I’d say your point is very clear and valid. I also feel this way to approach bosses is very anticlimatic. When a player gets hit by a wall - the boss - they want to try and try again until the boss is beaten. If the game gets in the way of that process, in this case, forcing you to farm for mats and repair your gear, it quickly becomes frustrating and boring. It’s important for them to understand this, and I’m sure eventually they’ll figure out how to better improve this.
9 Likes
This might be a bit of a drastic change from the current game design but an upgradable potion belt like souls games let you increase your flask amount, that refill on death or let’s just say for immersion sake, the whispers have an eternal spring of life energy that let you refill your potions. So food might be pushed over to slow regeneration and more mid to long time buffs? The whole “find the merchant or gather herbs and find a fireplace” mechanic just gets in the way of getting gud.
3 Likes
We should have a refilling potion (ala Dark Souls) to have a better control over our healing and let food as a secondary item for, let’s say, get buffs and not healing. That would allow us a better combo and less frustrating gameplay loop. Plus, it could potentially encourage to try things instead of think “Fuck, I’ll pass. I don’t wanna farm mats for cook”.
3 Likes
On the other hand that might get in the way of the alive system where enemies slowly respawn similar to how resources slowly respawn so if you always get your heals back you might also have to always get your enemies back which isn’t the intended map design. So I’m not sure regarding balancing here.
Upvote or rather “heart” this please, so that the devs see it as soon as possible! This is a fundamental challenge that needs to be adressed quickly, atleast so that we get an answer to what the devs intention is here moving forward!!!
2 Likes
Couple more thoughts on this:
It feels like negative feedback systems were lifted from other games without sufficient consideration for how those systems interact when placed alongside each other.
Durability degrades like in Dark Souls, but in Dark Souls heals are replenished on death and enemies instantly respawn to provide currency for repairs.
Heals are not replenished like Bloodborne, but in Bloodborne heals drop plentifully from mobs, and mobs once again respawn instantly for easy farming after a death. Durability degrades very slowly, only incurs a penalty at very low durability, never renders gear unusable, and is easily replenished.
In Breath of the Wild, both heals and durability are not replenished, but deaths reload a previous state, so resources are only consumed on successful attempts, not unsuccessful ones.
Each of these systems has things in common with what NRFTW is doing, but they crucially each have something that allows for you to continue attempting a fight with a reasonable investment of time/resources when failing. NRFTW combining all of the punitive measures from these other titles, without leaving any of the mitigation methods each uses to allow the player to proceed results in an untenable gameplay loop as currently balanced.
9 Likes
1000 percent agree with the OP. This is my situation in a nut shell. Boss beat me and now I have nothing left and there are no mobs or herbs to build myself back up. You can make a new Realm, but that just seems like bad game design. Dark Souls respawns the mobs for a reason, and this game needs to stop trying to be different in this area and just respawn everything after a death., Problem solved.
3 Likes
I agree with you. I’ve basically started refraining myself from healing and unequip all my armor until I feel like I’ve learned the boss’s movesets. Sure, you can go back and farm, but it’s time consuming and just not that fun for me. The durability problem is circumventable by creating a new realm, but again this interuppts your gameplay flow and just feels kind of tedious.
I agree that there needs to be some stakes when you die, but the current system feels it’s actively preventing me from playing the main objective. I’m fine dying multiple times to a boss, but please let me keep trying!
2 Likes
Player behavior here of “just fight the boss without using your health items until you learn the fight” is a pretty good indication that something isn’t quite right. I’m skeptical that behavior is what the devs intended for players.
I still think it lowers the difficulty ceiling, too. I’ve been able to one shot bosses so far just because I had a ton of healing items on hand. I never really had to learn a moveset, because I could just farm up a ton of heals and heal through every mistake I made.
5 Likes
100% agree. They should have it so dieing to bosses does not impact durability (or it takes 3X longer to build up) and each boss should drop healing items when you hit them really hard or maybe every 25%.
Death spirals are bad game design and they need systems to make it feel like its worth trying over and over to learn to boss vs I try to get 1 hit in and run away because I am afraid of dieing.
1 Like
Something you hit on here! We have a lot of mechanics from souls but the exp is automatic. Maybe if we lost souls vs auto exp we could stop the loss of durability. I can live with the food part because I try not to use food, bombs or oils for example while learning the mechanics.
