Weapon degradation in games

[RJ Dalton]

I'm generally against it. The only time I saw it where it worked was STALKER and that's because that game was all about a world that was falling apart and the degradation of weapons was a part of that feeling. And also, guns were everywhere, so it's not like it was hard to replace them.

 

[Odbarc]

In games like Fallout, it sort of makes sense to have your weapons break or reduce in quality. It made you have to keep your guns in good condition. The game was built around it. But I sort of hated it losing damage by shooting 2~3 times.

In a game like Diablo, it was sort of a way to control the economy but had enough durability that it never really broke with how quickly and easily you could repair your items. And it sort of makes sense that bashing your sword against a rock guy 1000 times, it needed a little sharpening.

 

[southparkdudez]

Depends, If I'm playing Dead Rising, Shadow of Rome, or an RPG like Fallout 3. I think its perfectly fine. But if its like Dead Island it can be a bit annoying.

 

[Playful Pony]

I can see why there is weapon degradation in Fallout 3 and New Vegas. It works because you can repair your guns after an engagement (just grab enemy weapons that match and fix yours up!), and because you do it on the spot it doesn't add lots of aditional items to drag around for repair purposes only... ... Unless you have fairly rare weapons, and that is where my issue with this repair system comes in. If your chosen gun is not very common (as it tends to be, because as we know rare = awesome) you'll often end up dragging around aditional weapons of that type because coming across one when you need it is simply not going to happen. The alternative isn't much better, zapping piles of caps away from the players ammo-and-beer fund!

In any other game i flat out hate it. Even in Fallout 3/NV I'd rather see it gone as it stands now.

 

[Cecilo]

I enjoy weapon degradation where it is appropriate, in Fallout, yes, why? Because the world is scrapping together advanced weapons with tools and other possibly already failing parts from other weapons.

I enjoy it in, Sword of the Stars the Pit, where one of the monster is a living cell made of what equates to acid, where your weapons and armor take damage from them if they attack you because they are made of acid.

I would not enjoy it in Fantasy RPGs, where weapons were usually made pretty solid, considering many of them were basically hunks of metal. MAYBE armor, if I am fighting demons, dragons and the like. Because I would imagine that my armor needs to be reforged after being burned to a crisp, then cooled and then burned again over and over.

TL;DR - Good sometimes, bad others, depends on the context.

 

[SomeGuyOnHisComputer]

I actually kind of like it, wish more games had it. In games like Dead Rising, it adds a level of strategy and "quick thinking" that helps push the game past being mindless brawler. However, it doesn't work every game, especially since every game doesn't have an abundance of weapons sitting around.

 

[Vausch]

I don't mind it, but when I'm playing a magic based game time I often wonder "Why is it this mystically enchanted item breaks? Why can't I enchant it so it can either take more damage or just not break at all?"

Captcha: Science class. Not here it's not.

 

[RJ 17]

Gotta say I've never been a fan of it. I mean, I get it...it makes it more realistic to say that hitting a thousand things would your Sword of Bloody Death Kill wouldn't leave it as sharp and pristine as the day you found/bought it. But damnit, there's good realism in games and there's annoying realism in games, in my opinion weapon degradation falls under the latter. It's just tedious and stupid, making me waste talent points that could very well be spent in the skills I that I actually want to use just so I can make sure I can repair my own crap and not have to be halfway through a dungeon and realize "Oh, that's what I forgot to do while I was in town..." because my sword just crumpled like it was made of tin-foil and my armor is coming apart at the seams.

Another thing I find annoying and tedious are weight limits in your inventory. I'm the type of person that picks up EVERYTHING in a dungeon, even the junk. Open a chest and find three broken vases, a rusty dagger, and a pair of fur boots? Well that's worth SOME cash back in town. It's a habit I picked up from my days playing WoW in which I found one of the fastest ways to earn money early on is to simply pick up everything and sell it to the vendors, obviously taking the better stuff to the AH. But with limited inventory space I'll get halfway through a dungeon and have to start passing up my beloved junk and only keep the good stuff.

How am I supposed to support the local pawning business when I'm leaving so much worthless loot behind?! I know this might seem like a half-sarcastic remark, but seriously, that's how I play my RPGs: loot EVERYTHING and sell it.

