Weapon degradation in games

[lunavixen]

There are few games which have done weapon degradation well, Dark Cloud is my favourite example of it, it had weapon degradation, but you had ways to repair it in the field and it wasn't expensive to do, weapon degradation speed depended on the enemy you were fighting, your weapons endurance level and whether you had any monster killer things added (different ones for different types).

I think it's wholly dependant on the game and how they implement it in said game

 

[Doom972]

It depends on the game. For example, In Morrowind and oblivion it was just annoying and immersion breaking (who would go exploring dungeons with 20 hammers?), but in Fallout 3 & NV it made sense to replace parts from other weapons (even though any real soldier would tell you that it's a bad idea) because it fits the idea of making use of what little is left in the destroyed world.

 

[KoudelkaMorgan]

I hate it. Unless I'm playing a completely realistic simulation or something, where its done based upon actual physics and real weapons etc. then I don't see the point.

Its usually the most unimaginative coin sink that pretty much EVERY mmo relies upon. All it does is actively punish you for playing the game. I'd rather have some other money sink as opposed to make literally every martial interaction with any other lifeform cost you money.

In Fallout, it made a lot of sense, but it penalized you heavily if you wanted an npc to repair something for you and even then it was usually half-assed.

It pretty much meant you either gouged the hell out of repair early and often, or you suffered for it.

I'd rather have rare as hell good weapons, sometimes you find them in completely broken states, but with the right parts you can repair and improve them like the mods in NV. So basically you will be rocking a shovel until you finally get a gun, and then you might get a laser rifle if you are damn lucky, but a WORKING one would be a miracle so you gotta track down the parts. End result you get a one of a kind signature weapon that your pumped up repair/science/energy weapons skill/perks naturally keeps in perfect working order. But that means that if you forego all that in favor of rocking that shovel it must also be unbreakable which kind of stretches the plausibility.

Then you remember its supposed to be fun, and you administer your SHOVEL JUSTICE!

Hardcore mode could work the same as it does now.

In a game like Dead Island or SH:Origins were weapons break constantly, its unpardonable.

Why include an element of "realism" to games that feature the surreal or supernatural? And why implement it so poorly that your only recourse is to do the very UNREALISTIC thing of carrying a dozen axes/TVs/electric hammers on your person at all times?

It was especially abhorrent in Oblivion where at max level against the poorly scaled mobs ALL your light armor would be shattered in like 2 hits from ANYTHING. Heavy at least took a few more hits so you could stop and use your (at that point) UNBREAKABLE repair hammer to instantly repair it to full after every goblin sneeze.

Between that, and the need to stop and squat in the shadows around npcs/jump around like a fool/summon and punch out creatures/swim underwater into a wall for a few hours every so often to not get totally screwed stat-wise its a wonder that I finished that game. Thats not even mentioning the soulcrushing sameness and tedium of closing the Oblivion gates themselves if you are unfortunate enough to activate them.

So yeah...I don't see the point of repairs in a FUN game. In mmos its referred to as the "tank tax" because it unfairly targets the most needed classes in the game typically. When they try to get the group to pitch in for repairs after getting the crap beat out of them for an hour or two its pretty much "lol nope. its your fault for picking a class that takes so many hits idiot."

 

[The Harkinator]

It worked pretty well in Fallout 3 with using same type equipment to repair gear. Worked better in Fallout NV with the Jury Rigging perk as you could now start fixing unique gear yourself.

Was an annoyance in Oblivion, especially with magic weapons. Felt like lugging around lots of repair hammers was a waste of time and thought I was being penalised for using equipment in the game.

Really didn't work in Dead Island where the weapon starts degrading quickly right away, makes getting a decent weapon something you can only enjoy for a few minutes, then you have to go and get it repaired.

 

[verdant monkai]

Get rid of it it adds nothing and its just a pain in the ass.

 

[IronMit]

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.

Fallout 3 FWE mod struck a better balance;

All Weapons degrade more slowly overall. However you can carry a lot less so it balances out.
Automatics would degrade a bit faster compared to semi-automatics.
You can still use similar weapons to repair those rare weapons
You can use abrox cleaner or make 'repair parts' from 'scrap metal' if your repair skill is high enough and repair weapons with that light weight convenient item. Remember your carry weight is less so it balances out.

It almost got too easy though because some traders have 100 repair skill and weren't tooo expensive.

Also FWE reduces the weapons damage rating being effected by your 'pistol skill' so was more dependent on the condition of the weapon.