So I would add in more xp shard drops and do away with auto exp. Then get rid of repair mechanic completely. QoL for souls game to me.
I’m loving the game and the iteration approach the devs are taking.overall.
1000% support this, I got a weekly quest for killing Torn in war room, and I did something about 10 attempts, broke my gear, went to repair, on third attempt after my healing items all gone, now I’m peacefully picking up flowers and mushrooms. Go back to fight, I got so frustrated with healing items, that I just gave up on using them, now repair is last problem. It was fine until my last copper coin went to smithy, and I went back to farming money.
All of that at the start of the game, now at level 15, have no issues with food or money, but it shouldn’t be like that. These systems instead of adding gameplay actively damage core gameplay.
At the start nor for nor repair feels rewarding. Food because it’s a pain to farm it, respawn rates are low both for enemies and resources. Repair because it gives no value to having your eqiups all shine and nice, other than you can use them again.
What is intresting, now I get food from enemies, and I just throw away it, just to have space. Seems a little bit backwards isn’t? Food was not present at the start of the game, it’d make it so much better though.
So my suggestions are:
- Make durability worthy of attention, provide bonuses when item hase more then 80% of durability and some thing really good if more then 95%. Additional armor or damage, something like that
- Make food more available at the beginning of the game. More ingredients and make enemies drop food.
You forgot to add, that when you actually managed to kill a boss the loot you get normally worse than that of normal monster in high end world
2 Likes
I think the mechanic of realm swapping isn’t explained enough. You can pretty much farm infinite resources and mobs early by swapping realms. I agree it breaks with the fluidity of the gameplay loop and feels like cheating, but it helps.
I’ve started using them as banks so I never have to go back to town if I can’t get that extra tree, or ore, because my pickaxe broke. Also if I run out of inventory space I can use them as stash houses.
However, it is breaking with the fluidity and becomes tedious…
1 Like
I agree with @Dingus on the realm swapping. It’s not explained but encouraged. If you get stuck realm swap to farm mobs or collect low level mats. But initially I would realm swap until you have enough blood ichor to unlock everything. Between the first boss, the twins and the war room boss you can get 3 blood ichors a realm.
This would allow you to carry more food. Also getting a staff with the heal and repair rune will allow you to trade focus for health/repair so you will be more likely to use food only for bosses and spend on repair less.
The mechanics work pretty well imo but aren’t explained well and could definitely use a guided tutorial.
I don’t think you’re meant to blow through your best consumables first attempt. at least that’s how i approach it, you fight a few times with minimal resources, then you go all out.
I find it provides a nice touch of heightened tension of “I gotta play well” and discourages the loop of mindlessly fighting the boss without being fully engaged.
2 Likes
Developing counterintuitive strategies to accommodate the fact that the game is eager to soft lock you, whether by going into fights with no gear and not healing, or by “realm swapping” to make up for the fact that enemies/resources don’t respawn in a timely fashion, all only serve to reinforce how ill-considered the systems design is in its current state. These are all tedious workarounds that add nothing to the experience. Ex post facto justifications about how they “make you take it more seriously” are pretty unconvincing.
The same applies for the staff with heal/repair. If the recommendation is “repeatedly farm the early game until you get an item that will allow you to circumvent the mechanics”, that’s a tacit admission they’re bad mechanics.
6 Likes
Noted above:
“In Breath of the Wild, both heals and durability are not replenished, but deaths reload a previous state, so resources are only consumed on successful attempts, not unsuccessful ones.”
Let whispers be save points.
This would fix the big issue around healing items, and waste mostly the users time. The whispers are long apart, so a long walk is quite the punishment.
With that, the heals and resources can be tuned much tighter to the challenges and progression.
Also it does not trivialize content by killing 1 and 1 mob per death in an encounter that is supposed to be fought as a group.
1 Like
I am still at the starting area before Sacrament, but I think if the game is making me explore naked or get naked and jump to my death to “replenish for free”, there is some design flaw.
I know I have repairs free here, but Im worried that in later stages it will be even worst.
1 Like
I think they wanted to make the gear disposable. Like in a survival game. Atrocious inventory and LOOONG gathering animations are also a reflection of that intention.
But those Survival mechanics are directly in conflict with the rest of the game IMO. Isometric souls-like should be enough. Adding survival to that only degrades from the experience.
2 Likes