Have a question about how the TVTropes wiki works? No one knows this community better than the people in it, so ask away! Ask the Tropers is the page you come to when you have a question burning in your brain and the support pages didn't help.
It's not for everything, though. For a list of all the resources for your questions, click here. You can also go to this Directory thread
for ongoing cleanup projects.
Gamebreaker is one of those things were there's excessive complaining and gushing and has suffered trope decay as a result. If everything in a game breaks the game, then there's no gamebreaker.
The Zelda development team developed for many possible scenarios and the only way a game could be truely broken is if players do something the developers never accounted for like the flying machines in Breath of the Wild (which was acknowledged by the dev team introducing new Zonai vehicle building in Tears).
You could cut a lot of that sub-page. There's a misconception that these games are designed to be Nintendo Hard Dark Souls knockoffs, when they're not. For example:
"Pretty much the entire cooking system. If you know what you're doing, you can fill your inventory with a massive amount of food that grants full heals and potions that grant long-lasting stat bonuses."
Is that really a game breaker? That's the intended use!
Something that would be a gamebreaker for TOTK would be something like the rocket-shield. Fuse a Zonai rocket to a shield and boom, you have an easy dungeon bypass for a lot of shrine puzzles. That's not an intended use, in my view, because the devs don't allow you to take out Zonai devices within shrines and you can't use the Autobuild power, so it was in their head that they needed to prevent constructed workarounds. What they missed was a player coming in with rocket-shields already in their inventory.
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
I want to delete a few entries myself especially over special bonus effects from wearing certain outfits.
I know Game-Breaker is a YMMV trope so editing things out is a bit tricky, but it really does feel like some of these entries are exaggerating basic mechanics at some points.
Even YMMV tropes need some sort of consistency.
Here's a mixed case:
- The simplest, but arguably most effective use of Ultrahand and recall is the "floating elevator" technique. Simply take any Ultrahand-able object, place it along the ground, raise it up to the maximum height (or to wherever you want to go) and then drop it down. Switch to Recall and Recall your object, and it will instantly trace a path into the air. Stand on the object you Ultrahanded and bam, makeshift transportation platform. What makes it even better is that Recall barely has any cooldown and can be reused almost immediately after the timer runs out, which lets it keep objects in the air indefinitely like a pseudo-Stasis. This can absolutely destroy several of the game's traversal challenges, and can even sequence break certain shrines.
- Ultrahand/Recall can also be used to launch gliders without needing rails or rockets. Pick it up, Ultrahand it in the air for several seconds, put it back down in front of you, climb on, Recall, then cancel the Recall in midair.
- Recall can also be an effective strategy against enemies and giant bosses. Just pick up a large object with Ultrahand, start swinging it around and hit enemies with it, then use Recall and it will do the same thing in reverse.
- Another powerful way to use Recall and Ultrahand is through "Recall Riding". Simply throw a spear, attach it to a plank of wood, Recall it, and stand on the plank. Watch as the spear is dragged backwards and then flings Link and the platform extremely high into the air, often rivaling the launches from the Skyview Towers!
Firstly, combining Ultrahand and Recall is a fundamental use of the game's physics engine — one of the first shrines is built around it. Secondly, the floating elevator is an intended use; several Sky Islands are mostly easily accessed that way and the Eldin Skytower is unlocked by using it. Third, using UH/RC to launch gliders is directly demonstrated in the tutorial. Only the last two examples really fit.
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
^^^ Isn't there a giant wall on just as many shrines that blocks the player from just immediately launching themselves over to the end?
^^ Yeah, those examples don't qualify at all objectively as written (character/item/strategy being hideously unbalanced and/or making the game ridiculously easy to the point where people complain about it.)
^ The third example does seem like a useful strategy, but doesn't strike me as a breaker unless there's something I'm missing. For the fourth example, I can see how that might qualify if rewritten, since it makes traversing the world ridiculously easy (if focusing on an aspect of the game still fits, that is.) I'm looking around and I can't find any posts of people complaining about it being used this way, however.
Edited by Super_Weegee
There probably needs to be a comment at the top of the page to guide editors on what's a Game-Breaker and what's not for both games.
^^ Also on the "Floating Elevator" technique: unless I missed some dialogue or even a minor cutscene, it's not directly taught in-game and I think you're confusing it with the normal "elevator" technique. It's a very confusing name because there's two ways to make an elevator:
- Reversing the direction of falling object and riding it with Recall was an ability shown off in a trailer before the game's release.
