In-game economies have always fascinated me, please do make a full video on it! One of my favorite things to do in games is figure out how to break the economy, it’s always a fun puzzle.
Would love to see this topic too. Specifically because I found the loot economy of Fallout and Arcanum so enticing due to being deprived for so long. Once I hit the endgame Im stacked, but I had to do plenty of turf war looting and questing to get to that point. For Outer Worlds I felt the loot economy was not as satisfying precisely because I was never deprived of ammo, in fact I was so stacked I almost wanted to dump my whole inventory to manufacture a sense of struggle to gain power.
New Vegas has my favorite version of weapon durability in that things like weapon repair kits and the Jury Rigging perk mitigated a lot of the possible headaches of your favorite weapon breaking apart. Jury Rigging was also a fun way to repair weapons and gear for resale.
Weapon repair kits are ever funnier imo, you can just leave your repair at 30 and buff with magazine+compreension to 50 so you can use/craft a bunch of gear at once, also gives some purpose to the clutter just like they did with fallout 4, i always focus in maxxing out dps asap since the beginning
Weapon durability runs into the same issue as consumables hoarding because given the existence of a limited use item, they're always gonna be like "oh i'm gonna save it for later" and then they never really get to have fun with it.
But what if you do get into a situation where only that weapon and item you are hoarding let’s you pass an encounter , a bit satisfying isn’t it , cause your saving paid off.
Durability is theoretically interesting for the reasons you listed. That's, of course, just my opinion, but I haven't seen any game that executes on that well and thoroughly achieves those benefits. The major con is that devalues (almost eliminates) equipment progression as a reward mechanism: e.g. this weapon I earned is awesome, but it's transient, a consumable. The regression of losing the equipment of a main player verb causes an exceeding amount of loss aversion, and on an aspect (equipment progression) that should be a main source of motivation. On many design mechanics being frustrating: as a blanket statement that can be used to justify any design decision and it's equivalent opposite decision.
I saw a video about Breath of the Wild's weapon durability. In the video, he made the point that weapon durability discouraged the player from engaging with things in the world. The example he used was a chest surrounded by a group of monsters, and he had to consider whether the treasure was more valuable than his weapons' durability. In most cases, the answer would be no, and he would avoid things in the world because it was just not worth it the durability damage.
This was my criticism of BOTW's durability system, it made it so once you reached late game and you had some incredible weapons and shields, fighting lower level enemies for the fun of it or just because you were going past them, actively made you weaker. Their drops and the treasure they were possibly protecting, were less valuable than the durability of my super powerful weapons. There are ways they could have adjusted for this. They could have made it so especially powerful weapons have significantly higher durability, but more difficult enemies decreased your weapons durability in proportion. That would make it so using my +3 guardian great sword on a basic bokoblin would be negligible in terms of durability drain, but using it on higher level enemies would still make it degrade. They also didn't put in any kind of meter or number to tell you what the maximum durability was or what it's current durability was. This encouraged players to only use one weapon at a time because if you kept switching around, you would find yourself in some especially hard battles where all of your weapons were low and would break before the fight ended, and you had no way of knowing you were in that position. It was better to constantly cycle through one weapon, knowing the rest you had were fine, than to risk of all of your weapons breaking at the same time. It wasn't fun or interesting, it was just frustrating knowing there is no reason why the game didn't give you that information. Love the game, but the mechanic was so poorly implemented it made me want to pull my hair out.
That's why I quit BotW early. It just wasn't fun to "play" in that world because, even if you win, you really lose most of the time. The sequel still has weapon durability, but the monster parts and crafting system fixes the issue, imo. I played that game extensively (near 100% I think). I totally get Tim's opinion about late game crunch and not prioritizing balancing systems like this. However, I think that some systems that are absolutely pervasive (like BotW durability. It will come up in EVERY fight), need to be balanced properly or the game just doesn't work.
Yeah. I wasn't massively impressed by TotK, but it really fixed the issue of weapon durability by letting you graft stuff together. Rather than cool weapons being rare drops, it's much more about assembling what's around you to adapt to the current situation - which is much better design for an open world sandbox.
I love durability mechanics, I recently played the massive overhaul mod GAMMA for Stalker Anomaly and the crafting and durability mechanics in that game are ridiculously complex and initially frustrating. I had to read a manual just to learn how they even work but it ended up being one of the most satisfying aspects of the gameplay for me. It was so difficult and expensive to find and repair weapons but it gives you such satisfaction once you are able to fix up some solid weapons and armor. Not for everyone but I loved it.
I think durability as a mechanic works very well when it fits with the narrative of the game. Fallout makes sense with a durability mechanic because you're surviving in this wasteland where everything is ancient and worn out and falling apart. In a game universe where everything is new and "current" it can end up feeling contrived. I think something like Doom Eternal's general idea of certain weapons being better "counters" to certain enemies or enemy types does a better job of encouraging varied weapon use where durability seems to clash with the setting/narrative. I have enjoyed both of these approaches in different games. I find that simply explaining and excusing mechanics with narrative context works though, like in Borderlands where some weapons are literally one-time-use only.
I'm curious, what are the one time use weapons in borderlands? Are they like... "You can fire this weapon one time"?, or "it destroys itself on unequip"?, or are you talking about set pieces like turrets that would only be used in a playable story section? I'm asking because I've played all three games multiple times and beaten them, and I have no memory of these one time use guns, but I also know the game has an obscenely large amount of guns, expanding per subsequent release, and if they do exist it'd give me a good reason to actually play them again.
@@moosecannibal8224 Tediore manufactured weapons are all single use, and you throw them away when empty, but of course in those games new ones get manufactured into your hands. It's mostly an aesthetic thing, but the idea, and it having an explanation backed by lore, is the key here.
I think the only game where I struggled with the durability somewhat was System Shock 2, and even that one showers you in tools to repair weapons early and maybe later on.
@@renaigh Interesting! Since weapons break down so fast and you get a shiny icon at the bottom of the screen when they start losing durability it's kinda hard to miss.
I love Durability with context, A game life Fallout makes sense because you are in a freaking wasteland your items are not pristine so maintaining your armor and weapons is a great survival mechanic.
Well implemented weapon durability makes a game so much more engaging and creates fun scenarios, it’s a must in an RPG especially I don’t understand why people are against durability, but to argue against ammo at all is absurd
The first Mass Effect didn't have ammo, and I quite liked the choice. It felt futuristic and immersive. Then they invented not-ammo in the second game. And forced you to use it.
this channel is such a goldmine...I remember playing fallout with my older brother when I was too young to play it myself...it was definitely a huge part of my childhood, and stood alongside gems like baldurs gate, metal gear solid and final fantasy as things that molded me...the greatness of that game cannot be overstated...and now I'm binging the creator on UA-cam, lol...what a time
Video on money sinks vs money sources please! These videos are great! I see durability as an immersion metric. Just like encumbrance, and ammo and vital signs e.g. hunger. Those are all about making the player fit in a world. If they are well implemented and fit the world of the game, then it's always a positive.
That's not a universal excuse to me though because the game designer makes the world and can make it however they want. They chose to make a world that required these things.
Scary to think Outer Worlds could have not had ammo! Back when I played through it, I'd wished it actually had MORE ammo types, rather than broad categories like Energy, Light, Heavy.
I feel the same. I figured the limited ammo types were a consequence of a smaller scoped game, but it’s interesting to hear that some people didn’t even want that!
yeah, also it clashes with the setting, the weapon durability fits because this is cheap amazon garbage, hell durability should have been more mean with guns exploding at 0, instead of being just 30% worse. but if you've ever dealt with batteries, chargers or anything every weapon would have its own ammo in its own silly non difference.
As silly as it might sound, part of me has wondered if any designer's aversions to weapon degradation traces back to (at least in some small degree) a line from a 2008 episode of Zero Punctuation, since that was when ZP was truly exploding in popularity: "you have one second to name any game in which weapon degradation has been a good idea. Time's up. That's what I thought." -- ZP ep23, on Silent Hill Origins Funny thing is that the ZP wiki apparently now links to BotW at the words "a good idea", lol
Durability is one of these mechanics i never liked in game. It is generally important in the beginning of the game, and becomes irrelevant to the end. It easily snowballs, so the better you do in the game, the easier durability it can be managed, and if you do badly durability will become a serious problem as it not only drains your ressources, but also hinders you from acquiring new ones. Durability is generally often a weak threat, because it would kill games otherwise, but that also makes it more a nuance then a challenge. Like puzzles that are faster bruteforced, then understood. As for weapons that are managed via durability, for me, they suffer the same fate as rare potions. I will never use them, because i keep them for "when there are needed", so never. So overall i disagree, while is a ressource sink, it was never a fun one for me.
Basically, much like how ammo scarcity in Survival Horror games force more thoughtful play Weapon Durability in games with potentially infinite access to ammo allows RPGs to start leaning more into those kinds of weapon effectiveness considerations
*The thing about breath of the wilds is that it's durability system is that it didn't really force you to use other weapons because basically every single weapon was exactly the same.* I wish you'd spoken on this more because I'd love to hear your perspective on why the mechanic was in there in the first place because it didn't have any interaction with the game's economy and the only difference with the vast majority of weapons was the number the number it was attached to. From what I can tell the only reasons the durability system existed in that game at all was because someone higher up thought it was really exciting when your weapon broke and it did a bunch of damage. It also might have been to make the master sword feel more special but all I really ended up doing was making it so that the master sword is what you used when you wanted to mine and chop down trees. Perhaps the real genius of it was that the durability system was so bad that you hardly ever got a chance to hear people's other complaints because everyone was so frustrated by the durability.
I disagree, each type of weapon had its own best-use scenario (long spears vs certain enemies, boomerangs vs others, heavy two handed wpns vs others etc)
@@lorenzotosiart the problem is you just named all three of the only melee weapons in the game lol. And it's more like 2 1/2 since the boomeranged shares the same attacks as the singlehanders
Some of my favorite games ever are FO3 and NV, and the durability system used in those games was top notch. While I think NV did it a tiny bit better with the related perks, I think Fallout 3 was the more effective general use of the system. I tend to hate babysitting a survival mechanic, finding food and water, stuff like that. I think gear durability(alongside ammo scarcity) highly effectively replaced that in FO3, letting it be a survival-ish game without having a bar just tell you arbitrarily that "you're hungry". The more you use it, the more you lose it - it was such a good system. The way it was handled too, with jamming on reloads, weapons getting less performant in accuracy and damage, it worked so well to me. The fact that someone who is a good repair person can repair them really well, or someone with good barter skill can just sell stuff and offset the cost of having someone else do it for them Then 76 had to ruin that by overstretching what junk did and using an awful system. The same junk used for everything fixes the stuff you use to get more junk, resulting in a likely net loss too often, and there's no warning at all. No malfunctions, just a context box telling you it broke.
I'm pretty neutral on Durability, I think as a simulational/survival mechanic it works best. If I'm just roleplaying a character I'd rather not have it occupy my thoughts every moment I play.
Ditto. Also, I think it can be overdone even as a simulational/survival mechanic. If an in-game mod is required to offset how quickly the item degrades or to make it work faster or more efficiently, etc., I'd say the mechanic itself requires a little more thought. I shouldn't have to go out of my way as a player to try to find or purchase a tool or weapon mod to minimize the anguish the mechanic itself is causing otherwise, but given the trend toward "more, more", most developers are shoving more and more items and mods for those items and mods for mods for those items into games to the point that micromanagement (of inventory, etc.) essentially becomes the name of the game. There are games, which shall remain nameless, that honestly feel like you're clocking in to work when you fire them up, not going out to play.
I'm pro durability because of what you said. Finding an identical weapon doesn't feel frustrating because you can use it to repair what you have. I always put points into repair.
As a hobby TTRPG Designer i find this very interesting. Im always arguing for durability mechanics because it is a gold sink. When you have to maintain your best weapons you are constantly investing in keeping it working. Games without durability mechanics constantly need to give you new gear to buy in order to drain your resources. This artificially inflates numbers which i don't like. People also like crafting stuff. But without durability you either craft one thing and be done or you have to constantly scale gear and enemies to give the crafter something new to do. Repairing items gives your crafter something to do. I especially like the Monster Hunter approach where you can shortly push your weapons above 100% quality to get a slight damage buff.
I think the most reliable thing is to give the player a choice whether he wants the insane fragility of his items or not sometimes I can cut the wear and tear by 10x and play, sometimes I turn it off altogether The only time I can accept grinding is when I get paid for it
I like F:NV's durability system EXCEPT I wish Power Armor was more durable. If you're not partnered with Raul, a single fight against rapid fire enemies will destroy any armor, which hurts PA more than others because usually it can only be repaired by other PA or metal armor, and none is as common as others. I don't mind the difficulty or the price of repairing it, but you need to do it too often. In Lonesome Road you needed to repair PA after every fight.
Part of that is the intention of lonesome road is to be a challenge for high level characters: most efficient method is to use stealth or pick off enemies fast to minimize how much you're getting shot.
@vadimshetser2310 Yep, you feel less like a walking tank and more a metal suit. Fallout 4 tried to hit that mix decently. However, there was the added durability of your pieces (which makes sense to a level. However, all durability besides those niche situations was already gone). I guess it logically is a hold over from other armors having durability. Fallout 2 was one of the funniest where you could get one of the best suits from level 1 then dominate the hell outta the early game.
Yeah, power armor might as well be the worst armor in new Vegas for me. I love power armor so much in the games, but in Fallout New Vegas, it’s horribly underpowered with no big benefit to strength (also for some reason they made the more advanced t51 weaker in terms of strength?), DEFINITELY no big benefit to defense; it’s only 20-30 depending on the model, and it just makes Fallout 4’s power armor FAR better. This is all stats, though, because in Fallout 4, getting it so early, and the iffy fusion core system isn’t very rewarding or well designed.