 

[omglazorspewpew]

For the most part, I am happier without it than I am with it around. The only examples I can think of it kind of working are the newer Fallout games since crafting and weapon modding is sort of part of the fun of the game. The other game I didn't mind it in was in Maramasa The Demon Blade. It has a weapon degradation system where the swords would break if you constantly used the same sword over and over. The swords would repair themselves but the game would be broken without it. Collecting and using the various swords in combat is the fun of that game and if the most powerful ones never broke then you would have no reason to use the others.

 

[Stublore]

Don't like it for one reason:
Uniques.
Nothing pisses me off as much in these sort of games where I get a unique item and can hardly use the damn thing because after 2 min MAX of ingame use it has degraded so much that vanilla items are better.
Repair/smithing whatever the mechanic used should allow 2 things:
A)The higher the skill, the more slowly item degradation occurs.
B)Use of non uniques to repair uniques, even at at a cost of say 3/1 or more.

 

[RandV80]

I think it can work but you have to put some thought into it. What are you trying to achieve with it, gameplay? realism? If it's realism, daily maintenance is probably a bigger factor than repair. In literary fiction and real history as well any good adventure/soldier should take time around the camp fire to oil & sharpen their sword. So the Oblivion method of carrying around dozens of smith hammers to occasionally stop and tinker at your weapon is nonsense.

So for realism it should be some combination of daily maintenance keeping your weapons in top shape, this can simply be part of camping and various skill sets and points can increase the effectiveness. If the weapon breaks, you take it to town for a smith to repair.

Now how does fantasy set in? Taking one fictional literary setting for example, Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series (and my user name is merely a coincidence), the 'magic' swords are unique because they don't break and never get dull. Wouldn't that be an optimal way of making your games magic weapons unique? If you're in a medieval setting and magic is real, the first thing a crazy wizard would do is make a sword that's freakin on fire! Then practicality should set in and you start making swords that keep their sharpness and don't break. And to me an enchantment seems like something that's best degraded by time, not use. So if you're adventurer is raiding some old tomb and pries a big ass sword from an old corpse in a coffin, then maybe you need to bring it to and pay an enchanter for a one time restore but after that it's good for the life span of the hero.

But all that is a whole lot of work and planning to put into a game. So if the only feasible choice is a crumby oblivion style thing or nothing for a game like Project Eternity then the latter option is probably best. Though I still think it shouldn't be too hard having mundane weapons that break and unique magic weapons that don't, since the game is called Project Eternity and all.

 

[Geo Da Sponge]

Well, as others have said it's really a question of how it's implemented. The only real experience I have with it is from playing Oblivion, Fallout 3 and New Vegas, going from worst to best in that order. I think one of the most important requirements is that it shouldn't feel like your weapons are ridiculously flimsy; like you should be able to use a weapon from top quality for an entire fight and not really notice the difference afterwards. This is one of the ways New Vegas really improved on Fallout 3; it made it so that the performance for a weapon was the best it could be so long as it was above 75% (and 50% for armours). That meant that I wasn't getting all OCD about constantly repairing them to make sure I got every damage point possible out of them.

Oh, and if you're annoyed by the fact that you can't find the right weapons to repair your stuff in New Vegas you could take the Jury Rigging perk with 75 repair, which let you repair any weapon/armour with anything else that was in the right class. That helped a lot. And secondly, if you really can't find anything else to work with a weapon repair kit will work with anything. Oh, and it also made it so that guns occasionally jam if their quality got low enough, effectively making them double the reload time. That was a really nice touch that made weapons feel like they were really getting worn out rather than just losing magical weapon-power juice.

So basically, to make a weapon degradation system work you need the following:
- Make weapons last a decent and believable amount of time before they need repairing.
- Don't just make it all statistics.
- Add in a few alternatives to make maintenance easier to stop it from getting too frustrating.

 

[Gottesstrafe]

I can't really think of a game that has it that wouldn't have been better with it removed.

In most games: I'll end my run, or I'll have to return to base/town LONG before anything breaks, and all I do is stop by the shop on the way out to hit repair.

