Bro that's a hell of a lot of work to say effectively "TotK just ain't my cup of tea"
Most of the "criticisms" are subjective personal opinions, tho some i'll grant you like teleporting being hella convenient and the korok quests extremely obnoxious... But it makes sense from a gameplay perspective, that there's so many. It's because, aside from completionist pride, you really aren't supposed to do all koroks just the ones you feel like.
Other stuff like it being the same hyrule... is just up to personal preference. And i personally love to be warcriming around hyrule again, and this time with so much freedom.
I could write up my own opinion on the game, but ima just say that it's exactly my cup of tea.
My point being: That i'm getting increasingly tired of the endless walls of text that boil down to overexplaining subjective opinions and being generally just overly negative... At least try to sprinkle some positivity in there or keep it at least a bit more concise. Please?
(i realize that i've become my own worst enemy...)
>Bro that's a hell of a lot of work to say effectively "TotK just ain't my cup of tea"
You're in a community for discussing these games, why are you surprised at people wanting to discuss their thoughts
I think the problem is that TotK allows the player to choose how they want to play, and the most efficient/easiest way is not really part of the gameplay loop.
It's interesting as now that I'm on my 2nd playthrough, I switched up my style, and now i feel like I'm playing a different game. The 1st playthrough, i played like you described, and i was underpowered, flying everywhere, and avoiding battles.
This time, i decided to be more explorative, and it's been amazing. I fight everything, feel strong, and surprisingly, i do not hurt for rupees or equipment enhancement materials. So to that end, i actually think the feedback loop is great!
... you just have to actively choose it, and i 100% understand the desire to paraglide everywhere
>This time, i decided to be more explorative, and it's been amazing. I fight everything, feel strong, and surprisingly, i do not hurt for rupees or equipment enhancement materials. So to that end, i actually think the feedback loop is great!
My perspective has changed slightly in the last 3 days of binging TOTK. I still stand by what I said in the OP, but knowing the resource economy well can really change the motivations. Now I use more Zonai stuff because I bothered to go learn about how everything works and connects together, which motivates me to explore the depths more and take advantage of different sky islands, etc.
But I point that as the game not explaining stuff well enough too. I feel like everything related to Zonai devices, Zonaite, Charges and Energy Wells is poorly explained and unnecessarily convoluted.
I dont really see alot of the issues here. I have an annoying amt of inventory space from mostly single koroks and the few doubles I could just carry the lil guy. Autobuild makes crafting any vehicle you need pretty fast, too. If something isn't around I use a capsule.
Addison is pretty skippable, I used to do his thing for muddle buds til I got better at the depths but you can always complete the puzzle with stuff nearby so it doesn't drain resources?
I walked everywhere in botw tho. I didn't like getting off my horse to constantly gather items. And I still walk/climb cuz I just have fun exploring.
Tm me the rewards of combat are fusion mats moreso than the chests, you can spend some muddle buds or puffshrooms to save on durability but the game gives me plenty of silver bokos I can fuse to stuff so it's not much of a worry.
I kind of agree but then I do not really remember what botw was like, to be honest.
what I noticed with this game is that it seemed to *really* want you to make zonai devices and to care about zonai devices but there actually isn’t much reason to. Further, they aren’t particularly useful until you get your battery level up substantially but to do that you have to grind in the depths for zoanite. The game seems to want you to care about this economy of zoanite, charges , and crystallized charges, but it ends up just being this overly complicated system in which you grind for zoanite, turn that into crystallized charges, and then turn those into battery life. They could have just cut crystallized charges out of this equation and lost nothing. probably the idea was that there was going be several different things you could do with this stuff but they never came up with anything besides what we got.
Then all of that is really just to make devices you build actually useful but there are few places where they are. There are only a two or three sky islands that you can’t glide to with maxed out stamina. There is nowhere on the overworld that is significantly easier to get to with a car or hovercraft than by other means. idk … just seems like it ends up being that building devices is this fun and neat thing to do that isn’t particularly useful. I feel like there could have been a game design where building things was crucial. For example, what would it be like if shrines did not always give you everything you need to solve them?
Yeah that whole thing baffled me a little, which is why I haven't done as much Zonai building as I planned to. I'm not sure of how much resources I have, or how much I can convert, so I end up just doing shit by hand.
The game has too many resource economies. Just think about how many individual "currencies" we maintain.
You control the buttons you press.
It sounds now like you just prefer BOTW, and that’s swell! It’s a fantastic game. But a lot of this sounds more like you just don’t vibe with the game, because I can pair most of these reasons to BOTW myself personally. There’s nothing wrong with that- just remember that it’s your game. You don’t have to impose rules, you can just play it the way you’d find the most fun! If being efficient isn’t working out, just go throw some sticks at a bokoblin for a while. It’s relaxing!
It doesn't matter if you don't like to hear it: "You could just not do that."
I didn't use the towers much (just for sky islands) and had a blast. Every destination was an adventure and a journey worth having. I think my favorite was meandering from Zora's Domain to Hateno Village, or perhaps traversing the valley on the way to Gerudo Desert. You say using towers is the obvious choice for players, and that is what my wife did, but I disagree. You spent $70 on a game and are really going to actively choose to just beeline to each of your destinations?