 

[TheCommanders]

I absolutely hate it. There are a tiny number of circumstances where it feels appropriate (something with a heavy emphasis on survival, for example), but 99.99% of the time it's just stupid. Often, it makes me not want to use good weapons. I already have a problem in games where I hoard things because I might need them later, and have a really difficult game experience (but usually really easy final boss fight ) because of it. Knowing that the equipment might become useless shortly after use only makes this problem worse. Most of the time, weapon/armor degradation isn't even well implemented (not that it would help all that much if it was, but hey), just a sort of stupid check box you need to take care of every . And if all it's doing is being annoying, what's the point?

 

[latiasracer]

Personally, i quite like the way Far Cry 2 did it. There was something i just liked about aiming down my sights, lining up a perfect headshot then nothing happening! I also quite liked how the textures changed as the weapon degraded, it was just cool...



The only thing i didn't like about the degradation in FC2 was that if you got the SAW machine gun, with the capacity upgrade you could actually cause the gun to break if you expended the whole mag without pausing.


Unmodded S.T.A.L.K.E.R. SoC was an example of it being poorly implemented, as you had no way to repair your weapon. Whilst this shouldn't be a problem with so many people to shoot, you had the problem of some unique guns (For example, an American battle rifle that used the same ammo as the AKS4u, which was much cheaper to buy) you would be reluctant to use it.

 

[K12]

It seems to be generally agreed that Fallout 3 did weapon degradation well and I'm not sure if I completely agree.

Melee weapons worked fine but the degradation of guns will annoying busy work, just requiring you to combine stuff every know and to stop them being total wank to use. I think it would have worked better to simply make bullets much harder to come by.

I think Minecraft and Dead Rising 2 made weapon degradation work well because even if you lose all your stuff you can still get out of most situations with whatever you have to hand, or you can just leg it.

I think the key is to have a game which requires adaptability and intuition rather than preparation and stat building, which just feels like annoying busy work. Try surviving a Deathclaw encounter without preparation. Some of the Prince of Persia games use weapon degradation as well which had the opposite problem of being barely noticeable.

I think treating degradation as an equivalent to "ammo for melee weapons" is the simplest way of thinking about it.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

I think it's a good feature for RPGs. It adds stress to combat, and is easily countered by thinking strategically.

To me, it makes the weapons and equipment feel more real. It makes me try to take care of my things like I do in the real world.

If it's such a problem for people, just add a repair item so they can fix it on the fly.

 

[masticina]

I don't mind it in Fallout. It gives you a reason to gather guns and weapons for repair parts. In short it gives you somethings to do. And repair skill is one of the most important survival skills in Fallout 3/NV due to this.

In Oblivion it goes so slow that at the time you have to repair a weapon you already sold 5x the gold amount of armor and weapons you took from those you killed. And yes you can even repair your own weapons there is a repair skill, the levels up.. very very slowly! So you tend to end up paying anyway for your magical weapons.

I heard that in the past there we're a few games that had silly degradations. Think every 3 enemies your sword would be broken bad. Look I think Oblivions speed on degradation could be faster. I mean it is right now in oblivion nothing more that ever a few big quests you got to the stores and sell all your crap. Then take the weapons to the weaponstore and get them fixed up again. Many times it costs you less then a 300 gold to get all weapons back in perfect order. In short even though it will take a while to buy all houses and upgrade them all in the end you'll get there.

No it is those games that belief that a weapon should only work on 3 enemies.. and that never give you a fully functional sword anyway [all are rusty or almost broken] that seems to attract a dislike.

 

[CannibalCorpses]

I consider weapon degredation as more a tool to make the games economy work, rather than a thing for adding anything to the gameplay. Creating a massive and constant drain on resources usually means a game doesn't end up allowing the player to power game from the very start and also means the piss poor games mechanics guys don't have to do their jobs right (which they generally don't anyway.

That said, i don't have any problem with weapon degredation when it's in games but would prefer it to be harsher...your weapon reaches a certain point and then it breaks and becomes unusable. You can be arsed spending 2 hours dungeon crawling to get the 'sword of make-the-game-too-fucking-easy' but can't be arsed spending 10 seconds fixing it? You deserve what you get.

 

[Hambers]

I loved it in TLoU because it made every encounter tense, and forced mo to think of every fight as a puzzle. "Alright, I can use my machete twice to kill two clickers, but there are still eight runners, and I only have two bullets left..."

