My opinion is that weapon/armor degradation should be in a game option menu. Toggle weapon degradation on or off. Toggle armor degradation on or off.

Says the one who hasn't provided even the slightest hint of support for his assumptions...



Sorry to say, but if you think logic doesn't apply to opinions, you have provided ample proof you don't understand logic.

I didn't say it couldn't. I said it often doesn't. Reading comprehension. :shrug:

And wow, you can't even own up to your own bad assumptions. Instead, you just say that I have made some assumptions. None of which you bring to light. Good job.

You know what I find confusing? When Degrading armour was not confirmed to be out, no-one cared, now suddenly everyone hated it. Same with romance options, when the polls asking the forums whether they wanted it or not, the no's far surpassed the yes', but when it was confirmed to be in, everyone was ok with it. It seems to me everyone is just blindly going on whatever Bethesda decides.

Repairing worn equipment probably wouldn't feel like a chore if there wasn't so much fighting that had to be done. How realistic is it for a single person to kill over a couple dozen people and wild animals within a few days? Maybe that's why weapons and armor seem to wear out so quickly...

The problem with this decision is that it's another strike against having to manage your long-term survivability. Just like auto-regenerating health outside of battle, no degeneration for equipment means you won't have to worry much about maintaining yourself from fight to fight. Now, you may or may not have a problem with this (or may think that it's effect on survivability was negligible) but the fact is that we now have one less stat to monitor. For those of us who wish to have more survival elements in the game -not less- this is a step backwards.

Now that I can understand. One of the features I really wanted them to implement was the survival mode from Fallout 3. I think it was called survival mode. You know, you have to eat, drink, be careful of radiation, health packs worked differently and a few other tweaks. It made the game really fun. It would be nice to see them add that mode at some point and perhaps armor degradation could be part of that addition.

I don't mind that it's gone. I carried like 20 hammers around and just repaired stuff whenever I wanted. An annoyance if anything.

There are things that IMO add to the immersion and things that realism can bring the to the table in various ways with negative effects that in the end are "good" (IE fallout NV hardcoe mode with water/drink, etc). These add things that affect certain aspects of the game that while might have a negative impact on something, it overall adds a positive affect to things (in New Vegas for example, hardcoe mode made the actual environment/wasteland feel like more of a threat, rather then a simple backdrop).

Then there are things that are there for realism sake and add nothing to the game but negatives.without adding anything else to the game, such as weapon degradation.

If you have weapon degradation, what positive effect does it bring from being there? None, because the weapon breaks and then you're [censored]. It doesn't even have a cool combat oriented effect like a few action games had (IE severance) where the weapon/shield would shatter while fighting and you'd be like "oh [censored], this is intense!" and try to get away to pull out another weapon.

It was the same in WoW, with dying and armor/weapon decay. It was just a neagtive thing that added NOTHING positive at all, just a money/annoyance sink. You'd be doing something fun, exploring, etc and then your weapon breaks or a main armor piece, and you have to drop what you're doing to get it repair. This is coming from someoen who loved PVP in old UO, where you'd drop ALL your [censored] at deeath, because that added a purpose to pvp and upp'd the suspense, degradation doesn't do either.

I'd much rather they focus the crafting on allowing users to make customizable items, from different pieces of armor to choosing various dyes, mix and matching, etc.

Armor/weapon degradation in Fallout 3 and NV was really an annoyance.

I would end up with a great weapon or armor but never use it because it wasn't common enough that I'd always have spare for repairs. It's like all those FPSes where you have to keep getting ammo and the gun that matches it.
I do hope Skyrim is no FPS.

when does this become tedious instead of being fun?

They could implement a system where you have to replace broken things on the armor, you know, since to make armor oyu have to get stuff to make it, you just replace the stuff.

Well my opinion is th...

*bing bing bing crack* Your commenting hammer just broke. Please return to town and buy another one if you want to keep hammering away at this subject.

Anything below Daedric & Madness was degrading way too fast in Shivering Isles, weapon degradation was normal. They could have tweaked armor health instead of removing it entirely. I have to say that this change is clearly dumbing down the game, I was trying to accept other changes as logical but this is just too far. I also think that new armorer skill will be completely useless and will level up very slow like this, hence it'll never be picked up a la alchemy. Possibly even worse as you wouldn't craft hundreds of swords like fatigue potions. I doubt anybody will craft stuff if we get insanely powerful artifacts like in all TES games.

Very bad change overall and I hope it'll change. Mods wouldn't be able to implement it if the mechanic is absent from code as well.

He had a slightly different approach why there is no 'best' armor and I've been taking my own suggestions that I made a few posts later into account as well. His approach is that low quality armor is easier to repair (less money needed/materials for repair easier to obtain/less smithing skill needed), maybe even without a forge (like leather armor, you don't need a forge to exchange a few straps of leather). So if your high level armor is damaged, low level armor would be a good replacement for it and not just vendor trash. He mentioned the money sink as well.