I don't remember having an issue with armor durability in FNV. IIRC, armor doesn't lose its effectiveness until it drops below 50% condition. I've only done one play through using power armor, which was the last one. I don't like how slow you move in it. I think I repaired my power armor twice in the entire game, and it never came close to hitting 50% condition. The way I "forced" myself to use power armor was creating a low strength (3) character, so to use most weapons, I had to use power armor for it's strength boost.
Tim, do you have any thoughts on money sinks as per D&D, particularly classic style D&D? It's something I have been thinking about for a while, both as a player and as a DM. As I call it the "why can't I establish a bank?" problem.
Just an aside Fallout 1 was really fun from a merchant pov. When bottlecaps became useless guns and ammo became my currency of choice and the trunk of my car was the bank. Trading up when plasma ammo became available was something to look forward to
Hey Tim, what's your thoughts on the two common companion systems in RPGs: 1-2 uncontrollable companions or full party with 3-6 player-controlled characters?
Yep that'd be fun, I prefer player controlled personally since they tend to have more character to them (typically w/ backstories and character added to them alongside your character either being custom or w/ a pre-written backstory). That and being able to decide what your team does helps to coordinate things.
Thanks for the response Tim! I have to agree with you about Fallout 3 durability system. Its was very good. You had to choose between selling the 5000 guns you looted or keep the ones you had at 100%. Having your weapon at max durability felt satisfying. That also prevented abusing hi tier items such as power armor if you obtained it very early. As for the other side of the spectrum in the Breath of the wild sequel Tears of the kingdom they doubled down on the durability mechanic, weapons are now even more brittle. I really enjoyed that game but having to change swords every 8 swings or having to glitch them was REALLY annoying.
Hey Tim, I have a question about the politics of Fallout(as in just the first one since I know you didn't have as much of a hand in the later games) and what inspired it. The first game isn't nearly as political as the later games, especially New Vegas, but I still find it fascinating that one of the first things you really see in the game is American soldiers committing a presumed summary execution of a Canadian(or maybe a Chinese infiltrator but I guess thats why I'm asking you!). I wonder if there was anything concrete behind that kind of world building or if the team/you were just doing what seemed interesting as the game developed. I also wonder about the less in game politics and the real world politics which influenced it, which might explain why the Chinese are the main opponent of the U.S instead of the USSR, but I know how emotionally charged that can be. Hopefully you can at least talk some about that starting introduction with the U.S soldiers and what inspired that interesting tid bit.
Fallout 1 was pretty political, not as much as the later games but it set the ground work for showing the downfall of America, both morally and literally. We see that it became more authoritarian and the war that resulted. It even makes a direct parallel to WW2 Germany, which was later expanded on with the Enclave who are pretty heavy into eugenics and the concept of “purity”
@@s7robin105The Master: Divisions among humans caused the war so all humans should be turned into supermutants who are all the same. The Enclave: Divisions among humans caused the war so all humans that aren't us should be killed and then we'll all be the same. Both of the villains in the first two games were coming up with different answers to the same problem, shame they were both utterly horrific.
But yeah it is a Canadian resistance fighter. It prefaces the execution with information that “our boys in annexed Canada are keeping the peace”, or something close to that
I honestly don't even remember Outer Worlds having a durability system. Durability is nice when done well, Fallout 3/NV, or unfortunate when done excessively like Breath of the Wild, using 5+ weapons to kill one high level enemy.
I love watching your videos, because now I understand much more things from a developer perspective. Durability always frustrated me, but now I know we kinda need them to enjoy more variety. I remember suffering from having to leave behind some cool weapons in Borderlands because they aren't strong anymore. But I also had much fun testing new ones. Destiny also has this thing, but at some point I kept upgrading my favorite weapons and then stopped experimenting new things, consequently forgetting that feeling of "oh this new weapon is cool too"
I really like in STALKER how enemies almost always drop weapons in poor condition. It dissuades the player from picking up weapons just to sell them, and it makes picking up weapons during combat a much more desperate choice. If you pick up a weapon from a dead enemy it’s probably a really cool gun that you want to take home and fix up.
Is stalker worth paying for and playing? Maybe I want to try it out but I have no idea what it is storywise or gameplay wise, I just hear it’s influential
@@TheOnlyPedroGameplays What's influential about STALKER is how it's a very different kind of RPG. This was changed in Gamma mod pack for anomaly to be more Tarkov esque by adding skills, but in the original games your character's abilities are mostly influenced by what gear you take with you. In vanilla Shadow of Chernobyl, you couldn't actually repair your damaged gear, so it forced you to play more carefully and really consider what you need to get the job done for where you're going (you already die pretty fast anyhow). There's a wide variety of gear and artifacts (the latter are spicy rocks that modifiy your resistances and can give you special abilities but typically at a cost, similar to traits), so you feel a pretty noticeable difference in how encounters play out based on how you geared up. It also has a pretty fascinating radiant AI system that I'd argue is better implemented than Oblivion's, but easily just as buggy and charming. Sometimes the drunk bandits are a little too wise. My suggestion would be to get Anomaly, it's a faithful mod project that's basically all 3 games in one and free. It's good on its own, and I'd play it that way first, but GAMMA introduces some well implemented in depth modern mechanics that are Tarkov/Fallout esque, such as skills and limb damage. The original games are still decently playable (save the unfortunately buggy mess with awesome story that is Clear Sky), but if you want to try it out before you buy the OGs I highly recommend giving Anomaly a whirl. Make sure you double check your difficulty settings though, there's a lot of levers there that you can tweak. I'd say the vanilla setup is not super newcomer friendly (it's a bit tougher than the vanilla games considering the added mechanics) unless you're ok with the early game being extra tough.
@@TheOnlyPedroGameplaysI tried one of the newer ones, I think it was Shadow of Pripyat or something like that, and those games are very open-ended. In the one I played, once you start the game, there's an intro cinematic, and then it just drops you in some random part of the world with 2 guns and just let's you go. If you like games like that with barely any hand-holding, you'd probably like it.
I'm glad this turned towards economics, it's something I see a lot of games treat as an afterthought, even before you look at late-development balance passes and the like. Quickly, my thoughts about durability: I think it needs to be a positive experience. It should be balanced such that it's not always on the player's mind, and distracting them from their fun, but it should still be there. Perhaps use repair items that don't do as well as a shop or skill would, or instead of showing a number or bar, simply warn the player when the damage becomes severe. If you can keep it from feeling like a chore, it'll go far in reducing negative experiences. Now on to my usual essay comment... Economy is a fantastic tool for engaging players and motivating them to do things in the game, and in multiplayer settings, it drives positive interaction. I love that you brought up that single player games don't have enough sinks; I've run into that so many times in so many games, where money loses all value because you amass too much of it. I think it's part of the reason survival-style games have become so popular, but it probably falls under the umbrella of disempowerment in games. I'll save that rant for a more relevant video. But survival games- or games with survival mechanics, where you need to constantly acquire food and supplies, are perfect for exploring economic balance. The more you play the game, the more you need to sink money into things. The risk of spending money to make money is generally a good experience, so long as it's properly balanced. Nowhere have I seen this balanced more tightly than the Armored Core games, where poor performance in missions or over-designing your unit can mean even successful missions put you in the red. In multiplayer settings, I've seen some MMOs do really interesting things. Ragnarok Online (iRO) had a big focus on player skills, with some classes able to open warp portals to custom locations, or set up market stalls almost anywhere. For a long time, you couldn't even heal your character without items or a priest class player, so they'd hang out in towns and provide that service organically. Guild Wars 2 has probably the most stable and reliable player economy I've ever seen in an MMO since EVE. The pure utility and accessibility of it, without restrictions like WoW's auction expirations, mean prices for goods are almost always stable. Add to that the crafting-focused gear system, and it rounds out very well. Overall, I just wish more games would take it seriously, since it ties a lot of mechanics together, and can fundamentally alter how the game feels, especially in the long run.
I like Minecraft's weapon repair thing, where you can combine two tools of the same kind (e.g. iron swords, wooden shovels etc) and you merge them into a single tool that's like 105% of the combined durability of the tool
I'm down with weapon durability as long: I can repair it with materials I find, even if they're rare & spread out I can store the one I like that's rare. so I'm on your side here, I just frustrated at the implementation in the recent zeldas where You're suppose to go "well it's suppose to break so I shouldn't get attached." though all the Zelda games only had that as an optional side weapon in previous games. especially as I'm sometimes STUFFED wiht rupees and grunt monster materials but can't use them to repair/enhance my weapon.
Literally if I could do an outer worlds "Reduce to weapons parts" or even a fallout "use weapon of similar type to repair weapon " for Zelda it'd have been my favorite of the franchise gameplay wise but literally that one thing has made me go "okay so I don't think I'd replay this from new game."
I think what ruins the durability in BotW/TotK for me is the Master Sword, why engage with a supposedly main mechanic of the game if your just give me an weapon that only needs to recharge for 10 minutes.
@@renaigh that's another big thing , imagine if every other weapon could be repaired using monster parts or rupees but the master sword wiht the trade off of the master sword recharging ? See how that is still balancing it but also giving you a reason to maintain the weapons you have
From System Shock 2 to STALKER GAMMA, I've always loved weapon durability mechanics. For one, it makes the player more attached to and invested in whichever weapons they choose to use and put resources in - and that's an interesting, compelling choice in and of its self. If the player doesn't invest in the skills and resources - or simply hasn't found them - to maintain weapons, it adds a certain tension of "how many more shots can I fire before it breaks?". In a game like SS2 this is especially effective because it undermines the player's trust in their equipment which helps feed the survival/horror atmosphere. It also means that you will often naturally end up cycling through many different types of weapon, and having that variety is always good. Not to mention it adds an element of realism/authenticity, even if abstracted and exaggerated for gameplay purposes - machines break if they're not maintained, especially the kind that are supposed to contain repeated, if small explosions. In realism-oriented games like Red Orchestra 2, LMGs are extremely powerful, but this is somewhat curtailed by the fact they can easily overheat if you're not controlling your bursts or you've just had to fire a lot in a given period - first it will screw with the rate of fire and accuracy, and eventually the gun will simply break if you don't give it time to cool off, or replace the barrel if it has that facility. Other such games model similar effects, and also add jamming - which might be very frustrating, sure, but it's an emergent and often interesting if not pants-shitting challenge for the player to deal with in the moment. I played an ArmA 3 (ACE) PvP mission a few years ago as an auto-rifleman, where we as a small squad of heli-borne BLUFOR had to intercept players of two other factions who had to conduct a deal and then return to their hideouts. We managed to stop one faction's vehicle, landed and moved to intercept them whilst they continued to flee on foot. I had the chance to drop several of them, but as their luck would have it, my gun jammed as I tried to fire the first shot - which gave my would-be targets the chance to react, and meant my teammates had to step up their rate of fire and aggression to compensate. Was it frustrating? Absolutely, but in a fun way. The only thing I don't like about how these kinds of mechanics are often implemented, is reducing their damage. Maybe that makes sense for blades and edged weapons, but any kind of bullet-firing weapon I feel should hurt just as much, as long as the shot was fired. Having that chance of malfunction (and other adverse effects if modelled) is already enough of a detriment to reduce your practical damage output.
Love these videos! I'm one of those people who hate weapon durability. I was okay with the Fallout -> Repair with the same weapon mechanic but it made the UI problems even worse, as I hoarded 14 different AK-47s for repair purposes for the one I used. Also concerning Ammo: I always the gun which has the most Ammo and I normally finish the game with more than a million credits/bottlecaps/dollars or whatever currency they use because I like playing a rich idiot main hero.
Another subject where I hadn't really put any thought into it beyond "I really don't like weapon durability". Now I have a much better understanding of why some devs include the feature in their games. I think you just convinced me to not hate weapon durability now :)
I think a lot of games with the durability mechanic fail because they don't provide much or any advance warning that a weapon will break, so often, you'll end up in a massive boss fight with a bunch of nearly broken weapons. An occasional misfire or a stat debuff before the break happens might be a good way to warn you. I could also see a weapon repair perk which gave you a weapon status after each fight being useful as well. I also think that a mix of the repair mechanic and the scrapping/upgrade mechanic in F4 could be really powerful. If you broke a weapon down to repair another weapon, you might be left with spare parts which could be used for a future upgrade. It would make weapon repair more of the natural process, and encourage you to also modify weapons as well.
As someone who doesn't like durability or ammo, that doesn't address my issue with it at all. I'm pretty much always aware of how much I have left. I never get surprised by it. The bottom line is I want to be able to choose what I want my character to be like and how I want to play. Making a boss that has a decent amount of resistance (but not full immunity) to a certain type of weapon is fine because it still leaves the choice there. It strikes me as a bit contradictory with how adamant Tim is that every class is able to finish the story.
In Arcanum, I literally had my character's backpack being like 90% balanced swords. Durability doesn't guarantee players will use a variety of DIFFERENT weapons.
Part of the fun for me while playing Fallout 3 was having to switch weapons due to it being wear out. I confess that before starting to play the game I was worried about the idea, but I realize how much I like it.
Thanks for all your videos! This is a tiny question, maybe you can collect together a lot of small dev related ones and do a video: What tool did you use back then to do source versioning and control? SVN? GIT? Mercurial? Other? do you have opinions on those? I remember hating SVN and loving the switch to GIT 10 years ago, the company made me teach the other devs to help with the transition.
