Poll: Weapon degradation - yes or no?

[Cookiegerard]

Really depends on the game, Oblivion was a bit too harsh with it, with the whole, each hammer takes up space, and has a waaay too high of a chance to break per use, so you have to carry tons of hammers, and even then if you are unlucky..

Fallouts did it well, where you just need another weapon of the same type, so you could imagine you where taking a spring from one, stuff like that.

But when I think about weapons degrading, I think of Far Cry 2. I liked the system they had. If you bought a gun, it was better quality, but if you picked one up, it was older, fell apart more easily. I loved that you could literally see the rust start to appear on the gun, so if you were paying attention, you could see how bad it is. And in a way, it did make a little sense how quickly the guns would break, seeing as you are basically dragging them through deserts and jungles, the kind of places that if you don't take care of your gun, it will break.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Weapon Degradation yes and no. It's important in games like Monster Hunter and should be used in other MMOs to promote resource gathering. Furthermore it should be used in survival horror to increase tension and make you dread each encounter. I can also see scripted 'weapon failures' or 'weapon damage' being used in story-driven games or RPGs being used to some great effect (oh no! The sword of fate has shattered! Now I must quest to repair it)

In most other games though it isn't really necessary. A lot of J/RPGs are already micromanagement nightmares that adding in weapon damage could just add to frustration more times than not. I like how it was used in Fallout as it promoted resource gathering to a degree but...I can't think of any other game that features guns and weapon degradation other than running out of ammo so I'll stop.

 

[Festus Moonbear]

I love the weapons degradation in Far Cry 2, it's just another of the many things that keep you on your toes and make it essential to plan ahead and get set for missions instead of just barrelling ahead. It is possible to play through the whole game without experiencing any jams/fails at all if you plan your routes properly and make use of weapons shops, but sometimes it's nice to deliberately let a weapon degrade just to shake things up and make the combat more edgy. When you have an explosive pile surrounded by unsuspecting hostiles lined up in your RPG sights, but when you pull the trigger the rocket goes shrieking off into the air and does a few loop-de-loops and fucks up all your plans, it can be a rush. Murphy's law has its benefits.

 

[CloudAtlas]

It all depends on circumstance. If a game drops in weapons from a military base, you would expect them to be fully functioning and to last. If you scavenge rag-tag low quality weapons or you use a weapon in the wrong way, you would expect them to break eventually.

In an arcade Shooter you would expect weapons to work as long as ammo exists for it, in a survival game, you would allow the degregation to occur over time to make survival a challenge.

It's circumstance that wins through in the end.

I could agree with that. However, I haven't played a single game yet where I thought that equipment degradation is enhancing the gameplay. Too often, it's just a gold sink, annoying because you need to carry around tons of hammers or spare material, or disincentives the use of the most fancy, most fun weapons at your disposal because they are harder to repair.

 

[Mycroft Holmes]

It's really difficult to simply label a mechanic as wholly bad or wholly good. It all depends on what the developers are trying to accomplish.

Eg: weapons breaking down fit perfectly into Stalker. It's a game that is largely supposed to be about scavengers, and having your gun jam in the middle of a firefight is exactly the kind of thing they want to happen in that game. But having the same mechanic is CoD is stupid. CoD is supposed to be fast paced action between 'elite' soldiers. Adding in such a mechanic would break that flow in the same way that not having such a mechanic in stalker would break it's attempt at immersion and scavenging mechanics.

Most things have their proper place it's just about fitting them into the games where they are supposed to go.

 

[Fijiman]

I think Oblivion is the only game I played in which weapon degradation was an annoying chore that didn't really add anything to the game.

 

[Therumancer]

I don't care for it myself, as others have said it largely turns into busy work. In single player games it's a limitation on the player character that NPCs don't have to worry about, and generally amounts to yet another thing when you go back to the most recent quest hub. In MMOs it generally serves a purpose in terms of a way to "punish" the player for dying, and also to try and shave some money out of the economy to help combat inflation (rather badly).