In Fire Emblem, at least the one's I've played: After the tutorial, you have a way to farm for money or you get more money than you will ever need. Now dealing with weapon degradation means simply buying 2-3 weapons for everyone and not worrying for the whole mission. This isn't a bad thing, but it makes me wonder why they included it since it can be handled without much problem. I do see the added strategy for the Special Weapons, but regular weapons I don't really see the point.

The Last of Us: Shivs break after a use or 2 if you found the upgrade, most melee weapons break in less than 10 hits. The shivs durability makes sense since it adds a bit of strategy (quick kill now, or stealth kill a Clicker, or save it for a door), but melee weapons it just meant after killing 2-3 in a horde of 10 or so I'm weaponless and vulnerable.

Fallout 3/NV was tedious because you ended up stuck with 2 types of items: Ones that can be repaired endlessly (Hunting rifles, various faction armor) or items that you NEED a repair shop for (90% of unique items).

To do it properly the game has to be balanced around it. Fire Emblem was probably the closest to doing it well, but I think the game would be a LOT better without it.

The Last of Us emphasizes stealth to pure action though, weapon degradation makes sense since it's constantly trying to force the player to play smart and scavenge materials as much as possible. The player shouldn't be constantly running into battle with beserker fury taking on the hordes with a pipe (respect it) or 2*4, the constant presence of bottles and bricks are there to allow the player to distract enemies to take them out one by one or avoid them entirely. That constant state of vulnerability is intentional, meaning that every big fight should leave you weaponless or near weaponless, especially if you don't conserve your ammo. Risking short term victories (i.e. using powerful weapons to kill enemies or health kits to repair minor damage) over long term contentment is a constant theme among games like this and survival-horror games, and for good reason since it makes allows the player to exist in a state of control and vulnerability at the same time.

As long as the game is built around weapon degradation and accommodates it correctly, it is a fine mechanic. Everyone has already mentioned how games like Fallout and Minecraft and their emphasis on resource scavenging, but then there are games like Dead Rising on the other end of the spectrum. The emphasis is on brawler style combat where nearly everything around you can be used uniquely as a weapon, in which fits a weapon degradation system almost perfectly. Run out of chainsaws and ammo for your guns? Try grab a giant beach umbrella to bowl over zombies. Stuck behind a counter with no openings to escape? Throw some cooking oil on the floor and watch them slip over themselves. Bored and tired of hitting zombies with various flavors of sharp, pointy things on a stick? Put a fire breathing Blanca mask on a zombie and let it loose in a crowd.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

I can't stand it. If I have to take myself out of a gaming experience to go out of my way to repair my gear, then no, I don't want it in my game.

I can't be an epic hero of the land if every twenty minutes or so I'm running back to town or my house or wherever to hammer on my gear or whatever to repair it.

The closest I am to okay with it is in MMOs like LotRO, because I can go quest and resource gather for three hours before I even have to start about thinking of repairing my gear, but by then I'm already in a town where I can do that because I'm dropping off/selling all my loot and get ready for a hour of crafting. If fine with a simple coin sink every three hours or so.

It makes more sense to pay a bit of coin to have an NPC repair my gear than have to go out of my way to level a repair skill, which in some games can take way valuable leveling points away from other more important skills.

Skyrim would have been unplayable to me if it had had the weapon degradation of it's predecessors.

 

[Poetic Nova]

Ive started to play Stalker again recently and I found the weapon degradation handled well. The more shots you fire, the lower the quality thus lower base damage and accuracy, it doesn't happen that fast and you rarely need to exchange your weapons (only when a betetr rifle is found) so I dare to say, I actually like it in Stalker (same goes for the armor degradation aswell).

you should be able to use a weapon from top quality for an entire fight and not really notice the difference afterwards. This is one of the ways New Vegas really improved on Fallout 3; it made it so that the performance for a weapon was the best it could be so long as it was above 75% (and 50% for armours).

This is how it basicly works in Stalker aswell, as long as the weaponry is above 75% quality they hardly jam, under that mark and they'll start to lose their stats + they are prone to jam then.

You do need to shoot alot will you hit under the 75 percent mark though.

