Weapon Durability: Yay or Nay

@waahahah:

Ok wtf haha. So either which way I would be wrong here, but I just ran two more tests.

The test enemy was the Blue Maned Lynel at the Colosseum.

- Boko Spear 2

- 12 flurried hits and breaks

- 12 normal hits and breaks

Just as you said, per hit, no difference.

Then I tried another.

- Silver Longsword 22

- 30 flurried hits and breaks

- 26 normal hits and breaks

This is the opposite of what I said previously, though still not equal.

I'd run more tests, but I really need to get to sleep here. I'll definitely be trying more later though.

I generally don't like it. Games can be tedious enough without that feature.

Works for BotW.

It depends on the game.

I would have preferred if they were a little less weak, but I never had problems with it. On an annoyance level it was about as annoying as having to constantly craft things in Horizon so far. And I like crafting but in the starting 10 hours at least you constantly have to craft new arrows and stuff, it's not like you are making cool new stuff. I also liked it in Far Cry but dislike it in most games. It does depend on the game but most developers would not be able to implement it well enough.

No. Because every weapon you find is unique and potentially better suited for your character. Finding a better weapon to hold on to doesn't happen that often. Most weapons you find are worse than the favorite. If every weapon would have no special stats except for damage, then a durability system would feel differently. But even in that case, what would the durability system add to Nioh? Not much. It's not the right game for such a system.

OK So I gave it some thought in the past five minutes and here's what I came up with for BotW.

BOTW without a durability system - let's redesign the game. Some minor spoilers.

So if we just take out the durability system you run into a couple design issues that we would need to address. Since some people think that the durability system could be taken out to improve the game -and by the way it's not in any way hard to improve upon a game in hindsight especially without needing to work with a 100 other people on it- why don't we dive in to it and try to think of a system that would be better?

The problems you run in to have to do with the very core of the design: the freedom you get to go wherever you desire in this world. It's probably the biggest achievement of this game aside from the joy of exploration. But as a result we run into at least the following 3 problems:

For one, the red and blue enemies would never be a threat anymore. A player could go get the Master Sword from the beginning of the game and he would be set for the rest of the game. People are doing this in the game right now. You could always use the Master sword that will make short work of any of those enemies. So most enemies in the game become kind of useless. Or if the player doesn't immediately get the best sword the game becomes a lot harder. How would we solve this? Do we adjust enemies because you found better gear? Then what is the point of finding the better gear?

A second problem would be that you wouldn't ever care about finding or earning other melee loot, because you got a great melee weapon already. So weapons in chests become meaningless, weapons dropping from enemies become uninteresting. You finished a Divine Beast and get the legendary stick of hulu hulu! Great but you already have something better. How would we solve this?

And a third problem is that without an interest in enemy weapons the combat will become much less dynamic. You won't throw your sword away, you won't use a different melee weapon type, you won't steal an enemy weapon to use against them and in turn you are unlikely to ever play around with the enemies half as much as with the durability system in place. How would we solve this?

Those are the 3 main problems that I see emerge without a durability system. Here are the solutions I came up with: To problem 1 I would say you could design enemies so that they need to be taken down with a different melee weapon type. So you would need to have more than just the Master Sword to effectively take down all types of enemies because a sword is not very good against skeletons for example. To problem 2 I would say you could make the best sword in the game part of the Divine Beast stuff. You couldn't go get it immediately but you have to earn it, as one of the 'best of' melee weapons from the Divine Beasts. You would get the best spear, the best sword, the best hammer and the best shield from the Divine Beasts. It would still make many of the rewards in the game obsolete, I'm not sure how to solve that. Maybe replace all weapon rewards with rupee and (trap?) crafting rewards, and make everything more expensive? Then beating a Lynel would mostly turn it into rupees? To problem 3, I don't have a good answer. I don't know how you could possibly think of a way to keep the A.I. and the combat as fun and interesting as it is, without having the playful interaction with your weapons and the enemy weapons. I guess you could, instead of allowing us to toy with their weapons, give us something like traps that we could set that create interesting combat situations. Like a balloon trap that uses octo balloons to make an enemy unable to touch the ground and they would be stuck there until they attack the balloons. Or traps that influence their weaponry. That would take a lot of work to balance out and design, though.