One of those mechanics that DOES make a degree of sense, but doesn't tend to be a whole lot of fun in a computer game. When it comes to PnP games it depends on the mechanics of the game. As much as I've liked Palladium games in the past it always seemed to me that armor got wrecked way too easily. In their fantasy game a normal suit of chainmail might last for hald a dozen hits, due to having like 60 or so SDC, this is a game where a two handed weapon or some single handed weapons do like 3d6 damage before adding strength bonuses, craftsmanship modifiers, or anything else into them, for a serious monster or dedicated melee player character dishing out 25 damage points per blow isn't unreasonable and the really touch ones can occasionally do that 60 damage easily per attack. It's like "Armor of tissue paper".

 

[bigfatcarp93]

I voted "other" because it depends HEAVILY on the rest of the game, and how much resource management is ALREADY present. I think OP is right about Skyrim, where it would have been just a bit too much along with upgrading armor and weapons, charging magical weapons, like five types of arrows, etc.

 

[WindKnight]

Generally speaking, the idea isn't inherently bad, but pretty much every implementation in games is infuriating and frustrating as often it doesn't make sense for just how quickly something breaks down, especially if its something you can't repair.

And don't get me started on the multiplayer games where the degradation pretty much kills any cashflow you have if your not winning a significant portion of your games or you pump real money in to offset it.

 

[BoredAussieGamer]

In most cases, no. But if it's a mechanic that adds something and fits, then yes.

 

[natster43]

I like it in games like Fallout 3 and New Vegas, as I feel it is well implemented in them, and I don't mind it in Dead Rising as it fits, though it gets kinda annoying at points in Dead Island and Fire Emblem.
I would dislike it if they were poorly implemented or just didn't fit the type of game, but in those games I really like it or at least don't mind it all that much.

 

[Batou667]

Completely depends on the game. If the game has some kind of survivalist aspect to it, like Dead Rising or Dead Island (the only two examples of degrading weapons I can think of right now), then that would fit right in. But could you imagine a system like that in, say, a Ninja Gaiden game? It'd ruin the flow of the game and introduce an incongruous element of realism that would spoil the suspension of disbelief.

So, in one word: context.

 

[Navvan]

It has its uses, but it is way to overused. If it fits the game or weapon/armor thematically, fine, but don't shoehorn in the mechanic for balancing purposes.

 

[Navvan]

Repost/Deleted

Apparently the captcha gods are against me today =/

 

[Kikyoo]

The best ones that have weapon durability IMO are Monster Hunter, where your sharpness degrades over time when you use your sword, and you have to sharpen it again, and Dark souls where, depending on your planning, can become an issue and make the game more interesting, or just be a none factor.

Firstly in Monster Hunter going down to 0 doesn't break your beloved weapon, it just makes it woefully ineffective. Sharpening it, is not about going back to town, and paying some guy to do it. It's about time required to get your weapon back up to full strength in the middle of a pitched battle. It's part of the battle, and so you have plans around what to do when it happens. It can add to the encounters, and is one more thing you have to plan and take into account for.

Dark souls is one of the few other games I would say actually benefits at all from a durability system. A lot of that is because they tell you well beforehand when something is breaking, and before it breaks it get's a catastrophic power loss, making you not even want to continue to use it. This is offset heavily by being able to buy a repair box, and repair stuff at every bone fire, but it's something you can forget about, and have bite you in the ass. My most epic kill of the last boss I had been fighting him for some time, and got him real low, but then my Pike started to break. I didn't have another weapon, and couldn't switch in the middle of fighting Lord Gywn. I had to finish the fight with my busted ass pike and break it off in his skull. And I did, and it was glorious.

 

[Kikyoo]

Double taped the post button.
sorry about that.