I exaggerated a bit, I agree. But if choosing your equipment depending on the situation you are in and planning ahead to make sure your equipment doesn't break while you are in a dangerous situation are a tedious, non-immersive chore-like activities to you, then I have to wonder what is an interesting activity. It's like choosing which spells to use against a certain enemy. In conclusion you would probably be happy if they removed fire/frost/shock spells and only left damage health spells in? That's what the combat part of the game is about imo. Choices. If I just have to click the left mouse button and maybe sometimes the right button to block while I have the best sword and the best shield equipped that's not very entertaining to me. Just like magic would svck if there was a single damage spell with different magnitudes, where the best spell is always the one with the highest magnitude.



Now you exaggerate as well. You will carry around materials anyway, you already admitted that you like the blacksmithing system - which needs materials. No one says you need 3 armor sets and 4 weapons. And what other small items? You can even choose to carry only 1 armor set and 1 weapon. If your equipment is of the reliable sort and if you keep it in good condition it won't break. What you make out of the system is up to you. Want to squeeze the last bit of additional damage you can get out of your equipment? Keep some fragile, but powerful high level equipment in perfect condition in your backpack for that boss fight. If you don't care, just use slightly worse, but more reliable equipment and be done with it. Just like you can use fire spells against creatures with 25% fire resist. It's not the most efficient way to fight them, but it works if you don't care about having a large selection of elemental damage spells in your spell book and if you think it's annoying and tedious to switch between different damage type spells.



Agreed, this is speculation. Looking at previous ES games (and Fallout 3) it is a well-founded speculation though. Even if blacksmithing would cost a lot of money (which I doubt), it's just one activity. In Oblivion I didn't know where to spend my money, the only things worth buying at all were luxury goods like horses and houses.

By the way, Fallout 3 had a system that was similar in many regards. The sniper rifle would degrade really fast and it was hard to find spare parts to repair it. But it was one of the best weapons, so you had to decide when to use it instead of shooting every mole rat you encountered with it.

It's just a difference of opinion at this point. But it was good to see the idea get fleshed out a little more. I still feel like building a system around degradation like that would bother me more than immerse me. What percentage of my time should I want to spend obsessing over item degradation and recovering material/gold to make the nice stuff work again? I guess it comes down to that.

Perhaps if they added a whole crafting wing to the game that was well done and interesting (Blacksmithing, Tailoring, Leatherworking, Alchemy, Enchanting, Cooking, Woodworking, Carpentry, Jeweler, etc), I might be able to get more involved with it and accept it as part of a larger, more robust system. As I see crafting in the game now, it's more of an afterthought with heavy story, an open world, and first person combat at the forefront. It has been this way for all of the Elder Scrolls games since Daggerfall.

I do enjoy complexity as a rule, but I don't enjoy complexity for the sake of itself. It needs to have meaning behind it, and I know that in Morrowind and Oblivion it felt completely meaningless and tedious. And if I remember correctly, there was no degradation system in Daggerfall. I also don't think that the version you and the other guy present sounds all that fun. Find a way to make it fun and interesting, and I'd be all for it.

The real question here is how many man hours did they gain by dropping this feature and where did they wind up?

I'm hoping there'll be a mod to remedy this, will eventually be made and there'll be thousands of downloads from the Nexus. I don't feel sorry for the console users for the Fallout and The Elder Scrolls games who can't use mods.

Most attempts at such things, are usually poorly implemented. Farcry 2 for example, you could pick up an ak47 and go through about 3 gunfights with it before it would start to jam, and eventually blow up in your hands. It happened too fast, not to mention its just one more thing to keep track of. I'd rather they worked on issues that they have had and not fixed yet, than to work on something so trivial.

How about this.

I don't want to fight baddies, solve quests and travel by foot . Easier just to assume my characters does those things just like I assume my character eats every day without me having to do it for him. So why not have autofight button, autosolve button, autotravel button? Sure hardcoe players should have the option, but I just want to follow the storyline and not to worry about leveling, collecting loot, solving riddles, wasting time on travel etc.

I know this is an exaggerated example, but I want to underline that when they remove those little details, game becomes a little less complex each time. Ok removing weapon degradion isn't such a big deal itself as they added crafting and upgrading options, but removing degradition means that they also removed the similar spells from destruction school. This means less strategic options for mages. Npcs can't either use attacks that degrade player's gear. Enemies can no longer penetrate through player's armor. This makes game easier no doubt.

Degradition was also a money hole. It was one of the rational reasons why player should loot and ransack bandits lairs, buy better gear, use smiths etc. It added quite much to the game. Weapon smiths are less important now which means an immersion drop too. Game's balance also suffers as money is spent less on maintanance which means that you get rich faster.

^Everyone please read this^

People seem to overlook that this means no armor or weapon disintegration spells, which is extremely lame. I had characters built around both mechanics, and now they are gone.

Allow me to revert back to my college days and say "Hell yeah it's the right move!".

If I want to be bogged down by timesinks that add no visible, or meaningful immersion; I'll keep wiping heroics in World of Warcraft.

...Its not about immersion, its about strategy, and tactics of having to repair, and the possibility of having something break during combat. Not to mention the spells.

To me this just shows that Bethesda has made a game with so much content that repairing your gear is no longer needed to add depth to the game.
I think when people hear things like this they imagine it being applied to Oblivion. I honestly think the people who will enjoy this game the most are those who are new to TES, because they will not have any expectations. Take it all in as a whole new game.