So in short I think it could be done, although it would introduce a lot of arbitrary restrictions and some new problems (you can set infinite traps?, traps disappear after time?, still finding loot but all of it is worse, you could find a way to just use one weapon effectively against any enemy by exploiting A.I., or if you don't... the difficulty from one encounter to another spikes abruptly), but it would take a lot of extra resources to do this: Keep in mind that the game is build around the chemistry engine. The traps, and the enemies neatly designed around weapon types, and the re purposing of the resting place of the Master Sword would definitely be a lot more work than using the durability system. It would take much more tinkering and design work to pull that off. Think 1 or 2 years of extra dev time. I'm not sure that that would have been a better call. And also keep in mind you can do this easily with any game ever. You can very easily sit down and say 'I think this bit that isn't perfect would work better if we did it my way'. But I do wonder what system you would come up with to make it work better than it does.

Cause maybe I'm being a dum dum but usually I am good at this stuff and I don't think it's that easy to make BotW work without durability. The UI though, they could have quite easily done better by letting you drop weapons from the quick select menu and such. I totally 100% agree with those complaints.

Except Char specifically listed an alternative to the current system, so you're strawmanning him.

A 72 damage royal guard claymore is sub-20 minutes away from the start of the game. It will one-shot most anything outside the hyrule castle. Congratulations for ruining the game for yourself.

How do you gate it without stripping the player out of that option (which is satisfying and rewarding to pull off without being game-breaking) and/or redesigning the game from scratch?

You've got the floor.

the way weapon durability works in BOTW is absolutely perfect and people who complain about it don't know what they're talking about and/or aren't bothering to use their weapons properly. the game is entirely balanced and designed around it.

this is in contrast to other games like dark souls that have a weapon durability mechanic thrown in for no real reason.

A Nay sayer here... Worse thing ever and wouldn't hit a dog in da ass with'em.

@princeofshapeir:

Oh and this just for you. :P :P :P lolol

Zelda isn't primarily a combat game, and I already explained a stronger weapon won't instantly win the game for you. Go look at the comparison to dead rising in this tthread. I don't agree with the video posted. His reasoning is the same reasoning everyone else is using, and there are alternative ways to gate weapons, and there are alternative resource systems.

And no char's arguments have been that the game would be broken without this, its a needed feature.

Breaking weapons is literally the only way BotW could have existed the way it does,

Edit: And when I say I don't agree, I understand the the goals of the implementation, but he's saying again like most people, that there isn't alternative solutions that are less annoying (implying it by saying this system is needed the way it is basically)

Where's your control tests? I don't think weapons are created equally in this game. You should first make sure a silver longsword takes 22 hits consistently. I think shields do more damage (ie where you hit might affect the durability system more). I'd also try different mobs.

Either way the 'playstyles' argument can be tossed out the window if the optimal solution is always dodge + flurry, than you'll be doing that all the time.

@DJ-Lafleur: I'm the same way pretty indifferent

I disagree with this. In Dark Souls, the durability system is really nothing more than a system that taxes you souls for playing the game and makes you backtrack to the blacksmith to repair your weapon. It's a mechanic that simply is not fun, and you have to put up with it because losing the weapon or armor that you spent days upgrading is just not an option. In Breath of the Wild, every enemy drops its weapon, so when yours breaks, you will always have another weapon in your inventory that is at least on par with the weapon your opponent is using. It works well for the most part, but I have already come across a shrine where I died after hitting a robot with every weapon in my inventory to the point of breaking, leaving it with about 1/4 of its health remaining. That was annoying, but to be fair, I really wasn't prepared at all for a combat shrine. A lot of my weapons were weak and brittle.

OK, let's see you start a game and go retrieve the Master Sword right away with only 3 hearts and no Runes. That weapon actually is gated. Regardless, there still can and are factors that push you to use different weapons aside from them breaking constantly, like weapon weaknesses and resistances and different enemy tactics making different weapons more useful than others or require better use of dodging/parrying.

There have already been weapon chests that have been useless to me even with the fragile weapons. And every great discovery is immediately tempered with, "well, this will be nice for a short time until it breaks".

Which means gating weapons behind strong enemies is a cheap cop-out.

You're not answering the question.

