You know, there are really not a lot of games that use the Zelda 2 leveling style. I've played it recently and it's kind of fun! They could bring that back. It's sort of an untapped way of doing things. I think God of War uses a similar system but can't think of much else.
Add more categories, health, magic, sword damage, some kind of speed/dodge, arrows, who knows what else. As you level, you get some new skills in addition to damage bonuses and such. Maybe certain levels in each category unlocks the potential for a new skill, and side dungeons give you orbs that you can spend to unlock the skills that you opened up by leveling. Down stab, up stab, multi shot. Could work really nicely.
For this one I just go by the animation. Press X as he does his chest thrust/shockwave for C5. Press X during the move after that where he turns and slashes for C6.
I just want to say, this for literally everything. Most of the combos (for any character) you can learn which animations to press the strong attack button on to trigger the one you want. With enough practice it's pretty easy to do.
(p.s. - personally I use Warriors layout :P Screwed me up tremendously trying to go back to Twilight Princess after that hahaha)
Edit: Regarding the discussion of making items useful, I thought A Link Between Worlds did this with the stamina meter. With no fear of running out of ammo, suddenly using bombs and arrows and whatever was useful, and enemies seemed designed around some of these also being better ways to kill them. I loved this implementation personally.
The zoomed in adventure mode maps in legends is really killing my motivation in clearing them. So frustrating to scroll around and get lost looking for item cards or unlockables compared to simply glancing at the whole map in the Wii U version.
For me, I'd love for them to scale back on the number of heart pieces in the game. Full hearts in the original Zelda was a bit much, but I feel that 1/4 Heart Pieces is too much. For me, changing the Heart Pieces to 2 per Heart Container is a happy solution. That makes finding a Heart Piece more rewarding and produces results faster.
On that subject, I think there are too many bottles these days as well. Skyward Sword did a good job of adding extra potions that need bottle space, but then gave a 5th bottle option. Again, less is more here. Cut bottles down to 3 and make filling them a tough choice. A fairy is auto-revive, but overall less healing. Red Potions restore most or all hearts, but don't save your life. Do you keep a bottle empty for finding/storing items on your journey?
And more upgrades please! Give us reasons to spend our rupees so that finding them in chests is a bigger boon. Also make the upgrades expensive, yet powerful. Save up for that Shield upgrade (say 1000 rupees) and finding that 100 rupee in a chest is suddenly more awesome.
I like 4. 5 in TP:HD feels like I've been cheated and like they padded out acquisition with easier puzzles than I've come to expect for heart piece level rewards. 2 Could be okay, but might throw off difficulty scaling since you get more health faster. You'd have to be more careful about limiting access at certain times.
Bottles are something I don't like being limited because of the many utility / sidequest items that require a slot. Fish baits are the TP:HD one that's irking me right now, since I can't just carry several and pick. Give me three bottles for potions and fairies and let Lantern Oil, Water, or whatever other quest items live on their own in an Item Pouch or something.
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Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
There, got all costumes in Master Quest and starting up the Twilight Princess adventure map.
Does anyone know what you need to do to unlock levels higher than 99?
I'm fine with the 1/5 hearts in TP. If we're honest it's not like extra health is needed or even relevant 90% of the game where a death simply results in the option to continue on without penalty. But they appear meaningful and mean I have more things to scavenger hunt for out in the world.
As long as the heart pieces are hand placed in the world such that the acquisition of each is interesting enough then they can split them up as much they like.
There, got all costumes in Master Quest and starting up the Twilight Princess adventure map.
Does anyone know what you need to do to unlock levels higher than 99?
Level 99 is the max level.
Yeah, the constant raising of the level cap in the original didn't really work in a game where you're expected to use so many different characters, it just made it super grindy to get people up to par. That's the reason people jumped on the rupee glitch so hard. Now everything's been rebalanced around a cap of 99 the rupee glitch isn't missed.
I don't have HW3DS but I can't believe that the rupee glitch wouldn't be missed. Even if the game had a level cap of 99, getting even two or three characters up there would be insufferable. Unless they tripled the leveling rate or something.
I don't have HW3DS but I can't believe that the rupee glitch wouldn't be missed. Even if the game had a level cap of 99, getting even two or three characters up there would be insufferable. Unless they tripled the leveling rate or something.
I dunno, when I was trying to grind Link up to 255 so I could rupee glitch the rest to meet him, I was managing to level him pretty fast.
It may have been changed for 3DS, but I think the bottom left Master Quest map had you fighting 12 Ganondorfs? Go in with a EXP potion and a EXP+ weapon skill, kill 11 of them, let the last one kill you, and restart. You keep the EXP from kills, and you can keep going without having to buy more potions.
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Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
There, got all costumes in Master Quest and starting up the Twilight Princess adventure map.
Does anyone know what you need to do to unlock levels higher than 99?
Level 99 is the max level.
Yeah, the constant raising of the level cap in the original didn't really work in a game where you're expected to use so many different characters, it just made it super grindy to get people up to par. That's the reason people jumped on the rupee glitch so hard. Now everything's been rebalanced around a cap of 99 the rupee glitch isn't missed.