The Last of Us is one of the games where weapon degradation add something to the combat and fits with the atmosphere and themes. That said it is frustrating that the machete was only useable for three attacks. Even if it was a one hit kill weapon it was only doing what it was manufactured for, unlike the pipe and 4x2. Bill after all uses a machete to deadly effect and the enemies are pretty proficient with them. Ideally a weapon degradation system should account for the difference between improvised and professionally made weapons. Shivs, pipes and random melee objects should absolutely have a low limit to the stress they can take in combat. More sturdy weapons design for bashing, bludgeoning and bifurcating should last significantly longer.

To balance this in a game like The Last of Us have them be rarer and available only when the odds mount up. Alternatively, give the player this boon in strength when the the enemy are relatively weak and harmless and have the player gleefully slake their blood-lust so you can make them feel like a monster in retrospect.

TL;DR: I'd like to use the machete to carve digital people up then feel bad about it.

 

[AgedGrunt]

It's a nice sense of realism, but often implemented as little more than a nuisance and money sink. Fallout made perfect sense, given how technology is sparse and all the salvaging and jury-rigging that was part of the game's reality.

Dead Island, on the other hand, was without a doubt one of the most absurdly ridiculous exercises in nonsense. Literally acquire something that looks like it could shatter bones, upgrade it with thousands of dollars of reinforcements and a shock mod, and the thing is degraded 50% in twenty minutes (and it's not even that powerful, anyway). Then again it was a game where the most powerful and useful weapon was your character's foot.

 

[Hambers]

It's a nice sense of realism, but often implemented as little more than a nuisance and money sink. Fallout made perfect sense, given how technology is sparse and all the salvaging and jury-rigging that was part of the game's reality.

Dead Island, on the other hand, was without a doubt one of the most absurdly ridiculous exercises in nonsense. Literally acquire something that looks like it could shatter bones, upgrade it with thousands of dollars of reinforcements and a shock mod, and the thing is degraded 50% in twenty minutes (and it's not even that powerful, anyway). Then again it was a game where the most powerful and useful weapon was your character's foot.

Now if your character's foot had broken THAT would be innovation right there!

 

[Negatempest]

Weapon degradation is usually so poorly implemented that it's sole purpose is a time sink over anything else. In every MMO it only serves as a time sink, plain and simple. The only time I have ever accepted weapon degradation was in Monster Hunter. The idea that you weapon would dull over use on a tough monster hide makes sense. Makes even more sense when your weapon can bounce off a monster's skin from being dull or not sharp enough. Also there are skills to tweak the sharpness of a skill so it ends up balancing out.

 

[Jabberwock King]

Who here remembers Morrowind? Remember how chitin armor had pretty decent stats, but had fuck all for durability? Or how ebony or daedric equipment could lasts nearly forever. I think the clear numerical indication of how much wear anything could/would take was a good feature.

 

[Headdrivehardscrew]

It really depends on the game in question.

In anything Fallout or Demon's/Dark Souls, it's a must have. In other titles, it's a concept that's so remote, misunderstood and misinterpreted that it plain don't make no proper sense.

I personally like weapon (and armour) degradation. If handled correctly, it's really not just annoyance, but a constant reminder of everything being ephemeral, transient, and decidedly non-eternal.

As much as I hate it, I love it.

I fell on the stairs the other day. I was in a hurry, you see.

I thought I'd broken my leg, because I took the liberty of flight, down a flight of stairs, right before landing rather harshly, coming to an abrupt stop with my thigh lodged against the bottom step, made of stone, and thus quite a bit more durable than the simple mix of meat and bones and shit I myself am made of.

But, hey, life is just too damn short, so I used the time (and iPhone (and Snapseed)) God has granted me and I slapped together a little something before I could, finally, get up again and hobble on through life:

 

[ThePenguinKnight]

Fallout did a pretty good job at implementing it, but I'd much rather prefer it if games made repairing weapons and armor even harder so that your forced to swap them out more often. It would force us to use a variety of weapons and armor instead of us just sticking to whats reliable.

 

[Poetic Nova]

Unmodded S.T.A.L.K.E.R. SoC was an example of it being poorly implemented, as you had no way to repair your weapon. Whilst this shouldn't be a problem with so many people to shoot, you had the problem of some unique guns (For example, an American battle rifle that used the same ammo as the AKS4u, which was much cheaper to buy) you would be reluctant to use it.

I disagree, while you could not repair it, a replacement was found easily (being a better rifle) and besides, a few of the unique (the better) one's had an extended durability.

Spoiler

Storming Obokan and Faster Shooting AK47

Using spoiler tags for those who didn't play it.