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[TransTrender]

It was the worst part of an otherwise pretty great game.
Not perfect but I'm hoping TotK addresses them. My biggest gripes aside from the weapon system was the real lack of story beats and side quests, then the Korok seed capacity upgrade system. The weapon system was by far, an extremely large margin to the next gripe the worst part of that game.
Jesus.

Edit: Oh yeah and for the most part the dungeons were rather lame and tame. Loved the master trials or wherever they were. Same with Eventide. I guess the weapons system works best in curated form like these.

 

[Zannegan]

It looked like combining a stick with a rock created a significantly more sturdy weapon. If you have options like that lying around everywhere, then I really won't mind durability this time around.

In fact, I could see an Eventide Isle-esque challenge where you lose all your equipment and armor and have to run around crafting rudimentary weapons (or even vehicles) to fight off a huge boss that can oneshot you.

 

[kubricks]

I hate it at first but once I realized that's how the games wants me to play, ie, use those weapons break it then swap, it kinda clicked and I don't hate it as much.

 

[nightmare-slain]

Good thing is that if you didn't like it in BOTW then you know you don't need to waste your time playing TOTK. Nah who am I kidding? People will still cry about it even after 6 years.

 

[Sakura]

There is little reason to fight anything in the game other than the bosses, so I didn't really care.

 

[ironmang]

Weapon durability in a 60+ hour game is not my idea of fun. Then add on a lack of traditional dungeons and the whole game is a hard no for me.

 

[scydrex]

Hated it with all my guts.

 

[FoxMcChief]

It didn’t bother me. The only two options are dumb.

 

[lachesis]

I didn't mind - but I would have loved if I could "repair" it on the spot or at home, or whatnot. Because those weapons were so galore, and I generally avoided battles while traversing...
But it did bother me when I was chopping wood or collecting stuff. Kinda hope it would only break in battle situation?

 

[420bits]

It was 10/10 turds and made me quit the game 15hours or so in.

I don't mind durability in games when its done right, this was a galaxy away from being close to right.

 

[Gallard]

It's not a toggle you can just switch off - Nintendo would have to rebalance the whole game's weapon economy. Why ever go back to a weaker sword once you get a better one? Why ever use a regular bow and arrow when you could have a quad bow that multiplied your arrows by 4? As soon as you pick up the first fire wand from a downed wizzrobe, all your flaming needs would be taken care of forever. No need for fire arrows, or flint stones, or igniting fire chus, or courting lightning. Just swing your infinite firewand. See? The weapons in BOTW flowed in easily and freely to counteract their short durability. Every enemy that died dropped weapons - and I enjoyed the aspect of looting or stealing a late-game weapon way earlier than I was supposed to and adapting to the environment.

The reverse of that is Elden Ring. You can get infinite weapon durability. BUT - no more picking up enemy weapons. No stealing weapons from an enemy camp to disarm them - no knocking it out of their hand, no throwing your weapons, no thrill of looting of an entire armory of 10 different weapons at once... The weapons you do get are carefully placed in rarer treasure chests - often at the end of a shrine. But once you get them, you get to have them forever. That's what you guys want?

 

[Nydius]

Fuck no. It was by far the worst part of the game and will be the worst part of the new one, no matter how much they try to tweak it with the superglue .. err, I mean fuse function.

There is nothing fun or engaging about being in the middle of a fight and having your weapon break, then having to thumb through a menu to grab another one, only to possibly have that one break after a few hits as well.

The whole system takes me out of the game and makes me have to worry about absolute nonsense. It rates up there with overencumbered inventory as one of the worst mechanics in games.

 

[Neilg]

It's not a toggle you can just switch off - Nintendo would have to rebalance the whole game's weapon economy.

lol people who hated the durability just want it toned down to 25%. They wouldn't need to rebalance shit with that tweak. It would just improve the game - weapons still break, but just not after every enemy.

E: maybe 10% even.
The mod to remove it that I played with was too far. But vanilla was unbearably shit.