- The technique being described on the page is purposefully switching between Ultrahand and Recall to ride an object. This is because Ultrahand creates a new path for Recall to follow, meaning it can be done in any direction from vertical, horizontal, circles, etc. depending on how the player moves an object before recalling it.
Nachoyah Shrine (the shrine associated with Recall in the tutorial) only shows how to ride an object to a higher place with ONLY Recall because you're just riding a raft up a waterfall and its final puzzle mostly involves moving some clock hands into sync, which does use Ultrahand to an extent but not to move a player upward. In theory, some players can figure out how to use Ultrahand and Recall together to lift themselves to high places but not everyone.
Also, the Ultrahand+Recall elevator technique isn't required for the tower in Eldin. The player just needs to get on top of it to remove a lid blocking its top, which can mean just recalling a nearby fallen rock to get lifted high enough to paraglide to the top of the tower and then removing the lid with Ultrahand.
Not sure where the game tells you that you can do to lift Wings (is this what you mean by gliders?).
The technique probably needs a better name to avoid confusion but I'm not sure if the community actually calls it that or not.
Now with that out of the way, as for whether that specific mechanic is a Game-Breaker, I'm a bit undecided.
When the two abilities are combined, they can indeed circumvent large pathways entirely because it affects how shrine orbs and even Koroks are transported. However, it does appear to be an intentional way to make puzzles less linear to complete especially since Ultrahand does create a new pathway for Recall when an object is moved. Plus, unlike Stasis, Recall doesn't automatically deactivate when Link switches to a different ability, meaning recalled objects can still be grabbed with Ultrahand while they're moving around even if they're hovering mid-air.
It's pleasantly surprising a decent amount of the community because the process works differently from switching between Stasis and Magnesis (their rough equivalents) in Breath of the Wild, hence the why it feels like a Game-Breaker.
For now, I want to say "no, it's not a Game-Breaker" but if I keep hearing more people call it that or I see a specific technique used with it, I might change my mind on it.
I went through the entries for potential cutting (and added one of my own) and this was what I was left with:
Breath of the Wild-specific
- The Menu Overload glitch. While the required items take a little bit to acquire, around 5 multi-shot bows and some shock arrows, it breaks the game wide open since it opens the door for even bigger glitches. For example, players can duplicate their inventory using the displays in Link's house (including the most powerful items in the game like the Hylian Shield and any weapon with an attack above 70 or 80) and transfer durability to damaged weapons to repair them. Needless to say, with the right equipment, you never have to worry about scrounging around for gear ever again.
- The Royal Guard's Gear are extremely powerful items found only in Hyrule Castle and normally have piss-poor durability, except the overload glitch enables us to transfer durability onto them. This means we can give Royal Guard's equipment the durability of a spring-loaded hammer, which has a whopping 80 uses. Not only that, we can dupe them to no end, and by abusing a certain NPC, generate an infinite supply of rupees. There's a reason this set of gear is almost undoubtedly the best when glitches are factored in. The result is that the standard Infinity +1 gear gets completely and utterly outclassed in both damage and possibly durability, since said gear has severe limits on what buffs it can have.
- You technically aren't supposed to be able to bring items to Eventide Island. However, you can drop them from your inventory, step onto the sand, and then pick them up after the monk strips you to your underwear.
Tears of the Kingdom-specific
- "Intercontinental Ballistic Laser Beams"
is a relatively simple construct that is little more than a homing cart and a whole bunch of lasers. It kills almost anything (up to and including a Gleeok) in seconds.
- A way to use Recall and Ultrahand is through "Recall Riding". Simply throw a spear, attach it to a plank of wood, Recall it, and stand on the plank. Watch as the spear is dragged backwards and then flings Link and the platform extremely high into the air, often rivaling the launches from the Skyview Towers!
- While item duplications were possible in the previous game, it was a little complicated to pull off. In this game, however, they are far easier to pull off than before to the point of being trivial. You can pretty much become the richest man in Hyrule and buy whatever you want with duped diamonds, make yourself immortal with duped fairies, cook the best food with duped ingredients, and upgrade your armor to the max or fuse your duped weapons with the most powerful duped materials with next to no grinding. This led to some people derisively referring to anybody using the exploits as playing on easy mode as a result. There are four widely-used variations, with the former two being patched out:
- One method was to save, drop a weapon, shield, and/or bow and equip another one, pause again very quickly, drop the equipped items again, then reload the save. If done right, the dropped items will carry over to the reloaded file, allowing for infinite duplications.