Oh, then Link is maxed out I kinda like that TBH... max level for everyone doesn't seem like a pipe dream :P
I don't have HW3DS but I can't believe that the rupee glitch wouldn't be missed. Even if the game had a level cap of 99, getting even two or three characters up there would be insufferable. Unless they tripled the leveling rate or something.
I had four 99s by the end of the third adventure map. I don't think levelling itself is faster but the progression curve's a lot smoother now.
In Skyrim in particular, you can park yourself next to a single dungeon, clear it, rest until it resets, and repeat. You will level up to the maximum level and consistently find level-appropriate loot every time you raid the reset dungeon, and the only difference between it and a dungeon off over thataway somewhere is what type of enemies it's permitted to spawn (and even with that there's only a handful of dungeon classifications, so if you want to see them all you can just cycle between a small corner of the world that has every type of dungeon within it). There are precious few unique items to find, and the unique quests almost all give leveled loot that will quickly become obsoleted anyway.
Not sure that's true, I thought there was some more complexity so that you can truly end up out of your depth, and areas would generally remain at whatever level difficulty you first found them at. I might be thinking of Fallout New Vegas though, and that doesn't necessarily invalidate the point, but I disagree that doing it that way is un-fun. Plus there is always a mix of scaled content and hand-placed content and I love all of it.
The areas would be scaled to your level upon first entering them or accepting a quest for them, but once you cleared the dungeon it would reset. And it's not necessarily that it's "un-fun" so much as it is a direct detriment to exploration.
Skyrim (and Oblivion before it) did not actually reward exploration. It just tricked you into thinking it did. That works precisely up until you figure out what's going on.
Awful, awful idea. That is no sort of reward at all. I have zero motivation to go to all that trouble for nothing but some health. Zelda games are already too easy, health is pointless! I feel the same about most the rest of what you listed, too.
If the game is too easy then any reward is pointless. The original and Link to the Past were absolutely not too easy, and interestingly enough they were also the two games in the series that most rewarded exploration. So yes, amp up that difficulty. Send it through the roof. Make it Dark Souls hard.
Fact is, stuff like carrying capacities of health or bombs or whatever was a big reward back in the NES days, but it's not something anyone ever gets excited about now. Everyone saves all their bombs anyway "in case they might need it later." I don't want scaled up capacities. "Ooh there are seventeen bottles to find out in the world now, now I can carry that many fairies and never game over ever!" Ugh. It's such a hollow motivator. Rupees are no reward either following the traditional Zelda formula because there's nothing worth purchasing. You make half a dozen major purchases in the game and that's it.
I want more combat options. I want enemies to be resistant/immune to different elements and have weapons imbued with those elements that behave differently from each other, some fast, some slow. Swords that increase the light radius around me. Helmets that improve the power of my spells (because I really should be able to cast spells) and also help me resist fire. I want to level up spellcasting, and level up swordplay if I choose to use swords, or axe use if I choose to use axes. I want to be able to build a set of situational gear for my trip into the volcano, or underwater or whatever. Not just coast through a couple caves and pick up 11/16ths of a new heart piece as my solitary weapon for the entirety of the game cuts through everything equally well.
From a game design perspective, these requests are in -direct opposition- to the goal of promoting exploration.
If enemies have resistance or immunity to attacks such that the game expects you to switch to other tools to get around them, then you must have those other tools in order to proceed and tackle the challenge. If you must have those tools, then you can't hide them around the game world where players might not find them. You must make sure they're available when the player needs to call upon them.
When Zelda games have done this in the past, they've used the dungeon treasure to do it, and they make sure you have acquired the treasure before you're able to complete the dungeon and move forward. So in that sense, exploring the dungeon to find its one treasure is certainly there, but even the dungeons have less of an exploration feel and more of a conquest / puzzle feel.
So, if the designers have to ensure that you have the tools you need to conquer the challenges before you, then they can't hide them in random off-the-path corners. That's why they've always put heart pieces and rupee rewards in those locations in the past. Sure, there's been the occasional hidden thing you need in order to proceed (Book of Hylia in LttP), but that's when the worlds were really small. You can't do that anymore with a large world.
What's so wrong with random loot? Skyward Sword dropped loot components randomly that you cashed in for crafted shields, it's not a far step to drop items directly. Maybe we could break them down into component parts for re-crafting, too.
Because random loot is not congruent with an exploration theme. Random loot is congruent with grinding, or providing different play experiences when repeating a linear run.
When games rely on random loot to outfit the player, then the player never needs to explore. Pick a direction -- any direction -- and you'll find exactly what you need. You'll kill things appropriate for your level, and you'll collect rewards appropriate for your level. You never need to go digging around for little caves off the path or see if there's anything under that waterfall, because the stuff you'd find there is exactly the same stuff you'll find if you just keep plugging down the road or enter whatever random dungeon area happens to appear in front of you. Furthermore, by its nature, most random rewards are trash that you either don't bother picking up (if weight / inventory limits exist) or vendor as soon as possible. That's even less rewarding than getting 1/10th of a heart container, since at least the latter suggests actual progress to something you could make use of.