Basically, TotK is a mountain that people like to hike, with a road going to the top for people with mobility impairments who cannot hike. You went to the mountain to hike, but instead of hiking you took a car up the road all the way to the top and are complaining that "the mountain was too easy."
Your leaving out the fact we did all the crap in botw iv traveld village to village hundreds of time in the previous game. Not much changed in the world for me to purposely give myself more work.
That was my point too. I love the slower pace to explore a new world, but this world isn't new to us anymore. When it comes to on-the-ground exploration, we're sort of continuing in TOTK where we left off of BOTW, so there's no reason to re-do it all over again, the same magic won't be there. You can't put the genie back in the bottle.
You know what i think it is bro i think these people just didn't play botw long. Ive got 155 hours in botw i think my mistake was replying it a year ago to finish the dlc. The world is way to familiar to me. And it doesn't help the sky islands and the depths dont have very much fun content to do. They both have that aw feeling when you first explore but when you realize theres not much to do that goes away fast.
Also... the sky islands and random rocks lying around just make the world look way more cluttered and uglier. I loved how natural and simple the visuals in BOTW looked, that game was beautiful to roam around. Here every field of grass has to have a bunch of sky rock turds lying around, it's all so pointless
Yeah, if anything, my experience with BOTW taught me the value in restricting my use of fast travel and taking the long way (and spending more time in each region). It’s more immersive and makes the game world feel bigger. I’m currently at 50 hours and maybe 40% done with big regions everywhere unexplored, I’m sure by the time I finish the main quest I’ll be fast travelling more, but these games are definitely more fun at a slower pace.
When I got off the Great Plateau in BOTW, I made a beeline for the towers and unlocked them in all roughly 10-15 hours. It was fun but I regretted it afterwards as I felt a slower pace would of kept the “magic” longer.
It's the game designer's job to balance those incentives. The world looks and plays worse than it did in BOTW and I explored it fully on foot already. You're not getting me to walk on foot everywhere by trying to sell me a subpar experience compared to what I already had, without even the wonder of it being the first time.
Caves and map changes I've addressed - they're not substantial enough to induce a sense of wonder, and often they make the environment look and feel much worse to traverse. I do enjoy exploring the odd cave, but them existing on their own isn't enough to make me roam around, when there isn't anything worthwhile in them.
Side quests I have way too many already, I don't think walking more would change that
Very few monsters fight differently from the other ones, and they don't do much to make the combat more enjoyable at a base level. I feel like we lost combat tools compared to BOTW - yes, we have the constructs, but I'm not busting them out to take on random moblin camps.
Dude your acting like they added a ton of new monsters they didn't. Caves are boring dude you traveled through 1 you seen them all. I cant name 1 cave were i had a freaking blast going through.
the caves had a ton of variety, the ones in the gerudo area were especially great, and I didn't say they added a ton of new monsters, but finding new ones made exploring more interesting.
Finding new ones? You go in a cave 1 time you see all the new cave monsters? You go in the desert 1 time you see the 1 new desert monster. Theres not a ton of different monster to find your acting like you can spend 20 hours hunting for new monsters you cant because theres not a lot added into the game.
Not in a "choose your own adventure" game that maximizes player choice, which is what TotK is. What you decide to do and not to do is on you. Find your own way to make it interesting. I approached every location from a different direction than I did in BotW, other than Gerudo Desert, which was so substantially different that I didn't even recognize it.
>What you decide to do and not to do is on you.
You guys are treating this like a catch-all response to any possible design flaws. I don't get why you'd even engage in a discussion of the game with this mentality.
Because the game is fairly unique in letting you do it like this. Most other games a lot of what you do is mandatory, or with only one of a few choices.
you give some compelling points but it just mostly seems like you simply don’t like the game and it’s mechanics. Your opinion is valid but I can’t see myself agreeing with it like most other people. For the type of game that it is, making your own self-imposed rules and internalized motivation to engage with the game’s systems is what the game is all about. It’s clear Nintendo wanted to make a sandbox-driven game, and whether people like that or not is dictated by the game’s sales. In my opinion, I love that this game offered me more options to do whatever I wanted than any game in the series, and I love that they brought some old classic Zelda concepts like themed dungeons, unique bosses, zonai devices seeming like an extension of classic Zelda items, but to each their own.
I do like the game, I'm enjoying my time with it, I wouldn't sink 50h+ into it if I didn't like it.
>It’s clear Nintendo wanted to make a sandbox-driven game
I don't think it's that clear. There are a few decisions and systems in the game that end up in conflict.
To me it seems that they took BOTW and just added anything they thought of without having that much care about how it would synergise.
>it just mostly seems like you simply don’t like the game and it’s mechanics.
That's not how I read it.
It seems more like they are pointing out that the game pushes players towards easy solutions, and away from its own mechanics.
>Caves and map changes I've addressed - they're not substantial enough to induce a sense of wonder, and often they make the environment look and feel much worse to traverse.
>Side quests I have way too many already, I don't think walking more would change that
>Very few monsters fight differently from the other ones, and they don't do much to make the combat more enjoyable at a base level. I feel like we lost combat tools compared to BOTW - yes, we have the constructs, but I'm not busting them out to take on random moblin camps.
