimes you just want to warp, especially to repeat locations like the

Spoiler

fairy fountains

or

Spoiler

dye shop

where you might not want to trek the same path over and over.

Why not simply remove fixed shops and force players to only buy from the travelling merchants instead? They are not as easy to warp to and you could even make it harder by changing up their routes so you can't even learn their daily pattern.

 

[ffejeromdiks]

The problem is that this sounds less like "Hard Mode" and more like "Tedious Mode".

Does it have to be for everyone? If it sounds tedious there's no one forcing you to play it.

 

[UncleSporky]

Do I really need to answer this? You can't just warp to a shop and buy arrows/supplies on a whim, you have to improvise in the field. Can't teleport to a pot so you have to burn your food on a campsite and barely scrape by after an enemy encounter goes sideways.

Not to mention just getting to know the map better itself, planning/marking routes on the map. It's a huge world with a million ways to traverse it, it's a shame that it's so easy to completely bypass most of it once you have plenty of warp points.

I know it probably sounds tedious to some, but like with survival mode in Fallout 4, it can totally change the way you experience the world for the better, and with a game with so much interactivity with the world I think it's a pairing that would work wonders.

Zelda isn't Fallout 4.

You're not going to accidentally wander too close to an enemy camp and be taking heavy assault rifle fire from several angles and have moblin suiciders running up with mini-nukes. You're not going to have mole-rats and scorpions bursting up from the ground hitting you with unavoidable damage unless you take steps to deal with them.

What happens in Zelda is one of the enemies spots you and blows their horn, alerting the rest, you keep running, a few of them chase you and can't catch up, and the ones shooting arrows miss every shot.

Because I do that right now when I'm not fast traveling.

When skeletons rise up from the ground I keep walking. Even when fast enemies like lizalfos run up, I keep running. The game is not designed to provide the player with inescapable challenges/sources of damage as you navigate the world. As a result, no fast travel would just be inducing tedium. It would encourage exploration, as you're walking somewhere and notice a cool thing in the distance you're compelled to check out, but it has nothing to do with challenge.

 

[ahoyhoy]

Does it have to be for everyone? If it sounds tedious there's no one forcing you to play it.

Well there's only going to be one Hard Mode, so ideally it would be something I want to do rather than something tedious.

 

[SatoAilDarko]

You'll be able to buy the dlc packs on their own as they come out. The $20 option is the only one right now, which is what the first bonuses are for. It's a season pass, not the only way to buy the DLC. They're two separate products and buying both gives you a bonus, it's not one product. Considering the second pack adds a new dungeon, new story and new challenges I'd expect a bit more from the first pack than just more damage from enemies.

I should say 'hope' instead of 'expect'. Which is why, right now, I'm only planning on buying the second dlc pack until we know more about the first one.

I mean in Nintendo's PR they said specifically:

Content packs cannot be purchased individually.

If they changed that they would upset the people who bought the expansion pass thinking they might as well do it now since they would have to pay $20 later for the winter content.

 

[schlynch]

I'm with you op. Would make things definitely more exciting.

 

[BGBW]

Does it have to be for everyone? If it sounds tedious there's no one forcing you to play it.

Some people are hoping for more challenge without it being made extra tedious.

Also, one would assume that many would be playing hard mode after beating the game at least once so they've likely already spent 100s of hours in this world already and not being able to warp whenever you want because now you fancy tackling a sidequest on the other side of the map sure sounds like a quick way to kill ones motivation to play.

 

[AtomicShroom]

You're a masochist, OP. I want Hard Mode to be legit fun challenge, not an increase in tedium. I don't want the challenge to be me not dying from boredom and annoyance.

 

[Weltall Zero]

The problem with hard mode is that everyone has their own ideas for it and 90% of them have a greater impact on quality of life than on difficulty itself. I want an actually harder game, not an annoying game.

Personally I think the difficulty of the game during the first third is fine as it is. It's only after you get and upgrade armor, and especially get the chosen one powers, that the game becomes paradoxically much easier late game. I would nerf armor values and the two strongest powers (

Spoiler

Mipha

and especially

Spoiler

Urbosa's

), but I would nerf them in the base game, not even necessarily in hard mode.

Does it have to be for everyone? If it sounds tedious there's no one forcing you to play it.

Shitty game design is shitty game design. "Not for everyone" is a piss poor excuse for bad design.

 

[TheCanisDirus]

Sounds more like annoying mode.