You mentioned Skyrim's shouts in another post. That's exactly the right kind of reward and one of the few ways in which that game actually rewarded exploration.
I'm all for giving Link new powers and options with the rewards that you find out in the game world. However, we have to be realistic. There are only so many such rewards that you can reasonably craft in a single game and put out there. There's a limit to how many abilities you can design, balance, and code into the game. If it's a big open world, then that's going to leave it very empty after you finish scattering them all around. Exploration can still reward, but very rarely, and you'll need a lot of luck to find the stuff you actually need.
The best I've ever seen this pulled off has been in the Dark Souls games. They have tons of weapon moves and a decent number of spells, along with plenty of armor options. These are hidden throughout the game world, either as treasures, drops, or from shops. As such, these games directly reward exploration in a way I haven't really experienced since Link to the Past. They also have small worlds to the point where they aren't really considered to be "open world" games. If anything they're more like Metroidvanias -- and Metroidvanias probably have the best exploration reward loop of any style of game, much like the original Zelda.
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I still disagree. I have continually felt well rewarded for exploring in every open world Bethesda game. Nothing to do with "being tricked into feeling rewarded," you don't get to claim that someone who felt rewarded is somehow mentally inferior for not seeing the strings or anything like that. Preferences are a thing. A reward is a reward, hand placed or not. I feel as good running to Ghostgate and stealing those hand-placed glass weapons as I do checking a randomly filled chest and finding a diamond I can vendor or use in alchemy.
Being able to run the same dungeon over and over doesn't mean exploration isn't rewarded. The very fact that no one would ever do this is a testament to that. You go do other dungeons because they are different, they have new and interesting layouts, bridges snaking over canyons, underwater sections, hidden chests. Exploration is both its own reward and a very real physical reward when you find cool items or new dragon shouts or even level up.
Resistances and immunities are a completely surmountable problem that you paint as something that's never been solved in a random loot game. If the enemies are too tough in one direction in this huge open world because you don't have a fire sword, you go in another direction until you find one. Or you clear a dungeon and get your maligned vendor trash and sell it and buy a fire sword from the town vendor. It's been done.
A "vendor trash" piece of equipment at the end of a dungeon is vastly better than a 1/10th heart piece. I can disenchant it, I can give it to a companion to use, I can sell it and therefore convert it into something I actually want, it might even be good or interesting enough that I decide to try it out in a new playstyle. Above all though, it stands for the promise that maybe next time it'll be something amazing, exactly what I'm looking for.
A 1/10th heart piece tells me that this is the caliber of stuff I'm going to find at the end of every dungeon and I should just give up the hope of ever being excited at all. It's incremental garbage that captures the imagination of no one.
You know, ZU/ZUNX, while not delayed as long as Ocarina, probably has been waiting too long. There's been too much speculation, too many hopes, too many ideas of how this next game could shake things up and do all the things one wants. The imagined/hoped possibilities have outstripped what it was probably ever going to be
I just can't imagine it coming out and pleasing anyone, at this point.
You know, ZU/ZUNX, while not delayed as long as Ocarina, probably has been waiting too long. There's been too much speculation, too many hopes, too many ideas of how this next game could shake things up and do all the things one wants. The imagined/hoped possibilities have outstripped what it was probably ever going to be
I just can't imagine it coming out and pleasing anyone, at this point.
I'm sure it'll be received better than Skyward Sword.
Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
edited April 2016
I only skimmed this conversation, but this is my thoughts. I feel like A Link Between Worlds somehow got this right, for the most part. When I first played that game I started out pretty linear, beating the first dungeon, etc. After the first dungeon though, I wanted to explore. And I felt like I was constantly being rewarded for doing so. Not just with heart pieces, but equipment and other things too. (My memory is fuzzy on exact details, but I remember thinking at the time, anytime I thought "I wonder what's in there" I was rewarded with something good for checking it out).
I think that's what they need to do here. Don't go full Skyrim when you can look at Zelda 1 as an example of an open world game. If you want, you can go straight to Death Mountain in Zelda 1. Nothing is stopping you. It's just more difficult. You could skip level 1 and start with level 3. Only a couple levels have real barriers for entry (ladder, raft), most have soft barriers like keys or bombs or the candle which you can buy. I think there are lessons you can draw from that. Maybe one of the problems is too many Zelda items have become tools? Like, in Zelda 1, only the bow, raft and ladder were really required items (also silver arrows but those don't count). Other required items you could get outside of dungeons. But you still wanted the other items. Going back to A Link Between Worlds, they sort of made them things like Sword and Tunic upgrades instead. That is an idea. Another idea I've mentioned before is maybe offering multiple paths through a dungeon based on which items you've picked up.
But going back to the main topic, I'll just reiterate my point that I think the rewards need to feel good. 1/10 heart piece doesn't feel good IMO. Stumbling into a random grave and finding a cape that makes you invisible? That feels good (even if the item is unnecessary to win). Or maybe you can find upgrades to your weapons, like better arrows, material to temper your sword, etc. Those feel like good rewards for exploring.