 

[Dirk Benedict]

I can't vote, because, while initially I did not enjoy it, after spending more time with it... I still didn't, lol... but, I did begin to tolerate it to the point where I felt I finally knew the game so it wasn't a thing. The game throws tons of weapons at you and managing that shit can be cumbersome, but while it is, it's not as bad as people made it out to be, which affected me buying it sooner... never, again.

 

[Fart Knight]

I ignored most combat encounters so yeah, not a fan.

 

[SlimeGooGoo]

It was ok.

Not sure if it would be as fun without, so I'm not complaining.

 

[kurisu_1974]

I also didn't fight a lot of mobs because of it, and because you don't need to anyway as you gain nothing from fighting in this game. Found the breakable weapons and the pointless combat a weird combination. And the washed out colors but that's another thread

 

[L*][*N*K]

I hated it, I understand the whole "forces you to experiment" but once I am done experimenting and find a weapon I like or a fighting style that I enjoy I should be allowed to continue using it

 

[Kagoshima_Luke]

Didn’t have a problem with it. Reminded me of the original Halo. In that game it was common to run out of ammo, so you were constantly swapping weapons out of necessity. It kept you on your toes and kept things fresh, so I liked it.

 

[nikos]

No.

 

[GymWolf]

No, it's a shit system that makes exploration worthless.

 

[tusharngf]

hated it and then i turned off durability in emulator setting

 

[tr1p1ex]

well you weren't supposed to "like it" per se.

But it made the game more interesting because it forced you to think on your feet, scavenge more and use other weapons. It fit in with the cooking and survival aspect of the game.

 

[fuck_diggity_cunt_ingdon]

The widespread bitching about it was unnecessary.

 

[darth.shrimp]

Only slightly annoying at first, becomes a non-issue pretty fast.

I tried playing it on CEMU, a few years after finishing it on the Switch, and the lack of durability actually made the game pretty boring. Once you get the "strongest" weapon, there's no real point in exploring anywhere anymore...

 

[STARSBarry]

The best part of the Master Sword DLC was the fact it added some actual well constructed combat challange and as a reward mitigated the shitty weapon break system.

Nintendo literally created a problem which they then turned around and sold you the solution as DLC.

If the weapon break system is so core to the experience why let the player just buy DLC to remove it?

 

[NeonGhost]

 

[ADiTAR]

I didn't mind it at all, I also liked that you throw something that's about to be broken to get extra damage.

 

[The Skull]

Liked the idea of it but the execution was annoying. The new fuse system might alleviate some of the frustration found in it.

 

[Marvel14]

Figure that hating BOTW weapon durability is a bit like getting annoyed that God of War and the Last of Us have you on fairly strict handrails where you can't climb or crawl under stuff that should be dead easy to and you can't explore every nook and cranny of the game world. If that is your expectation then that should murder immersion in both games.

Sure its annoying if that is your expectation of what you wanted in the game. But scratch a bit deeper and you realise that your expectation is for a different game-.maybe because of nostalgia (that unbreakable master Sword baby!) Or because of tropes from other games (leviathan axe only gets stronger for GOWs sake!)

In the end, you're free to expect and like whatever you like but I can't help feeling a bit sorry for you because your expectations and prejudices are preventing you from enjoying the game as the creators intended.

 

[mxbison]

Hated it. Could've been a legit 10/10 for me without that shit mechanic.

I really don't understand the argument of encouraging exploration, for me it did the opposite. I remember finding a cool weapon at the end of that maze thing on the small island and actually being disappointed because I knew it was gonna break if I use it.

 

[BravoZero]

I dislike weapon durability and inventory weight limits in games.
Unnecessary mechanics that distract from the game.

 

[Bragr]

This entire discussion exists to hate Zelda because it's popular.

It's just as dumb as people calling Sony games "walking simulators" or calling all the Soulsborne games "the same game".

It's a tiny fucking thing in the game you get over after 5 minutes, you can't possibly make an argument that this is a big issue. There is no way people are this petty.

People cling to this because it's console war fodder. This is Nintendo's version of the Abby incident.