This. BOTW is already riding a fine line in terms of stamina, mobility, difficulty etc. It's pretty much perfect. Add tedious stuff wont be fun.

 

[Camoxide]

No fast travel while in combat

 

[K' Dash]

Well, game is ramping up difficulty for me, I have 18 hearts and I'm getting my ass handed to me, just when you feel comfortable attacking a settlement head on, they introduce a new kind of bokoblin that can 2 shot you and arrows do 5 heart damage, bokoblin will flank you and attack your back as you're fighting the ones in front of you.

Also, 60+ attack weapons barely do any damage to them.

I'm back to stealth mode.

 

[ahoyhoy]

The problem with hard mode is that everyone has their own ideas for it and 90% of them have a greater impact on quality of life than on difficulty itself. I want an actually harder game, not an annoying game.

Personally I think the difficulty of the game during the first third is fine as it is. It's only after you get and upgrade armor, and especially get the chosen one powers, that the game becomes paradoxically much easier late game. I would nerf armor values and the two strongest powers (

Spoiler

Mipha

and especially

Spoiler

Urbosa's

), but I would nerf them in the base game, not even necessarily in hard mode.

Power/skill creep is a real problem that great games, especially the Soulsbourne games, still struggle with.

Even if they make Link weaker in the later game, the player themselves will have progressed in skill enough to exploit the mechanics enough to make most repeated encounters trivial. The only way to counter players learning the patterns of enemies is to introduce more enemy types or change the conditions of the fights themselves. The former requires more development time than Hard Mode likely will get and the latter might feel cheap in an open world game depending on the implementation.

 

[Dagobert Duck]

The problem with hard mode is that everyone has their own ideas for it and 90% of them have a greater impact on quality of life than on difficulty itself. I want an actually harder game, not an annoying game.

Personally I think the difficulty of the game during the first third is fine as it is. It's only after you get and upgrade armor, and especially get the chosen one powers, that the game becomes paradoxically much easier late game. I would nerf armor values and the two strongest powers (

Spoiler

Mipha

and especially

Spoiler

Urbosa's

), but I would nerf them in the base game, not even necessarily in hard mode.



Shitty game design is shitty game design. "Not for everyone" is a piss poor excuse for bad design.

I only got

Spoiler

miphas power

as a power right now, but how should it be nerfed? it already has a 30 minute cool off period which is a lot...

 

[SuperSonic1305]

Drinking water and sleeping dont sound difficult or fun, they sound like chores.

So they would fit right in with the climbing.

 

[Kyne]

• no fast travel
• stamina bar used while attacking
• hunger meter; when it runs out you start losing hearts (at a pretty slow rate)

honestly these 3 things alone are pretty tame and would change up the game pretty radically.

 

[Haunted]

never at any point during breath of the wild did I feel that the game needed more annoying micromanagement in menus to be better

 

[ffejeromdiks]

I only got

Spoiler

miphas power

as a power right now, but how should it be nerfed? it already has a 30 minute cool off period which is a lot...

It's crazy overpowered. Giving you an extra life plus a huge extra reserve of hearts every 30 minutes makes everything insanely easy. Especially seeing how its often the first ability most players get, it kinda cheapens the rest of the game. Luckily you can deactivate it which is pretty cool.

 

[burgerdog]

Sounds extremely tedious, this sort of stuff sounds awesome on paper and is usually awful in game. Do you guys remember malaria in far cry 3? Screw that shit.

 

[Skellig Gra]

That sound absolutely horrible. I honestly have no interest in hard mode.

 

[Deku Tree]

I just hope they add hard mode as an NG+.

I have no interest in re-collecting everything on a new save file.

 

[ffejeromdiks]

Sounds extremely tedious, this sort of stuff sounds awesome on paper and is usually awful in game. Do you guys remember malaria in far cry 3? Screw that shit.

I don't know man, Far Cry 2 was pretty friggin cool for it's time. I think it got a bad rep at the time, but you'll still hear people praising it's survival gameplay even now. Honestly it even has more than a few parallels with BotW, I wouldn't mind some of it's punishing mechanics making it's way into the game.

 

[Haunted]

One idea I liked were gold enemy variants (or something past silver, anyway).

I'm not sure how much hard mode being paid content will expand its feature set.

It isn't like hard mode is purchasable on its own. It's only one part of a $20 pass the big portion of which is the new content in Winter.

Nintendo could simply view hard mode as a bit of a bonus like the starting, cheats, Cave of Trials and new map feature.