So for me, that's what I want from an "open world" Zelda game. It doesn't have to be Skyrim. Just don't lock me into a narrow, linear path and reward me for looking around.
Edit: Another thing that came to mind, you don't even have to actually offer an item. If I explore off the beaten path and am treated to a cool cutscene or little visual interesting thing, that's a good reward too! Not something you use exclusively, but getting to see bits of the world come to life is what makes exploring fun.
Mentally inferior? If that's how this is coming across then I can see why this isn't getting anywhere.
It's nothing about the player being smart or dumb. Games rely on illusion as a general rule. Linear games create side areas that look like blocked doorways, or lock every door in a dark room except for the one that's lit up to guide you forward, to make you feel like you're in a world bigger than it is. GTA games pretend to be cities, which works just fine when playing the game normally, but it collapses the moment you try to do something as simple as follow traffic rules (you can't, the simulation design literally doesn't account for this).
A player isn't somehow "mentally inferior" for accepting the illusions that the game designer is crafting. That's sort of the whole process you go through when you decide to drop in and immerse yourself in a game. It's suspension of disbelief.
Preferences are definitely a thing, and people have different tolerances for stuff that violates that suspension of disbelief, pulling them from the game. For me, I haven't enjoyed exploring an Elder Scrolls game since Morrowind. Morrowind did have lots of hand-placed treasure and non-scaled (or minimally-scaled) enemy encounters, which is why I excluded it from my earlier critiques of the series. But when I play Skyrim, and shops are changing their gear based on my level, and the only unique thing I can ever find anywhere is a shout component I probably don't need, then it's easy to get pulled out of the game. More than that, I don't bother exploring. I enjoy Skyrim, but as a be-someone-else simulator, not an explore-their-intriguing-world game. It's one of the least exciting game worlds I can imagine exploring, frankly. The only reasons to do it are to find all the shouts or see the terrain.
As for this:
Resistances and immunities are a completely surmountable problem that you paint as something that's never been solved in a random loot game. If the enemies are too tough in one direction in this huge open world because you don't have a fire sword, you go in another direction until you find one. Or you clear a dungeon and get your maligned vendor trash and sell it and buy a fire sword from the town vendor. It's been done.
It's never been solved adequately. At the end of the day, these sorts of features detract more than they add. They create a number of potential problems -- a player getting stuck and having to turn around and grind random encounters / dungeons until the proper random loot drops, the need to carry & juggle a huge arsenal of nearly identical items to get around a simple paper-rock-scissors system that involves no actual interesting choices made on the part of the player, a need to upgrade not just your primary equipment but an entire set of resistance-targeting gear every few levels, etc.
The solutions to these problems have always been questionable. Most commonly, resistances & vulnerabilities are tuned way down such that you can basically ignore them (this is what Elder Scrolls does for the most part; you're never in trouble because you're missing a needed element because you don't ever actually need any given element), at which point there's no real reason to have them in the game -- it's just filler. Other times the game just drowns you in loot so you have what you need, but then you have a crazy cluttered inventory and basically have to do occasional spreadsheet work to manage everything. Or they make everything readily available in shops, at which point again you don't need to ever explore -- just kill the bad things, sell their stuff, and buy what you want.
Zelda games have never had these problems. They routinely have enemies and bosses with vulnerabilities to certain tools at Link's disposal, but the solution for the player is to find the treasure in the dungeon and use to to destroy the enemy. Unless you're sequence breaking, you always have the tools you need to take on every enemy in front of you, though you may have to experiment to see which tool it is you need to deploy. You explore to find the levels, you explore to collect the treasures, and to power up further on the side (optional treasures that typically don't exploit enemy specific weaknesses, heart pieces & containers to improve survivability, etc), then you explore around the world and see what's in its nooks and crannies.
I'm not saying to put 1/10th of a heart container as the treasure at the end of a dungeon. That's insane. I fully expect the next Zelda to have a smallish number of large dungeons like the series has always had. Each of these dungeons will (and should) give a full heart container and some unique tool you use to solve puzzles and gain access to other parts of the world.
In Link to the Past, when you were going through Zora's domain, you can take a 20-second walk down a side path to find a hidden heart container as a reward for looking around and exploring. There's another hidden off on the side of the pyramid when you enter the Dark World that requires going off the main path and jumping off a thing. That's the kind of rewarding I'm talking about. Not spending 30 minutes going through one of 90 dungeons scattered across the game world for an incremental maybe-one-day boost to a thing (I hope they don't do that at all, the dungeon-filled vistas of Elder Scrolls games are weird). Hiding this stuff at the end of dungeons placed everywhere is the opposite of what I want, because that doesn't reward exploration either. It just rewards dungeon-grinding.
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You know, ZU/ZUNX, while not delayed as long as Ocarina, probably has been waiting too long. There's been too much speculation, too many hopes, too many ideas of how this next game could shake things up and do all the things one wants. The imagined/hoped possibilities have outstripped what it was probably ever going to be
I just can't imagine it coming out and pleasing anyone, at this point.
