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Why is weapon degradation/breaking a thing in games?

It makes some sense in some cases

MMOs, to fight inflation.
Survival games, where getting the resources is actually a challenge
With particular weapons, that are powerful but fragile.

But too often its either just a pointless matter of chucking money at a blacksmith now and then, or all weapons end up acting like they're made of tin foil to make you change them, and either way its annoying.
 
sn00zer said:
Why is this awful mechanic a thing at all? It is just a number that goes down
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This is a critique that can be leveled at the most central systems of any game ever made. Health, lives, timers, combos, buffs, etc., are all just "numbers that go down."

Games are all about various kinds of management. Weapon degradation is just one more among many. And for me, I actually appreciate the risk-reward balance that goes into weapon degradation systems.
 
-Horizon- said:
Weapon degradation and limited inventory. I'm sorry but I don't like those 'features' :(
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Most of the time, limited inventory is there to balance a game world in each there is an abundance of resources. I have no problem with that.

On the other hand, I'm not fund of rare drops. If I beat a guy with a nice weapon, I should be able to take it. It's shouldn't just disappear into the ground. Killing the same thing 300 times to make it drop that elusive item is not fun either.
 
Andrain18 said:
Doesn't that actually happen to weapons and materials though? They break when used a bunch. Weird....
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I'm fine with degradation as a mechanic but pretending it's realistic makes no sense. Outside of a few scenarios, most mechanics in games are not added because it's realistic.
 
I have been playing Dying Light recently again and I don't really pay that much attention to it in that game but as a whole I fucking loathe the mechanic. I think I don't mind it in DL because I avoid combat a lot because the traversal is the best part of it.
 
Let me give you an example of a series that uses weapon degradation well. Fire Emblem has had weapon degradation in virtually every iteration (barring the newest entry, oddly enough) and it adds a layer of strategic depth. Most powerful weapons, particularly ones that cannot be purchased, have low uses. This requires you to be smart about when you make use of these weapons. Usually these weapons have some sort of special effect, like extra damage against a certain unit type, some sort of magic effect, or reversing the weapon triangle.

However, some of these weapons are the type that if they didn't have a limited number of uses, you would just use them all the time. Take the Zanbato from FE7. It does extra damage to cavalry units, and usually has around 25 to 30 uses. It is also a bit stronger in damage than a mid level sword that you can buy from a shop. Without weapon limits, as soon as you got the Zanbato you would give it to a sword wielding character and use it on every type of unit, even units it wasn't super effective against, just because the damage is slightly higher. The fact that it has a use limit makes you prioritize, and only use it in situations where there are multiple Calvary units to fight, or when the boss is a cavalry unit. That's just one example, but there are many more from just Fire Emblem alone.

Weapon degradation sometimes adds depth and strategy, it just depends on the systems in place.
 
KarmaCow said:
I'm fine with degradation as a mechanic but pretending it's realistic makes no sense. Outside of a few scenarios, most mechanics in games are not added because it's realistic.
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Blades gets dull really fast when hitting metal with it. That is a fact.

You know what really sucks? All those dented knives in the kitchen drawers because my kids are morons. Arrrrgh.
 
It was very gratifying when I read a Ken Levine interview in which he admitted that weapon degradation in System Shock 2 was a terrible idea and that if he could go back and do it over it wouldn't be there.
 
When its used correctly, I find item degradation systems to be terrific at forcing players out of their comfort zone, or challenging them to make hard decisions. When its slapped on for little or no reason, it becomes an out of place annoyance.

In my humble opinion, the item degradation system must to work in combination with other mechanics, such as those that rewards players for using specific items in specific circumstances. This encourages players to swap out their weapons/armour based on the situation, while still allowing them to fight through a situation if they don't have the ideal items. Strangely enough, "Pokemon" games do a terrific job of this with the most powerful moves being limited via a small amount of PP, which encourages diversity and specificity at the same time. Games like World of Warcraft use the degradation mechanic as a limiter on the number of attempts a player has at pieces of content. If you die too many times, you'll need to go back to town and repair, and allows the player to assess if they're capable of finishing. The mob respawn mechanic also plays in to this - if you bump into respawned mobs, your team is falling behind the pace the developers set. The two work together to give players indications as to their performance, and punishing their failure by subtracting currency from their inventory for repairs. Minecraft and other survival games also use the degradation system, in combination with their crafting systems. This forces players to continuously collect new resources while managing their current stockpile, which drives immersion and engagement.