- For materials, the only requirements are the paraglider or a shield. While you're in the air and using one of them, hold the items you want to duplicate, and close the menu while sorting it at the same time. The items will drop without decreasing the counter if timed right, allowing for up to 21 copies in one jump before it starts despawning.
- Another method found after the last two were patched involved Link's house in Tarrey Town, using a shock emitter device and a weapon, shield, and/or bow display room, While a Zonai shock emitter is active and touching the display, you can display the item at the same time you walk into the beam and get shocked, which knocks the duplicate item out of Link's hand. When you get the timing down, you can copy your entire inventory with the most powerful items in only a couple minutes.
- The most recent one involves travelling to Tobio's Hollow Chasm (which is normally locked behind a 10-heart gate but can be accessed from the Depths). This method duplicates materials attached to arrows fired from a multi-shot bow into a load zone, turning them back into materials. It is considered the fastest duplication glitch in version 1.1.2.
- The huge circular pressure switches in Shrines of Light, intended to be activated by directing a ball into them through physics puzzles, can also be activated by a bomb flower, cutting out all of the puzzling time, and defeating some of the most notably obtuse scenarios the switches appear in.
I’m good with these.
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
Would we have grounds to take Game-Breaker back to TRS or revive the cleanup project? I'll admit I'm a little disappointed to see some of these examples go because it's useful having a list of helpful tricks, but clearly they didn't fit the spirit of the trope and I suspect there remains a larger issue to address with this.
Edited by 8BrickMario
^^^ - The proposed changes seem fine to me.
^ - It'll depend on what a wick check turns up, but it seems to be the usual problem other "moments" items and pages got in that tropers just want to throw everything they like or hate up. People just forget if everything counts for one thing, then is there really a recognizable moment there?
^^ I'll admit, I did learn some nifty tricks from the cut material, but being informative or entertaining hasn't stopped material from being cut before, if it didn't belong.
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
... jesus. "The Paraglider" is in there as a gamebreaker. That's... astonishing. It's such a necessary mechanic in the game I feel like you may as well have an entry for "Analog Stick: Using the analog stick, you can control Link to basically do anything you need to in the game. In fact, using it properly will allow you to beat the final boss!"
Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.
Yeah, looks good to me. As regards the "elevator" in particular, I don't think it counts. While the game doesn't teach you that specific use, there are plenty of puzzles that are clearly meant to be solved by manipulating an object with Ultrahand and then using Recall to replay the action, so the game clearly intends for you to utilize that combination. And while it's certainly useful and effective, I don't think it's enough to qualify as a Game Breaker.
Reaction Image Repository
I like most of the new list so far, but stuck on this entry specifically being deleted:
- Meat skewers are simple, but effective. Five Prime Meats will create a Prime Meat Skewer, which heals for 15 hearts, and sells for 210 rupees. Five Gourmet Meats will create a Gourmet Meat Skewer, which will fully heal Link no matter how many hearts he has, and will sell for 490 rupees. The ingredients for both can be easily found throughout the game (wolves, deer, buffalo, caribou, woolly rhinos, and bears, will drop Prime or Gourmet and all go down with a single headshot), and Prime Meat can be farmed from a minigame in Hateno Village.
Getting meat is indeed easy in the game and you're making just as much money as gemstones. Is this not a Game-Breaker? Or is it being removed because the game is purposefully making it easier for the player to gain currency? I'm a little lost on that one.
Regardless, I'm completely fine with the new list so far. It cuts down on the number of entries that are ignoring the loading screen tips like the game's recommendation on the weaknesses of elemental enemies or a user boasting about a weapon's strength when it's still limited by durability (at least for BOTW) or too situational for the page.
Guys, this really should be taking place at the thread. Ya'll can all just revive it.
Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
^ This
I tried asking in the Game-Breaker clean-up
thread, but activity in that thread seems to be dead, so I'm asking here:
A lot of the listed entries in Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom's Game-Breaker subpage don't seem particularly, well, game breaking to me (at least as written). While it's a YMMV trope, one of the requirements listed on the main page is that the entries has to be insanely unbalanced to the point where people complain about them to qualify.
I already deleted quite a few of them, but I'm wondering if there's enough salvageable ones to warrant the subpage.
Edited by Super_Weegee