Hmm I don't know that I agree it's hit that point. I think there has been such a dearth of information that any speculation has been wild and not taken very seriously.
For a comparison let's look at FFVII:Remake. When that was announced (or even well before we ever knew it existed) you already had a full game to compare it to and as such factual information to base speculation upon. I think that is more a case where the final game can't possibly live up to the expectations of the fans.
But with ZeldaUNX we have very little information at all. The idea of "Open world" can be done it so many different ways that any speculation is pretty meaningless at this point and doesn't have much ground to stand on.
We can try and compare it to previous Zelda titles, but they've already said they've departed from the Ocarina formula on this one, so again any sort of speculation on that front is shaky at best as well.
It's sort of an interesting situation because the game can literally be anything at this point, which means it's hard to really get a concrete idea for it ahead of time. Sure people can wildly speculate that it will be like Skyrim, or Witcher 3, or hell even Grand Theft Auto, but at the end of the day it's Zelda. This means it will be Nintendo's interpretation of what an Open World game should be....which we haven't really seen before.
I mean look at Nintendo's interpretation of an online shooter in Splatoon. If we knew they were making an online shooter, and had no information, we would try to make it sound like shooters that already exist, which Splatoon very much isn't.
It's going to be interesting to see what exactly they've come up with here, I'm willing to bet it's not something we are expecting it to be at all.
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Even though it was a fine experiment, I still wasn't a fan of LBW's system. It fell head first into the same old pitfall. You can't assume what the player has at any one time, so there were very few puzzle uses for items. Even though I had every single one within a few hours.
That's what I'm worried about when the term open world gets tossed around. Freedom to go in any direction means not exactly knowing what direction you came from.
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Hm, I didn't expect the Termina map to unlock at the same time as the Twilight map. Are the two about the same in terms of difficulty?
On the WiiU version Twilight was the hardest map, but it looks like they're equal now. The level four weapons are split evenly between them, so you can start with either.
Hm, I didn't expect the Termina map to unlock at the same time as the Twilight map. Are the two about the same in terms of difficulty?
Yeah, it was weird. Reminded me how much I hate the Twilight map tho. Starts out with several squares you flat out can't get the reward on because it's impossible to get the right item at that point. Also weirdly the items seem to be kind of random - I'll clear out one and a different item will spawn at that spot later.
I don't see them releasing a Wii U game 9 months after the NX launches. I don't see Nintendo releasing a Wii U at ANY point after the NX launch.
I didn't see them not giving a console a unique Zelda after 30 years or delaying said game 2+ years either.
You didn't predict a Zelda game being delayed?
for that long and not a console unique? no, when I first purchased the system I didn't predict that. Aside from the virtual boy (heh) it's never happened before. In fact, out of their 11 consoles, it's only happened this once. I figured it was a pretty safe bet akin to 'I'm buying it for Mario Bros.'
Huh, maybe I was just lucky, but I beat the level 3 dominion rod mission on my first try. I basically just captured the three keeps you need to clear the mission + the one with the fairy clothing in it and then beat Darunia through fairy magic attacks (my darkness fairy has the health draining ability, which definitely came in handy here) and special attacks.
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Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
Huh, maybe I was just lucky, but I beat the level 3 dominion rod mission on my first try. I basically just captured the three keeps you need to clear the mission + the one with the fairy clothing in it and then beat Darunia through fairy magic attacks (my darkness fairy has the health draining ability, which definitely came in handy here) and special attacks.
Yeah, I didn't have as much trouble as I thought I would once I got used to the Dominion Rod (I did die like 8-10 times a few seconds in at first but those went so quick they barely count)
I'm going through the Twilight map now. It feels so weird not struggling horribly on these missions. The Wii U one was SO hard I never actually beat it (cleared a lot of the right side but that's about it). Also, the (I think) Twilight condition that hides enemies on the map is pure evil (especially when I need to track down fairy hunters and barrier technicians and such). Weirdly I didn't see that effect actually listed (the overworld said no special meter which was definitely in effect), but I had to play a second time after getting an item card (and clearing the twilight) and they showed up again. So *shrug*. Maybe it's an effect on all twilight missions.
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Add more categories, health, magic, sword damage, some kind of speed/dodge, arrows, who knows what else. As you level, you get some new skills in addition to damage bonuses and such. Maybe certain levels in each category unlocks the potential for a new skill, and side dungeons give you orbs that you can spend to unlock the skills that you opened up by leveling. Down stab, up stab, multi shot. Could work really nicely.
I just want to say, this for literally everything. Most of the combos (for any character) you can learn which animations to press the strong attack button on to trigger the one you want. With enough practice it's pretty easy to do.
(p.s. - personally I use Warriors layout :P Screwed me up tremendously trying to go back to Twilight Princess after that
Edit: Regarding the discussion of making items useful, I thought A Link Between Worlds did this with the stamina meter. With no fear of running out of ammo, suddenly using bombs and arrows and whatever was useful, and enemies seemed designed around some of these also being better ways to kill them. I loved this implementation personally.