Have to ad: this only applies to SoC, the only Stalker game handling this system very well, CS and CoP went overboard with it and gear can break at any time, instead of just degrading.

 

[MammothBlade]

I don't like it when degradation reduces effectiveness. I'd rather just weapons have a higher risk of breaking or jamming the lower their condition becomes.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

I dont mind it, but some games do it badly. Look Dead Island, how can a metal pipe degrade after smashing in a few zombies? Stupid.

 

[Gormech]

Against.

As an archer in most mmorpgs, it's kinda the thing that kills us. I mean we're already having to run back to town every few minutes to buy more arrows unless we payed for a few extra inventory slots(which also bugs me). Now our bow is freaking decaying. That means that I have to:
1: Keep up with bow decay.
2: Keep up with arrow supply
3: Keep distance due to decaying armor that never blocked much to begin with.
4: Buy special arrows since regular ones don't do enough damage to grind efficently.
5: Make sure that the mobs I'm killing give more gold than it's costing to kill them.
6: Save up extra cash so that when I pvp, I'm not making too big of a gold gamble
7: Save up even more money to next level equips
8: Worry about the thieves more
9: Partake in being a part time merchant to make ends meet

and finally,

10: Have to find one team that is nice enough to let me join even though I'm a relatively 'weak' class and can only play the support roll in the 'big' fights.

Not to mention the game bugging me for real cash.

Might as well be throwing my wallet at them. No wonder why archers are relatively rare.

 

[NeutralDrow]

Depends on how its used, as seems to be the consensus.

I'd bring up Soulbringer as a game where it's used well. Weapons and armor degrade at a rate that's determined by what they're used against, so swinging a scimitar against someone wearing plate armor will break it faster than against an unarmored, fleshy thing (you'd want to use a piercing weapon, instead...which would in turn do poorly against a skeleton or rock monster, where a mace would in turn shine). Armor is similar, though it tends to degrade more based on its own weight and heft than what attacks you absorb. And in both cases, performance is tied to how good of condition the item is in (in five stages from "perfect" to "ruined"). The encouragement is towards carrying more than one weapon for different situations, a touch of realism that actually works.

Granted, half that equation breaks apart once you find the indestructible plot sword in the middle of the game, but it's compensated by being only an average weapon otherwise until endgame.

As for where it's used poorly...I'd say Minecraft, but I get the feeling I'm in the minority. I far prefer Terraria's handling of it.

"Hmm, this shotgun has certainly seen better days. I'll try taping some bits from this other shotgun onto it, that'll fix it!"

It's even better with Jury-Rigging, the greatest perk ever.

"Hmm, my anti-materiel rifle is starting to jam more frequently. I know! I'll glue pieces of this BB gun to fix it! And I'll repair my metal helmet with parts of this baseball cap and sunglasses! I AM A MAD GENIUS I TELL YOU!"

 

[WanderingFool]

So...weapon degradation, are you in favour of it or against it?

In WRPGs specifically, what are your thoughts on it? Project Eternity last week revealed it would have weapon degradation, but have since removed it due to an outcry of sort from Kickstarter backers on the forum.

Personally I think it is important and immersive in some games, such as apocalypse games like Fallout.

However I definitely don't want it in my WRPGS. It's annoying when your god crafted sword of slaying +50 breaks and has to be repaired. It's downright unimmersive in TES games where Deadric artefacts dull as quickly as a regular iron sword bought off the blacksmith down the street.

Well, the problem with it in a game like Fallout is that it does work pretty well in the begining, but in the end game does become pointless since you have such a high repair skill you basically will never need to repair your weapons, and if you do you need like one gun and thats it.

Really it all a matter of execution. I do not believe weapons degradation needs to be the center of the game, but it needs some forethought put into it. In a game like Fallout, you need X level of repair skill/intelegance before you can actually attempt to repair that laser rifle.

Course, you also have games like Far Cry 2, where all your weapons degraded, forcing you to either pick up and enmies gun or head to the gun shop and pick another one up (I felt this was not well pyut together, but still did work somewhat... save for the AK-47 and USAS, the former would fire just fine while it was turning to dust in your hands, and thre later which would rust in a single magazine.)

In short, there needs to be some thought put into it.