I mean hard mode is listed after the Cave of Trials on the Expansion pass graphic.

I think this is likely.

The 3 treasure chests on the Plateau were complete throwaway garbage and they get their own bullet points in that graphic.

 

[Neoweee]

I just hope they add hard mode as an NG+.

I have no interest in re-collecting everything on a new save file.

What's the point, then? You would completely and utterly stomp everything, unless they made it nearly impossible to play off of NG.

It's crazy overpowered. Giving you an extra life plus a huge extra reserve of hearts every 30 minutes makes everything insanely easy. Especially seeing how its often the first ability most players get, it kinda cheapens the rest of the game. Luckily you can deactivate it which is pretty cool.

It isn't even among the most broken things in the game, IMO.

In order of more broken things that are bigger problems than Grace,

- Mid-combat eating
- Armor upgrades (Rank 3 and beyond) / Heavy Armor stat progression comparaed to Medium Armor
- +Defense buffs
- Flurry attacks too easy to trigger against some enemies and attacks.
- Holding up to four fairies at a time

 

[Deku Tree]

What's the point, then? You would completely and utterly stomp everything, unless they made it nearly impossible to play off of NG.

So you want to collect Korok seeds again?

Hearts are just scaling. They can ramp up the scaling so you wouldn't just stomp everything. If I wanted that kind of hard mode I can just sell all my hearts to the statue so that I have three and get one shot by everything.

 

[silva1991]

This is just too tedious.

Might as well add pee and diarrhea systems too right?

 

[boxter432]

far in, the game is "hard" enough as most of my encounters are like 2 dark moblins and 4 silver bokoblins with other archers shooting elemental arrows. silver bokos take a lot of hits so the encounters are long enough now, any harder would be frustrating to me.

survival checklist doesn't sound fun either. Not sure the solution, BOTW surprises at every turn, hopefully Nintendo has another trick up its sleeve that blows us away.

 

[Neoweee]

So you want to collect Korok seeds again?

Hearts are just scaling. They can ramp up the scaling so you wouldn't just stomp everything. If I wanted that kind of hard mode I can just sell all my hearts to the statue so that I have three and get one shot by everything.

I've only collected about 200 seeds, and I'm not going for a full completion until Hard Mode is out.

You only need a few hundred to max out your inventory, so for the love of god don't go full scavenge mode.

 

[A Serious Man]

- No fast travel.
- Random enemy modifiers (deals double dmg, explodes on death, poisons, etc.).
- Permadeath.

 

[explodet]

I'm telling you man.
Three words.

Random Overworld Wallmasters.

 

[thechristoph]

It has always rubbed me the wrong way when people say things like "this game is too easy, you can make a meal that gives you way too many hearts". Not just for Zelda, but any game. If a certain mechanic makes a given game too easy for you, then don't do it. Give yourself a self-imposed challenge.

Do a three heart run and don't get any stamina upgrades. Don't cook any buff meals. Limit yourself to one page of basic cooked meats only. Don't get any bag upgrades. Wear only basic clothing, no armor. Don't fast travel. Make yourself go to an inn or build a campfire at least every day. Turn off the champions' powers. Boom. Hard mode.

More power to ya if you want a hardcore survival sim, but that seems boring as hell to me and I hope they go a completely different way with it.

 

[///PATRIOT]

I haven't played Zelda, can you easily escape from enemies just using fast travel?
can you fast travel to anywhere in the map?

 

[ffejeromdiks]

- No fast travel.
- Random enemy modifiers (deals double dmg, explodes on death, poisons, etc.).
- Permadeath.

I don't know about permadeath but needing to sleep at a campfire/inn to save I'd be okay with.

 

[BGBW]

I haven't played Zelda, can you easily escape from enemies just using fast travel?
can you fast travel to anywhere in the map?

You unlock warp points on the map as you explore. You can travel to these pretty much whenever.

But if you're exploring a new region, it usually just means you've gone backwards and you'll have to venture forwards again.

 

[Primethius]

I don't think this is the right way to go about the hard mode.

Personally, I think the area Nintendo can most improve upon is enemy placements, encounters and as a result, cooking/recipes as a means of heals for the hard mode.

I feel you could have the current damage values if the world was just more populated with more monsters that were tougher overall.

As it stands, there's fairly easy early game bumps you overcome that makes a lot of the enemies and subsequently, camps, trivial to tackle.

 

[bennywhatever]

Just throw in more Lynels.