Is Fallout the only game you can really think of that benefited from durability? I think a more poignant question about durability is not to imagine people getting frustrated by potentially any mechanic, but rather to ask what games have really done it right? The problem with the system is that it's not really that interesting to engage with, there's just not a lot of ways to interact with it. I also think it's a bad way of doing a moneysink because I'd rather just have scarcer resources that feel more special than think 'oh good more crap to keep my pistol from doing less damage.' And I don't really see what it adds in the first place it seems to just exist as a slave to realism. Tarkov is another example of a game where people don't really seem to mind the durability system, mostly because its a milsim, and it's the only game I can think of where durability can be interacted with in a meaningful way because of its systems surrounding weapon heat, where weapons will degrade faster the faster you shoot them which can get extremely worse with a good suppressor we're really beefy suppressor can just murder a gun. Because you can just repair the damn thing with money which lowers its maximum durability but if that gets low enough to matter then a person's never going to run that gun you're just going to swap out the receiver or vendor the damn thing. I might agree that Fallout is the best example of the implementation of durability but I don't even really think that means anything because it doesn't add really anyting. Is kind of the same thing as hunger and thirst mechanics which people also complain about it but they all have a wide variety of ways to deal with them and it's doesn't quite feel as bad because it makes sense in basically any scenario that's your character is going to want to eat food and drink water at some point. On the other hand I don't know why my tactical nukes or bullets or big hammer are doing less damage because I didn't feed them enough guns of the same type. And I think that's another source of frustration because it's in the game as a gimme to realism but it doesn't realistically make sense in most cases. The only real upside the seems to be what you mention with the Fallout method and very specifically only The Fallout method because it makes drops that you already have useful beyond just being vendor trash, but the problem with that is that you were already only using one gun and one set of armor, which is just the highest damage dealing one of the type you've speced in for each of the relevant ammo types. So the only real effect that it has is that you're sometimes dealing slightly less or slightly more damage depending on if a random drop has happened to give you the ammo type for the only guns that you use which you would have been using regardless. Fallout isn't so much durability dendrite as it is durability being somewhat less annoying than typical. I've yet to see a good use case for durability they can't be more easily solved by tweaking a different system. It seems to me that durability exists in a design document and then it stays there because why not. So kudos to the people who begged you to take durability out of the outer worlds. Not at all with them on ammo thing though, assuming you weren't generalizing and it was indeed all of those same people that were asking to remove both
While i like durability, the main time when I don't like it is if a specific item, say a unique artifact, is irreparable since I end up just never using it because I don't want to lose the item. Having the item is more important than any advantage it could give me now because the potential usefulness in the future is far greater.
As a player i haven't found durability to have an affect on me. In Zelda there's always a new weapon to grab and you have plenty. Just grab a new one when your favorite breaks. Then there's games without durability. In Halo you're often running out of ammo and have to pick up a new gun off the ground. So again, you're often switching. You could view bullets as a form of durability, but meh. Games where you level up like the Borderlands series, your gun starts becoming obsolete when it's about 5 levels lower than you, so time to pick up a new one. In Prey there's a option to include durability, it's just another sink for your spare parts and doesn't change anything. On the developer side i don't see myself bothering to spend time on a durability system.
I'm one of those that loves weapon and armor durability. Love it in Fallout 3 and New Vegas. When Skyrim and Fallout 4 rolled out, I was wondering why this mechanic was not included in the games. Overall, I had a lot of fun playing these games😎
It's so strange they didn't have durability along side their newly implemented crafting systems. Smithing was an entire skill in skyrim and they didn't think implementing durability in any way was a good idea? Aside from ways to get money and high tier items fast smithing might as well be worthless.
I guess I"m picky about weapon durability. I really like it when it fits the theme of the game and isn't too onerous such as in the Dark Souls series. When it's so pervasive that I'm forced to switch weapons, that feels oppressive, and it's part of why I have no interest in Breath of the Wild. Thank goodness we live in a time when there are so many options available for gaming!
IMO, tell fell through the trap of making some things great and leaving other things bad. The quality bar is very un-even and noticeable. Likely spread themselves too thin.
The one aspect Tim didn't explicitly mention was that equipment durability also gives a strong incentive to use all "tiers" of weaponry in the game, no matter how far into the game you are. Daggerfall and most Fire Emblem games come to mind as examples where you want to use iron or steel weapons against most enemies, simply because repairing or replacing them won't bankrupt you. The Fallout 3/NV repair system also gives an incentive to pick up all gear, while also meaningfully limiting it through encumbrance. It creates situations where a lower tier weapon or armor can be worth hauling over a more expensive one, if you can combine enough of the cheap ones to make up for it in durability. And this requires some decision making and though process from the player, which is far better than mindlessly pressing "loot all" on all corpses. Lot of people disliked the equipment durability in BotW, but the game used it as a way to soft gate content since you effectively couldn't deal with enemies on a given zone if you couldn't reliably access several weapons that have certain damage output. If you get rid of durability, you have to do that gating through other means, like level scaling enemy stats. That in return often leads to other unwanted results, like enemies being damage sponges until you hit a level threshold.
The one game I enjoyed durability mechanics is the survival horror jrpg 'Koudelka' for the PS1. In context it makes sense, the weapons you're finding and using are either improvised not made for fighting or are antiques you're finding in a Welsh manor home/monastery. The lack of reliability keeps the feeling of tension, the idea you're a Group of people surviving the horrors by the skin of teeth. But you also find functional weapons, in the form of firearms which do not break providing you have ammo. I think the frustration for most players in games, is it that in real life, Guns have a life expectancy of tens if not hundred of thousands of rounds whilst in games, after a few fights where you may have only shot of about 30, your weapon has nearly disintegrated. (I will note that melee weapons in real life can break at the drop of a hat, nothing says fun like a sword snapping mid fight). In the end, to scale durability to real world scales means it's a mechanic that'll have little to no impact on play. Have weapons break too quickly and you frustrate the player.... Very difficult to find a good middle ground, I don't envy you game developers for sure.
I played a game that has durability but neither sources nor sinks. It just repairs everything at the workbench without a cost. So it's a leash to keep you coming home more than anything else. Durability has many applications!
Thanks for your thoughts! As a player I actually think the most frustrating mechanics are when a game is streamlined in 99% of its design and then will randomly have a durability system, or sink, or push back system. To me, when a game tries so hard to limit your frustration it puts you in a certain head space and then any sort of abbrassive system tends to frustrate. The experience as a whole is so devoid of challenge that these systems then become sources of inconvenience. When you commit to challenging your player and force them to engage mentally, I think you can actually add MORE of these systems because you will have sufficiently engaged the player. If that makes sense
meaningful choices vs modern day lack of choices and complacent laziness that is what i'm learning from this. I too am pro durability/inventory weight restrictions. however it is a delicate balancing issue to make it good. Zelda BoTW took durability way to far imo. I didn't even realize Outer Worlds had a durability system. It never became a thing. At that point it might as well not have existed since it didn't seem to achieve its goal it seems. Only thing about ammo "restrictions" is that when i'm re-loading a shotgun, a weapon you need to reload after 2-3 shots, and you get interrupted very easily by enemies. that gets annoying fast.
It's a slippery slope mechanic. When done well, it's a really fun mechanic that I like a lot. One example that comes to my mind is in Oblivion. First you suck at repairing anything and you break your repair hammers easily so you need carry quite a few with you all the time. When you get better the hammers won't break as easily anymore and eventually you become a master which can actually repair weapons and armors above their normal level which will give you extra damage or armor. It's just something I really enjoy doing in the game and not just a worthless money sink or busywork type of a mechanic in the game. I hate that newer games have chosen routes where they remove those busy work type of mechanics a bit too much for my taste. One extreme example is Mass Effect 1 and 2. I love the first one but dislike the second. And it's only because I loved the way how you can build your characters, what weapons they use, what armor they're wearing and the ammo they have. So focusing too much on mainstreaming games and removing things like durability, ammo management etc. So it's hard to balance so that it doesn't annoy people a lot but doesn't become pointless busywork. I, myself, hope that more games would add those old mechanics back to games more. Like having to sleep, eat, repairing and what not.
Durability sucks in games, however if a game is enjoyable enough, I can easily look past it. Though, having your favourite weapon break and then requiring using a weapon a player deems less fun makes the game less fun over all. Imagine dungeon crawling with a butter knife. I liked that Mass Effect 1 didn't need ammo as they used an interesting explanation in the universe, from the wiki - In Mass Effect, to generate ammunition a weapon shaves a projectile the size of a sand grain from a dense block of metal contained within the weapon's body. Zelda Botw sold well becauce it was a Zelda game on a popular system, not because it had weapon durability. The game is often talked about as a great game then people sighting that durability was too heavy-handed and not great.
I have never feel that weapon durability is a good system to try different weapons, it just feels annoying as a stat track for you to keep your weapons on top condition, but you can just brute-force your way into not changing your weapon, and we you fail you end with hoard syndrome, in which the weapon you like you never actually use, like a potion that stays in your inventory untouched for a final final final boss that may not even exist Enemy specialization on the other hand, actually does feel rewarding when it comes to trying different weapons, it makes you strategize and think of different things after many failures
Oh, it's so interesting to learn that some devs were asking to remove ammo from Outer Worlds 🤔 I certainly came to that realization when I played the game, that ammo was a pointless thing in the game, but I think that's a consequence of how common it is, and how cheap it is. By the end of the game, I was literally not even bothering picking it up, even though it doesn't weigh anything, because it's so common. Also weapon durability, I don't like it in games, but I play a lot of games with it and I get past it, it's a mechanic, whatever, it's a thing. But it's honestly a non-issue in Outer Worlds. Repairing is practically free throughout the entire game. I also think it didn't need to be a feature, since it doesn't do anything, just like ammo.
Hmm, this got me think about Fallout 4 and its weapon customization, and how that could've been a really deep and interesting system. Imagine a system with a well balanced tradeoff between weapon damage (via ammo used), durability, and ergonomics. So you could build a super sniper rifle, and put overpowered ammo through it, but it would literally break after 3 rounds, or you could build (like I did in Fallout 4) a .32 machine gun because you've got 2,000 rounds of ammo, so why not, but if you overheat the gun then it takes a lot of extra durability loss. If you build the gun powerful AND durable then it weighs so much that it takes a long time to make ready, a long time to reload, and you move slower while wielding it. Obviously weight would be countered by strength and (to a lower level) agility. I think if a game implemented this system well it would make weapon choice feel very important and rewarding.
I know when a game gives me a ranged weapon with unlimited ammo, I use nothing else afterwards. I'm playing Atomic Heart right now, and even though the recharging energy weapons suck, it is hard for me to use anything else. I felt the weapon degrading worked well for games like FO3/NV and Stalker Gamma. But it is extremely frustrating when a game makes the weapon so fragile that the weapon breaks after a couple of gun fights.
If that ranged weapon is not effective against a certain enemy though, you are handicapping yourself. The "if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail" argument doesn't work against those of us who want to optimize our play. But I still think players should have the choice rather than it breaking and then them being forced to use something else.
@@Elrog3 Optimizing play for some of us is hoarding every resource. If I consume 1 round from a gun when I could have killed the enemy with a weapon that doesn't consume ammo, I've failed.
I think durability should work more like sharpness from monster hunter instead of the weapon evaporizing from durability depletion, but with an added thing, the durability value can go into the negatives (much, much slower than getting from 100 to 0 mind you) which is the point where the weapon would break and anything above 0 gets the bonuses from weapon scaling (if there's stats, otherwise they could perhaps benefit from perks or skills or accessories), but if they get to 0 the scaling is either reduced or outright gone (with the occasional exception that keeps the bonuses when getting into the negatives).
So, I absolutely love it in some cases, and conceptually I want it there some way or another in most RPGs, but Breath of the Wild is an example where I think it just goes too far for no discernible benefit as far as I can tell. It basically saps the fun out of using any cool weapon. And anyone who says Oblivion's durability system was great needs to go replay that unmodded. I remember at times your equipment would be absolutely devastated by a lone enemy for no reason and after sometimes even one fight your armor would be next to worthless, and they don't even give you the Unarmored or Dodging skill type as an alternative like in previous games. So when it comes down to it I'll take a removed feature over a poorly implemented one any day. I just want durability systems to make me feel more like I'm in the game's world and much less like I'm playing a video game.
I don't like weapon/armor durability in RPGs for the simple reason that they make it harder to build an attachment to a character- Imagine how ridiculous it'd be to give hairstyles a durability. The weapon and armor you use on a character are important to their, well, character. You don't see fantasy movies where the main character changes clothes and weapons every five minutes, because that unequivocally harms the connection an audience builds to a character. When a character's armor or weapon *does* change, it's usually a BIG plot point or growth moment, not "ah well my revolver broke so my cowboy gunslinger is going to have to use a bolt action rifle for a bit." It hurts the fantasy of a character. This is the same reason I think free cosmetic overrides in MMORPGs are such a good idea- while the actual gear you use changes fairly regularly, you can build up the style and persona of a particular character. Think about how much fanart is made for games where your created character has a consistent style, compared to other games. It hardly even makes sense to think about getting fanart of your Fallout character because they generally don't have a consistent look I understand how difficult it is to balance sources and sinks, but I think this particular lever directly undermines the RP in RPG (also it's one thing to have a mechanic that some people dislike, and a whole 'nother thing to have a mechanic few of your players like. I'll admit I could be wrong, but I'd bet you've received much less positive feedback than negative feedback about durability mechanics over the years) ((Thanks for these videos, always insightful and thought provoking))
I don't see how durability prevents connection. If you like that weapon you should repair it regularly. Kinda like how irl you would take care of your car or computer or phone.
