The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a massive game filled with secrets, including one regarding its weapon damage stat. Combine that with the returning weapon durability, and fans who already felt alienated by Breath of the Wild's innovations might be in for even more of a curveball.
Multiple weapon types is a feature originally introduced in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and has unsurprisingly been brought back in its sequel, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. While the weapons' aesthetics are quite varied, they all fall into just three types: one-handed swords, two-handed swords, and spears. The latter are often deemed superior due to their weaker yet faster hits (combined with a flat damage bonus added by fusing materials to them), and their ability to stun-lock enemies despite leaving Link more exposed while attacking. Regardless, all three types are rather brittle and will break when enough hits are dealt, though Tears of the Kingdom's new Fuse ability can rectify this if only a little.
A Reddit user by the name of fallen_corpse posted a PSA regarding the weapon damage stats for Tears of the Kingdom. Apparently, a hidden stat change is present, giving each weapon type its own damage modifier to prevent each type from being overpowered, but this results in spears being weaker than advertised, making them weaker than other weapon types with the same numbers listed. It turns out that light swords have an unchanged 1.0 damage stat, while heavy ones sit as 1.05 (5% stronger than presumed), and spears are at 0,75 (25% weaker than presumed). These changes should make the more difficult early game a lot more interesting in terms of combat strategy.
Many fellow Redditors seemed glib about the news, with some acting not very surprised, and others shrugging it off, now deeming light weapons to be the superior type as a result of this find. Some even noted the fact that the returning Champion's Tunic no longer has the ability to reveal enemy HP numbers, a change potentially made to make the stat changes less obvious.
It is unknown why Nintendo implemented such a change while developing Tears of the Kingdom, let alone why it didn't disclose this to its fans. The company has been known to revise sequels based on fan feedback, hence Tears of the Kingdom's new Ascend ability, but while series producer Eiji Aonuma has detailed the thought-process behind that change, neither he nor the other developers have stated why they felt the need to rebalance the weapon types this time around. Perhaps they were aware of how many players seemed to favor spears over other weapons and wanted to encourage more experimentation, something these past two Zelda games are all about.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is available for Nintendo Switch.