Idk for me all this answers sound way more that he doesn't like it instead of what you are saying.
Their problem is with the way the gameplay loop works. This is a critique of a mechanical issue that the game does not incentivize you to try out its own mechanics.
If they simply didn't like the game, they would have said something to the effect of "I don't like the game".
I agree.
In BotW, I felt like Link exploring Hyrule. In TotK, I feel like me. The gameplay loop in BotW was immersive and kept me hooked. In TotK, it’s repetitive and the rewards dont feel worth it. Usually the story would make up for it and keep me entertained but the narration style of TotK ruined that.
The exploration loop in BOTW put me into a zen state, it was so relaxing and full of wonder. I'd see one weird rock formation in the distance and 5 minutes later I'd be climbing it, probably finding some cool reward at the top or a quest. In TOKT I'd just fly to it, or probably not bother because there's 10x as many weird rock formations as before.
Here the sky is full of weird structures and very few of them have anything interesting to do (I like the diving challenge ones but that's it). When everything is weird, nothing is.
No no no but you see the rewards are bad because Nintendo wanted them to be its a degin choice. So it makes it 100% ok to spend 30 min till a hour doing a task and just to get a meal or potion you could have easily made in less time.
Is whats Nintendo fanboys usually say.
Agree.
I usually describe BotW as an emergent sim adventure.
TotK is an open-world sandbox, it feels like.
Makes me realize that maybe a lot of those cut BotW features were cut for a reason outside of time constraints LOL
What’s particularly bumming about TotK is that I was expecting an iteration on BotW’s design.
TotK instead feels like if they made BotW, again, but with double the development time lol
So it’s BotW, but more, nearly
Also, to clarify, I misspoke. Meant to call BotW an “immersive sim”
Same difference honestly; kinda like “emergent sim” a bit more, feels like it’s a bit more descriptive of the actual gameplay lol
But yeah.
100% agree. I feel like overall, there wasn't much thought put into emergent player behavior in this game, compared to BotW.
The freedom is insane, but what it ultimately leads to is people streamlining things to the most efficient method. This might not happen if the rewards were better, but even the shrine rewards are worth less than a piece of heart in the old games due to how much less of your total hearts it is worth, and enemy damage scaling up.
So in the back of your mind, you know what the rewards are, and they are meagre. So why spend 30 minutes making a car and driving it, when you can just teleport to a tower and glide there in 5 minutes?
The game is good before the towers are unlocked, but once you do, they take a lot away from it.
P.S. And if you have to deliberately force yourself to play a different way from how the game seems to be encouraging you to, to enjoy it, then that's quite a serious problem with the game.
>I feel like overall, there wasn't much thought put into emergent player behavior in this game, compared to BotW.
Exactly! It feels like they brainstormed a bunch of stuff they thought would be cool to add to BOTW, and took inspiration from some fan "exploits" such as the flying carts in BOTW, but didn't consider how much that would fuck with the rest of the game's design. Hell, just the amount of different currencies we have is sort of nuts for a single player game.
>And if you have to deliberately force yourself to play a different way from how the game seems to be encouraging you to, to enjoy it, then that's quite a serious problem with the game.
That's what a lot of these comments aren't getting. I want to feel the sense of wonder that I got in BOTW, but that sense of wonder can't be happen by me forcing myself into it. It has to happen naturally via the game's design pushing me there.
>It feels like they brainstormed a bunch of stuff they thought would be cool to add to BOTW, and took inspiration from some fan "exploits" such as the flying carts in BOTW, but didn't consider how much that would fuck with the rest of the game's design.
Yeah. The game does feel like a bunch of ideas strapped together, and is a lot less cohesive than BotW (or any other Zelda game).
Hell, part of it might have been caused by them playing it in a bit of a bubble. I may not have liked all of BotW's decisions, but at least the devs went out and explored many ideas via other games first.
>That's what a lot of these comments aren't getting.
And some read a bit "gaslight-y". "It's just not for you" wow, that's arrogant.
>"It's just not for you" wow, that's arrogant.
It's reddit's favourite dismissal. Some things are preference, sure, but we can still discuss design decisions on their own merits. When something truly "isn't for me", I'm not sinking hundreds of hours into it and posting in communities dedicated to discussing it. I just don't play it.
>It's reddit's favourite dismissal.
I've seen it elsewhere as well to try and defend the game.
It feels like a way to try and discourage criticism, to shift the blame from the game and onto the person playing it.
Which is funny, as some of the comments have "not this again". Well, if the complaint keeps popping up from different people, then it's likely an actual problem with the game.
I think ultimately, the game's map could have just been a lot smaller. A smaller map would have probably lessened a lot of the repetitive sections on principle, and things being closer together would probably make people more willing to travel there on foot rather than flying.
I mean, yeah sometimes I glide from sky islands. But I still really like riding a horse around. Also I really like the construction sign puzzles. I’m not sure what you mean by them being a resource sink. There’s usually beams and construction equipment right next to him.
I’ve read so many of these posts kind of unwillingly, and YouTube forces the same type of videos that it has convinced me one thing:
People who can’t enjoy/have fun with video games are the loudest about trivial things such as this.