It depends on the game and how it is implemented. I don't recall any game that I have played with this implemented where I found it to be a problem. It's presence in Breath of the Wild made sense to me and I had no issues with it.

Except its not a cheap cop-out, and I'm not suggesting thats the only mechanic. And if you can already defeat the harder enemies I don't understand why its bad that your forced into long drawn out tedious fights with easier enemies because you don't want to waste better items.

My point made about dead rising, is getting a late game weapon isn't nearly all that game breaking. Until your defense matches its still easy to get killed when dealing with multiple mobs.

How do you gate it without stripping the player out of that option (which is satisfying and rewarding to pull off without being game-breaking) and/or redesigning the game from scratch?

I mean the game is already broken with upgraded armor, my upgraded plate armor turns most lynels into big horses with tickle sticks. The mechanics are already in to allow an assortment of some base weapons that do not break to be upgradable, and late game already suffers from being able to steam roll low tier enemies, but again, its drawn out due to not having a base attack power thats upgraded along with defense.

Even if they wanted to keep the breakable weapons, they could still make the vast majority of weapons have a modifier called worn where the weapon will break. And you can get forged weapons early but they are normally weaker but reliable. Add that to the system in place with worn weapons you'll give much more player agency to being able to upgrade the base weapons as well as the early game being nearly identical with enemy weapons being more powerful. Eventually you'll have good base equipment which is a better solution than carrying 15 royal greatswords.

I mean right now there is no point in fighting mobs unless you need a resource. Having no resources that are reliable and all mobs being optional the optimal solution is almost always run around them unless you know they have something you need. Considering that weapons aren't that good of a reward when they are trainsient items that are plentiful, combat is not a rewarding aspect of this game. I'd point out that even 70+ hours in the combat generally rewards me with items that are worse than what I'm already carrying, its always a downgrade. And this pattern starts fairly early in the game where the vast majority of mobs drop trash clubs and your spending travelers swords to get, and later your trading royal swords for mid tier weapons.

Hate it so nay

NO!!!!! A thousand times NOOOO!!

I remember having that in Elder Scrolls Oblivion and it was annoying as ****!!! Whenever a boss fight, I had to make sure that the weapons I was carrying were fully repaired and buying weapon repair tools constantly was the fucking worst!

I don't like weapon durability in Zelda - Breath of the Wild because everytime I open a chest I know that no matter how good that weapon is its not gonna last long. I really wish before you start a new game then you can choose the old weapon system or the new one.

Instead of that new weapon durability system then Nintendo should make something like if you collect 2 of the same weapon then you can make that weapon stronger or at least make the durability last longer and you can repair it at a Weapon Smith or something like that.

yay.

I take it you like Fallout 3 because that's the way it's done in that game. I still can't get 100% repairs though. I guess I need to level up some more.

Early in the game, I couldn't get more than 57% repairs.

You're limiting people's agency to bandaid the problem you've created by "fixing" what you perceive as a problem.

It is a textbook case of a cop-out.

Not when you oneshot them with huge AoE swings.

How long did it take you to get this armor upgraded? Rethorical question which should make it clear why it's not broken in any way.

Is this a problem to you?

You do understand that you just described every RPG ever made, right?

This is a similar system to what FC2 used, but worse. It discourages weapon pickups, where BOTW wants you to use every weapon out there by design.

I'm sorry, all i see is people sticking to unbreakable weapons the entire game just because they're unbreakable, disregarding the damage. And how are you planning to compensate for now unlimited ability to mine ore and chop wood? What are you gonna do about weapon inventory? Do you just make it unlimited now, since unbreakable weapons will clog it up real fast?

Just look at how people use master sword.

It's a use-it-on-everything-until-it-breaks-then-switch-to-other-weapons tool.

This shit's not gonna fly.

Dude, stop farming low level mobs at 70+ hours and complain that the loot isn't good, holy shit.

Go beat Ganon already.

@jun_aka_pekto: I can't remember Fallout 3 Weapon durability system but I just hate Zelda - Breath of the Wild system lol. Still I keep play Zelda BoTW :/

Please elaborate on why its a cop out. I've pointed out why its not since there are numerous systems in place that gate + difficulty + mob count, not to mention its not the solution I came up with. I don't understand why it matters if its behind a mob or not. Most of the materials to upgrade armor is gated behind some of the harder mobs. So they are an effective gate already for survivability, and getting better offensive weapons.