In Fallout 3, the degradation system should have been a great way to encourage scrounging, adding to the immersion greatly. The execution was lacking, because a health bar on a weapon is very uninteresting. Having specific components on weapons wearing down while the gun is still usable, suffering specific performance penalties for each component, would have created more interesting gameplay. Using Fallout 4's crafting system, with each component having its own durability effecting its performance, would be interesting and easily understood. Of course, it would also be tedious to maintain across multiple weapons. Adding the extensive crafting system, giving players the motivation to scrounge through the wasteland, and removing durability was probably the best decision. Other games like Diablo 3 have the degradation mechanic, but it doesn't really offer anything. While it helps subtract gold from the online environment, the various crafting systems do a better and more rewarding job. Ultimately, I feel the durability system could be removed and no one would miss it. Not every game needs degradation.
 
Usually I agree that despite the intentions it's a rarely well-executed mechanic, HOWEVER, if you want to see why it's not always bad I recommend 'Condemned'.

In Condemned, unlike most games that use degredation, you can pretty much grab anything and use it as a weapon, so no matter what there's almost always some scrap in the form of a loose pipe, plant or whatever you can rip off and use so you're never at a real loss for something to hit stuff with.
Where it becomes GENIUS is how it relates to what I've called 'the upgrade cycle'. While you can find cruddy stuff to hit people with easily, there are obviously some rarer items that are better with the ultimate being guns. The degradation of any of these items isn't bad enough for it to leave you unarmed most of the time, but usually by the time an 'upgrade' comes you're close to needing a replacement anyway. The fab part about this is when you find a gun because they're infinitely better than melee weapons of any type BUT once they're out of bullets they're effectively one of the worst melee weapons in the game :P
So you have that choice (and it's definitely a choice) to drop probably what's usually by then a top-end melee weapon to upgrade for a gun and basically easily insta-kill 6 or so enemies before having to start at the bottom again, or you can hold onto that top level melee thing for a while longer and get a longer period of ass-kicking than you would with the gun, but nowhere near as effectively as the gun would obviously have made it :3

This constant ebb and flow of power really makes the game along with it's fairly decent combat system and atmosphere.
 
SomedayTheFire said:
I have been playing Dying Light recently again and I don't really pay that much attention to it in that game but as a whole I fucking loathe the mechanic. I think I don't mind it in DL because I avoid combat a lot because the traversal is the best part of it.
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In Dying Light, I just kill some of those assholes and take their weapons. They always have good stuff in shiny condition.
 
ponpo said:
Babbies everywhere.

Degradation exists so that one can take advantage of it.

3rr3prG.jpg
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Those trolling days lol
 
It gives you something to think about and plan around. It also gives a feeling of the game's mechanics simulating "real life" (e.g. food/'water required). Some people like such resource management in their RPGs.

Just like any game system, it can be balanced well or poorly with controls/options that are fun or that are tedious.

Not every game needs to be designed to any single individual's liking (no durability, no random battles, no cutscenes, no voice acting, etc etc). It's a big world with space for all sorts of tastes.
 
In my opinion, Fallout 3 handled it very well because the player had the ability to fix their own weapons, so you can have long sessions of exploring/completing objectives without having to worry about durability. Also having some skillpoints allotted in the repair skill greatly helps in that respect.

But when a game forces you to backtrack all the way to a repair shop... Yeah, fuck that shit.
 
Silent Chief said:
Blades gets dull really fast when hitting metal with it. That is a fact.

You know what really sucks? All those dented knives in the kitchen drawers because my kids are morons. Arrrrgh.
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Why don't you just sprinkle the based in realism repair powder to get rid of those dents?
 
So you don't just get one powerful weapon and never touch any other, if they do it right.

In Fallout 3 repair was a skill, so you actually got rewarded for investing in it by having guns that got better by repairing them over the cruddy state you find them in.
 
Removing this ruined late-game Fallout 4 to me. In a resource scavenging game like Fallout, where most of your loot is just resources or weapons from foes, you need to constantly be on the lookout for the proper parts to keep your weapons in working order.

