When you think about game systems, there’s usually good ones and bad ones. Sometimes, bad systems are added to a game because of no good reasons. The dev team might’ve seen it in another game and thought that it was a given that it had to be part of the experience. But can you make a bad system good ? Yes you can. A bad system can be coupled with others and become an excellent system. But for some, it’s very difficult.
-
Item durability: This is usually a bad system by itself. Can you find a game where you thought the durability system was good ? Breath of the wild transformed this system by making it so that all* weapons will break and needs to be replaced. The durability system adds something to the gameplay by transforming weapons into tools to solve problems. But even with that, BoTW was still massively criticize for it’s durability system because, durability is SUCH A BAD SYSTEM.
-
Crafting Timers: Timers are usually bad systems. The only games where timers are a good system are mobile games that you play for short burst, start a something that runs on a timer and comeback to the game later or the next day. Timers are not meant for console or PC games. Ask yourself if timers are fun. Look at diablo 3. They could’ve added timers when unlocking each level of the vendors but they chose not to. Would that be fun if they did ?
There’s more system. There’s crafting, player housing, looting gear, transmog, Daily/weekly Quests, Inventory management, gameplay loop, Survival mechanics, health/stamina/mana management. And more.
Each of those systems needs to be looked at with a lenses of “how can all systems be good by respecting the main vision of the game”. You should not think that to get to the perfect vision of the game, you should accept that some bad systems needs to be implemented. There’s always a way to make those system good. (Almost). And unless you can’t turn them into something special., then the system must go. I’m looking at you Item durability and crafting timers.
Personally I wanna deconstruct how I see the durability system here, which I just don’t find fully realized. At launch it made a bit of sense in the way of forcing you to visit the hub for repairs - if you wanna keep your gear after all those sorry deaths, hahaha!
Then, I realized that since I died less I had to go back for repairs less often and that durability otherwise gets worse so slowly you can clear whole areas without worrying about it. Tool durability was buffed to heaven, practically won’t have to worry about that either. You also have a whole bunch of repair powders for when you are in a pinch. “A whole bunch” is an understatement by the way.
In Breath of the Wild (which is a GREAT example of a system done RIGHT, props to ya!) it made sense because the whole world is built to accommodate it. Break your sword? Cut down or blow up a tree for a branch/ disarm your opponents, smack them! Bombs and branch too weak? Gravity not exploitable? Run away to find better gear. Perfect!
In Wicked, durability feels too meh in comparison. Yes, weapons occasionally drop but they don’t scale on more than one stat - means that weapon drops are usually trash as backups. Weapons don’t get destroyed fast enough anyways to make you strategize on that. You can’t take advantage of gravity that consistently. It’s a system that doesn’t incentivize you to change your gameplay, rather stop it to go for repairs if you wanna continue playing effectively. Annoying or irrelevant/meaningless long-term.
That’s my one gripe with the system and why I now understand when people suggest completely doing away with it. It feels more like a hindrance rather than a mechanic that compliments the whole experience. That said, I’m against fully giving up on it, faithful that the devs could find a way to keep it in, yet out of ideas as to how to do it well sadly. Pretty different kind of game.
2 Likes
Breath of the wild durability still kind of bothered me in the end, because while obviously the devs want to push you towards using different weapons, because of the decay inherent to the really good weapons as well that were harder to get, I always used one of the worst things I had, even if I didn’t want to use it. I didn’t really use the things I liked to use most because I knew I wouldn’t have the extra damage for a bigger fight, or what I was more comfortable using for a more difficult encounter. Tears of the kingdom was a huge step forward in my opinion, but in the end I still had problems with it, partly because of how much a pain it was to menu every time I needed to replace something, and partly I think because it just seemed unnecessary in the end. The game has so many cool combinations to try, it seemed pretty pointless to break your stuff to make you swap.
