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Hello. I've come up with a few ideas for the new hard mode, as I think that after you get used to game, it's actually very easy. Please keep in mind these are my own opinions based on my own gameplay experience so far. I would love if people could discuss them or tell me their own ideas.

I will rank my ideas from "most important" to "possible idea" from top to bottom, and at the bottom I will list some general things that I think need to be fixed.

 

Disable loading saves and fast-travelling during fights

I think for casual players it's great that this is possible. But for a hard mode that is supposed to come out, I think it's an absolute necessity to disable this.

Are you gonna fight a Lynel? Save before you start your fight. If you happened to miss a few dodges and end up using more healing items than you would have liked, you can simply load your save from when before the fight starts and get all your healing items back!

The game also really tries to tell you that you need to prepare before you go into a fight. Yet this doesn't always apply. According to the game's rules, if you were so careless as to come too close to a guardian without any gear, you are supposed to die. But instead you can fast-travel away! Did you mess up in an enemy-camp and are overwhelmed? Fast-travel away!

With being able to fast-travel and load saves during a fight there is no real threat about dying. Dying is already pretty forgiving with the frequent auto-saves, but this makes you literally invincible.

 

Make it cost more spirit orbs to upgrade hearts / armor

The first upgrade should cost the normal 4 orbs. But after that, maybe make it cost 6 or even 8. Now where a normal person would need to clear 24 shrines to get a total of 10 hearts, in hard mode you would have to clear 36 or 48.

Assuming enemies are gonna be harder in hard mode, this makes it a lot more worthwhile to invest in hearts, while at the same time making staying alive more challenging. It also makes sure you want to make a lot more of elixers and food that give you temporary hearts, though I will speak more about that at the bottom of this post.

At the same time it means you're probably gonna invest less in stamina wheels, which means stamina food and stamina elixers become more viable.

 

Improve overworld bosses, add them at more places, and maybe add more variety

I think right now for casual players the overworld bosses are pretty cool and challenging. But for the hardcore players / pro players, the real challenge is taking any damage at all while fighting a stone talus / hinox.

Stone talus is super easy to dodge, climb on top and then beat the hell out of him.

Hinox you can stasis, shoot the eye, hit him a million times, run away and then repeat.

And even Lynels become not too hard once you get used to them.

I don't think giving them more HP would be the right fix. That would not make it worthwhile to kill them as their rewards are not worth breaking 3 or more weapons. Maybe make their attacks faster, add a larger variety of attacks, or make them do more damage. In my opinion getting smacked by a giant tree by an even more giant Hinox should insta-kill you, especially in hard mode.

I would love to see more overworld bosses in the wild as well, instead of the bunch of random bokoblins and lizalfos you find everywhere.

 

Slightly improve enemy combat AI

Even in Dark Souls some bosses will be easy after you memorized all attack patterns. But I think sometimes Zelda is still a bit too forgiving, and too much like the previous games. Fights usually go like this in my opinion:

Bokoblin misses Bokoblin: "OH NO I MISSED / HIT YOUR SHIELD, WELL LET ME JUST STAND STILL HERE FOR 5 SECONDS. HERE LINK, NOW'S YOUR CHANCE, FEEL FREE TO HIT ME A FEW TIMES!!! Bokoblin clearly shows he's back in shape and get ready to attack again

I know that there should be some free hits / a stun feature, but right now I think it's too long, even if just by a second. It doesn't feel like the enemy is actually trying to kill you, but if you're just doing some sword practice together. Don't get me wrong, I love the fights though, it's just still a super tiny bit too scripted.

 

Make it harder to upgrade your inventory slots

Currently my inventory is full of rare, 30+ ATK weapons. In my house I have three displays with the great Fireblade, Iceblade and Shockblade. Do I ever use all these weapons? Never! All I use are the two latest wimpy weapons I picked up from bokoblins to kill other bokoblins. With overworld bosses I only need two stronger weapons.

At the start of your game you might think weapons break fast, but once you find a few korok seeds and do the upgrades you will pretty much have an endless supply of strong weapons. With a lot of upgrades you don't have to think about weapon durability anymore when for example hitting rocks with stasis or mining ore veins because you have those extra spots for sledgehammers.

Also, a thing that was supposed to be a big point about this game during marketing and stuff is how you're supposed to adapt to the styles of different weapons because you always have to use what nature gives you. But this is not really the case anymore when you have a ton of inventory upgrades.

I agree that it will probably be annoying that everytime you will have to throw away weapons from chests because your inventory is full though.

Maybe make the first upgrades cost more korok seeds, like 5-10 instead of just 1?

 

Make enemies chase you farther (and maybe slightly faster while in "chase" mode)

The game wants you to plan ahead of your adventure. If you see a group of bokoblins right now you can dash through them like Sonic and leave them behind without ever fighting them (because really after a while in the game there's no point). But the game is supposed to be played strategically, you're supposed to sneak around the camp, look for environmental kills etc.

If you get detected I think the enemies should chase you for longer and faster. Making them faster in an actual fight would be too overpowered, just while they are chasing you away from their camp. This way it's more rewarding to be careful and keep a distance.

Another thing is that a lot of enemies spawn at night but you can keep running past them ignoring literally every single enemy that spawns on you. Improving this spawning mechanic (spawning them farther in front of you and making them auto-target you), and them making them chase you farther and faster, will make it so you will be forced to keep check of what time it is, and make it so you will probably look for a fire and wait until morning. Heck it would even make making your own camp-fires more viable.

 

Nerf the Master Sword

Once you get the master sword you can use it for anything. It pretty much does 1500 damage before it runs out of energy, making it enough to kill overworld bosses for 75%. You can use it for mining, for cutting trees, for hitting rocks with stasis, for hunting, and it will never break and still do a ton of damage!

Possible suggestions:

*Make it break a lot faster. Right now when not glowing it can do roughly 1500 damage before it runs out of energy. Change that to 750 or even lower.

*Make it cost even more than 13 hearts to be able to get it

*Increase recharging time (not really a fan of this myself)

 

Make flurry rush less overpowered

Just a tiny suggestion. Once you become a pro in combat it becomes easy to flurry rush 90% if not more of all attacks, and it gives you like 8 free hits. That's a lot. That way a fight typically exists out of you doing 16 hits while the enemy strikes only twice, missing you both times. To me that doesn't even sound like a real fight, just like a total beatdown.

 

General comments

Crafting / cooking

I mostly feel like the crafting / cooking system is too unneeded / underrated right now. I have many, many items in my inventory saying "mix this with some critters to make elixers!". Never have I ever made an elixer because I never needed it.

When I went to fought Ganon I had DEF and ATK raising pieces of meals in my inventory. Yet I didn't really need it, neither did I ever need it in the rest of the world. It doesn't feel rewarding enough to spend time trying to make different kinds of elixers or foods with special effects when the game is easily beatable without all those. Hopefully making overworld enemies harder will fix this a bit.

Enemy scaling

Early game bokoblins feel challenging and cool to fight. But later in the game fighting bokoblins feels like a complete waste of time, arrows, and weapon durability. You get nothing back for it except some monster parts and maybe a chest containing a weapon worse than the ones you already had. I could take them all out flawlessly, but I can just as easily run past them and not waste my time on them.

And neither do they feel hard anymore. You don't need your many healing items, ATK and DEF raising elixers, and your strongest shields and weapons. You need one and a half flurry rush and you win.

 

If you managed to make it all the way to here after reading everything then you are an awesome person!

Submitted March 09, 2017 at 10:49AM by WeeziMonkey http://ift.tt/2naeqOW