Once your essentially a God with insane weapons, you still have that necessity to pillage bodies and search buildings for the loot/resources you need to stay as powerful as you are. It makes sure that scavenging, looting, and collecting resources remains vital to your strength even in the late game. It also is really great at providing tension.

This is completely gone in Fallout 4. I'm level 50 with maxed out weapons and armor. I have already built huge settlements and now I have literally zero reason to pillage any bodies or explore any buildings I come across. All tension or reward for exploration is completely gone. I haven't explored the whole map yet but its become so boring now I don't even want to.

You take out that aspect of the gameplay loop, you ruin a big part of the game after a certain amount of time.
 
Pretty stupid mechanic.

I can't think of an example where it added to the experience.

But its conceptually easy and probably simple to program, so it gets thrown in.
 
It's supposed to introduce an element of resource management to the game. I actually kind of like that type of mechanic since it forces you to think more methodically about what you have at your disposal.
 
I felt quite stupid when I grabbed several weapons in Fallout 4 and stashing them away thinking I'd need those for repairs.

Welp.
 
Love it in Far Cry 2. There is a palpable sense of desperation when your main weapon jams or even explodes in your face and you're really forced to think on your feet. It could have been implemented better - namely, it doesn't make sense that all of the AI mercenaries drop nothing but the most degraded weapons and yet they don't suffer from the same effects - but it still added a lot to the game. The fact that they removed weapon deterioration is one of my biggest disappointments with Far Cry 3 and 4.
 
JoeNut said:
Suppose it means you can't find one super weapon and abuse it. Dying light did it quite well I thought
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I thought Dying Light did it very poorly, just like Dead Island beforehand. Why is something made of solid metal like a crowbar or a lead pipe bending and breaking after 20 or 30 attacks?

I don't dislike the mechanic overall, but it needs to be carefully balanced so it's not too much of a pain in the arse. Most games are too fussy with degradation so it feels like tedious busywork. I remember finding it particularly annoying in Dark Cloud.
 
Ugh. For the millionth time, you can't just write off an entire concept like weapon degradation as "bad". It's all about the implementation. You could make the argument that most games use it poorly (and I'd agree, most do), but you can't make the argument that it should just cease to exist just because you don't like it.

I would say that in games like Dark Souls and other such games, yeah it doesn't work too well. Not because it's an annoyance, but because it's a non-factor. Durability doesn't go down fast enough for it to matter, and the cost of repairs is too low for it to matter. And of course the repair box that allows you to repair your weapon at any bonfire messes up the balance of needing to find blacksmiths. So yeah, why even have it in there?

But there's ways for games to do it right. Imagine a game in which weapons degrade quickly, but only under certain circumstances, and the devs use those circumstances to punish players for bad play, but reward players for good play. For instance, as long as you hit your target, your weapon doesn't degrade, but any time you bang your weapon against a wall it degrades fairly quickly. Any time you hit an enemy's shield it degrades as well. Not as fast as hitting a wall, but still enough that it matters. For expert players, their weapons don't degrade at all. For new players, the game puts enough pressure on them to try to get better. Even if their sloppy play is good enough to get them through the game, they'll still want to get better in order to keep their better weapons around. Of course in order for the system to be completely sound you need to bring it all together by deciding what exactly happens when a weapon fully degrades. Should the player be able to repair them at all? Or should they always have to find or buy new weapons? Is the game be balanced around hard checkpoints, and the player can only switch weapons at checkpoints? Done correctly this could have a lot of benefits. Forcing players to use a weapon that is weak against a certain enemies because they have to save a better weapon for the boss. Putting players in situations where they don't want to use their strongest move because they know it will spin the weapon to wide and hit the wall, making a mundane encounter more interesting. It all depends.

By making it something that is actually a factor, and actually balancing the game around it (as you should with all aspects of your game), then you're making your players make real decisions that actually matter. Which most games with weapon degradation don't do unfortunately.
 
Why do games make players manage any resource?

Conceptually, it's not that different from HP, MP, ability cooldowns, money, etc. It's one of the parameters that a game simulates and keeps track of. You can argue that it's often poorly implemented, but I don't understand the "UGH WHY IS THIS A THING" factor.
 