@R10nu said:

Not when you oneshot them with huge AoE swings.

Except your aoe doesn't have the same range as all the mobs. Or doesn't' consider the charge time or ranged attacks, or need for stamina to make some of the better AOE's effective over a large group of sparse enemies... There are still more things to consider that stop you from doing this early on, and the weapon system has little effect stopping you later.

@R10nu said:

How long did it take you to get this armor upgraded? Rethorical question which should make it clear why it's not broken in any way.

I guess you don't see the stupidity in your response. They have a way of gating defense power that isn't tied to transient items... The defense for durability in weapons is there is no other way to possibly gate the player...

@R10nu said:

Is this a problem to you?

You do understand that you just described every RPG ever made, right?

It does matter since its still completely one sided fight the durability affecting early/late game in general, you can just swap weapons and kill the mob as needed.

@R10nu said:

This is a similar system to what FC2 used, but worse. It discourages weapon pickups, where BOTW wants you to use every weapon out there by design.

I'm sorry, all i see is people sticking to unbreakable weapons the entire game just because they're unbreakable, disregarding the damage. And how are you planning to compensate for now unlimited ability to mine ore and chop wood? What are you gonna do about weapon inventory? Do you just make it unlimited now, since unbreakable weapons will clog it up real fast?

Just look at how people use master sword.

It's a use-it-on-everything-until-it-breaks-then-switch-to-other-weapons tool.

This shit's not gonna fly.

Except in practice BoTW different weapons are fairly indistinguishable which is why people just use the master sword until it breaks. The durability is a nuisance and there is no huge benefit to using different weapons, so forcing it on players is a detrimental experience instead of making the enemy mobs AI hard enough that there is a reason to constantly try to switch weapons.

Its a failed system, and this system IS a cop out to try to get people to use different items when the combat isn't good enough to motivate users to do it. People sticking to a single weapon is a failure of the combat. The fact that you don't always need to or should have to be forced into wasting resources is just a problem.

@R10nu said:

Dude, stop farming low level mobs at 70+ hours and complain that the loot isn't good, holy shit.

Go beat Ganon already.

Apparently you missed that has been my experience throughout the entire game. You need weapons to fight enemies, enemies are generally a downgrade for the weapons you find outside of combat. The exception is monster parts for armor upgrades... so the only reason to bother with enemies is to farm mats for armor.. There are very... very few missions where you are forced to address mobs so the entire combat system is sort of pointless for the vast majority of the game, without missions that force you into direct confrontation. I'd say thats not a rewarding system.

In Fallout 3, you can do your own repairs if you have the perk. You would need an identical weapon to the one you're repairing. If you don't have the perk, then your only option is to bring the weapon to a trader who can repair it for a price.

Depends on the game, I liked it in Zelda as I did in Dying Light

@jun_aka_pekto: Thats actually a pretty nice idea. I like that. But ya something like Fallout 3 weapon system will be nice.

Fire Emblem Awakening has it but it was not an issue at all because :

1. It takes a while to break

2. The durability always shows.

Witches 3 did it well allowing different repair kits.

It makes games so much more interesting. You actually use lots of weapons you would never use otherwise. Such a great choice in Zelda. I'm like well crap I'm a bit low on weapons lets go to this barn and grab this......mop, soup spoon, and wood cutting axe! All better lets do this! Odd that anyone could not see how much fun this is.

At best it's a minor annoyance... big fucking nay here.

I didn't like it at first because it was an adjustment. In your first playthrough, it can be really tough if you walk into a high powered area and you are not properly equipped. However, by the end of it, I liked it. Certain weapons have certain roles (light torches, chop wood, mining), some can be fixed or rusty items can be "upgraded", and the game is strictly designed on this facet. That's what makes this mechanic workable. This allows the open world to be truly open, do what you want, how you want.

It also plays into the micro-game of inventory management. I think the only downfall, if any, is that you should be able to store some weapons - which is possible if you build a house and upgrade it accordingly, but that is a quest all of its own.

Weapons can break in real life so I like when it can break in a game as well.

Nah. I'd rather have rare ammo.