I'm doing another run in Outer Worlds in Supernova and just like my 1st run, durability is not a problem in this game because the weapon and especially armor takes a long time to lose in durability and you have plenty of places to repair them anyway. RDR2 have also a sort of durability on your weapon that is you don't clean your weapon from time to time it would do less dmg and lose in some stats but like Outer Worlds it was rare and you could carry oil for cleaning your weapon so it wasn't a problem. But this also force you to switch weapon which doesn't bother me imo
What do you think about weapon levels in games? (when same looking weapon has different/better stats just because you found it being a higher level) Personally this always breaks immersion for me. I could get behind at least a bit differently looking weapon made by different wendor but identical stick seems should be identical in stats. Also this makes loot drops less rewarding and tedios when you just pick up 20 same things and constantly compare whoch one is better.
Hey Tim, I'm a solo dev and I'm wondering if you have a discord server? I just think it would be cool if we could share our personal projects and ideas with you. Your talks are inspirational, I listen everyday. Much love and respect from the UK :)
I liked it in FO3 and New Vegas. But I hated it in BotW. As soon as I went against a golem near the start of the game I broke all my weapons and simply gave up since it had half health but I no longer had any means to kill it, so I basically wasted 5 minutes and lost all my weapons. GREAT! So I emulated it, installed a mod that increases the difficulty and turned on a cheat that makes the weapons indestructible. Best choice ever. That may have broke the game in some cases, but I understand very well what challenge is, I use different weapons based on the enemy I'm fighting, I basically never use the best weapons. The vanilla game balance is terrible since whenever you open a chest, instead of an actual treasure you now get 10 arrows or an axe that will break in 3 minutes. On top of that, as soon as people get the Master Sword, guess what everyone will be using 95% of the time? The reason BotW sold that much it's because it's a Zelda game...you don't hear anyone complainig what's in a Zelda title, no one dares to challenge that fandom, doesn't matter how big are the issues.
@@ericbaker8781 imagine a Zelda game but with combat system or enemy variety not stuck in 1998. Zelda games aren't hard, there isn't any difficulty in just running out of weapons to fight enemies with because the weapons are made out of cardboard. If I could have fisted my enemy to death like in a souls game I would have, but the game decided to gatekeep content behind more durable/stronger weapons and hearts. There's little to no skill in that. Not even being able to fight enemies because every weapon breaks after 2 hit and you can't use fists =/= challenge
Critical. Im a diplomacy peacenik so when i RPG finding a great weapon is like finding easy street. Thats why i rely on it even in sub-optimal situations. Durability forces me to care a little at least.
One thought that struck me when I watched that video is doesn't weapon durability is actually making the same work as ammo? especially when you can scrap same type weapon for repairs.
I personally think the durability mechanics and "repair" skill in single-player CRPG are abomination and should be thrown away or reinvented. Not because it forces the player to save their favorite weapons and armor for “later” which may never happen (just like using stockpiled potions and arrows in BG-like games often doesn't happen). Not because it forces the player to waste time “juggling items” in the inventory. And not because it clutters the player’s already limited-weight inventory (another game design monster that must be destroyed) with “repair kits,” duplicates of weapons/armors, and other "junk". And not because each shot or taking damage additionally punishes the player with damage to his equipment, and therefore additional spending of money or consumables on repairs (which can even lead to reloading the save after a successfully completed but “financially unprofitable” battle - and any unforced reloading is a game design flaw). But because the repair skill itself in CRPG is flawed compared to other skills. Whereas other skills make the character, his abilities, his weapons BETTER, the repair skill simply returns the player's items to the SAME CONDITION in which they were in the very beginning. It's as if in the game the character was constantly losing stamina due to walking, and to replenish it the player had to use a skill to eat pills that restored stamina to its previous level so that the character could walk again. A skill that makes it possible to do exactly the same what you already did before using this skill has no place in this world. Even the infamous “medical skills” don’t feel so flawed now - in modern games they can speed up health recovery in real time, and provide an additional bonuses to the player after using the healing items. I see some kind of solution to the problem of durability and repair in using the repair skill to improve the item above the limit of its stats, increasing the durability limit and slowing down its decline (as was partially done in TOW). But it still feels like a crutch rather than a really good solution.
Limited weight inventory is a great tool when it forces players to decide what to carry and what to leave in their camp. Neo Scavenger, for example, is a fantastic example of how to use inventory limits as a survival mechanic. But in most RPGs, inventory weight limit is purely a way to limit the amount of loot players can carry. I personally think loot as a concept is more boring than weight limits as a concept.
depends on the game, original (1993) XCOM had ammo, armor and individually had to manage like ~25 characters, the firaxis XCOM2 removed this whole ammo/armor management subsystem, now after research your entire team had the new stuff.... that was the best decision the team made i can accept weapon durability in looter shooters like Borderlands buy the game has to constantly give you options (i really really like randomly generatod weapons in Borderlands where all the combination exceeds the billions), in regular RPGs and limited accessibility to stuff... u dont like it i also dont like the repair system, Zelda Breath of the Wild does it well too but Fallout New Vegas does not, you need Jury Rigging to be playable
Money imbalance IS huge deal! . Having lots of money , like Scrooge McDuck , after maybe 30% of gameplay makes game super easy, even on hardest difficulty . So i do not get it how that is not super important to fix before shipment ??
Three reasons that money imbalance doesn't get fixed (on TOW and on other games): 1. Bugs like crash bugs and bugs that prevent the game from being completed take priority. 2. Fixing money imbalance often means changing other systems (like vendors, loot drops, quest rewards, etc.), and there is not time to do all of those changes 3. It's a complex issue (see reason 2) and not only do the devs not agree on what to change, sometimes those changes don't work and shift the cause of the money imbalance to something else
Ok , i get it. Would assigning special team just for that ( like QA) make it proper from start and during development cycle? Cant remember when was the last time i played game ( Fallout 2 ? ) that had money earn-spend well balanced . Also thank you for fast reply . @@CainOnGames
@@ognjenfilipovic2851 every game will have money imbalance because you are the only one playing, it's the same in D&D pen and paper campaigns, the players are the only ones raking gold and treasure, in a "static" economy, imagine if you had to simulate all the variables and implement inflation when the party arrives to a city and they buy everything...
@@ognjenfilipovic2851Assigning QA to that specific issue would have meant other bugs would have gone undiscovered. I could not add more people to the project after the budget was fixed, so that team would have come from the existing QA group. All I can say is this: decisions are made in the first few months that affect everything in the game over the coming years. Yes, the economy could have been balanced, but then the game might have shipped with crash bugs, or more areas would have been cut for lack of testing, or maybe an entire feature like crafting or respeccing would have been cut. This is the balancing act that all game directors perform.
In my personal opinion, I think durability in The Outer Worlds was pretty good, it was not like Fallout 3 where I ran out of ammo so easily. It was also different from Breath of The Wild where everything breaks easily.
This video seems slightly contradictory to your opinion on skill based vs class based character systems. In that video you state that you like a system that allows the player to build an extreme character, while in this video you cite enforcing variety as one of the reasons for durability being good. Along that specific axis (ignoring the economic reasons) wouldn't enforcing variety run counter to the idea of an extreme character? If you make the character Mark Sman and his sniper rifle breaks forcing him to use a pistol would you see that as a negative consequence of weapon durability? In effect you're trading player agency for a systemic enforcement of variety. Mark Sman is already going to have a tough time dealing with a bunch of fast enemies that can close the distance, does he need his weapon to break on top of that inherent weakness in order to force him to use a different one?
Depends on the game. I hated it in Zelda as it was just tedious to me compared to prior Zelda games where I could just use the Master Sword all the time.
It is weird, I never minded it in New Vegas as I can craft weapon repair kits, and some weapons last for hundreds of reloads. Likewise, the variant ammo and the companions can affect the rate of degredation. In The Outer Worlds my hunting rifle disintegrates in my hand because I need to find a work bench to maintain it. As a solution I got a spare, and I already carry two handguns. The T&L factory really makes subpar quality, as post apocalyptic salvage is more durable. Was their factory bought out by Remington and the machinery sabotaged by the workers who lost their jobs?
I like it. It makes weapons and armor feel "more" grounded in the world of the game you're playing. But if you don't care that much about immersion over solely gameplay, then it isn't for you. I do think the Jury Rigging perk in a game like F:NV strikes the perfect balance between "realism" and video-game. I also have 0 issues with how FO3 handles it. Dark Souls as well had a good system.
That's because its so basic people knew what they were getting in to before they tried it. You can't build up an expectation and then smash it horribly with something that you grasp fully from seeing 5 seconds of gameplay.
i'm really against durability cause it always pressures you to scavenge for/hoard parts/spares that take up precious inventory space you could use for stuff you actually wanna hoard - like armors that you like or fit best for a situation (like against environmental harzards/different enemy damage types etc.) or simply for stuff you wanna sell to make big cash. finite ammo i do like as long as it's weightless and doesn't take up inventory space like spares do. repair vendors require backtracking and money that you could spend otherwise (player housing, paying ppl off as a quick way for quest progression etc.) one notable exception is the jury rigging perk from fnv. repairing comically big sledgehammers (super sledges) with pool cues is hilarious.
Usually a game that requires you to pick up a load of junk for repairs will have a storage spot for you to put it though right?.... Like Fallout4's workbenches, so you can keep your armor and just periodically drop your stuff off at home whenever you inventory is near full. I normally have an additional container for stuff to sell for when I actually go to sell stuff so I'm not carrying all the junk around with me all the time and knowingly ruining my own experience with the game. I feel like I might understand your point better if I knew what games you're referring to though, since the ones Tim has made and the ones I usually play that include durability as a mechanic, almost always has it there for a reason that actually benefits most other systems in the game (aside from Outer Worlds, that game may as well not have it in the first place) weightless ammo is important yeah, though I do think for specific challenge options like survival mode, weighted ammo is crucial to the gameplay. but that fact you'd be short on money for a player house or a bribe is down to the players decision as to how to spend their money usually.... If you're bad with cash and just spend it as you get it and see the next thing you want, of course you're gonna end up in a bad situation. Being innovative and using different weapons (like you use different armors) minimises repair costs, keep a max of three to five weapons with different ammo types on you, you'll almost always have a backup gun, or a gun with another type of damage to swap to if you need it. simplistic, uncomplicated. Store your junk until it's needed to keep inventory clean, don't over-use any one specific item unless you need to, don't overspend on things you don't need, and you'll always have all the money you need in almost every game. Like Time said, almost every game you play that has an in game economy will have a way to break it because that sort of balancing is hardly important for a game you're meant to have fun in, so almost every game is going to give you a way to become rich within the first hour, even if they didn't intend to do it. But yeah, you could be talking about a different type of game, I'm solely basing this off of my experience playing Fallout: New Vegas, Fallout 3, Fallout 4, Outer Worlds, heck even the two most recent Deus Ex games or even Baldur's Gate, which all make the efforts to balance these mechanics together to make an enjoyable time that pushes you to fully experience their world and the game's mechanics. So please, tell me if I'm wrong.
@@moosecannibal8224 fallout 4 luckily doesn't have weapon durability. if they had, it'd just be unnecessary fast travel after every building/dungeon. given how unoptimized the loading times are for any machine (raising fps beyond 60 helps with loading, but causes terrible glitches), this game would be nigh unplayable.
In fallout at least new vegas the repair skill could be a way to increase the value of a weapon especially if u have say two broken marksman carbines well those are both worthless but repair one with the other and its worth 1-2 thousand caps, i remember always using low durability weapons to repair medium durability weapons of the se type for money reasons because a) it increased the total value if u had a good enough repair skill and b) free’d up space for more weapons to carry and sell, high level repair in fnv can make u really rich which makes sense too because someone who could keep guns repaired and cleaned in a wasteland would be sought after
In-game economies have always fascinated me, please do make a full video on it!
One of my favorite things to do in games is figure out how to break the economy, it’s always a fun puzzle.
The Metro games had a great economy system imo, where your ammunition was also your money.
Would love to see this topic too.
Specifically because I found the loot economy of Fallout and Arcanum so enticing due to being deprived for so long. Once I hit the endgame Im stacked, but I had to do plenty of turf war looting and questing to get to that point.
For Outer Worlds I felt the loot economy was not as satisfying precisely because I was never deprived of ammo, in fact I was so stacked I almost wanted to dump my whole inventory to manufacture a sense of struggle to gain power.
playing the auction house is one of the most interesting things to do in WoW besides raiding
New Vegas has my favorite version of weapon durability in that things like weapon repair kits and the Jury Rigging perk mitigated a lot of the possible headaches of your favorite weapon breaking apart. Jury Rigging was also a fun way to repair weapons and gear for resale.
One aspect of FNV/FO3’s durability system I loved, is that npc weapons also had durability and could break during combat!
@@brandonadkins9435 Right? That was cool.
Weapon repair kits are ever funnier imo, you can just leave your repair at 30 and buff with magazine+compreension to 50 so you can use/craft a bunch of gear at once, also gives some purpose to the clutter just like they did with fallout 4, i always focus in maxxing out dps asap since the beginning
Weapon durability runs into the same issue as consumables hoarding because given the existence of a limited use item, they're always gonna be like "oh i'm gonna save it for later" and then they never really get to have fun with it.
But what if you do get into a situation where only that weapon and item you are hoarding let’s you pass an encounter , a bit satisfying isn’t it , cause your saving paid off.
@@yourstruly5013now imagine the frustration if you used that item just moments before!
Durability is theoretically interesting for the reasons you listed. That's, of course, just my opinion, but I haven't seen any game that executes on that well and thoroughly achieves those benefits. The major con is that devalues (almost eliminates) equipment progression as a reward mechanism: e.g. this weapon I earned is awesome, but it's transient, a consumable. The regression of losing the equipment of a main player verb causes an exceeding amount of loss aversion, and on an aspect (equipment progression) that should be a main source of motivation. On many design mechanics being frustrating: as a blanket statement that can be used to justify any design decision and it's equivalent opposite decision.