Andrain18 said:
Doesn't that actually happen to weapons and materials though? They break when used a bunch. Weird....
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In real life, people defecate. "Because it happens in real life" is a poor reason to add something to a game.

Designers instead tend to think in terms of "because the player's intuition is that it should happen". I would argue that most players do not have a strong intuition that, for example, an M-16 assault rifle tends to become pretty useless after firing 200 rounds if you don't spend two or three hours cleaning it afterwards.

Doing things because they're realistic is a very easy way to confuse players. Most people have intuition that does not match reality, especially with regards to things they usually only see in movies (explosions, medieval combat, people being shot, etc.).
 
It actually bothers me more when it's completely pointless like Dark Souls than when it's like Dark Souls 2. DS2 had a ton of problems, but that's not really one of them I don't think. At least then the mechanic has a point and isn't just some annoying thing to waste currency on.

The limited magic use in souls is sort of a kind of weapon degradation, but it works well because usually the things are low enough to make you vary your weapon choice.
 
QuixoticNeutral said:
I look forward to that, as the removal of weapon durability was what worried me most about Fates. One of the things that always appealed to me most about the Fire Emblem games, particularly the linear ones that limited your access to shops (so, not FE8 or Awakening), was that weapons were a critical part of the resource management you had to master, encouraging you to get the most mileage you could out of your cheapest arms so your more powerful weapons would see you through the late game. It was as much a part of the game as planning where to divert your finite income of XP, and encouraged risk-taking in the same fashion as levelling your weakest characters: win by razor-thin margins now, and you become more powerful later. And it also imposed a countdown timer of sorts on characters you use to hold the line and fend off dozens of enemies at strategic chokes.
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Agreed one hundred percent. I played ultra conservative when it came to using better weapons. Iron sword FOR LIFE :P
 
I am curious as to what examples of easily repairable weapons with degredation people think are done well.

Fire Emblem is a good example of weapon degredation, but that system works because you can almost never repair weapons. You have certain powerful weapons with limited uses for the entirety of the game. The games are systematically about managing dwindling resources and maximizing resource gain, since there isn't really any possibility of "grinding", and what grinding you can do plays into the drain of resources (gold/durability in exchange for levels).

I think in Dark Souls or Diablo the game is not enhanced by it at all. In Dark Souls, here are weapons that break easily and attacks that break weapons, but you could just as easily have a Broken status effect that greatly reduces damage that you apply to just those weapons, or when hit by those attacks, and then players wouldn't need to think about the mechanic all the time for very little payoff while restricting those weapons or including those kind of enemies.
 
Your advantage of always being able to hit something automatically makes it an action game IMO. You realize not everyone wants their RPG or 3rd person action adventure with the same elements as Contra or Devil May Cry?

I believe it adds an RPG element to the mix. If I said I wanted to go shopping in a video game and then walk out to the arcade and play games then you'd probably say something like, "that sounds boring", but yet it was a technical marvel to behold in games like ShenMue.

It came with it's own challenge. Instead of just focusing on health and mana you have to think about how you're attacking.

You sorta have to take a lot of things into consideration: realism, combat, is it an RPG?, and what type of progression do you want the player to have IMO.

If I wanted to manage food properties over health then it's more about getting food than potions. It's just an added element to get the player going. You're probably thinking Dark Cloud and Dark Souls. It's another aspect of game design that people can't necessarily see in its original design.
 
Orayn said:
Why do games make players manage any resource?

Conceptually, it's not that different from HP, MP, ability cooldowns, money, etc. It's one of the parameters that a game simulates and keeps track of. You can argue that it's often poorly implemented, but I don't understand the "UGH WHY IS THIS A THING" factor.
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Playing through wind waker hd currently and I'm so glad that the newer ones has a stamina meter that regenerates automatically. Theres plenty of times I find myself running out of mana when i come across new islands and attempting to get into places or figuring out puzzles. And while I prepare for dungeons I'm not always prepared for just wandering around. The game will throw bombs and arrows at you but its a bit more stringy with mana. I've cut fields of grass only to find a small bottle of mana or none at all which forces me to either go waste more time and buy mana potions or zone into beedle shops and respawn the grass and keep repeating that until i get the mana I need. Either way its still wasting time trying to refill a resource instead of actually being challenged by the game.

