Equipment wear and tear in games.

[gnarf]

My theory is that when you have degradation instead of it breaking and becoming lost forever, have some sort of degradation where the weapon/armor etc becomes slightly less effective. (ie a dull sword chops for less than a sharp and shiny one) overall this is annoying though, and realistically this would happen very slowly (unless you decided to fight giant rocks with your sharp sword.) but you should make it so that if you have degradation you don't need to run back to a town every 20 minutes to repair, it should be something that you only need to repair something after having to go back into town 5+ times for other reasons. or you should be able to have 3-5 play sessions (assuming long play sessions) before you need to repair something. but you should be able to take your item to a smith of whatever variety you need and he should be able to fix it for a flat nominal(cheap) fee no matter what the quality or condition, unless it had 0 durability and was broken (but not destroyed) thus needing more repair. whatever you do don't have it so that a 'broken' weapon or item is lost forever, give the play the choice of taking the broken item in for repairs or being able to throw it away if he chooses.

 

[gallaetha_matt]

Honestly? I don't much care for weapon degradation in games. It's one of the things that put me off Dead Rising . You could be ploughing through zombies with your baseball bat one minute. Then without warning you suddenly find yourself weaponless, without anything useful within grabbing distance and a lot of zombies between you and a possible exit. To me that isn't rewarding player skill, it's like using a deck of tarot cards instead of a controller.

However, the Obiivion system was fairly painless. It wasn't good. It really punishes you at those lower levels (unless you picked armourer as a class skill, but what kind of anally retentive middle management type does that on their first playthrough?). It stops mattering once you're in the high levels and you can afford to weigh yourself down with repair hammers, hence why I refer to it as painless but not good. At one end of the scale it's a pointless, arbitrary time sink and at the other it's not even something that you think about anymore.

Don't even get me started on the Fallout 3 system. In the first ten levels I sank more caps into weapon maintenance than I did on anything else. Again I didn't pick repair as one of my core skills, so that might be the problem.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the hell out of Oblivion and Fallout 3 - but I thought these games would've been greatly improved by chucking the weapon degradation system out of the window, and possibly setting it on fire too.

Realism is overrated. If I want realism I'll go outside.

 

[Savagezion]

I think the key behind weapon degreadation is to not have it happen too often. Fallout 3 actually had it happen very quickly. You should be able to do 4-5 quest before the weapon loses any real quality. (Really, more. I personally would put it at 10-12.) A gun is meant to be fired, and armor is built to take damage. As such the tolerance on a gun should be better than most games depict. firing a gun 20 times should not mean it needs repairs. The threshold for weapons and armor being high should be a good deterant for tedium.
This will mean that the mechanic of repairing weapons and armors may not comeinto play on the game much but I think that is better than having it show up too often personally.

 

[subject_87]

Minecraft does it right- it's one of the only games where my sword or pickaxe breaking doesn't cause me to swear vigorously. It's even got a little bar to indicate about how many uses are left in it, unlike some games.

But overdoing it is a bad idea; I play games to unwind and distract myself with nonexistent worlds, so why would I want to be reminded of what I'm trying to forget? (Yes, I know that games also do have important context in the real world, but I'm just sayin'.)

 

[xdgt]

As a person who encountered weapon wear and tear in real life i'd suggest something like this - have a maintenance kit: some oil, a cleaning brush and so on which the character can use once in a while when he can catch a break that would prolong the weapon's durability (as in making it less likely to break) also have some general spare parts kit that would make actual repairs possible (you can either take apart other weapons for their parts, buy the parts at a merchant or maybe even create some parts yourself out of raw materials). Again some parts are more likely to break than others - it is more likely that the barrel will overheat and become crooked than say a trigger breaking or the blade of sword becoming dull than the hilt breaking off. Also using an assault rifle is far less likely to cause it damage (with regular maintenance it can go on for months) than it being lets say hit with a sledge hammer or run over by a car (which may damage the internal mechanism and render it unusable).

 

[archvile93]

If you are doing some sort of RPG or Survival type it might be good to add a bit of rudimentary degredation system. If you are going for a linear rpg however, I would tend to leave it out. Also keep in mind how realistic you want to make your game. That is the biggest factor in whether you should include it or not. If the is of the 2 types previously mentioned if implemented well it would definitely add to the experience of the game even though it would be an annoyance factor to an extent the person should of kept their equipment up to date.

I hate it.

Because for one thing, if realistically implemented, it would come up incredibly rarely. How many times is your gun going to break in a twelve hour fucking period in real life?

