It's great if games do it right. Stalker for example has degradation, it affects accuracy, bullet drop, jamming, etc. It makes sense given the location and situation of the area, finding some good weapon early doesn't mean you can use it forever that's why you also need to be on the lookout for new guns. You could go and find a good weapon in good condition early but that might not mean you'll have some good weapons later on in the game necessarily. The degradation mechanic isn't fast but the emphasis is on that most weapons are not perfect and degraded at certain extents.
It means you can't just find one good weapon and use it the whole game, you never get to use other weapons and all you do is focus on one type of ammo (and there are many, for certain sizes you also get different piercing types).
The tense atmosphere of stalker + shoot outs means that you don't want a weapon jam to occur, you also don't want to engage in certain fights if other stats on your weapon are not that good. It reiterates your location and situation in The Zone, you are also not a god in the game, you are just one Lone Stalker, the A-Life AI system in the game aids it (especially in CoP) where life goes on without you. This means that all NPCs in the game are "alive" even if you are nowhere near them, they move around, scavenge, and you can hunt and track a NPC if you want. They find weapons of their own from fights they are in or that they find, they will drop the specific weapon they are carrying as well. The items are persistent, when one bandit/stalker/whatever dies, that degraded weapon persists and can be found by another if it's better than they have, that degradation continues to exist and that weapon can swap many hands or never be picked up and maybe you find it by one of them that died with it recently.
Games that incorporate it into tension and the world do it right, the tension and atmosphere in Stalker in insane and you really do not want your weapon to jam at the wrong time. It has never been a bad thing in this game for example and the degradation is not necessarily quick, but you rarely find 100% fixed weapons (they do exist like a lot of special weapons but even random AK-47s). It's more about that all weapons in the game are degraded at certain levels, the degradation isn't that fast though, but not all weapons are perfect. Meaning, you can pick up an AK-47 that is 70% degraded, it won't degrade very quickly like other games, but your chances of finding a 0% degraded perfect weapon is low, you might 2hrs later find a AK-47 that is only 30% degraded, you'll swap it immediately for the better stats since your accuracy, bullet drop, jamming, recoil, etc is way better now even though it's the same type of weapon. So while degradation itself isn't fast, the game doesn't have perfect weapons which makes sense given its setting.
It works well given the atmosphere of a game and its setting, good in games with horror elements.