I like 4. 5 in TP:HD feels like I've been cheated and like they padded out acquisition with easier puzzles than I've come to expect for heart piece level rewards. 2 Could be okay, but might throw off difficulty scaling since you get more health faster. You'd have to be more careful about limiting access at certain times.
Bottles are something I don't like being limited because of the many utility / sidequest items that require a slot. Fish baits are the TP:HD one that's irking me right now, since I can't just carry several and pick. Give me three bottles for potions and fairies and let Lantern Oil, Water, or whatever other quest items live on their own in an Item Pouch or something.
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Does anyone know what you need to do to unlock levels higher than 99?
As long as the heart pieces are hand placed in the world such that the acquisition of each is interesting enough then they can split them up as much they like.
Level 99 is the max level.
Yeah, the constant raising of the level cap in the original didn't really work in a game where you're expected to use so many different characters, it just made it super grindy to get people up to par. That's the reason people jumped on the rupee glitch so hard. Now everything's been rebalanced around a cap of 99 the rupee glitch isn't missed.
I dunno, when I was trying to grind Link up to 255 so I could rupee glitch the rest to meet him, I was managing to level him pretty fast.
It may have been changed for 3DS, but I think the bottom left Master Quest map had you fighting 12 Ganondorfs? Go in with a EXP potion and a EXP+ weapon skill, kill 11 of them, let the last one kill you, and restart. You keep the EXP from kills, and you can keep going without having to buy more potions.
Oh, then Link is maxed out
I had four 99s by the end of the third adventure map. I don't think levelling itself is faster but the progression curve's a lot smoother now.
Skyrim (and Oblivion before it) did not actually reward exploration. It just tricked you into thinking it did. That works precisely up until you figure out what's going on.
If the game is too easy then any reward is pointless. The original and Link to the Past were absolutely not too easy, and interestingly enough they were also the two games in the series that most rewarded exploration. So yes, amp up that difficulty. Send it through the roof. Make it Dark Souls hard.
From a game design perspective, these requests are in -direct opposition- to the goal of promoting exploration.
If enemies have resistance or immunity to attacks such that the game expects you to switch to other tools to get around them, then you must have those other tools in order to proceed and tackle the challenge. If you must have those tools, then you can't hide them around the game world where players might not find them. You must make sure they're available when the player needs to call upon them.
When Zelda games have done this in the past, they've used the dungeon treasure to do it, and they make sure you have acquired the treasure before you're able to complete the dungeon and move forward. So in that sense, exploring the dungeon to find its one treasure is certainly there, but even the dungeons have less of an exploration feel and more of a conquest / puzzle feel.
So, if the designers have to ensure that you have the tools you need to conquer the challenges before you, then they can't hide them in random off-the-path corners. That's why they've always put heart pieces and rupee rewards in those locations in the past. Sure, there's been the occasional hidden thing you need in order to proceed (Book of Hylia in LttP), but that's when the worlds were really small. You can't do that anymore with a large world.
Because random loot is not congruent with an exploration theme. Random loot is congruent with grinding, or providing different play experiences when repeating a linear run.
When games rely on random loot to outfit the player, then the player never needs to explore. Pick a direction -- any direction -- and you'll find exactly what you need. You'll kill things appropriate for your level, and you'll collect rewards appropriate for your level. You never need to go digging around for little caves off the path or see if there's anything under that waterfall, because the stuff you'd find there is exactly the same stuff you'll find if you just keep plugging down the road or enter whatever random dungeon area happens to appear in front of you. Furthermore, by its nature, most random rewards are trash that you either don't bother picking up (if weight / inventory limits exist) or vendor as soon as possible. That's even less rewarding than getting 1/10th of a heart container, since at least the latter suggests actual progress to something you could make use of.
You mentioned Skyrim's shouts in another post. That's exactly the right kind of reward and one of the few ways in which that game actually rewarded exploration.
I'm all for giving Link new powers and options with the rewards that you find out in the game world. However, we have to be realistic. There are only so many such rewards that you can reasonably craft in a single game and put out there. There's a limit to how many abilities you can design, balance, and code into the game. If it's a big open world, then that's going to leave it very empty after you finish scattering them all around. Exploration can still reward, but very rarely, and you'll need a lot of luck to find the stuff you actually need.
The best I've ever seen this pulled off has been in the Dark Souls games. They have tons of weapon moves and a decent number of spells, along with plenty of armor options. These are hidden throughout the game world, either as treasures, drops, or from shops. As such, these games directly reward exploration in a way I haven't really experienced since Link to the Past. They also have small worlds to the point where they aren't really considered to be "open world" games. If anything they're more like Metroidvanias -- and Metroidvanias probably have the best exploration reward loop of any style of game, much like the original Zelda.
Being able to run the same dungeon over and over doesn't mean exploration isn't rewarded. The very fact that no one would ever do this is a testament to that. You go do other dungeons because they are different, they have new and interesting layouts, bridges snaking over canyons, underwater sections, hidden chests. Exploration is both its own reward and a very real physical reward when you find cool items or new dragon shouts or even level up.