If implemented often enough to mean anything, it would become irritating. I can't tell you how many times I had to stop having fun in Oblivion to go fix my sword. If the little hammer didn't break, it wouldn't be so bad, kind of fun even. But no, half my money had to go towards fucking hammers.

A way it could be done right is sharpening your sword or cleaning your gun gives you a temporary boost, next thirty hits do 1.5 damage, or something like that.

A master hammer like the skelton key would of been brilliant in Oblivion but then again I don't really see money as being a problem in that game.

If you become a master armorer your hammers will never break. You are aware of that aren't you.

 

[ClassicJokester]

I'm a fan of Fallout 3's repair system, though there were some things that bugged me.
I wish they had let you strip parts off of guns you found instead of having to carry around a couple extra guns, which always seemed a little ridiculous.
Along with that, it would have been interesting if different parts degraded differently, and affected the weapon stats in different ways. The barrel is getting worn? Decreased weapon damage. Stock is broken? More inaccurate aiming.

Maybe coulda been cool.

As a person who encountered weapon wear and tear in real life i'd suggest something like this - have a maintenance kit: some oil, a cleaning brush and so on which the character can use once in a while when he can catch a break that would prolong the weapon's durability (as in making it less likely to break) also have some general spare parts kit that would make actual repairs possible (you can either take apart other weapons for their parts, buy the parts at a merchant or maybe even create some parts yourself out of raw materials). Again some parts are more likely to break than others - it is more likely that the barrel will overheat and become crooked than say a trigger breaking or the blade of sword becoming dull than the hilt breaking off. Also using an assault rifle is far less likely to cause it damage (with regular maintenance it can go on for months) than it being lets say hit with a sledge hammer or run over by a car (which may damage the internal mechanism and render it unusable).

Dammit, knew I shouldn't have skimmed the thread. This is what I was trying to say.

 

[Casimir_Effect]

Loved it in FarCry 2, especially as you could turn it off if you wished. The whole mechanic added this great tension to firefights when you knew that your weapon was a bit dodgy. It made you be smarter with your firefight tactics, encouraging the use of stealth and flanking to get closer to an enemy so as to reduce the amount you needed to fire.

Otherwise it's a mechanic I don't notice much. Diablo 2 had it, buy my main chars were Amazon and Sorceress so it didn't hurt much (bows don't degrade and neither does magic). Oblivion had it as well, but the ability to repair stuff yourself or fast-travel to a nearby town made it pretty pointless. That's the bad kind to me - it justs gets in the way. I'd equate it to needing to Identify items in RPGs - plain old fucking annoying.

 

[xdgt]

That...doesn't sound very fun to play out though. It just sounds tedious.

It doesn't have to be. If i may take RPGs for example - before and after battle you get your buffs, spells and potions/food to get you ready for next encounters. It could be something as long as a few seconds once every 20mins-1hour. Something that would add a little bit of extra tactical thought without hindering your entertainment.

 

[moose_man]

Fire Emblem's got it... I always wondered why awesome weapons fell apart, like Siegfried.

 

[oppp7]

In survival horror I can see it working as a way to keep you low on weapons, but for games like Diablo it's just annoying.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

If you can't repair it...terrible.

If you can, AWESOME.

*glares at SaGa Frontier 2 angrily*

 

[InnerRebellion]

I love Fallout 3's...but I think it only works in a survival game like that.
Now as for visual wear and tear, I love it. If my armor gets blasted by a shotgun, there should be some dents in it! And cloth/leather armor should get torn...anyone know a game that does that well?

 

[noble cookie]

I know Dead Rising has it, but there are weapons everywhere so it doesn't matter!

 

[xdgt]

That...doesn't sound very fun to play out though. It just sounds tedious.

It doesn't have to be. If i may take RPGs for example - before and after battle you get your buffs, spells and potions/food to get you ready for next encounters. It could be something as long as a few seconds once every 20mins-1hour. Something that would add a little bit of extra tactical thought without hindering your entertainment.

YEah, no. It's not fun. It wasn't fun back when I played WoW and it would not be fun in any non-MMO game. Repairing your armour and such isn't a fun mechanic and your idea just adds even more tedium to it.

Depends on what kind of game are you going for, if you're looking for instant brainless fun then wear and tear mechanic is not the right thing to implement, in that case i'd even remove bullets and just go for infinite ammo. On the other hand if you're looking for a slower paced game with a little more thought and a little bit less rash action then wear and tear mechanic can add a certaing variation and flavour (if done right), if before jumping alone at an army your first thought isnt "You're dead, I'm awesome" but rather "Maybe I should go around, try and find a better weapon and position or even avoid the fight if possible".