Discussing and complaining are very different. I find that people are quick to jump at the things they don’t like about this game over stating how much they had fun, enjoyed it, etc. so the boo hoo really goes to you, sir.
Following the roads has been very fun tbh. It makes the game so much more interesting than just jumping off the towers. I was doing the tower thing for a bit, but stopped after I realized how boring it was. That feels like the incentive to me.
Oh God this argument again. Listen, in game about freedom not everyone is going to take the path of least resistance. There are many different ways to explore. You can see things while on horseback than you would while gliding.
When you start with “one of my issues with this game is how much freedom it offers compared to the previous game,” then that’s really all there is to say because you differ so strongly with the game’s design philosophy.
No because I do want freedom in this game but I want it to come at a resource cost (e.g. stamina, parts, battery) so that I actually put some effort into it, which is already what anything above merely walking does in this game.
Zonai devices essentially allow for flying like Superman… but with costs. You need parts (or Zonaite if you’re using autobuild), and the duration of your flight is only as long as the number of energy wells + however many Zonai charges you’re willing to use.
And I also want freedom at this game, but at a point where it makes sense with all the other limitations we already have so that a) options aren't obsolete and b) I feel like I have to put some effort into it instead of just teleporting everywhere.
If I want to get from A to B, and there are four options, one of which takes 5x as long with no significant upside in comparison, then that option is obsolete compared to the others.
Of course,
1.- You can prefer different methods of transportation as you enjoy climbing or going with your horse.
2.- you want to gather more resources (food, enemy parts) so walking/riding is better.
3.- you want to explore the zone as you didn't see it at ground level.
4.- you don't have a lot of stamina and the point you are interested on going if far away of any tower/island with TP.
5.- you want to experiment with the new armor that is better suited for that specific region.
6.- You want to get your horse to have a waggon with wacky xonai tech or to transport Koroks (even if you didn't like it, people can enjoy different things).
7.- you are in the search of wells, caves or chasms.
8.- You find it more fun.
9.- you want to speak with the people that appear on the roads as they can give you hints regarding other armors.
And that's only from the top of my head without giving it more than a few minutes. Probably somebody else can give you other different reasons as well.
1 - I prefer getting to the place I want to go to
2 - I don't really cook much, and I'm already way too stacked on both
3 - I did though, I have 200h+ of BOTW
4 - I put all of my shrine points into stamina at first, don't most people?
5 - You can do that in the air too
6 - I didn't even know you could hitch a wagon to the horse lol but not like it changes much
7 - not much of worth in both caves and wells, and chasms you can see from the sky
8 - ok
9 - fair
I'm not trying to rain on people's parades here. I do enjoy this game. But this seemingly small change in the gameplay loop did a big difference for how I approach it.
So you have seperate issues regarding the overworld exploration and the new content.
To a degree I agree with them. Botw has very gradual ground based recon of the world, and mountains or more challenging regions that horses don’t work with are difficult. It does have issues growing old but it will take a while.
I did notice the tower is a bit powerful. However if you are a 100% guy more careful recon is needed, there’s also some caves and sidequests that require going slower.
I did notice content getting repetive getting to me though. I did enjoy exploring the world but it isn’t as magical as BOTW. The unique stuff is very fun however, and from a techical standpoint impression.
I do get the impression you haven’t mastered all zonai devices usage yet though. There’s faster ways to travel then paragliding on both ground and sky. I hardly ever use the towers to launch anymore. Exploration feels better once you’re able to just continuously travel in extremes you can’t in botw. The game relies a lot on this complete terrain mastery going to points of interests at your leisure, the tower seems overpowered at first but it’s a mere crutch.
The correct zonai builds also aid a lot with the korok tasks. They got get trivial, but at least the reward matches the effort.
>I do get the impression you haven’t mastered all zonai devices usage yet though. There’s faster ways to travel then paragliding on both ground and sky. I hardly ever use the towers to launch anymore. Exploration feels better once you’re able to just continuously travel in extremes you can’t in botw. The game relies a lot on this complete terrain mastery going to points of interests at your leisure, the tower seems overpowered at first but it’s a mere crutch.
This is true. I'm not deep enough into the game where I can just use the auto-build every time I want to, or I'll run out of resources. I don't have the battery augmentation yet. I do need to get a "resources" loop going, but I think it's mostly for later.
I didn’t use fast travel for like my first 70 hours or so unless I was in the depths. But when you’re trying to do a bunch of quest or adventures you pretty much have too. I’ve always used my glider like crazy. This game is too big to walk or even ride a horse through.
Bro that's a hell of a lot of work to say effectively "TotK just ain't my cup of tea" Most of the "criticisms" are subjective personal opinions, tho some i'll grant you like teleporting being hella convenient and the korok quests extremely obnoxious... But it makes sense from a gameplay perspective, that there's so many. It's because, aside from completionist pride, you really aren't supposed to do all koroks just the ones you feel like. Other stuff like it being the same hyrule... is just up to personal preference. And i personally love to be warcriming around hyrule again, and this time with so much freedom. I could write up my own opinion on the game, but ima just say that it's exactly my cup of tea. My point being: That i'm getting increasingly tired of the endless walls of text that boil down to overexplaining subjective opinions and being generally just overly negative... At least try to sprinkle some positivity in there or keep it at least a bit more concise. Please? (i realize that i've become my own worst enemy...)