Playing Dragons Dogma atm, and this thread made me think how much it would detract the game if I was having to run back and repair stuff every 5 minutes. Even without it you have to manage with a terrible save system and a night system that effectively has invulnerable enemies.

Oh I get you can get lots of weapons..point is I want to keep & use cool weapons that I like..like that big flaming sword (the big one, I forgot where I got it) not the small ones you get off those tra la la wizard thing.

I can't believe that people are falling for the "it forces you to use other weapons" as a valid argument. That is a sign a poor game design. God forbid the a game encourages the player to use a variety of weapons in a more natural and combat efficient manner, to which BOTW has to some extend. Trying to make the argument that gamers would use only one weapon and cheese through the game is a weak counter argument because weapons durability does not stop that phenomena nor does it prevent the player from attacking recklessly and as many has pointed out there isn't a shortage of weapons. So, since that is the case why bother with weapon breakage if weapons are flowing as many has stated? All this boils down to is tedium in first portion of the game because most of the weapons you received is garbage and players use stronger and more durable weapons later. How many gamers are using wooden clubs and shit mid to late gameplay? No one, because players simply migrate to the more powerful weapons like every other game and durability cannot stop that as some are trying to argue.

This isn't true.

Yeah, this argument is getting a bit weird.

Some of you are framing it as if we all agree that it's a problem or unappealing system to begin with. As if we're saying that it's a necessary evil, something that only exists as a solution to other greater problems. As if we need to make excuses for why it's there.

That's not my take at all. I enjoy the system. I like how it works in the immediate flow of combat. I like how it feeds into loot/rewards. I like how it works on a larger scale as a balance to the game. I'm not saying that it's the only way this game could have worked and therefore it must exist. Nintendo could have taken many approaches to it. This is what they went with.

Some of us enjoy it. Some of you don't. Amazing. Sounds like opinions on mechanics from almost every single game ever.

Though calling it shit design is taking it bit far. There is a clear difference between disliking something and something being legitimately poorly designed. The system works as intended and it works very well. I've probably read a hundred different arguments about not liking it, but not a single argument that actually gives an analysis detailing what makes it poorly designed.

I can't believe that people are falling for the "it forces you to use other weapons" as a valid argument. That is a sign a poor game design.

Like come on Pedro. Games forcing you to do certain things based on an integral system. That's poor design now? Welcome to every video game. Seriously though man, elaborate on that. (which btw the rest of your post doesn't actually do).

I think the Tests of Strength shrines are too samey and get into filler territory. I think too many shrines get away with not utilizing your Sheika Slate. I think enemy stasis is too short lived, especially so on weaker enemies. Motion control sections are hit or miss, but not usually my thing. I dislike plenty of elements in this game. Doesn't mean they're poorly designed. Just means I don't find them appealing.

I'm not gonna go ad populum here. But at a certain point you can just accept that you dislike something that many others happen to enjoy. I thought The Witcher 3 was a game for bums. The rest of the world feels differently. It is what it is.

Nothing wrong with dissecting and discussing what you think works and doesn't work, that's how it should be. Criticism is great. But "I don't like something means it's poorly designed" isn't criticism.

Funny. But you know what I meant.

@Zensword: It was a tactical element when you have to factor in limited funds to buy weapons. It became completely broken by Awakening because of DLC and broken abilities that allows you to farm for money.

ITT: dummies try their hardest to downplay success on consoles they aren't rooting for.

To get to the topic I don't always like weapon degradation. In games like Dark Souls and Witcher it feels pointless, like it's just a thing that's there, it doesn't change any of the moment to moment gameplay for existing, you just have to remember to stop into a shop/bonfire. In Dark Souls 3 it might as well not exist, you have to intentionally try hard to break a weapon between bonfires. Only good mechanic that came out of DS item breaking was the ability to use acid to break other player's stuff, which is the best multiplayer troll mechanic ever.

MMO's are much worse than that. Weapons degradation is just a mindless money sink, there's no gameplay function whatsoever. A shallow punishment for failure.

But there are games that have done it well. Dead Rising was always a great one because you're just grabbing whatever random crap you can find and whacking people until they break. In Minecraft and survival games it's vital to the gameplay cycle of gathering and resource collection that your items don't last forever.