While I get that most devs are probably using durability as a system to encourage gameplay variety or immersion, I have only ever been annoyed by it’s implementation except in one game. Every time it seems to be either a nuisance that doesn’t let you use what you want to use, or a nuisance that just makes you return to a hub with regularity. I think the problem stems from the fact that it feels like a punishment for just playing the game normally instead of an integrated part of the gameplay loop. It just kind of exists, and usually ends up being a minor tax on your currency income because if it was hard to manage through the whole game it would feel bad and nobody wants to commit to that unless you’re playing a survival game (but even those trend away from micromanagement).
The single game I actually thought durability was well implemented was Lies of P. You have a default grinder that you hold a button to use to repair durability while you are moving around with no associated cost other than the animation and reduced movement. The game is balanced so you can kind of ignore it at first but later becomes something additional to handle during boss fights. It decreases faster than some other games because of if being something you are constantly managing instead of being a longer term incentive, but you can get permanent upgrades to avoid this being annoying, or reward you with extra damage if you stay on top of it. You can also get different grinders that give you buffs and single use items that repair instantly. It serves as both an additional thing to manage during combat (sort of like stamina) as well as something that can benefit the player.
I haven’t spent THAT much time with No Rest for the Wicked but durability has already become little more than a nuisance to me because I have more than enough currency for it to bother me, but it just makes me go back to sacrament every so often. It feels like it is clashing a bit with the game design as a system because the areas have so much depth and want you to really get in there and learn enemies and bosses but you are pulled back to the hub by durability if you are dying a lot. If you aren’t then it doesn’t even matter. To me it feels like the half hearted version of dark souls durability, instead of just losing it all the time, you lose it when you die. It doesn’t provide any value to the gameplay outside of that. You don’t have to immediately go face the thing you died to to get your stuff back. It doesn’t provide enough incentive to run multiple weapons or try stuff out because the stat barrier to doing that is high, and it’s hard to invest in more than one or two in the beginning because of resources. It seems like it’s meant to be the “git gud” incentive rather than running back to collect your currency, but it’s not incentivizing much of anything rather than running around picking up some more stuff to sell if you have to. It doesn’t really make you go back to improve against what killed you and it doesn’t make you try more weapons.
I liked durability in Lies of P because it was a unique part of the core gameplay loop that didn’t cost other core resources to manage and could provide benefits as well as detriments. I don’t like it in No Rest for the Wicked because it’s basically taxes. Durability does not have to be bad.
Timers on the other hand I have only ever seen in mobile games trying to get your money from you and idle games and for some reason Lies of P which has a real time timer for consumables you use for AI summons to help with bosses and I will absolutely admit that it makes no sense and serves no purpose and I still have no idea why they did that. Crafting timers are unsalvageable.
1 Like
I never thought about it but you might be unto something regarding Lies of P.
The way you explained it made me think of the monster hunter franchise. More specifically the sharpness system. The way the game is built, you will usually need to sharpen your weapon usually at least once during a fight, or you run the risk of having your weapon being deflected/bounces back off the armor or carapace of the monster.
The game could just make you go back to camp to sharpen or use an item (which you can). But instead, the sharpening system is integrated with all part of the gameplay loop.
- If you want to sharpen mid-fight, you open yourself to taking damage.
- If you sharpen while the monster is fleeing, you can’t pursue the monster and attack while he’s fleeing.
- You can farm for resources that makes you sharpen faster, which is part of the gameplay loop of the game.
- You can also use weapons with higher or lower durability. Requiring to sharpen more or less often.
This whole system is integrated into each part of the gameplay loop of the game, being gearing up, farming for resources and hunting monsters.
Those first 3 points you proposed about sharpening already exist in Wicked, in the form of Blade Oil.
It’s a consumable, think it lasts about 30 seconds. Has an animation for applying it so it opens you up (although low risk, it’s relatively fast). You can farm for mats to craft it too.
Your 4th point sounds interesting. Could deepen the whole mechanic and I don’t think it requires too much tinkering with code.
The advantage of the sharpening system in monster hunter is that it’s deeply integrated with gameplay. In Wicked, durability requires you to stop gameplay, or the items fixing durability are used outside of gameplay. And you’re right about blade oil. Having an animation for it does make it more interesting.