Resistances and immunities are a completely surmountable problem that you paint as something that's never been solved in a random loot game. If the enemies are too tough in one direction in this huge open world because you don't have a fire sword, you go in another direction until you find one. Or you clear a dungeon and get your maligned vendor trash and sell it and buy a fire sword from the town vendor. It's been done.
A "vendor trash" piece of equipment at the end of a dungeon is vastly better than a 1/10th heart piece. I can disenchant it, I can give it to a companion to use, I can sell it and therefore convert it into something I actually want, it might even be good or interesting enough that I decide to try it out in a new playstyle. Above all though, it stands for the promise that maybe next time it'll be something amazing, exactly what I'm looking for.
A 1/10th heart piece tells me that this is the caliber of stuff I'm going to find at the end of every dungeon and I should just give up the hope of ever being excited at all. It's incremental garbage that captures the imagination of no one.
I just can't imagine it coming out and pleasing anyone, at this point.
I'm sure it'll be received better than Skyward Sword.
Steam: pazython
I think that's what they need to do here. Don't go full Skyrim when you can look at Zelda 1 as an example of an open world game. If you want, you can go straight to Death Mountain in Zelda 1. Nothing is stopping you. It's just more difficult. You could skip level 1 and start with level 3. Only a couple levels have real barriers for entry (ladder, raft), most have soft barriers like keys or bombs or the candle which you can buy. I think there are lessons you can draw from that. Maybe one of the problems is too many Zelda items have become tools? Like, in Zelda 1, only the bow, raft and ladder were really required items (also silver arrows but those don't count). Other required items you could get outside of dungeons. But you still wanted the other items. Going back to A Link Between Worlds, they sort of made them things like Sword and Tunic upgrades instead. That is an idea. Another idea I've mentioned before is maybe offering multiple paths through a dungeon based on which items you've picked up.
But going back to the main topic, I'll just reiterate my point that I think the rewards need to feel good. 1/10 heart piece doesn't feel good IMO. Stumbling into a random grave and finding a cape that makes you invisible? That feels good (even if the item is unnecessary to win). Or maybe you can find upgrades to your weapons, like better arrows, material to temper your sword, etc. Those feel like good rewards for exploring.
So for me, that's what I want from an "open world" Zelda game. It doesn't have to be Skyrim. Just don't lock me into a narrow, linear path and reward me for looking around.
Edit: Another thing that came to mind, you don't even have to actually offer an item. If I explore off the beaten path and am treated to a cool cutscene or little visual interesting thing, that's a good reward too! Not something you use exclusively, but getting to see bits of the world come to life is what makes exploring fun.
It's nothing about the player being smart or dumb. Games rely on illusion as a general rule. Linear games create side areas that look like blocked doorways, or lock every door in a dark room except for the one that's lit up to guide you forward, to make you feel like you're in a world bigger than it is. GTA games pretend to be cities, which works just fine when playing the game normally, but it collapses the moment you try to do something as simple as follow traffic rules (you can't, the simulation design literally doesn't account for this).
A player isn't somehow "mentally inferior" for accepting the illusions that the game designer is crafting. That's sort of the whole process you go through when you decide to drop in and immerse yourself in a game. It's suspension of disbelief.
Preferences are definitely a thing, and people have different tolerances for stuff that violates that suspension of disbelief, pulling them from the game. For me, I haven't enjoyed exploring an Elder Scrolls game since Morrowind. Morrowind did have lots of hand-placed treasure and non-scaled (or minimally-scaled) enemy encounters, which is why I excluded it from my earlier critiques of the series. But when I play Skyrim, and shops are changing their gear based on my level, and the only unique thing I can ever find anywhere is a shout component I probably don't need, then it's easy to get pulled out of the game. More than that, I don't bother exploring. I enjoy Skyrim, but as a be-someone-else simulator, not an explore-their-intriguing-world game. It's one of the least exciting game worlds I can imagine exploring, frankly. The only reasons to do it are to find all the shouts or see the terrain.
As for this: It's never been solved adequately. At the end of the day, these sorts of features detract more than they add. They create a number of potential problems -- a player getting stuck and having to turn around and grind random encounters / dungeons until the proper random loot drops, the need to carry & juggle a huge arsenal of nearly identical items to get around a simple paper-rock-scissors system that involves no actual interesting choices made on the part of the player, a need to upgrade not just your primary equipment but an entire set of resistance-targeting gear every few levels, etc.
The solutions to these problems have always been questionable. Most commonly, resistances & vulnerabilities are tuned way down such that you can basically ignore them (this is what Elder Scrolls does for the most part; you're never in trouble because you're missing a needed element because you don't ever actually need any given element), at which point there's no real reason to have them in the game -- it's just filler. Other times the game just drowns you in loot so you have what you need, but then you have a crazy cluttered inventory and basically have to do occasional spreadsheet work to manage everything. Or they make everything readily available in shops, at which point again you don't need to ever explore -- just kill the bad things, sell their stuff, and buy what you want.