Then maybe go and look into Tarkov and stalker gamma. Perfect weapon degrading mechanics imo. Tarkov for the simple, gamma for the most complex.
I saw a video about Breath of the Wild's weapon durability. In the video, he made the point that weapon durability discouraged the player from engaging with things in the world. The example he used was a chest surrounded by a group of monsters, and he had to consider whether the treasure was more valuable than his weapons' durability. In most cases, the answer would be no, and he would avoid things in the world because it was just not worth it the durability damage.
This was my criticism of BOTW's durability system, it made it so once you reached late game and you had some incredible weapons and shields, fighting lower level enemies for the fun of it or just because you were going past them, actively made you weaker. Their drops and the treasure they were possibly protecting, were less valuable than the durability of my super powerful weapons.
There are ways they could have adjusted for this. They could have made it so especially powerful weapons have significantly higher durability, but more difficult enemies decreased your weapons durability in proportion. That would make it so using my +3 guardian great sword on a basic bokoblin would be negligible in terms of durability drain, but using it on higher level enemies would still make it degrade. They also didn't put in any kind of meter or number to tell you what the maximum durability was or what it's current durability was. This encouraged players to only use one weapon at a time because if you kept switching around, you would find yourself in some especially hard battles where all of your weapons were low and would break before the fight ended, and you had no way of knowing you were in that position. It was better to constantly cycle through one weapon, knowing the rest you had were fine, than to risk of all of your weapons breaking at the same time. It wasn't fun or interesting, it was just frustrating knowing there is no reason why the game didn't give you that information.
Love the game, but the mechanic was so poorly implemented it made me want to pull my hair out.
That's why I quit BotW early. It just wasn't fun to "play" in that world because, even if you win, you really lose most of the time.
The sequel still has weapon durability, but the monster parts and crafting system fixes the issue, imo. I played that game extensively (near 100% I think).
I totally get Tim's opinion about late game crunch and not prioritizing balancing systems like this. However, I think that some systems that are absolutely pervasive (like BotW durability. It will come up in EVERY fight), need to be balanced properly or the game just doesn't work.
BOTW is deeply flawed
Yeah. I wasn't massively impressed by TotK, but it really fixed the issue of weapon durability by letting you graft stuff together. Rather than cool weapons being rare drops, it's much more about assembling what's around you to adapt to the current situation - which is much better design for an open world sandbox.
I love durability mechanics, I recently played the massive overhaul mod GAMMA for Stalker Anomaly and the crafting and durability mechanics in that game are ridiculously complex and initially frustrating. I had to read a manual just to learn how they even work but it ended up being one of the most satisfying aspects of the gameplay for me. It was so difficult and expensive to find and repair weapons but it gives you such satisfaction once you are able to fix up some solid weapons and armor. Not for everyone but I loved it.
I think durability as a mechanic works very well when it fits with the narrative of the game. Fallout makes sense with a durability mechanic because you're surviving in this wasteland where everything is ancient and worn out and falling apart. In a game universe where everything is new and "current" it can end up feeling contrived.
I think something like Doom Eternal's general idea of certain weapons being better "counters" to certain enemies or enemy types does a better job of encouraging varied weapon use where durability seems to clash with the setting/narrative.
I have enjoyed both of these approaches in different games.
I find that simply explaining and excusing mechanics with narrative context works though, like in Borderlands where some weapons are literally one-time-use only.
I'm curious, what are the one time use weapons in borderlands?
Are they like... "You can fire this weapon one time"?, or "it destroys itself on unequip"?, or are you talking about set pieces like turrets that would only be used in a playable story section?
I'm asking because I've played all three games multiple times and beaten them, and I have no memory of these one time use guns, but I also know the game has an obscenely large amount of guns, expanding per subsequent release, and if they do exist it'd give me a good reason to actually play them again.
@@moosecannibal8224 Tediore manufactured weapons are all single use, and you throw them away when empty, but of course in those games new ones get manufactured into your hands. It's mostly an aesthetic thing, but the idea, and it having an explanation backed by lore, is the key here.
OH!, yeah my bad!, I completely forgot that's how Tediore worked!, I am 100% kicking myself right now for such a simple oversight lmao @@MFKitten
I think the only game where I struggled with the durability somewhat was System Shock 2, and even that one showers you in tools to repair weapons early and maybe later on.
I never even realised TOW had durability.
I'm curious then, how did you play the game? Did you never interact with the workbench? Always using newfound weapons?
@@Hubip no, I never interacted with the crafting element.
@@renaigh Interesting! Since weapons break down so fast and you get a shiny icon at the bottom of the screen when they start losing durability it's kinda hard to miss.
@Hubip I didn't even realize they had crafting
@Hubip I don't remember it having durability, so it definitely wasn't enough to become a tactical decision to use anything else
I love Durability with context, A game life Fallout makes sense because you are in a freaking wasteland your items are not pristine so maintaining your armor and weapons is a great survival mechanic.
Well implemented weapon durability makes a game so much more engaging and creates fun scenarios, it’s a must in an RPG especially I don’t understand why people are against durability, but to argue against ammo at all is absurd
The first Mass Effect didn't have ammo, and I quite liked the choice. It felt futuristic and immersive.
Then they invented not-ammo in the second game. And forced you to use it.
this channel is such a goldmine...I remember playing fallout with my older brother when I was too young to play it myself...it was definitely a huge part of my childhood, and stood alongside gems like baldurs gate, metal gear solid and final fantasy as things that molded me...the greatness of that game cannot be overstated...and now I'm binging the creator on UA-cam, lol...what a time
Video on money sinks vs money sources please! These videos are great!
I see durability as an immersion metric. Just like encumbrance, and ammo and vital signs e.g. hunger. Those are all about making the player fit in a world. If they are well implemented and fit the world of the game, then it's always a positive.
That's not a universal excuse to me though because the game designer makes the world and can make it however they want. They chose to make a world that required these things.
@@Elrog3Maybe you're replying to someone else? I don't understand what you mean by "excuse" in the context of my comment.
@@fafofafin I was talking about the justification you gave for having durability and the other similar mechanics. Sorry I didn't make that clearer.
Scary to think Outer Worlds could have not had ammo! Back when I played through it, I'd wished it actually had MORE ammo types, rather than broad categories like Energy, Light, Heavy.
Crazy to think some of the empty brain dev wanted no ammo at all, lazy
I feel the same. I figured the limited ammo types were a consequence of a smaller scoped game, but it’s interesting to hear that some people didn’t even want that!
they could still have those categories and not have ammo to worry about
Same, the great variety of ammo in Fallout New Vegas is amazing, and it feels a bit simplistic in the Outer Worlds.
yeah, also it clashes with the setting, the weapon durability fits because this is cheap amazon garbage, hell durability should have been more mean with guns exploding at 0, instead of being just 30% worse. but if you've ever dealt with batteries, chargers or anything every weapon would have its own ammo in its own silly non difference.
As silly as it might sound, part of me has wondered if any designer's aversions to weapon degradation traces back to (at least in some small degree) a line from a 2008 episode of Zero Punctuation, since that was when ZP was truly exploding in popularity:
"you have one second to name any game in which weapon degradation has been a good idea. Time's up. That's what I thought." -- ZP ep23, on Silent Hill Origins
Funny thing is that the ZP wiki apparently now links to BotW at the words "a good idea", lol
So did Yahtzee not play any beat 'em ups?
Durability is one of these mechanics i never liked in game.
It is generally important in the beginning of the game, and becomes irrelevant to the end. It easily snowballs, so the better you do in the game, the easier durability it can be managed, and if you do badly durability will become a serious problem as it not only drains your ressources, but also hinders you from acquiring new ones.
Durability is generally often a weak threat, because it would kill games otherwise, but that also makes it more a nuance then a challenge. Like puzzles that are faster bruteforced, then understood.
As for weapons that are managed via durability, for me, they suffer the same fate as rare potions. I will never use them, because i keep them for "when there are needed", so never.
So overall i disagree, while is a ressource sink, it was never a fun one for me.
Basically, much like how ammo scarcity in Survival Horror games force more thoughtful play
Weapon Durability in games with potentially infinite access to ammo allows RPGs to start leaning more into those kinds of weapon effectiveness considerations
*The thing about breath of the wilds is that it's durability system is that it didn't really force you to use other weapons because basically every single weapon was exactly the same.* I wish you'd spoken on this more because I'd love to hear your perspective on why the mechanic was in there in the first place because it didn't have any interaction with the game's economy and the only difference with the vast majority of weapons was the number the number it was attached to. From what I can tell the only reasons the durability system existed in that game at all was because someone higher up thought it was really exciting when your weapon broke and it did a bunch of damage. It also might have been to make the master sword feel more special but all I really ended up doing was making it so that the master sword is what you used when you wanted to mine and chop down trees. Perhaps the real genius of it was that the durability system was so bad that you hardly ever got a chance to hear people's other complaints because everyone was so frustrated by the durability.
The main reason is, if weapon can break, the game must provide you with a steady sources of weapon and so it is easier to fill a open world.
it did force you to use other weapons because you'd run out of weapons fairly quickly.
I disagree, each type of weapon had its own best-use scenario (long spears vs certain enemies, boomerangs vs others, heavy two handed wpns vs others etc)
@@lorenzotosiart the problem is you just named all three of the only melee weapons in the game lol. And it's more like 2 1/2 since the boomeranged shares the same attacks as the singlehanders
I don't comment on stuff frequently, but thank you for providing this content Tim! My daughter and I have been enjoying the daily releases together.
Some of my favorite games ever are FO3 and NV, and the durability system used in those games was top notch. While I think NV did it a tiny bit better with the related perks, I think Fallout 3 was the more effective general use of the system. I tend to hate babysitting a survival mechanic, finding food and water, stuff like that. I think gear durability(alongside ammo scarcity) highly effectively replaced that in FO3, letting it be a survival-ish game without having a bar just tell you arbitrarily that "you're hungry". The more you use it, the more you lose it - it was such a good system.
The way it was handled too, with jamming on reloads, weapons getting less performant in accuracy and damage, it worked so well to me. The fact that someone who is a good repair person can repair them really well, or someone with good barter skill can just sell stuff and offset the cost of having someone else do it for them
Then 76 had to ruin that by overstretching what junk did and using an awful system. The same junk used for everything fixes the stuff you use to get more junk, resulting in a likely net loss too often, and there's no warning at all. No malfunctions, just a context box telling you it broke.
I'm pretty neutral on Durability, I think as a simulational/survival mechanic it works best. If I'm just roleplaying a character I'd rather not have it occupy my thoughts every moment I play.
Ditto. Also, I think it can be overdone even as a simulational/survival mechanic. If an in-game mod is required to offset how quickly the item degrades or to make it work faster or more efficiently, etc., I'd say the mechanic itself requires a little more thought. I shouldn't have to go out of my way as a player to try to find or purchase a tool or weapon mod to minimize the anguish the mechanic itself is causing otherwise, but given the trend toward "more, more", most developers are shoving more and more items and mods for those items and mods for mods for those items into games to the point that micromanagement (of inventory, etc.) essentially becomes the name of the game. There are games, which shall remain nameless, that honestly feel like you're clocking in to work when you fire them up, not going out to play.
Always enjoyed New Vegas' system. As you said, it elevated loot from vendor trash into useful items.
"One players frustration is another players challenge" is something I'm going to try to remember that very valuable advice
I'm pro durability because of what you said. Finding an identical weapon doesn't feel frustrating because you can use it to repair what you have. I always put points into repair.
7:16 you cant persuade the animals not to attack you, but you can persuade the merchant to repair for half price :P
As a hobby TTRPG Designer i find this very interesting.
Im always arguing for durability mechanics because it is a gold sink. When you have to maintain your best weapons you are constantly investing in keeping it working.
Games without durability mechanics constantly need to give you new gear to buy in order to drain your resources. This artificially inflates numbers which i don't like.
People also like crafting stuff. But without durability you either craft one thing and be done or you have to constantly scale gear and enemies to give the crafter something new to do. Repairing items gives your crafter something to do. I especially like the Monster Hunter approach where you can shortly push your weapons above 100% quality to get a slight damage buff.
I think the most reliable thing is to give the player a choice whether he wants the insane fragility of his items or not
sometimes I can cut the wear and tear by 10x and play, sometimes I turn it off altogether
The only time I can accept grinding is when I get paid for it
I like F:NV's durability system EXCEPT I wish Power Armor was more durable. If you're not partnered with Raul, a single fight against rapid fire enemies will destroy any armor, which hurts PA more than others because usually it can only be repaired by other PA or metal armor, and none is as common as others. I don't mind the difficulty or the price of repairing it, but you need to do it too often. In Lonesome Road you needed to repair PA after every fight.
Power armor after F2 is really... underpowered.
Part of that is the intention of lonesome road is to be a challenge for high level characters: most efficient method is to use stealth or pick off enemies fast to minimize how much you're getting shot.
@vadimshetser2310 Yep, you feel less like a walking tank and more a metal suit. Fallout 4 tried to hit that mix decently. However, there was the added durability of your pieces (which makes sense to a level. However, all durability besides those niche situations was already gone). I guess it logically is a hold over from other armors having durability. Fallout 2 was one of the funniest where you could get one of the best suits from level 1 then dominate the hell outta the early game.
Yeah, power armor might as well be the worst armor in new Vegas for me.
I love power armor so much in the games, but in Fallout New Vegas, it’s horribly underpowered with no big benefit to strength (also for some reason they made the more advanced t51 weaker in terms of strength?), DEFINITELY no big benefit to defense; it’s only 20-30 depending on the model, and it just makes Fallout 4’s power armor FAR better.
