Topic: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Something I hope is fixed in TOTK is the healing system.

In BOTW, you heal by opening a menu, at ANY time, and just eating as much as you want. You can open a different menu, also at any time, and just leave if "Healing" doesn't do enough for you. This has never felt like good game design to me, more like mechanics that the devs didn't have time to perfect.

Instead, do healing the way Hollow Knight did it- Hold down a button long enough to heal. Getting hit cancels this, so you have to strategize when you do this. You can make it a rune like Stasis, that when you enter combat, you equip automatically (To avoid annoying people, the auto-equip bit could be disabled in settings). Then to heal, hold down the "Use Rune" button.

Since this idea effectively makes food pointless, I suggest this solution as well-
Make elixir ingredients MUCH easier to get. Make hunting and collecting food harder.
Basically, you can make elixirs which no longer heal you, and give you the same effects, at the cost of some damage, or another loss. If you hunt down ingredients to make dishes instead, you have similar effects without the drawbacks, but those ingredients are rare and very expensive in shops.

These are still activated, however, by selecting them in a menu. Fixing the "Open menu at any time" issue could be done by at first, not letting you use the sheikah slate or inventory if there are monsters within a certain distance. Maybe you could unlock the ability to freeze time and open the menu in a dungeon somewhere.
That's what I'd like to see in TOTK.

@sunny63 Absolutely. Healing is one of the most broken things in BOTW that not many people really seem to mention. It is severely unbalanced if you just have several healing meals. Not only that, but you can also teleport away from any danger at any point.

The comparison to Hollow Knight is a very good one because I really love how that game’s healing system works. It actually feels strategic. But even going back to some older Zelda games, if you wanted to use a fairy or drink milk, you still needed find somewhat of an opening.

If TOTK implemented a real-time healing system, I think all of the issues here would go away. Perhaps you could still pause to eat stat-buffing meals, but these couldn’t actually heal you. While they’re at it, don’t allow people to teleport in combat either. They can run, fly, drive away, whatever. That’s fine. But fast traveling is just a cheap crutch.

Healing in Zelda has always been easy. Just smash a pot open or cut grass and you get hearts, at least until they did cooking. Zelda isn't really a souls-like game, or it's not meant to be. Maybe a healing system where you have to be strategic could work for something like Master Mode, but Zelda games aren't meant to be a game with limited heals.

I hope this game has an Ed Sheeran song

@EaglyTheKawaiiShika what did I say...

@EaglyTheKawaiiShika I think the mention of the figure you mentioned is enough to get the thread banned, given the controversy around them rn.

Anyways, it's probably best to change the topic back to TotK, so that this thread doesn't get archived, causing people to have to make a new TotK thread.

We have reached 1000 posts off of 40 seconds of gameplay footage.

@Munchlax It's not an addiction I can stop whenever I want I swear.

For the comments about healing I'm inclined to agree to an extent, but meals received such few criticisms and were enjoyed by people who wouldn't normally like action games so I think they'll remain largely the same. I personally think Skyward Sword has my favorite use of healing because you have to drink the potion while remaining in real time so it does help with that strategic element mentioned (even though the potions get broken af in late-game).

I can honestly say I never once found myself while playing Breath of the Wild thinking “Gosh, I wish healing was way more inconvenient and harder to do!!!”. Not every game needs to be a Soulslike. I wouldn’t mind them adding optional sliders for a more punishing healing system for those who want it, I’ll always agree games should have more options in both directions, not less. However, I would hate to see it out and out replacing what we have and honestly I just couldn’t imagine Nintendo changing it in the first place.

The only thing broken is the lack of fishing in botw. With all that you can do, not being able to craft a rod is insane. Just let me fish in totk dangit!

Cooking a single radish = full health plus 3 hearts. That's pretty easy, no? And you can store a bunch of cooked ones, 20-30? Granted, I learned that from internet, not the game.

I'm a more fun bombing the ***** out of the water

I think perhaps if TOTK has a Master Mode, it would work to implement a real-time healing system that way. Perhaps standard mode could retain the default method, maybe just with a couple slight tweaks.

@Munchlax and 51 pages of waiting impatiently

As long as they change the broken weapons mechanic i’ll be happy. It would be great if they could do it like other MMOs, where you find starter weapons with different stats and then collect metals and gems or whatever, and work it up at the blacksmiths. If they locate all the best blacksmiths in harder to reach places then it wont get overpowered too soon. Something like that would be cool, because i never felt attached to weapons in BOTW

Honestly, all they have to do is make it to where you can reforge broken weapons, or have a proper durability meter, and I'd be content.

@Rambler why not have both!

I just want a good game honestly, this is my most hyped game of the decade so far.

@NintendoByNature
You could use bombs instead of lures!

I’m not really excited for TotK at the moment. Like, I’ll probably get it, since I’m a fan of the series, but at the current, there’s not much to make me excited. Not much to show how different this game is from the original, or make me want to buy it over the original.