With BOTW, we have something that would roughly fall into the survival game genre, though not completely. The important difference is that you can't just farm up any weapon, you have to go and do things and explore to get tools. I would say despite how salty people are getting that the system works just fine and lends to the design of the game. Most of the reasons as to why are already listed here but I'll go ahead and point out the most important ones to me, the first of which was that the system enhances the emergent gameplay aspects. If weapons did not break with the games design, combat would be dull because people would just pick the ideal weapon and never use anything else. Which is technically possible, but it doesn't challenge the player to think or be creative, and the core of weaponplay is just okayish. Instead, the game's encounters are laid out so you have a wide variety of options and ideal circumstances you may or may not meet, and having an ever changing roster of weapons is important to enhancing that feeling.

Say, for example, you're deciding to take on a camp of moblins. If you have tons of weapons that never break you'll always just use the right ones: hammer for shield guys, spear vs spear, sword for damage output. Breaking weapons though means you probably won't have the best tools for the job, which more or less will force you to be creative. Maybe you need to pick off the wheat from the chaff to win, so you lure them into their bomb barrels. Maybe you jump in and knock the tough guy off the top floor to his death. Things like that. I found this kind of things especially came into play in thunderstorms and other hostile environments, as I had to do combat in locations with a weird array of items I don't normally equip. If those weapons are breaking well then I better start looking around at how I can best exploit these camp layouts.

The other thing I'd point out with the BOTW system is that the weapon degradation system allows weapons to be interesting loot again. A problem with the system in most RPG's with or without weapon degradation is that no matter what you're always going to use the weapons and armor that are objectively best. Whether it's because it's a +3 over a +2, or it's a weapon combo you enjoy like Dark souls, you're always going to stick to what is optimal. This is fine on it's own but as far as loot goes it means you're only ever going to want the best stuff and the myriad of other kinds of weapons and armor are unsatisfying to get. This was something I did not like particularly in Bloodborne, because you get weapons so infrequently by the time you have another one you're probably way too comfortable with the first and have stuck a bunch of upgrades into it. BOTW's system is a solution to this particular problem. No matter what every weapon you find has a chance to come into play and thus makes for viable loot. A sword you find may not be the best available but you can hang onto it anyway knowing that somewhere down the line it will be useful.

I'm not going to say the system is perfect or that you have to love it, but I can say with reasonable confidence that it works well in the context of this game's gameplay and that a large portion of the game's uniqueness comes from the fact that a rotating list of weaponry means each scenario feels different, and strategies and considerations are made based on what is available to you at any given moment. Much of that could not exist without this system. Are there systems that could replace it and achieve this? Probably, and given the butthurt reception I'd say Nintendo will probably change it for the next game. But the implementation has had the correct effect and regardless of how you'd feel I'd say BOTW does a pretty good job with the concept.

Yeah, I haven't played enough of BotW to have a good opinion yet. From what I've played, the durability system could definitely be a whole lot better than it is, but it's not the disaster I expected it to be. I think I'd prefer a system where you are able to find basic weapons that are decent (around traveler's level fairly early in the game, soldier level mid-game) and don't break. I get why the OP weapons have to break, but encountering a mini-boss and running out of weapons is an experience that seems like it could have been better-designed.

So that's already getting you to use three different weapons (more when factoring thunderstorms or mounted moblins) just for one enemy type. Plus there's still an advantage in using the environment/layout to reduce numbers. Weapons breaking just forces you to use weaker weapons and the battle last longer. Plus, there's usually the option of just avoiding the camp until you have what you need.

I would also add that weapons breaking limits the excitement of loot, knowing that the new cool weapon won't last long anyways and makes finding a great sword similar to finding 5 shock arrows. Plus, without any indicator of the life span left, when you need to drop a weapon to pick up a new one, you're stuck trying to remember which one you used more and would likely break sooner if kept.

It's alright if not too extreme. Usually in those type of games, there is plenty of weapons to replace broken ones.

I think you missed the point that I was making. I am stating that the belief that durability forces the player to use other weapons is a fallacy and a weak argument. Durability does not force the player to use other weapons, players are going to use weapons based on the situation. The idea that the durability is needed to encourage/force the player to diversify is nonsensical.

As long as the weapons don't degrade too quickly and there is a way to repair them, I like it.