This is all stats, though, because in Fallout 4, getting it so early, and the iffy fusion core system isn’t very rewarding or well designed.
I don't remember having an issue with armor durability in FNV. IIRC, armor doesn't lose its effectiveness until it drops below 50% condition. I've only done one play through using power armor, which was the last one. I don't like how slow you move in it. I think I repaired my power armor twice in the entire game, and it never came close to hitting 50% condition. The way I "forced" myself to use power armor was creating a low strength (3) character, so to use most weapons, I had to use power armor for it's strength boost.
Tim, do you have any thoughts on money sinks as per D&D, particularly classic style D&D? It's something I have been thinking about for a while, both as a player and as a DM. As I call it the "why can't I establish a bank?" problem.
It's sad that modern D&D doesn't really have a system for this unless you go third party.
Just an aside Fallout 1 was really fun from a merchant pov. When bottlecaps became useless guns and ammo became my currency of choice and the trunk of my car was the bank. Trading up when plasma ammo became available was something to look forward to
Excellent topic! I would love to hear your thoughts on encumbrance!
Also a video about game economics sounds very interesting 😊
Thank you professor 😄
Encumbrance would be a great topic!
Hey Tim, what's your thoughts on the two common companion systems in RPGs: 1-2 uncontrollable companions or full party with 3-6 player-controlled characters?
That's a cool question. I second that.
Yep that'd be fun, I prefer player controlled personally since they tend to have more character to them (typically w/ backstories and character added to them alongside your character either being custom or w/ a pre-written backstory). That and being able to decide what your team does helps to coordinate things.
Im very curious to hear your take on the Unity situation
Thanks for the response Tim!
I have to agree with you about Fallout 3 durability system. Its was very good. You had to choose between selling the 5000 guns you looted or keep the ones you had at 100%. Having your weapon at max durability felt satisfying. That also prevented abusing hi tier items such as power armor if you obtained it very early.
As for the other side of the spectrum in the Breath of the wild sequel Tears of the kingdom they doubled down on the durability mechanic, weapons are now even more brittle. I really enjoyed that game but having to change swords every 8 swings or having to glitch them was REALLY annoying.
Hey Tim, I have a question about the politics of Fallout(as in just the first one since I know you didn't have as much of a hand in the later games) and what inspired it. The first game isn't nearly as political as the later games, especially New Vegas, but I still find it fascinating that one of the first things you really see in the game is American soldiers committing a presumed summary execution of a Canadian(or maybe a Chinese infiltrator but I guess thats why I'm asking you!). I wonder if there was anything concrete behind that kind of world building or if the team/you were just doing what seemed interesting as the game developed. I also wonder about the less in game politics and the real world politics which influenced it, which might explain why the Chinese are the main opponent of the U.S instead of the USSR, but I know how emotionally charged that can be. Hopefully you can at least talk some about that starting introduction with the U.S soldiers and what inspired that interesting tid bit.
probably because the USSR was over and they were trying to be more forward-thinking in their science fiction?
Fallout 1 was pretty political, not as much as the later games but it set the ground work for showing the downfall of America, both morally and literally. We see that it became more authoritarian and the war that resulted. It even makes a direct parallel to WW2 Germany, which was later expanded on with the Enclave who are pretty heavy into eugenics and the concept of “purity”
@@s7robin105The Master: Divisions among humans caused the war so all humans should be turned into supermutants who are all the same.
The Enclave: Divisions among humans caused the war so all humans that aren't us should be killed and then we'll all be the same.
Both of the villains in the first two games were coming up with different answers to the same problem, shame they were both utterly horrific.
@@tomstokoe5660yeah there is something kind of ehhhh about that
But yeah it is a Canadian resistance fighter. It prefaces the execution with information that “our boys in annexed Canada are keeping the peace”, or something close to that
I absolutely love listening to you speak about game development. Thank you.
I honestly don't even remember Outer Worlds having a durability system. Durability is nice when done well, Fallout 3/NV, or unfortunate when done excessively like Breath of the Wild, using 5+ weapons to kill one high level enemy.
These videos are so relaxing to watch everyday. It makes me want to think about the games I play from a completely new perspective.
I love watching your videos, because now I understand much more things from a developer perspective. Durability always frustrated me, but now I know we kinda need them to enjoy more variety.
I remember suffering from having to leave behind some cool weapons in Borderlands because they aren't strong anymore. But I also had much fun testing new ones. Destiny also has this thing, but at some point I kept upgrading my favorite weapons and then stopped experimenting new things, consequently forgetting that feeling of "oh this new weapon is cool too"
I really like in STALKER how enemies almost always drop weapons in poor condition. It dissuades the player from picking up weapons just to sell them, and it makes picking up weapons during combat a much more desperate choice. If you pick up a weapon from a dead enemy it’s probably a really cool gun that you want to take home and fix up.
Is stalker worth paying for and playing? Maybe I want to try it out but I have no idea what it is storywise or gameplay wise, I just hear it’s influential
@@TheOnlyPedroGameplays
What's influential about STALKER is how it's a very different kind of RPG. This was changed in Gamma mod pack for anomaly to be more Tarkov esque by adding skills, but in the original games your character's abilities are mostly influenced by what gear you take with you. In vanilla Shadow of Chernobyl, you couldn't actually repair your damaged gear, so it forced you to play more carefully and really consider what you need to get the job done for where you're going (you already die pretty fast anyhow). There's a wide variety of gear and artifacts (the latter are spicy rocks that modifiy your resistances and can give you special abilities but typically at a cost, similar to traits), so you feel a pretty noticeable difference in how encounters play out based on how you geared up.
It also has a pretty fascinating radiant AI system that I'd argue is better implemented than Oblivion's, but easily just as buggy and charming. Sometimes the drunk bandits are a little too wise.
My suggestion would be to get Anomaly, it's a faithful mod project that's basically all 3 games in one and free. It's good on its own, and I'd play it that way first, but GAMMA introduces some well implemented in depth modern mechanics that are Tarkov/Fallout esque, such as skills and limb damage.
The original games are still decently playable (save the unfortunately buggy mess with awesome story that is Clear Sky), but if you want to try it out before you buy the OGs I highly recommend giving Anomaly a whirl.
Make sure you double check your difficulty settings though, there's a lot of levers there that you can tweak. I'd say the vanilla setup is not super newcomer friendly (it's a bit tougher than the vanilla games considering the added mechanics) unless you're ok with the early game being extra tough.
@@TheOnlyPedroGameplaysI tried one of the newer ones, I think it was Shadow of Pripyat or something like that, and those games are very open-ended. In the one I played, once you start the game, there's an intro cinematic, and then it just drops you in some random part of the world with 2 guns and just let's you go. If you like games like that with barely any hand-holding, you'd probably like it.
@@Heyesy let me finish Dark Souls first, then 😅, expand my ability to go without hand holding
@@TheOnlyPedroGameplays haha, sure thing.
I'm glad this turned towards economics, it's something I see a lot of games treat as an afterthought, even before you look at late-development balance passes and the like.
Quickly, my thoughts about durability: I think it needs to be a positive experience. It should be balanced such that it's not always on the player's mind, and distracting them from their fun, but it should still be there. Perhaps use repair items that don't do as well as a shop or skill would, or instead of showing a number or bar, simply warn the player when the damage becomes severe. If you can keep it from feeling like a chore, it'll go far in reducing negative experiences.
Now on to my usual essay comment...
Economy is a fantastic tool for engaging players and motivating them to do things in the game, and in multiplayer settings, it drives positive interaction. I love that you brought up that single player games don't have enough sinks; I've run into that so many times in so many games, where money loses all value because you amass too much of it. I think it's part of the reason survival-style games have become so popular, but it probably falls under the umbrella of disempowerment in games. I'll save that rant for a more relevant video.
But survival games- or games with survival mechanics, where you need to constantly acquire food and supplies, are perfect for exploring economic balance. The more you play the game, the more you need to sink money into things. The risk of spending money to make money is generally a good experience, so long as it's properly balanced. Nowhere have I seen this balanced more tightly than the Armored Core games, where poor performance in missions or over-designing your unit can mean even successful missions put you in the red.
In multiplayer settings, I've seen some MMOs do really interesting things. Ragnarok Online (iRO) had a big focus on player skills, with some classes able to open warp portals to custom locations, or set up market stalls almost anywhere. For a long time, you couldn't even heal your character without items or a priest class player, so they'd hang out in towns and provide that service organically.
Guild Wars 2 has probably the most stable and reliable player economy I've ever seen in an MMO since EVE. The pure utility and accessibility of it, without restrictions like WoW's auction expirations, mean prices for goods are almost always stable. Add to that the crafting-focused gear system, and it rounds out very well.
Overall, I just wish more games would take it seriously, since it ties a lot of mechanics together, and can fundamentally alter how the game feels, especially in the long run.
I like Minecraft's weapon repair thing, where you can combine two tools of the same kind (e.g. iron swords, wooden shovels etc) and you merge them into a single tool that's like 105% of the combined durability of the tool
I'm down with weapon durability as long: I can repair it with materials I find, even if they're rare & spread out I can store the one I like that's rare. so I'm on your side here, I just frustrated at the implementation in the recent zeldas where You're suppose to go "well it's suppose to break so I shouldn't get attached." though all the Zelda games only had that as an optional side weapon in previous games. especially as I'm sometimes STUFFED wiht rupees and grunt monster materials but can't use them to repair/enhance my weapon.
Literally if I could do an outer worlds "Reduce to weapons parts" or even a fallout "use weapon of similar type to repair weapon " for Zelda it'd have been my favorite of the franchise gameplay wise but literally that one thing has made me go "okay so I don't think I'd replay this from new game."
I think what ruins the durability in BotW/TotK for me is the Master Sword, why engage with a supposedly main mechanic of the game if your just give me an weapon that only needs to recharge for 10 minutes.
@@renaigh that's another big thing , imagine if every other weapon could be repaired using monster parts or rupees but the master sword wiht the trade off of the master sword recharging ? See how that is still balancing it but also giving you a reason to maintain the weapons you have
From System Shock 2 to STALKER GAMMA, I've always loved weapon durability mechanics. For one, it makes the player more attached to and invested in whichever weapons they choose to use and put resources in - and that's an interesting, compelling choice in and of its self. If the player doesn't invest in the skills and resources - or simply hasn't found them - to maintain weapons, it adds a certain tension of "how many more shots can I fire before it breaks?". In a game like SS2 this is especially effective because it undermines the player's trust in their equipment which helps feed the survival/horror atmosphere. It also means that you will often naturally end up cycling through many different types of weapon, and having that variety is always good.
Not to mention it adds an element of realism/authenticity, even if abstracted and exaggerated for gameplay purposes - machines break if they're not maintained, especially the kind that are supposed to contain repeated, if small explosions. In realism-oriented games like Red Orchestra 2, LMGs are extremely powerful, but this is somewhat curtailed by the fact they can easily overheat if you're not controlling your bursts or you've just had to fire a lot in a given period - first it will screw with the rate of fire and accuracy, and eventually the gun will simply break if you don't give it time to cool off, or replace the barrel if it has that facility.
Other such games model similar effects, and also add jamming - which might be very frustrating, sure, but it's an emergent and often interesting if not pants-shitting challenge for the player to deal with in the moment. I played an ArmA 3 (ACE) PvP mission a few years ago as an auto-rifleman, where we as a small squad of heli-borne BLUFOR had to intercept players of two other factions who had to conduct a deal and then return to their hideouts. We managed to stop one faction's vehicle, landed and moved to intercept them whilst they continued to flee on foot. I had the chance to drop several of them, but as their luck would have it, my gun jammed as I tried to fire the first shot - which gave my would-be targets the chance to react, and meant my teammates had to step up their rate of fire and aggression to compensate. Was it frustrating? Absolutely, but in a fun way.
The only thing I don't like about how these kinds of mechanics are often implemented, is reducing their damage. Maybe that makes sense for blades and edged weapons, but any kind of bullet-firing weapon I feel should hurt just as much, as long as the shot was fired. Having that chance of malfunction (and other adverse effects if modelled) is already enough of a detriment to reduce your practical damage output.
I like that gold had weight in EQ so you could only keep so much on you before you couldnt move. Genius!
Love these videos!
I'm one of those people who hate weapon durability. I was okay with the Fallout -> Repair with the same weapon mechanic but it made the UI problems even worse, as I hoarded 14 different AK-47s for repair purposes for the one I used.
Also concerning Ammo:
I always the gun which has the most Ammo and I normally finish the game with more than a million credits/bottlecaps/dollars or whatever currency they use because I like playing a rich idiot main hero.
Another subject where I hadn't really put any thought into it beyond "I really don't like weapon durability". Now I have a much better understanding of why some devs include the feature in their games. I think you just convinced me to not hate weapon durability now :)
I think a lot of games with the durability mechanic fail because they don't provide much or any advance warning that a weapon will break, so often, you'll end up in a massive boss fight with a bunch of nearly broken weapons. An occasional misfire or a stat debuff before the break happens might be a good way to warn you. I could also see a weapon repair perk which gave you a weapon status after each fight being useful as well. I also think that a mix of the repair mechanic and the scrapping/upgrade mechanic in F4 could be really powerful. If you broke a weapon down to repair another weapon, you might be left with spare parts which could be used for a future upgrade. It would make weapon repair more of the natural process, and encourage you to also modify weapons as well.
As someone who doesn't like durability or ammo, that doesn't address my issue with it at all. I'm pretty much always aware of how much I have left. I never get surprised by it. The bottom line is I want to be able to choose what I want my character to be like and how I want to play. Making a boss that has a decent amount of resistance (but not full immunity) to a certain type of weapon is fine because it still leaves the choice there. It strikes me as a bit contradictory with how adamant Tim is that every class is able to finish the story.
why not have both repair methods? for example, items which share a type repair eachother efficiently, while cross type repairs are inefficient.