I also take issue with the weight management in fallout 4. If you're not doing settlements then you don't probably have an issue. Just grab whatever you need or what upgrade components you need more of and you're fine. However if you're doing settlements you're going to probably be grabbing everything. The game doesn't take that into consideration though. If you're !00% clearing out any zoned area you're going to be making 1 trip back to dump everything off. Sometimes even 2 or more. You'd think for all that time spent going back and forth and building up your settlement you'd be rewarded for it by being given some form of reducing the burden of gathering for settlement purposes but you never do. After 80+ hours I got sick of it and installed a mod that increases my carry weight. If I ever play through fallout 4 again from scratch I'm not even going to bother with settlements. Just stick to picking up what I need to survive and upgrade my weapons and I most likely won't be bothered by the carry limit.
 
It makes complete sense in mmo's that have player crafting (IE Ultima Online/SWG, etc)

Where the economy is built upon other players making the items you buy and then use.

The reason for it is simple, you need items to break and new items to replace them so it keeps people having to buy goods from player crafters, otherwise you end up with waaaaaaay too many items and no one buying them, not a healthy economy.

In single player games? I agree, it gets annoying and it doesn't really have any gameplay purpose that is a "positive" rather more of an annoyance, especially where the items aren't crafted or bought but found as loot, especially when the items are rare/unique.
 
It's meant to mimic reality, in that if you use a weapon enough times it needs to be repaired.

A lot of other mechanics can be painted in the same way, OP. Hit Points? Just a number that goes down when you get hit. Magic? Same, except when you use magic. So on and so forth.

It is implemented decently in Souls, in that it doesn't cause enough trouble to limit you really, but it's present enough for you to pay attention to it every once in a while. It's just another management stat.

There was one time where I had a pretty intense experience. I was running through Anor Londo, and I decided to jump into Painted World of Ariamis for the first time. I kind of panicked, because my main weapon was getting low on durability. I ended up switching between several other weaker weapons, and barely scraped through. I still remember that experience because it was pretty memorable.
 
Ants said:
I am curious as to what examples of easily repairable weapons with degredation people think are done well.

Fire Emblem is a good example of weapon degredation, but that system works because you can almost never repair weapons. You have certain powerful weapons with limited uses for the entirety of the game. The games are systematically about managing dwindling resources and maximizing resource gain, since there isn't really any possibility of "grinding", and what grinding you can do plays into the drain of resources (gold/durability in exchange for levels).

I think in Dark Souls or Diablo the game is not enhanced by it at all. In Dark Souls, here are weapons that break easily and attacks that break weapons, but you could just as easily have a Broken status effect that greatly reduces damage that you apply to just those weapons, or when hit by those attacks, and then players wouldn't need to think about the mechanic all the time for very little payoff while restricting those weapons or including those kind of enemies.
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Yeah, Fire Emblem it is quite a serious mechanic; you have to really watch how much you use those good weapons you like, especially if you only have one of them.
 
xamidoxhua said:
The most annoying part of the witcher iii.
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It made you shop, it made you think about alchemy (possibly) and you were sorta given the opportunity to do more besides do this, do that, finish, onto new things.

I don't mind it because what's your reason to going back to town in most games? Selling items you've picked up along the way. If you have too many items you become encumbered and you can't do much besides walk slowly.

Maybe there's too much of an emphasis on items anymore because I would prefer you give me 20 or more kills and then I need to go somewhere and get ready for a boss. I feel pretty good repairing a weapon after leveling up in Bloodborne. I feel like I can go back, use my items to upgrade, or just take a break. Home towns have become more like waiting rooms when you want to just take a break from journeying onward. It feels like a lot of games have taken the Diablo approach to how towns work. That's an older concept than Diablo. Towns have been managing resources since RPG's were in the multi-user domain, right? I mean, it's not necessarily a bad concept, but it's one that's repeated quite often.

The weapon degrading is a realistic game play decision that helps me think about managing something more than my move list. I want to get out of that DMC-mindset when I'm trying to gain experience to level up, so it helps me greatly.
 
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