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I have played around 245 hours of breath of the wild, around 40 hours on my friends switch before I got my own and 205 hours on my own switch. I've just bought "The Master Trials" DLC for it. I've been using the heroes path and it has tracked all the way from when I started the game, to exactly where I'm standing now. I have heard that the game only tracks up to 200 hours of gameplay. If that's so, then why has it tracked to where I am currently standing if I've played 5 more hours than 200 hours? When I reach the maximum amount of trackable hours will it stop tracking me from there on, or will it remove tracked data from the start of the game?

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    I'm guessing that the playtime counter displayed from the Switch home menu includes time you spent with the game paused, but the Hero's Path feature only records your movement when the game is unpaused?
    – Kevin
    Apr 25, 2018 at 14:56
  • @Kevin That's not what he's asking. He's asking why his game has tracked more than 200 hours when he heard it only does up to 200.
    – Steve-O
    Apr 25, 2018 at 15:21
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    @Steve-O It's exactly what he's asking, maybe time in the menu or in cutscenes doesn't count towards the 200 hours, so while he played for longer than 200 hours, the game hasn't recorded 200 hours of travel around the world yet.
    – Question Marks
    Apr 25, 2018 at 15:33
  • When does Heroes Path start tracking? When you buy the DLC or start playing BOTW, with or without DLC?
    – Eric Duminil
    Apr 25, 2018 at 18:17
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    @EricDuminil. You don't have to install anything for it to track your movements. I played the game since day 1 and had already completed the story (~100 hours) when the Hero's Path update was released, and I could still track my path down to the cave where Link first wakes up.
    – Nolonar
    Apr 25, 2018 at 18:44

3 Answers 3

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I realised that the game has tracked to where I am currently standing because the time I have spent in shrines and divine beasts has paused the heroes path, so therefore I have played over 200 hours of the game in general but not yet gotten to 200 hours in the open world.

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Hero's Path Mode: This new map feature shows the path Link has walked through Hyrule from the last 200 hours of gameplay. Use the time tracker bar to see where you've spent the most time and where you have yet to explore. There's bound to be more adventures and maybe a shrine or two on the road less traveled.

This is from Nintendo's page of the DLC, which says 'the last 200 hours of gameplay'. Therefore I presume that the first 5 hours will be deleted if you go 5 hours over the limit.

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    OP says it shows everything from when he started to where he is now. So it doesn't seem like he lost 5 hours
    – Taacoo
    Apr 25, 2018 at 14:27
  • The bar that you use to scroll through, where you previously traveled is not yet full I realised I suppose time spent in shrines and divine beasts paused it
    – Liam
    Apr 25, 2018 at 14:51
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    -1 The OP is aware of the 200 hour limit. He's asking why Hero's Path isn't deleting history yet, even though he's gone over that limit. So this doesn't answer the question.
    – Kevin
    Apr 25, 2018 at 14:59
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    @Liam You figured that out on your own. That's not mentioned in this answer.
    – Nic
    Apr 25, 2018 at 15:10
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    @Kevin He asked both actually. This is a valid answer to the final question in the post.
    – JMac
    Apr 25, 2018 at 18:45
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This is just an alternative guess to the already existing answers:

I recently started the game and if I remember correctly it says that the 200 hours are an approximation and not an exact number. Either way, the reason might be the technical implementation of the tracker.

It could be that the tracker does not store your "GPS" location every X seconds but rather stores some additional information about your actions. It can be limited by storage space rather than actual time and the 200 hours are just something Nintendo measured as an average time it takes for a player to fill that storage.

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  • It makes the most sense IMHO.
    – Eric Duminil
    Apr 26, 2018 at 7:58
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    I can tell this answer comes from a programmer. :) Marketing people want to say "It will store X hours" and we say "well we can't give you that" and they say "just give us an estimate that will be right for most players" and we say "fine I think about 200 hours or so" and then that goes out as Absolute Truth
    – Kip
    May 3, 2018 at 1:53

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