Do you like durability systems for your equipment in video-games?

[Lotus Victoria]

Greetings champions! Good to see you.

So, a lot of RPG's have durability systems included into the gameplay. WoW, Guild Wars, Dark Souls, Far Cry 2 and recently, Breath of the Wild, to an more extreme extent.

Do you like this kind of system?

[Ilarion]

I think it's just an annoyance.

[Fencers]

I'm okay with durability systems overall and prefer systems that present an opportunity cost.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

As someone who studies game design, I understand why they exist: to force the player to take a break and reevaluate their strategy rather than continually getting frustrated and eventually rage quitting when they cannot defeat a boss. The problem is that it doesn't actually help the player defeat the encounter - you don't get stronger and you aren't given useful hints on the encounter, just an annoying time and currency sink. Perhaps a better solution would be for the player to be booted out of the encounter, and find a new NPC waiting who (in universe) had prior experience with the boss and would share his tips, or would outright help the player as a guest party member (justified as him being a monster hunter, a fellow member of the organization the player is apart of, or out for revenge because the boss killed his loved one, etc).

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I'm okay with durability systems overall and prefer systems that present an opportunity cost.

Like Wild Tangent's Fate? In that game, when you died, you got three choices: 1. spend a large amount of money to resurrect on the spot with max out HP and mana and temporary invincibility, 2. get booted within either three floor up or three levels down the dungeon, leaving your items at your corpse. You have to make it back quickly to retrieve your items, or 3. just get booted out of the dungeon, to the entrance for the first floor.

[Fencers]

Like Wild Tangent's Fate?

Yes. I did enjoy those games in part for the risk offered in going deeper in the dungeon(s).

[Afrospinach]

Generally? No.

Fallout 3 was the worst, my gun does less damage the second I pull the trigger? At least FNV had a threshold for when the damage started to decline. It was refreshing in skyrim to just have you gear and that was that.

On the flipside you have something like project zombiod which have skill levels that mitigate damage to your tool. Being a survival and whatnot you need to balance it all out which is fun.

WoW/Diablo etc, now their durability system is a real head scratcher. You wasted your time on this? Serves no purpose. A footnote on your finances, no real practical limitation on gameplay. It could disappear and no one would notice. Even when you are wiping it is just busywork now.

[endersblade]

I mostly find it an annoyance. I especially hate it when the item/gear gets destroyed completely when it reaches zero. Nox comes to mind. It sucks having to carry a few SETS of gear to go exploring because your shit will break and you'll be stuck outside of town without a weapon, shield, or armor.

[Charge me Doctor]

It's non-interactive tax on stubbornness, i'm ok with that. Had literally 0 problems with it since i can repair on a mount. How people manage to die fucking once in a raid and go "rep bot plox"

[Jtbrig7390]

I find it to be annoying, But its whatever in the end.

[Baconeggcheese]

Most of the time its just a currency sink, like in wows case.

When its punishing I don't much enjoy it, but as a sink I have no issue.

[breadisfunny]

depends on how it's implemented. in oblivion for example it's boring and unneeded.

[Wondercrab]

It's entirely dependent on how it's done. In some games it seems like nothing more than an arbitrary resource tax, while in others it can make things interesting and dynamic. Breath of the Wild is probably a good recent example of how a weapon durability system radically alters gameplay, and while there are still some issues with it, it does push the player towards far more dynamic and varied encounters than if they'd just been able to use one static weapon from start to finish.

[Coldkil]

I'm okay with it, but the system needs to be an integral part of the gameplay and have some purpose. Either it's like WoW where it's mostly a currency sink and it's basically just a "timer" - but in this case it could be removed altogether - or it's something more structured.

In the end it's good as a mechanic but it shouldn't be something hindering the player.

[Zephyr Storm]

Durability systems need to be abolished in video games unless it's in a game that is specifically trying to be realistic. And even then, the durability system needs to be far more accurate than what it normally is. Hitting zombies with a metal baseball bat or ax should not make them break after just a few swings, for example.

But overall, the vast majority of games just need to get rid of the durability system, period. It's more of an annoyance than anything else. It's a lazy and boring way for developers to make players stop playing in order to do something else or just force players to spend money on bullshit.

[Dejiko]

Not a fan of it, mostly because there`s usually nothing interesting attached to the decay in quality for weapons/armor, if it breaks
you just go repair it.
If there was an interesting mechanic associated with weapons gradually getting worse, alongside visual ques in the form of the weapon physically
changing, perhaps becoming more dull or sustaining damage or rusting it could be more interesting.
The new zelda game turned me off it completely, five swings with a weapon and it`s gone forever.

If they make it so you can fashion your own repair kits through gathering materials in the open world, say gather some wood and metals and have a
system where you can progress and improve, as well as learn to attach improvements to weapons and in time strengthen their durability that could be fun.

[mizeri]

no its stupid, same as the house cut for the AH

[Cæli]

no its stupid, same as the house cut for the AH

I don't think you get the idea behind gold sink : P

[Katchii]

Really depends on the game and how robust the system is. Games where there's crafting and the ability to make your own weapons and stuff, I think it would make sense, games where there's easily accessible repair stations or NPCs it's also fair and makes sense. It also really only feels fair when the weapon has a durability rating you can see as it degrades and take some time to degrade.

The way Zelda: Breath of the Wild implemented it was stupid, making weapons more like a consumable than an actual weapon, and I had extreme difficulty enjoying the game and finishing it because of that fact. Weapons breaking after 5 swings, permanently (early weapons anyway, better weapons could take considerably more punishment), having no way to repair most weapons and having to constantly find and equip new weapons along with the extremely limited inventory space just made it the most cumbersome and unfun mechanic I've ever encountered in a game.

[Endus]

The biggest issue is it's not reasonable, a lot of the time. The Witcher 3 is gonna be my go-to example because I finally got around to playing it and the DLC recently. I understand they wanted it to be "realistic", but this is a setting where meditating for an hour refills all your potions and stuff if you've got an alcohol on you (and I literally never ran out or bought any). While you DO get repair kit drops, you don't always get them when you need them, paying for repairs is oddly expensive right at the start but quickly becomes irrelevant anyway, and your weapons get damaged so quickly it's a constant issue.

I ended up modding it away. It just served to slow everything down for no good reason. Applying oils or working out which potions you want to use, that's a mechanic that has benefits, but repairs were just a "BTW, your gear sucks now until you use a consumable or talk to a blacksmith" thing. No advantages to repaired gear, just disadvantages because you forgot to do your chores often enough. It's the equivalent of giving your hero a food/water meter (in a setting like The Witcher where that stuff's plentiful, not a survival game like Fallout), or requiring them to take piss breaks every so often or they piss their pants. It's unfun and annoying, and doesn't add any value to the player's experience, just a penalty for forgetting your daily chores.

In a single-player game, you don't need a time/currency sink, and in an MMO, you can find better ones.

[Polybius]

I'd rather have Durability as a penalty over anything else. It beats losing experience and inventory.