 

[StueyDuck]

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo *inhale oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

 

[Portugeezer]

It was fine, but stupid for the master sword.

 

[Mozza]

The system is fine, adds a great sense of tension to multiple enemy and boss battles.

 

[Moses85]

 

[UnNamed]

Yes, it was never a big problem for me.

 

[Assaulty]

It was terrible. Completely killed any desire I had to explore for better loot and ultimately made the already empty ish world even emptier feeling. I am still baffled as to why people tout this game as one of the best open world games ever made and I suspect, were this game not Zelda, it wouldn't be.

 

[SCB3]

I liked it aside from it being on the Master Sword and Hylian Shield, those should never have any Durability or usage limits

 

[Exede]

I need a 3rd option here.

I simply don't cared much about it.

 

[Seyken]

Absolutely hated it and stopped playing because of it. I'm the kind of guy that hoards items in RPGs and avoids using them thinking that I may have use for them later on, only to eventually find myself at the final boss with an inventory packed to the brim with items that I will no longer have any use for.

So imagine my dismay when I find out that THE WHOLE WEAPON SYSTEM is based around breakables. I'd just find myself using the crappier weapons in order to save up the strongest ones, or just avoiding combat all together, because it wasn't rewarding enough, actively making the game less fun to play.

Plus it doesn't give me any incentive to explore, because I know that whatever I find has a limited use. If shit didn't break, but had durability that could be restored through the use of items/ores that you find in the open world, that would have been a million times better and would have enabled them to actually place special and one of a kind weapons in the world, hell, even have more involved side quests with one of these as a reward. Absolutely baffling design choice.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk

 

[acm2000]

dying light did a good job of weapon durability, repairs, upgrades and by the time it did finally break you had newer weapons of high enough level to warrant changing anyway.

 

[DenchDeckard]

Didn't hate it, didn't love it. I had loads of awesome weapons at all times and did enjoy throwing them at enemies.

 

[cireza]

This system exists only to fill the world with stuff to pick-up.

 

[AV]

Great system. People hate it because they have OCD/FOMO and never use their strong potions in RPGs because they "might need it later". Once you get over that it's absolutely not an issue in any way.

The fact that we're still debating it 6 years later makes it one of the most interesting mechanics put into a game regardless of how divisive it is.

 

[ANDS]

What kills me about the pro durability argument is that now we're praising gameplay that is roundly dismissed in other open worlds. Overstuffed inventories and itemization that is meaningless is a recurring complaint for the open worlds of our time, but put it in a ZELDA and now it's an ingenious way to inspire the player. . . except not because most players are just avoiding the already shallow combat by just not engaging.

More, if weapons are so plentiful and your bags are always stuffed with them (and stamina food and non-metallic armor, and. . .) then why is it there to begin with. If a mechanic can be trivialized so easily then it's not a core mechanic at all and just a waste of the players time.

. . . but hey, this is all "fixed" in TEARS which has the new never before seen mechanic of combining items together that inherit the properties of the base material used to create new objects. I'm curious what names they started with before settling on FUSE: KRUFTING maybe? CAST-WERKS, ITEMSYNTHOIDS. . . so tricky coming up with names for never before seen mechanics.

 

[Spyxos]

I absolutely hated it. I can still remember several fights where I had to change the weapon at least 5 times in just one fight. Hanging around in that menu every time argh. I couldn't believe they left it in the game like that.

 

[masterkajo]

Loved it. Played the game on Master Mode the first time through and it was brutal. Loved the challenge.

BUT I agree that in TotK it should at least give some options to have like one or two weapons being made unbreakable via some powers/sidequest/shopowner. Or at least give me some repair powder that I can buy to sprinkle on a good weapon to restore it. Heck, even a blacksmith to repair a weapon before it breaks is fine. So you can get back to your favorite weapons and keep on using them. Also, up the durability a bit.

 

[darth.shrimp]

they have OCD/FOMO and never use their strong potions in RPGs because they "might need it later"

... I feel personally attacked.