 

[rodneyy]

it can be fun but it can also influence your gameplay quite a bit. in the first stalker game there was wepon degrade and no repair (but it would last a wile) and in a way it did work as one of the best guns in the game can be found hidden just lying on the floor not to far into the game if it did not degrade then you would be set for the rest of the game. with degrage you can go pick it up whenever you want to but its better to save it till later.

also it can change how you play. instead of using one gun for everything you have to choose the smg might be ok at close quaters but if you need to use up so many shots that it is half degraged after a few fights its usless. you find yourself using single shot assualt rifels and snipers because they will last you so much longer, and with all the weight allowances in that game you cant just bring 3 or 4 of the same gun, you got maybe 2, 3 if you dont mind moving a bit slow and thats it.

as it was most people didnt like it as the next game you could fix the guns but i liked it. i flet it fitted in with the whole desolate wasteland

 

[Furyaki12]

I only vividly recall 3 games with weapon degradation: Fire Emblem, which was already talked about, and the two Dark Cloud games.

In the first Dark Cloud, your weapons had HP that was depleted every time your weapon made contact with an enemy (or in the case of the ranged weapons used by some characters, every time it was used). Depending on the enemy, the weapon's HP went down slower or faster each swing - hitting the goblin would decrease the weapon's health far less than hitting a rock monster or a moving suit of armor.

If you let your weapon's HP hit 0 by not using a Repair Powder to restore it to full, it broke and was completely gone. That weapon you've been using and upgrading since the beginning of the game, the one you sunk all of your time and refining crystals into?

Completely. Gone.

Only the characters' default, weak, un-upgradeable weapons can break and remain in your inventory, although they can't do any damage to the enemy when broken. On a side note, this game also had a Thirst Meter, which necessitated carrying around flasks of water or hoping that the floor of the dungeon you were on had a spring of water to drink from. Once your thirst meter was depleted, your character would gradually lose health and deal lower damage with their attacks until you sated them.

In the sequel, weapons still had HP and could still break, but you kept the weapon; when it breaks, you just lose all the EXP the weapon had toward its next level (the Stabbing Stabber+7 with 3 EXP left till Level 8 would revert to the Stabbing Stabber+7 with 1000 EXP left till Level 8), and it wouldn't do any damage to the enemy until it was repaired. They also did away with Thirst as a mechanic and simply turned it into a status effect; you can't eat anything (restore health) until you cured it.

In short, the first Dark Cloud's system was obnoxious, but the sequel's was tolerable.

 

[bug_of_war]

I think it would be hilarious if they added in random gun jams or a mechanic where it overheats if you fire more than 30 rounds per minute into something like Halo for example. I think weapon degradation can work as long as you remember the mechanic is there, and you don't wonder half an hour down the line why your sword is doing nothing against the big bad boss...

Far Cry 2 does that well-ish. Older guns are visually more used and are more likely to jam or even explode.

I'm not opposed the weapon degradation, however it needs to be implemented well. For example, Oblivion's degradation system was annoying as the weapon would always look good until you actually realise that the damage has decreased. Same goes for the enchantments in Oblivion, I went up 4 levels before I realised my bow had ran out of charge, thankfully that was fixed in Skyrim with the weapon glowing when pulled out.
A game that I think did weapon degradation the best is the aforementioned Far Cry 2. New weapons worked really well, but the more you used the weapon/swam, the more the gun began to show signs of it's age. For example, you would start off with a shiny pitch black sniper rifle, then after a few missions some dirt, rust and even scratches would appear on the weapon, the gun would also jam forcing you to unjam the weapon. This would only happen every second magazine though, and with most guns the animation was quick. However, if you kept that weapon for a LONG time (or a short time if you picked it off the ground) it would jam FREQUENTLY, and eventually would explode in your hands. It was great aesthetically, but could be frustrating as hell, but it was still fantastic, especially since each gun had a different jamming/unjamming animation and would have it's own unique degradation appearance.

So yeah, if implemented well I will gladly accept a game with weapon degradation, but I definitely think they should focus more on visual cues rather than just telling you the weapon is getting old, it just makes me feel more engaged when I can see that my weapon is becoming a piece of crap.