Zelda games have never had these problems. They routinely have enemies and bosses with vulnerabilities to certain tools at Link's disposal, but the solution for the player is to find the treasure in the dungeon and use to to destroy the enemy. Unless you're sequence breaking, you always have the tools you need to take on every enemy in front of you, though you may have to experiment to see which tool it is you need to deploy. You explore to find the levels, you explore to collect the treasures, and to power up further on the side (optional treasures that typically don't exploit enemy specific weaknesses, heart pieces & containers to improve survivability, etc), then you explore around the world and see what's in its nooks and crannies.
I'm not saying to put 1/10th of a heart container as the treasure at the end of a dungeon. That's insane. I fully expect the next Zelda to have a smallish number of large dungeons like the series has always had. Each of these dungeons will (and should) give a full heart container and some unique tool you use to solve puzzles and gain access to other parts of the world.
In Link to the Past, when you were going through Zora's domain, you can take a 20-second walk down a side path to find a hidden heart container as a reward for looking around and exploring. There's another hidden off on the side of the pyramid when you enter the Dark World that requires going off the main path and jumping off a thing. That's the kind of rewarding I'm talking about. Not spending 30 minutes going through one of 90 dungeons scattered across the game world for an incremental maybe-one-day boost to a thing (I hope they don't do that at all, the dungeon-filled vistas of Elder Scrolls games are weird). Hiding this stuff at the end of dungeons placed everywhere is the opposite of what I want, because that doesn't reward exploration either. It just rewards dungeon-grinding.
Hmm I don't know that I agree it's hit that point. I think there has been such a dearth of information that any speculation has been wild and not taken very seriously.
For a comparison let's look at FFVII:Remake. When that was announced (or even well before we ever knew it existed) you already had a full game to compare it to and as such factual information to base speculation upon. I think that is more a case where the final game can't possibly live up to the expectations of the fans.
But with ZeldaUNX we have very little information at all. The idea of "Open world" can be done it so many different ways that any speculation is pretty meaningless at this point and doesn't have much ground to stand on.
We can try and compare it to previous Zelda titles, but they've already said they've departed from the Ocarina formula on this one, so again any sort of speculation on that front is shaky at best as well.
It's sort of an interesting situation because the game can literally be anything at this point, which means it's hard to really get a concrete idea for it ahead of time. Sure people can wildly speculate that it will be like Skyrim, or Witcher 3, or hell even Grand Theft Auto, but at the end of the day it's Zelda. This means it will be Nintendo's interpretation of what an Open World game should be....which we haven't really seen before.
I mean look at Nintendo's interpretation of an online shooter in Splatoon. If we knew they were making an online shooter, and had no information, we would try to make it sound like shooters that already exist, which Splatoon very much isn't.
It's going to be interesting to see what exactly they've come up with here, I'm willing to bet it's not something we are expecting it to be at all.
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No we'll likely find out at E3 this year since they've said they are focusing on the game for that event.
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That's what I'm worried about when the term open world gets tossed around. Freedom to go in any direction means not exactly knowing what direction you came from.
Now to tackle the northeastern part..not exactly a whole lot of my favorite weapons there, but oh well, gotta get through it.
Sorry, I mean we'll all get to play it Christmas 2017!
No. The date will be given as December 31st.
It'll be cancelled on December 30th.
delayed until late January 2018!
edit: I wish I could find my posts from the first delay in early 2015 that called this exact sequence of events
On the WiiU version Twilight was the hardest map, but it looks like they're equal now. The level four weapons are split evenly between them, so you can start with either.
Steam: pazython
I didn't see them not giving a console a unique Zelda after 30 years or delaying said game 2+ years either.
Yeah, it was weird. Reminded me how much I hate the Twilight map tho. Starts out with several squares you flat out can't get the reward on because it's impossible to get the right item at that point. Also weirdly the items seem to be kind of random - I'll clear out one and a different item will spawn at that spot later.
Oh how naïve I am.
Turns out that even when people are given pretty definitive statements, they'll just make up shit to justify their fears
You didn't predict a Zelda game being delayed?
Steam: pazython
for that long and not a console unique? no, when I first purchased the system I didn't predict that. Aside from the virtual boy (heh) it's never happened before. In fact, out of their 11 consoles, it's only happened this once. I figured it was a pretty safe bet akin to 'I'm buying it for Mario Bros.'
Yeah, I didn't have as much trouble as I thought I would once I got used to the Dominion Rod (I did die like 8-10 times a few seconds in at first but those went so quick they barely count)
I'm going through the Twilight map now. It feels so weird not struggling horribly on these missions. The Wii U one was SO hard I never actually beat it (cleared a lot of the right side but that's about it). Also, the (I think) Twilight condition that hides enemies on the map is pure evil (especially when I need to track down fairy hunters and barrier technicians and such). Weirdly I didn't see that effect actually listed (the overworld said no special meter which was definitely in effect), but I had to play a second time after getting an item card (and clearing the twilight) and they showed up again. So *shrug*. Maybe it's an effect on all twilight missions.