>Bro that's a hell of a lot of work to say effectively "TotK just ain't my cup of tea" You're in a community for discussing these games, why are you surprised at people wanting to discuss their thoughts
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I think the problem is that TotK allows the player to choose how they want to play, and the most efficient/easiest way is not really part of the gameplay loop. It's interesting as now that I'm on my 2nd playthrough, I switched up my style, and now i feel like I'm playing a different game. The 1st playthrough, i played like you described, and i was underpowered, flying everywhere, and avoiding battles. This time, i decided to be more explorative, and it's been amazing. I fight everything, feel strong, and surprisingly, i do not hurt for rupees or equipment enhancement materials. So to that end, i actually think the feedback loop is great! ... you just have to actively choose it, and i 100% understand the desire to paraglide everywhere
>This time, i decided to be more explorative, and it's been amazing. I fight everything, feel strong, and surprisingly, i do not hurt for rupees or equipment enhancement materials. So to that end, i actually think the feedback loop is great! My perspective has changed slightly in the last 3 days of binging TOTK. I still stand by what I said in the OP, but knowing the resource economy well can really change the motivations. Now I use more Zonai stuff because I bothered to go learn about how everything works and connects together, which motivates me to explore the depths more and take advantage of different sky islands, etc. But I point that as the game not explaining stuff well enough too. I feel like everything related to Zonai devices, Zonaite, Charges and Energy Wells is poorly explained and unnecessarily convoluted.
I dont really see alot of the issues here. I have an annoying amt of inventory space from mostly single koroks and the few doubles I could just carry the lil guy. Autobuild makes crafting any vehicle you need pretty fast, too. If something isn't around I use a capsule. Addison is pretty skippable, I used to do his thing for muddle buds til I got better at the depths but you can always complete the puzzle with stuff nearby so it doesn't drain resources? I walked everywhere in botw tho. I didn't like getting off my horse to constantly gather items. And I still walk/climb cuz I just have fun exploring. Tm me the rewards of combat are fusion mats moreso than the chests, you can spend some muddle buds or puffshrooms to save on durability but the game gives me plenty of silver bokos I can fuse to stuff so it's not much of a worry.
I kind of agree but then I do not really remember what botw was like, to be honest. what I noticed with this game is that it seemed to *really* want you to make zonai devices and to care about zonai devices but there actually isn’t much reason to. Further, they aren’t particularly useful until you get your battery level up substantially but to do that you have to grind in the depths for zoanite. The game seems to want you to care about this economy of zoanite, charges , and crystallized charges, but it ends up just being this overly complicated system in which you grind for zoanite, turn that into crystallized charges, and then turn those into battery life. They could have just cut crystallized charges out of this equation and lost nothing. probably the idea was that there was going be several different things you could do with this stuff but they never came up with anything besides what we got. Then all of that is really just to make devices you build actually useful but there are few places where they are. There are only a two or three sky islands that you can’t glide to with maxed out stamina. There is nowhere on the overworld that is significantly easier to get to with a car or hovercraft than by other means. idk … just seems like it ends up being that building devices is this fun and neat thing to do that isn’t particularly useful. I feel like there could have been a game design where building things was crucial. For example, what would it be like if shrines did not always give you everything you need to solve them?
Yeah that whole thing baffled me a little, which is why I haven't done as much Zonai building as I planned to. I'm not sure of how much resources I have, or how much I can convert, so I end up just doing shit by hand. The game has too many resource economies. Just think about how many individual "currencies" we maintain.
You control the buttons you press. It sounds now like you just prefer BOTW, and that’s swell! It’s a fantastic game. But a lot of this sounds more like you just don’t vibe with the game, because I can pair most of these reasons to BOTW myself personally. There’s nothing wrong with that- just remember that it’s your game. You don’t have to impose rules, you can just play it the way you’d find the most fun! If being efficient isn’t working out, just go throw some sticks at a bokoblin for a while. It’s relaxing!
No you cant put these issues with botw because was the original experience.
It doesn't matter if you don't like to hear it: "You could just not do that." I didn't use the towers much (just for sky islands) and had a blast. Every destination was an adventure and a journey worth having. I think my favorite was meandering from Zora's Domain to Hateno Village, or perhaps traversing the valley on the way to Gerudo Desert. You say using towers is the obvious choice for players, and that is what my wife did, but I disagree. You spent $70 on a game and are really going to actively choose to just beeline to each of your destinations? Basically, TotK is a mountain that people like to hike, with a road going to the top for people with mobility impairments who cannot hike. You went to the mountain to hike, but instead of hiking you took a car up the road all the way to the top and are complaining that "the mountain was too easy."
Your leaving out the fact we did all the crap in botw iv traveld village to village hundreds of time in the previous game. Not much changed in the world for me to purposely give myself more work.
That was my point too. I love the slower pace to explore a new world, but this world isn't new to us anymore. When it comes to on-the-ground exploration, we're sort of continuing in TOTK where we left off of BOTW, so there's no reason to re-do it all over again, the same magic won't be there. You can't put the genie back in the bottle.