If anything, there was perhaps too much ammo in The Outer Worlds. Not once did I ever run out or get close to running out.
Only in the Emerald Vale. When you have companions with infinite ammo, it stops being a problem.
In Arcanum, I literally had my character's backpack being like 90% balanced swords. Durability doesn't guarantee players will use a variety of DIFFERENT weapons.
Part of the fun for me while playing Fallout 3 was having to switch weapons due to it being wear out. I confess that before starting to play the game I was worried about the idea, but I realize how much I like it.
Thanks for all your videos!
This is a tiny question, maybe you can collect together a lot of small dev related ones and do a video:
What tool did you use back then to do source versioning and control? SVN? GIT? Mercurial? Other? do you have opinions on those? I remember hating SVN and loving the switch to GIT 10 years ago, the company made me teach the other devs to help with the transition.
Is Fallout the only game you can really think of that benefited from durability? I think a more poignant question about durability is not to imagine people getting frustrated by potentially any mechanic, but rather to ask what games have really done it right? The problem with the system is that it's not really that interesting to engage with, there's just not a lot of ways to interact with it. I also think it's a bad way of doing a moneysink because I'd rather just have scarcer resources that feel more special than think 'oh good more crap to keep my pistol from doing less damage.' And I don't really see what it adds in the first place it seems to just exist as a slave to realism.
Tarkov is another example of a game where people don't really seem to mind the durability system, mostly because its a milsim, and it's the only game I can think of where durability can be interacted with in a meaningful way because of its systems surrounding weapon heat, where weapons will degrade faster the faster you shoot them which can get extremely worse with a good suppressor we're really beefy suppressor can just murder a gun. Because you can just repair the damn thing with money which lowers its maximum durability but if that gets low enough to matter then a person's never going to run that gun you're just going to swap out the receiver or vendor the damn thing.
I might agree that Fallout is the best example of the implementation of durability but I don't even really think that means anything because it doesn't add really anyting. Is kind of the same thing as hunger and thirst mechanics which people also complain about it but they all have a wide variety of ways to deal with them and it's doesn't quite feel as bad because it makes sense in basically any scenario that's your character is going to want to eat food and drink water at some point. On the other hand I don't know why my tactical nukes or bullets or big hammer are doing less damage because I didn't feed them enough guns of the same type. And I think that's another source of frustration because it's in the game as a gimme to realism but it doesn't realistically make sense in most cases.
The only real upside the seems to be what you mention with the Fallout method and very specifically only The Fallout method because it makes drops that you already have useful beyond just being vendor trash, but the problem with that is that you were already only using one gun and one set of armor, which is just the highest damage dealing one of the type you've speced in for each of the relevant ammo types. So the only real effect that it has is that you're sometimes dealing slightly less or slightly more damage depending on if a random drop has happened to give you the ammo type for the only guns that you use which you would have been using regardless. Fallout isn't so much durability dendrite as it is durability being somewhat less annoying than typical. I've yet to see a good use case for durability they can't be more easily solved by tweaking a different system. It seems to me that durability exists in a design document and then it stays there because why not. So kudos to the people who begged you to take durability out of the outer worlds. Not at all with them on ammo thing though, assuming you weren't generalizing and it was indeed all of those same people that were asking to remove both
I hated durability until this talk. It now makes so much sense.
A video on game economics? Count me in!
While i like durability, the main time when I don't like it is if a specific item, say a unique artifact, is irreparable since I end up just never using it because I don't want to lose the item. Having the item is more important than any advantage it could give me now because the potential usefulness in the future is far greater.
As a player i haven't found durability to have an affect on me. In Zelda there's always a new weapon to grab and you have plenty. Just grab a new one when your favorite breaks. Then there's games without durability. In Halo you're often running out of ammo and have to pick up a new gun off the ground. So again, you're often switching. You could view bullets as a form of durability, but meh. Games where you level up like the Borderlands series, your gun starts becoming obsolete when it's about 5 levels lower than you, so time to pick up a new one. In Prey there's a option to include durability, it's just another sink for your spare parts and doesn't change anything. On the developer side i don't see myself bothering to spend time on a durability system.
I'm one of those that loves weapon and armor durability. Love it in Fallout 3 and New Vegas.
When Skyrim and Fallout 4 rolled out, I was wondering why this mechanic was not included in the games. Overall, I had a lot of fun playing these games😎
It's so strange they didn't have durability along side their newly implemented crafting systems. Smithing was an entire skill in skyrim and they didn't think implementing durability in any way was a good idea? Aside from ways to get money and high tier items fast smithing might as well be worthless.
Do you draw a parallel between ammo/durability and consumabes/amount of consumables?
I guess I"m picky about weapon durability. I really like it when it fits the theme of the game and isn't too onerous such as in the Dark Souls series. When it's so pervasive that I'm forced to switch weapons, that feels oppressive, and it's part of why I have no interest in Breath of the Wild. Thank goodness we live in a time when there are so many options available for gaming!
It’s really dependent on the game for me. I liked it in Fallout 3 and NV but hated it in the new Zelda games
Hey, Tim. What's your take on Starfield?
IMO, tell fell through the trap of making some things great and leaving other things bad. The quality bar is very un-even and noticeable. Likely spread themselves too thin.
The one aspect Tim didn't explicitly mention was that equipment durability also gives a strong incentive to use all "tiers" of weaponry in the game, no matter how far into the game you are. Daggerfall and most Fire Emblem games come to mind as examples where you want to use iron or steel weapons against most enemies, simply because repairing or replacing them won't bankrupt you. The Fallout 3/NV repair system also gives an incentive to pick up all gear, while also meaningfully limiting it through encumbrance. It creates situations where a lower tier weapon or armor can be worth hauling over a more expensive one, if you can combine enough of the cheap ones to make up for it in durability. And this requires some decision making and though process from the player, which is far better than mindlessly pressing "loot all" on all corpses.
Lot of people disliked the equipment durability in BotW, but the game used it as a way to soft gate content since you effectively couldn't deal with enemies on a given zone if you couldn't reliably access several weapons that have certain damage output. If you get rid of durability, you have to do that gating through other means, like level scaling enemy stats. That in return often leads to other unwanted results, like enemies being damage sponges until you hit a level threshold.
The one game I enjoyed durability mechanics is the survival horror jrpg 'Koudelka' for the PS1. In context it makes sense, the weapons you're finding and using are either improvised not made for fighting or are antiques you're finding in a Welsh manor home/monastery.
The lack of reliability keeps the feeling of tension, the idea you're a Group of people surviving the horrors by the skin of teeth.
But you also find functional weapons, in the form of firearms which do not break providing you have ammo.
I think the frustration for most players in games, is it that in real life, Guns have a life expectancy of tens if not hundred of thousands of rounds whilst in games, after a few fights where you may have only shot of about 30, your weapon has nearly disintegrated. (I will note that melee weapons in real life can break at the drop of a hat, nothing says fun like a sword snapping mid fight).
In the end, to scale durability to real world scales means it's a mechanic that'll have little to no impact on play. Have weapons break too quickly and you frustrate the player....
Very difficult to find a good middle ground, I don't envy you game developers for sure.
I played a game that has durability but neither sources nor sinks. It just repairs everything at the workbench without a cost. So it's a leash to keep you coming home more than anything else. Durability has many applications!
Thanks for your thoughts!
As a player I actually think the most frustrating mechanics are when a game is streamlined in 99% of its design and then will randomly have a durability system, or sink, or push back system.
To me, when a game tries so hard to limit your frustration it puts you in a certain head space and then any sort of abbrassive system tends to frustrate. The experience as a whole is so devoid of challenge that these systems then become sources of inconvenience.
When you commit to challenging your player and force them to engage mentally, I think you can actually add MORE of these systems because you will have sufficiently engaged the player.
If that makes sense
meaningful choices vs modern day lack of choices and complacent laziness
that is what i'm learning from this. I too am pro durability/inventory weight restrictions. however it is a delicate balancing issue to make it good. Zelda BoTW took durability way to far imo.
I didn't even realize Outer Worlds had a durability system. It never became a thing. At that point it might as well not have existed since it didn't seem to achieve its goal it seems.
Only thing about ammo "restrictions" is that when i'm re-loading a shotgun, a weapon you need to reload after 2-3 shots, and you get interrupted very easily by enemies. that gets annoying fast.
It's a slippery slope mechanic. When done well, it's a really fun mechanic that I like a lot. One example that comes to my mind is in Oblivion. First you suck at repairing anything and you break your repair hammers easily so you need carry quite a few with you all the time. When you get better the hammers won't break as easily anymore and eventually you become a master which can actually repair weapons and armors above their normal level which will give you extra damage or armor. It's just something I really enjoy doing in the game and not just a worthless money sink or busywork type of a mechanic in the game.
I hate that newer games have chosen routes where they remove those busy work type of mechanics a bit too much for my taste. One extreme example is Mass Effect 1 and 2. I love the first one but dislike the second. And it's only because I loved the way how you can build your characters, what weapons they use, what armor they're wearing and the ammo they have. So focusing too much on mainstreaming games and removing things like durability, ammo management etc.
So it's hard to balance so that it doesn't annoy people a lot but doesn't become pointless busywork. I, myself, hope that more games would add those old mechanics back to games more. Like having to sleep, eat, repairing and what not.
Durability sucks in games, however if a game is enjoyable enough, I can easily look past it. Though, having your favourite weapon break and then requiring using a weapon a player deems less fun makes the game less fun over all. Imagine dungeon crawling with a butter knife. I liked that Mass Effect 1 didn't need ammo as they used an interesting explanation in the universe, from the wiki - In Mass Effect, to generate ammunition a weapon shaves a projectile the size of a sand grain from a dense block of metal contained within the weapon's body.
Zelda Botw sold well becauce it was a Zelda game on a popular system, not because it had weapon durability. The game is often talked about as a great game then people sighting that durability was too heavy-handed and not great.
I have never feel that weapon durability is a good system to try different weapons, it just feels annoying as a stat track for you to keep your weapons on top condition, but you can just brute-force your way into not changing your weapon, and we you fail you end with hoard syndrome, in which the weapon you like you never actually use, like a potion that stays in your inventory untouched for a final final final boss that may not even exist
Enemy specialization on the other hand, actually does feel rewarding when it comes to trying different weapons, it makes you strategize and think of different things after many failures
Oh, it's so interesting to learn that some devs were asking to remove ammo from Outer Worlds 🤔
I certainly came to that realization when I played the game, that ammo was a pointless thing in the game, but I think that's a consequence of how common it is, and how cheap it is. By the end of the game, I was literally not even bothering picking it up, even though it doesn't weigh anything, because it's so common.
Also weapon durability, I don't like it in games, but I play a lot of games with it and I get past it, it's a mechanic, whatever, it's a thing. But it's honestly a non-issue in Outer Worlds. Repairing is practically free throughout the entire game. I also think it didn't need to be a feature, since it doesn't do anything, just like ammo.
Hmm, this got me think about Fallout 4 and its weapon customization, and how that could've been a really deep and interesting system.
Imagine a system with a well balanced tradeoff between weapon damage (via ammo used), durability, and ergonomics. So you could build a super sniper rifle, and put overpowered ammo through it, but it would literally break after 3 rounds, or you could build (like I did in Fallout 4) a .32 machine gun because you've got 2,000 rounds of ammo, so why not, but if you overheat the gun then it takes a lot of extra durability loss. If you build the gun powerful AND durable then it weighs so much that it takes a long time to make ready, a long time to reload, and you move slower while wielding it. Obviously weight would be countered by strength and (to a lower level) agility. I think if a game implemented this system well it would make weapon choice feel very important and rewarding.
I know when a game gives me a ranged weapon with unlimited ammo, I use nothing else afterwards. I'm playing Atomic Heart right now, and even though the recharging energy weapons suck, it is hard for me to use anything else. I felt the weapon degrading worked well for games like FO3/NV and Stalker Gamma. But it is extremely frustrating when a game makes the weapon so fragile that the weapon breaks after a couple of gun fights.
If that ranged weapon is not effective against a certain enemy though, you are handicapping yourself. The "if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail" argument doesn't work against those of us who want to optimize our play. But I still think players should have the choice rather than it breaking and then them being forced to use something else.
@@Elrog3 Optimizing play for some of us is hoarding every resource. If I consume 1 round from a gun when I could have killed the enemy with a weapon that doesn't consume ammo, I've failed.
@@Postal0311 That's a good point.
I think durability should work more like sharpness from monster hunter instead of the weapon evaporizing from durability depletion, but with an added thing, the durability value can go into the negatives (much, much slower than getting from 100 to 0 mind you) which is the point where the weapon would break and anything above 0 gets the bonuses from weapon scaling (if there's stats, otherwise they could perhaps benefit from perks or skills or accessories), but if they get to 0 the scaling is either reduced or outright gone (with the occasional exception that keeps the bonuses when getting into the negatives).
So, I absolutely love it in some cases, and conceptually I want it there some way or another in most RPGs, but Breath of the Wild is an example where I think it just goes too far for no discernible benefit as far as I can tell. It basically saps the fun out of using any cool weapon. And anyone who says Oblivion's durability system was great needs to go replay that unmodded. I remember at times your equipment would be absolutely devastated by a lone enemy for no reason and after sometimes even one fight your armor would be next to worthless, and they don't even give you the Unarmored or Dodging skill type as an alternative like in previous games. So when it comes down to it I'll take a removed feature over a poorly implemented one any day. I just want durability systems to make me feel more like I'm in the game's world and much less like I'm playing a video game.
