What Master Mode could have done better

In theory, it was a good idea to add a separate "difficult" mode to spice up gameplay for players who percieve the base game as stale after a while.

Some parts of it are poorly executed tho. The constant, super fast health regen for example. Either you're too weak, so enemies turn into damage sponges and you'll end up breaking your weapons for basically no profit, or you have good enough gear to kill them before health regen kicks in, at which point the game becomes so easy that it can feel lame again. There is very little middle ground, especially since the truckload of high-damage extra equipment from the floating platforms can make you completely OP directly after leaving the starting area.

Take the intro section for example:

• In Normal Mode, the Great Plateau is full of red Bokoblins, which have 13 HP. A regular unboosted Boko Club deals 4 damage points and lasts for 12 hits, and the last hit deals double damage. The "lifetime damage" of such a club is 13*4=52 damage points, which means that you can kill 4 Red Bokoblins before your weapon breaks - at which point you have 4 new weapons. This is a net gain with a huge wiggle room for trial and error, so even if you mess up by throwing your weapon off a cliff or setting it on fire, you always gain more than you lose.

• In Master Mode, the same enemies suddenly have a whooping 72 HP, but the equipment is still the same. The Boko Club still breaks after having dealt 52 points of damage, but your enemy isn't dead yet, so you need to badly damage a second weapon in order to kill it. And if you need nearly two weapons for every foe you kill, then you will end up with an empty inventory and a couple of very angry foes eventually, because you can not kill enemies faster than you can accumulate new weapons. And the very fast, constant health regen make this worse, because if you stop attacking a foe for a couple of seconds, then it will heal back to full health - but your weapons are still shattered.

No amount of skill and technique can fix this - direct fights are unwinnable by default unless you either use exploits (like shock traps), workarounds to OHKO your enemies (like drowning them or sneakstriking them while they sleep) or get better gear BEFORE the fight starts. Creative gimmicks that were viable techniques in Normal Mode, like fire damage, rolling boulders into enemy camps, tossing explosives and the like are suddenly completely wortless which makes fights a whole lot LESS interesting. You HAVE to hit hard and fast with strong equipment, or else you lose.

On the other hand, you can get mega overpowered ridiculously fast, at which point the same fights become flat-out boring.

Lets say you just fiished the Great Plateau Section. It takes all of two minutes to reach the Bridge of Hylia, and there is a Boko on a floating platform, equipped with a 3-shot Mighty Lynel Bow and Bomb Arrows. The platform is directly above water, so if you toss a single bomb at it, the Boko will fall down, drown, and you can get his equipment with zero effort. Congrats, you now have an endgame weapon to terrorize the next foe from afar with zero risk - and it respawns every Blood Moon.

There are tons of these platforms all across the map, with ridiculously strong equipment that is often easy to farm. If you want something even remotely close in Normal Mode, you would need to actually slaughter a mid-tier Lynel for it - no chance to get something as powerful as that with a single bomb and zero effort.

What Master Mode could have done better:

There could have been a million other ways to spice up gameplay without "just" adding damage sponges that hit like trucks. For example:

• Mirroring the map. Doesn't take much effort from a programming point of view, but it can make the overworld feel fresh again as the layout will be unfamilliar. You'd have to actually travel and explore instead of blindly running into a well-known direction as always.

• Randomizing Shrines. Will it be a puzzle? A Test of Strength? A Blessing Shrine? You simply won't know beforehand, so undiscovered shrines are worth checking out again.

• Randomizing Enemies - or at least enemy variants. Ridgeland Tower for example is surrounded by Electric Lizalfos and Electric Wizzrobes, but what if it were Fire- or Ice-elemental enemies instead? Or imagine entering a Major Test of Strength, expecting to fight a Guardian Scout, but instead there is a Talus or Hinox in there?

• Randomizing "dead" Guardians. Once you have the Camera or Stasis+ you can just check which ones are alive and just pretending to be dead, but lets just disable that, too. Is that dead Guardian over there really DEAD-dead or is it a Decayed one just pretending to be dead and you'll get a nasty surprise as soon as you get closer? No way of knowing beforehand!

• Randomizing Treasure Chests. You just found a chest. Is it a weapon, rupees, arrows, a piece of armor? No way of knowing beforehand! Some could be disguised octoroks as well.

• Removing Safe Zones. Settlements, Stables, and a handful of other areas are "safe zones" in which enemies instantly become docile. Enter a village and enemies that were just chasing you WILL stop, look around confused, and then be on their merry way, even if Link is standing within sight range. But what if they would simply never stop chasing you even if you enter a building?

• Adding enemies outside their "expected" environment. Imagine riding across Central Hyrule and suddenly you hear the Molduga theme and a huge HP bar appears on top of the screen ... or you're exploring Faron and there's a Skywatcher just drifting over the jungle. MM currently only has a single extra Lynel on the Great Plateau, but that's it.

• Randomize consumables. Everyone knows that Hearty Durians and Mighty Bananas can be easily farmed in the Faron Woods for super convenient boosts, but what if you would have to find the place where they grow anew in each playthrough? Sometimes they'll grow in Zora's domain, sometimes in the desert, sometimes in Eldin ... you would need to actually explore the map again.

• Additional Gameplay Mechanics like for example hunger / fatigue so Link would need to eat and rest regularily even when he's not hurt. Items could also have weight or certain other limitations (like 1 page inventory MAX) so the player couldn't just carry around 48576 food items at all times without some sort of drawback.

• Nerf Link, for example by removing the auto-pause whenever you open the menu. No more healing / boosting / changing armor in the middle of combat without taking cover first. And how about being able to only carry 1-2 armor sets at a time, with a wardrobe/chest in Link's house for the sets you're currently not using?

• Permadeath Mode. Whether or not faeries / Mipha's Grace work in this mode is up for debate.

• Mimics. Is that ore deposit over there really just an ore deposit or will it bite when I approach it?

• Wallmasters/Florrmasters. As annoying as I personally found these enemies, they DID keep players on their toes while exploring temples in order games. Could be limited to Hyrule Castle and/or Divine Beasts or certain shrines. Or they could appear everywhere, but only during Blood Moon nights.

Any more ideas?