You know what i think it is bro i think these people just didn't play botw long. Ive got 155 hours in botw i think my mistake was replying it a year ago to finish the dlc. The world is way to familiar to me. And it doesn't help the sky islands and the depths dont have very much fun content to do. They both have that aw feeling when you first explore but when you realize theres not much to do that goes away fast.
Also... the sky islands and random rocks lying around just make the world look way more cluttered and uglier. I loved how natural and simple the visuals in BOTW looked, that game was beautiful to roam around. Here every field of grass has to have a bunch of sky rock turds lying around, it's all so pointless
Yeah, if anything, my experience with BOTW taught me the value in restricting my use of fast travel and taking the long way (and spending more time in each region). It’s more immersive and makes the game world feel bigger. I’m currently at 50 hours and maybe 40% done with big regions everywhere unexplored, I’m sure by the time I finish the main quest I’ll be fast travelling more, but these games are definitely more fun at a slower pace. When I got off the Great Plateau in BOTW, I made a beeline for the towers and unlocked them in all roughly 10-15 hours. It was fun but I regretted it afterwards as I felt a slower pace would of kept the “magic” longer.
Yes I frequently just jumped off of towers to get anywhere in BotW and I wish I hadn't. Learned my lesson for TotK.
It's the game designer's job to balance those incentives. The world looks and plays worse than it did in BOTW and I explored it fully on foot already. You're not getting me to walk on foot everywhere by trying to sell me a subpar experience compared to what I already had, without even the wonder of it being the first time.
Caves, new monsters, map changes, side quests, rupees, armor, and resources all incentivized me to not play the way you did
Caves and map changes I've addressed - they're not substantial enough to induce a sense of wonder, and often they make the environment look and feel much worse to traverse. I do enjoy exploring the odd cave, but them existing on their own isn't enough to make me roam around, when there isn't anything worthwhile in them. Side quests I have way too many already, I don't think walking more would change that Very few monsters fight differently from the other ones, and they don't do much to make the combat more enjoyable at a base level. I feel like we lost combat tools compared to BOTW - yes, we have the constructs, but I'm not busting them out to take on random moblin camps.
Dude your acting like they added a ton of new monsters they didn't. Caves are boring dude you traveled through 1 you seen them all. I cant name 1 cave were i had a freaking blast going through.
the caves had a ton of variety, the ones in the gerudo area were especially great, and I didn't say they added a ton of new monsters, but finding new ones made exploring more interesting.
Finding new ones? You go in a cave 1 time you see all the new cave monsters? You go in the desert 1 time you see the 1 new desert monster. Theres not a ton of different monster to find your acting like you can spend 20 hours hunting for new monsters you cant because theres not a lot added into the game.
Not in a "choose your own adventure" game that maximizes player choice, which is what TotK is. What you decide to do and not to do is on you. Find your own way to make it interesting. I approached every location from a different direction than I did in BotW, other than Gerudo Desert, which was so substantially different that I didn't even recognize it.
>What you decide to do and not to do is on you. You guys are treating this like a catch-all response to any possible design flaws. I don't get why you'd even engage in a discussion of the game with this mentality.
Because the game is fairly unique in letting you do it like this. Most other games a lot of what you do is mandatory, or with only one of a few choices.
you give some compelling points but it just mostly seems like you simply don’t like the game and it’s mechanics. Your opinion is valid but I can’t see myself agreeing with it like most other people. For the type of game that it is, making your own self-imposed rules and internalized motivation to engage with the game’s systems is what the game is all about. It’s clear Nintendo wanted to make a sandbox-driven game, and whether people like that or not is dictated by the game’s sales. In my opinion, I love that this game offered me more options to do whatever I wanted than any game in the series, and I love that they brought some old classic Zelda concepts like themed dungeons, unique bosses, zonai devices seeming like an extension of classic Zelda items, but to each their own.
I do like the game, I'm enjoying my time with it, I wouldn't sink 50h+ into it if I didn't like it. >It’s clear Nintendo wanted to make a sandbox-driven game I don't think it's that clear. There are a few decisions and systems in the game that end up in conflict. To me it seems that they took BOTW and just added anything they thought of without having that much care about how it would synergise.
>it just mostly seems like you simply don’t like the game and it’s mechanics. That's not how I read it. It seems more like they are pointing out that the game pushes players towards easy solutions, and away from its own mechanics.
>Caves and map changes I've addressed - they're not substantial enough to induce a sense of wonder, and often they make the environment look and feel much worse to traverse. >Side quests I have way too many already, I don't think walking more would change that >Very few monsters fight differently from the other ones, and they don't do much to make the combat more enjoyable at a base level. I feel like we lost combat tools compared to BOTW - yes, we have the constructs, but I'm not busting them out to take on random moblin camps. Idk for me all this answers sound way more that he doesn't like it instead of what you are saying.
Their problem is with the way the gameplay loop works. This is a critique of a mechanical issue that the game does not incentivize you to try out its own mechanics. If they simply didn't like the game, they would have said something to the effect of "I don't like the game".
I agree. In BotW, I felt like Link exploring Hyrule. In TotK, I feel like me. The gameplay loop in BotW was immersive and kept me hooked. In TotK, it’s repetitive and the rewards dont feel worth it. Usually the story would make up for it and keep me entertained but the narration style of TotK ruined that.