I don't like weapon/armor durability in RPGs for the simple reason that they make it harder to build an attachment to a character- Imagine how ridiculous it'd be to give hairstyles a durability. The weapon and armor you use on a character are important to their, well, character. You don't see fantasy movies where the main character changes clothes and weapons every five minutes, because that unequivocally harms the connection an audience builds to a character. When a character's armor or weapon *does* change, it's usually a BIG plot point or growth moment, not "ah well my revolver broke so my cowboy gunslinger is going to have to use a bolt action rifle for a bit." It hurts the fantasy of a character.
This is the same reason I think free cosmetic overrides in MMORPGs are such a good idea- while the actual gear you use changes fairly regularly, you can build up the style and persona of a particular character. Think about how much fanart is made for games where your created character has a consistent style, compared to other games. It hardly even makes sense to think about getting fanart of your Fallout character because they generally don't have a consistent look
I understand how difficult it is to balance sources and sinks, but I think this particular lever directly undermines the RP in RPG
(also it's one thing to have a mechanic that some people dislike, and a whole 'nother thing to have a mechanic few of your players like. I'll admit I could be wrong, but I'd bet you've received much less positive feedback than negative feedback about durability mechanics over the years)
((Thanks for these videos, always insightful and thought provoking))
I don't see how durability prevents connection.
If you like that weapon you should repair it regularly. Kinda like how irl you would take care of your car or computer or phone.
I'm doing another run in Outer Worlds in Supernova and just like my 1st run, durability is not a problem in this game because the weapon and especially armor takes a long time to lose in durability and you have plenty of places to repair them anyway. RDR2 have also a sort of durability on your weapon that is you don't clean your weapon from time to time it would do less dmg and lose in some stats but like Outer Worlds it was rare and you could carry oil for cleaning your weapon so it wasn't a problem. But this also force you to switch weapon which doesn't bother me imo
What do you think about weapon levels in games? (when same looking weapon has different/better stats just because you found it being a higher level)
Personally this always breaks immersion for me. I could get behind at least a bit differently looking weapon made by different wendor but identical stick seems should be identical in stats. Also this makes loot drops less rewarding and tedios when you just pick up 20 same things and constantly compare whoch one is better.
All my homies love 90 repair level 14 perk Jury Rigging 💪
durabilitý adds realism and consequence
How did Ron Perlman get involved with Fallout? And have you ever met him?
Hey Tim, I'm a solo dev and I'm wondering if you have a discord server? I just think it would be cool if we could share our personal projects and ideas with you. Your talks are inspirational, I listen everyday. Much love and respect from the UK :)
I am playing through Buldars Gate 3 and my camp has a good percentage of the Forgotten Realms' storage items. I make every trader I meet a victim.
I liked it in FO3 and New Vegas.
But I hated it in BotW. As soon as I went against a golem near the start of the game I broke all my weapons and simply gave up since it had half health but I no longer had any means to kill it, so I basically wasted 5 minutes and lost all my weapons. GREAT!
So I emulated it, installed a mod that increases the difficulty and turned on a cheat that makes the weapons indestructible. Best choice ever. That may have broke the game in some cases, but I understand very well what challenge is, I use different weapons based on the enemy I'm fighting, I basically never use the best weapons. The vanilla game balance is terrible since whenever you open a chest, instead of an actual treasure you now get 10 arrows or an axe that will break in 3 minutes. On top of that, as soon as people get the Master Sword, guess what everyone will be using 95% of the time?
The reason BotW sold that much it's because it's a Zelda game...you don't hear anyone complainig what's in a Zelda title, no one dares to challenge that fandom, doesn't matter how big are the issues.
Imagine a Zelda game being to hard for you
@@ericbaker8781 imagine a Zelda game but with combat system or enemy variety not stuck in 1998.
Zelda games aren't hard, there isn't any difficulty in just running out of weapons to fight enemies with because the weapons are made out of cardboard. If I could have fisted my enemy to death like in a souls game I would have, but the game decided to gatekeep content behind more durable/stronger weapons and hearts. There's little to no skill in that.
Not even being able to fight enemies because every weapon breaks after 2 hit and you can't use fists =/= challenge
Was just fighting those golems yesterday, very frustrating!
Critical. Im a diplomacy peacenik so when i RPG finding a great weapon is like finding easy street. Thats why i rely on it even in sub-optimal situations. Durability forces me to care a little at least.
One thought that struck me when I watched that video is doesn't weapon durability is actually making the same work as ammo? especially when you can scrap same type weapon for repairs.
I personally think the durability mechanics and "repair" skill in single-player CRPG are abomination and should be thrown away or reinvented. Not because it forces the player to save their favorite weapons and armor for “later” which may never happen (just like using stockpiled potions and arrows in BG-like games often doesn't happen). Not because it forces the player to waste time “juggling items” in the inventory. And not because it clutters the player’s already limited-weight inventory (another game design monster that must be destroyed) with “repair kits,” duplicates of weapons/armors, and other "junk". And not because each shot or taking damage additionally punishes the player with damage to his equipment, and therefore additional spending of money or consumables on repairs (which can even lead to reloading the save after a successfully completed but “financially unprofitable” battle - and any unforced reloading is a game design flaw). But because the repair skill itself in CRPG is flawed compared to other skills. Whereas other skills make the character, his abilities, his weapons BETTER, the repair skill simply returns the player's items to the SAME CONDITION in which they were in the very beginning. It's as if in the game the character was constantly losing stamina due to walking, and to replenish it the player had to use a skill to eat pills that restored stamina to its previous level so that the character could walk again. A skill that makes it possible to do exactly the same what you already did before using this skill has no place in this world. Even the infamous “medical skills” don’t feel so flawed now - in modern games they can speed up health recovery in real time, and provide an additional bonuses to the player after using the healing items.
I see some kind of solution to the problem of durability and repair in using the repair skill to improve the item above the limit of its stats, increasing the durability limit and slowing down its decline (as was partially done in TOW). But it still feels like a crutch rather than a really good solution.
Limited weight inventory is a great tool when it forces players to decide what to carry and what to leave in their camp. Neo Scavenger, for example, is a fantastic example of how to use inventory limits as a survival mechanic. But in most RPGs, inventory weight limit is purely a way to limit the amount of loot players can carry. I personally think loot as a concept is more boring than weight limits as a concept.
depends on the game, original (1993) XCOM had ammo, armor and individually had to manage like ~25 characters, the firaxis XCOM2 removed this whole ammo/armor management subsystem, now after research your entire team had the new stuff.... that was the best decision the team made
i can accept weapon durability in looter shooters like Borderlands buy the game has to constantly give you options (i really really like randomly generatod weapons in Borderlands where all the combination exceeds the billions), in regular RPGs and limited accessibility to stuff... u dont like it i also dont like the repair system, Zelda Breath of the Wild does it well too but Fallout New Vegas does not, you need Jury Rigging to be playable
On the topic of mechanics: what are your thoughts on using action points (fallout) vs action type (D&D) in turn based RPGs?
Money imbalance IS huge deal! . Having lots of money , like Scrooge McDuck , after maybe 30% of gameplay makes game super easy, even on hardest difficulty . So i do not get it how that is not super important to fix before shipment ??
Three reasons that money imbalance doesn't get fixed (on TOW and on other games):
1. Bugs like crash bugs and bugs that prevent the game from being completed take priority.
2. Fixing money imbalance often means changing other systems (like vendors, loot drops, quest rewards, etc.), and there is not time to do all of those changes
3. It's a complex issue (see reason 2) and not only do the devs not agree on what to change, sometimes those changes don't work and shift the cause of the money imbalance to something else
Ok , i get it. Would assigning special team just for that ( like QA) make it proper from start and during development cycle? Cant remember when was the last time i played game ( Fallout 2 ? ) that had money earn-spend well balanced . Also thank you for fast reply . @@CainOnGames
@@ognjenfilipovic2851 every game will have money imbalance because you are the only one playing, it's the same in D&D pen and paper campaigns, the players are the only ones raking gold and treasure, in a "static" economy, imagine if you had to simulate all the variables and implement inflation when the party arrives to a city and they buy everything...
@@ognjenfilipovic2851Assigning QA to that specific issue would have meant other bugs would have gone undiscovered. I could not add more people to the project after the budget was fixed, so that team would have come from the existing QA group.
All I can say is this: decisions are made in the first few months that affect everything in the game over the coming years. Yes, the economy could have been balanced, but then the game might have shipped with crash bugs, or more areas would have been cut for lack of testing, or maybe an entire feature like crafting or respeccing would have been cut. This is the balancing act that all game directors perform.
In my personal opinion, I think durability in The Outer Worlds was pretty good, it was not like Fallout 3 where I ran out of ammo so easily. It was also different from Breath of The Wild where everything breaks easily.
This video seems slightly contradictory to your opinion on skill based vs class based character systems. In that video you state that you like a system that allows the player to build an extreme character, while in this video you cite enforcing variety as one of the reasons for durability being good. Along that specific axis (ignoring the economic reasons) wouldn't enforcing variety run counter to the idea of an extreme character? If you make the character Mark Sman and his sniper rifle breaks forcing him to use a pistol would you see that as a negative consequence of weapon durability? In effect you're trading player agency for a systemic enforcement of variety. Mark Sman is already going to have a tough time dealing with a bunch of fast enemies that can close the distance, does he need his weapon to break on top of that inherent weakness in order to force him to use a different one?
Depends on the game. I hated it in Zelda as it was just tedious to me compared to prior Zelda games where I could just use the Master Sword all the time.
It is weird, I never minded it in New Vegas as I can craft weapon repair kits, and some weapons last for hundreds of reloads. Likewise, the variant ammo and the companions can affect the rate of degredation.
In The Outer Worlds my hunting rifle disintegrates in my hand because I need to find a work bench to maintain it. As a solution I got a spare, and I already carry two handguns.
The T&L factory really makes subpar quality, as post apocalyptic salvage is more durable. Was their factory bought out by Remington and the machinery sabotaged by the workers who lost their jobs?
I like it. It makes weapons and armor feel "more" grounded in the world of the game you're playing. But if you don't care that much about immersion over solely gameplay, then it isn't for you. I do think the Jury Rigging perk in a game like F:NV strikes the perfect balance between "realism" and video-game. I also have 0 issues with how FO3 handles it. Dark Souls as well had a good system.
Underrail handles this great for balance
I think Pong is the game people didn't complain about, especially when it was released.
That's because its so basic people knew what they were getting in to before they tried it. You can't build up an expectation and then smash it horribly with something that you grasp fully from seeing 5 seconds of gameplay.
i'm really against durability cause it always pressures you to scavenge for/hoard parts/spares that take up precious inventory space you could use for stuff you actually wanna hoard - like armors that you like or fit best for a situation (like against environmental harzards/different enemy damage types etc.) or simply for stuff you wanna sell to make big cash.
finite ammo i do like as long as it's weightless and doesn't take up inventory space like spares do. repair vendors require backtracking and money that you could spend otherwise (player housing, paying ppl off as a quick way for quest progression etc.)
one notable exception is the jury rigging perk from fnv. repairing comically big sledgehammers (super sledges) with pool cues is hilarious.
Usually a game that requires you to pick up a load of junk for repairs will have a storage spot for you to put it though right?.... Like Fallout4's workbenches, so you can keep your armor and just periodically drop your stuff off at home whenever you inventory is near full. I normally have an additional container for stuff to sell for when I actually go to sell stuff so I'm not carrying all the junk around with me all the time and knowingly ruining my own experience with the game.
I feel like I might understand your point better if I knew what games you're referring to though, since the ones Tim has made and the ones I usually play that include durability as a mechanic, almost always has it there for a reason that actually benefits most other systems in the game (aside from Outer Worlds, that game may as well not have it in the first place)
weightless ammo is important yeah, though I do think for specific challenge options like survival mode, weighted ammo is crucial to the gameplay.
but that fact you'd be short on money for a player house or a bribe is down to the players decision as to how to spend their money usually.... If you're bad with cash and just spend it as you get it and see the next thing you want, of course you're gonna end up in a bad situation. Being innovative and using different weapons (like you use different armors) minimises repair costs, keep a max of three to five weapons with different ammo types on you, you'll almost always have a backup gun, or a gun with another type of damage to swap to if you need it. simplistic, uncomplicated.
Store your junk until it's needed to keep inventory clean, don't over-use any one specific item unless you need to, don't overspend on things you don't need, and you'll always have all the money you need in almost every game.
Like Time said, almost every game you play that has an in game economy will have a way to break it because that sort of balancing is hardly important for a game you're meant to have fun in, so almost every game is going to give you a way to become rich within the first hour, even if they didn't intend to do it.
But yeah, you could be talking about a different type of game, I'm solely basing this off of my experience playing Fallout: New Vegas, Fallout 3, Fallout 4, Outer Worlds, heck even the two most recent Deus Ex games or even Baldur's Gate, which all make the efforts to balance these mechanics together to make an enjoyable time that pushes you to fully experience their world and the game's mechanics.
So please, tell me if I'm wrong.
@@moosecannibal8224 fallout 4 luckily doesn't have weapon durability. if they had, it'd just be unnecessary fast travel after every building/dungeon. given how unoptimized the loading times are for any machine (raising fps beyond 60 helps with loading, but causes terrible glitches), this game would be nigh unplayable.
In fallout at least new vegas the repair skill could be a way to increase the value of a weapon especially if u have say two broken marksman carbines well those are both worthless but repair one with the other and its worth 1-2 thousand caps, i remember always using low durability weapons to repair medium durability weapons of the se type for money reasons because a) it increased the total value if u had a good enough repair skill and b) free’d up space for more weapons to carry and sell, high level repair in fnv can make u really rich which makes sense too because someone who could keep guns repaired and cleaned in a wasteland would be sought after