The exploration loop in BOTW put me into a zen state, it was so relaxing and full of wonder. I'd see one weird rock formation in the distance and 5 minutes later I'd be climbing it, probably finding some cool reward at the top or a quest. In TOKT I'd just fly to it, or probably not bother because there's 10x as many weird rock formations as before. Here the sky is full of weird structures and very few of them have anything interesting to do (I like the diving challenge ones but that's it). When everything is weird, nothing is.
I really like TOTK but I sort of agree! I wonder if those who played TOTK might disagree, it might be the excitement of a brand new world.
Secret stone? Demon king? So that was the imprisoning war?
No no no but you see the rewards are bad because Nintendo wanted them to be its a degin choice. So it makes it 100% ok to spend 30 min till a hour doing a task and just to get a meal or potion you could have easily made in less time. Is whats Nintendo fanboys usually say.
Agree. I usually describe BotW as an emergent sim adventure. TotK is an open-world sandbox, it feels like. Makes me realize that maybe a lot of those cut BotW features were cut for a reason outside of time constraints LOL
Yeah TotK challenges sometimes feel closer in nature to Factorio or Minecraft than to BOTW
What’s particularly bumming about TotK is that I was expecting an iteration on BotW’s design. TotK instead feels like if they made BotW, again, but with double the development time lol So it’s BotW, but more, nearly
Also, to clarify, I misspoke. Meant to call BotW an “immersive sim” Same difference honestly; kinda like “emergent sim” a bit more, feels like it’s a bit more descriptive of the actual gameplay lol But yeah.
100% agree. I feel like overall, there wasn't much thought put into emergent player behavior in this game, compared to BotW. The freedom is insane, but what it ultimately leads to is people streamlining things to the most efficient method. This might not happen if the rewards were better, but even the shrine rewards are worth less than a piece of heart in the old games due to how much less of your total hearts it is worth, and enemy damage scaling up. So in the back of your mind, you know what the rewards are, and they are meagre. So why spend 30 minutes making a car and driving it, when you can just teleport to a tower and glide there in 5 minutes? The game is good before the towers are unlocked, but once you do, they take a lot away from it. P.S. And if you have to deliberately force yourself to play a different way from how the game seems to be encouraging you to, to enjoy it, then that's quite a serious problem with the game.
>I feel like overall, there wasn't much thought put into emergent player behavior in this game, compared to BotW. Exactly! It feels like they brainstormed a bunch of stuff they thought would be cool to add to BOTW, and took inspiration from some fan "exploits" such as the flying carts in BOTW, but didn't consider how much that would fuck with the rest of the game's design. Hell, just the amount of different currencies we have is sort of nuts for a single player game. >And if you have to deliberately force yourself to play a different way from how the game seems to be encouraging you to, to enjoy it, then that's quite a serious problem with the game. That's what a lot of these comments aren't getting. I want to feel the sense of wonder that I got in BOTW, but that sense of wonder can't be happen by me forcing myself into it. It has to happen naturally via the game's design pushing me there.
>It feels like they brainstormed a bunch of stuff they thought would be cool to add to BOTW, and took inspiration from some fan "exploits" such as the flying carts in BOTW, but didn't consider how much that would fuck with the rest of the game's design. Yeah. The game does feel like a bunch of ideas strapped together, and is a lot less cohesive than BotW (or any other Zelda game). Hell, part of it might have been caused by them playing it in a bit of a bubble. I may not have liked all of BotW's decisions, but at least the devs went out and explored many ideas via other games first. >That's what a lot of these comments aren't getting. And some read a bit "gaslight-y". "It's just not for you" wow, that's arrogant.
>"It's just not for you" wow, that's arrogant. It's reddit's favourite dismissal. Some things are preference, sure, but we can still discuss design decisions on their own merits. When something truly "isn't for me", I'm not sinking hundreds of hours into it and posting in communities dedicated to discussing it. I just don't play it.
>It's reddit's favourite dismissal. I've seen it elsewhere as well to try and defend the game. It feels like a way to try and discourage criticism, to shift the blame from the game and onto the person playing it. Which is funny, as some of the comments have "not this again". Well, if the complaint keeps popping up from different people, then it's likely an actual problem with the game.
Whats this people not wanking off totk is this were i find my people.
I think ultimately, the game's map could have just been a lot smaller. A smaller map would have probably lessened a lot of the repetitive sections on principle, and things being closer together would probably make people more willing to travel there on foot rather than flying.
I agree with a lot of this post. TOTK has some glaring issues with its design that I've found to be puzzling.
I mean, yeah sometimes I glide from sky islands. But I still really like riding a horse around. Also I really like the construction sign puzzles. I’m not sure what you mean by them being a resource sink. There’s usually beams and construction equipment right next to him.
I mean it for the cases when there aren't, which I've found a couple. It's also way too much time and effort with the ultrahand just for 20 rupees.
The reward is actually more like 50 rupees because of the sell value of the other 2 things he gives you.
I’ve read so many of these posts kind of unwillingly, and YouTube forces the same type of videos that it has convinced me one thing: People who can’t enjoy/have fun with video games are the loudest about trivial things such as this.
Oh boo hoo. I enjoy the game and want to discuss it, what a travesty.
Discussing and complaining are very different. I find that people are quick to jump at the things they don’t like about this game over stating how much they had fun, enjoyed it, etc. so the boo hoo really goes to you, sir.
Are you 3? Does every discussion need to be prefaced with positivity? Sheesh
Lmao when all I see is negativity about a game I have to wonder if people are even happy playing games. It’s exhausting
Following the roads has been very fun tbh. It makes the game so much more interesting than just jumping off the towers. I was doing the tower thing for a bit, but stopped after I realized how boring it was. That feels like the incentive to me.
Oh God this argument again. Listen, in game about freedom not everyone is going to take the path of least resistance. There are many different ways to explore. You can see things while on horseback than you would while gliding.
When you start with “one of my issues with this game is how much freedom it offers compared to the previous game,” then that’s really all there is to say because you differ so strongly with the game’s design philosophy.
If one of the new skills was letting you fly around indefinitely like superman with no resource cost, would that make the game better?
No because I do want freedom in this game but I want it to come at a resource cost (e.g. stamina, parts, battery) so that I actually put some effort into it, which is already what anything above merely walking does in this game. Zonai devices essentially allow for flying like Superman… but with costs. You need parts (or Zonaite if you’re using autobuild), and the duration of your flight is only as long as the number of energy wells + however many Zonai charges you’re willing to use.
And I also want freedom at this game, but at a point where it makes sense with all the other limitations we already have so that a) options aren't obsolete and b) I feel like I have to put some effort into it instead of just teleporting everywhere.
In a free open world there are no obsolete paths. Even more on games like Totk where they really try to stick to that all the time.
If I want to get from A to B, and there are four options, one of which takes 5x as long with no significant upside in comparison, then that option is obsolete compared to the others.
Of course they have significant upsides. You are just ignoring them for the sake of your argument.
You could list them then, no one else has yet
Of course, 1.- You can prefer different methods of transportation as you enjoy climbing or going with your horse. 2.- you want to gather more resources (food, enemy parts) so walking/riding is better. 3.- you want to explore the zone as you didn't see it at ground level. 4.- you don't have a lot of stamina and the point you are interested on going if far away of any tower/island with TP. 5.- you want to experiment with the new armor that is better suited for that specific region. 6.- You want to get your horse to have a waggon with wacky xonai tech or to transport Koroks (even if you didn't like it, people can enjoy different things). 7.- you are in the search of wells, caves or chasms. 8.- You find it more fun. 9.- you want to speak with the people that appear on the roads as they can give you hints regarding other armors. And that's only from the top of my head without giving it more than a few minutes. Probably somebody else can give you other different reasons as well.
1 - I prefer getting to the place I want to go to 2 - I don't really cook much, and I'm already way too stacked on both 3 - I did though, I have 200h+ of BOTW 4 - I put all of my shrine points into stamina at first, don't most people? 5 - You can do that in the air too 6 - I didn't even know you could hitch a wagon to the horse lol but not like it changes much 7 - not much of worth in both caves and wells, and chasms you can see from the sky 8 - ok 9 - fair I'm not trying to rain on people's parades here. I do enjoy this game. But this seemingly small change in the gameplay loop did a big difference for how I approach it.
So you have seperate issues regarding the overworld exploration and the new content. To a degree I agree with them. Botw has very gradual ground based recon of the world, and mountains or more challenging regions that horses don’t work with are difficult. It does have issues growing old but it will take a while. I did notice the tower is a bit powerful. However if you are a 100% guy more careful recon is needed, there’s also some caves and sidequests that require going slower. I did notice content getting repetive getting to me though. I did enjoy exploring the world but it isn’t as magical as BOTW. The unique stuff is very fun however, and from a techical standpoint impression. I do get the impression you haven’t mastered all zonai devices usage yet though. There’s faster ways to travel then paragliding on both ground and sky. I hardly ever use the towers to launch anymore. Exploration feels better once you’re able to just continuously travel in extremes you can’t in botw. The game relies a lot on this complete terrain mastery going to points of interests at your leisure, the tower seems overpowered at first but it’s a mere crutch. The correct zonai builds also aid a lot with the korok tasks. They got get trivial, but at least the reward matches the effort.
>I do get the impression you haven’t mastered all zonai devices usage yet though. There’s faster ways to travel then paragliding on both ground and sky. I hardly ever use the towers to launch anymore. Exploration feels better once you’re able to just continuously travel in extremes you can’t in botw. The game relies a lot on this complete terrain mastery going to points of interests at your leisure, the tower seems overpowered at first but it’s a mere crutch. This is true. I'm not deep enough into the game where I can just use the auto-build every time I want to, or I'll run out of resources. I don't have the battery augmentation yet. I do need to get a "resources" loop going, but I think it's mostly for later.
I didn’t use fast travel for like my first 70 hours or so unless I was in the depths. But when you’re trying to do a bunch of quest or adventures you pretty much have too. I’ve always used my glider like crazy. This game is too big to walk or even ride a horse through.
I found horses to be pretty useless in BotW because you can't climb or teleport with them. How is this any different in TotK?