After playing Skyrim since release, I've started wanting the old mechanic where your weapons and armor dulled and became damaged over time. I think that they should make it need repair a lot less, so it doesn't seem unrealistic, but still need repairs every once in a while in TES VI when it comes out.

I disliked item degradation and I'm glad it's gone. To me, it was merely "busywork." I did not feel it added challenge or interest to my games.

My philosophy of roleplaying game design is pretty simple: whenever possible I want to be rewarded for actions I take, not punished for actions I don't take. When I apply an improvement to a weapon I feel like I have accomplished something. When I repair a weapon I do not feel like I accomplished something. When I have finished repairing my weapon is no better than it was when I first got it. I am maintaining the status quo. I feel I am doing drudge work, a chore.

I might be able to support a system that combines smithing and repair, a system that allowed only smithing improvements to degrade. Items would degrade only down to their base values. We would then be required to re-apply our smithing improvements. That is the only way I would ever want degradation to come back into the series.

I don't really understand this perspective. Your actions---using a weapon, taking damage in combat---are lowering the condition of your equipment. Your failure to maintain this equipment isn't punishment, it's the expected result of what you're doing. This is effectively the same as the damage system. You fight enemies, you take a hit, your health is reduced. Refusing to heal yourself or disengage and then dying isn't a punishment, but the natural outcome. Equipment degradation is simply this in a longer, less urgent format.

I also don't see why equipment repair always seems to make the list of "Things too tedious to be in TES" when there are so many other features, far more tedious, still present in the game that don't seem to really bother anyone. The enchantment system, for instance, is effectively identical to the repair system, but requires far more input. Whereas equipment repairs were always available from plenty of vendors, enchantment requires consumables. Meaning you'll either be looting every soul gem you can find, stopping to trap souls when you need them, or visiting vendors to buy them anyways.

The smithing skill itself is pretty much all grind. There's no real natural way to incorporate it into adventuring while leveling it at an even pace. It pretty much always requires stopping what you're doing and pumping out a bajillion identical items using all the bits of metal and scraps of fur you've been hoarding. This is in contrast to repair which leveled at a much better pace, as you adventured, and could be done really whenever you happened to be in town for quests or to unload loot. Unless you were dead set on putting things off til the last possible second, you'd rarely ever be heading into town just to touch up your swords and shields.

I miss repair in Skyrim.

I'll love a, hmm, how to put it. Say you upgraded your sword 3 times, after a lot of us, it degrades the 2nd version, then the 1st version, then the original version, then crack, it breaks.

But yea, I liked it in the other TES games and in Fallout, it seemed like a reasonable thing, the more I use a weapon, or get hit, the more the weapon or armor are going to suffer from wear and tear.

I can see it being tedious because it's so simplistic. Just carry some repair hammers (which are plentiful), and repeatedly click on it in the menu until it's repaired. Or talk to a smith and pay some gold. Unlike health, it's not a very volatile statistic (a single battle won't do too much to it, and you obviously can't repair in combat), it's just something you have to do once in a while just because. There's not really much meaning to it.

However, the idea of tempering wearing off so that you have to re-temper your gear... that has some value. Your items would never drop below their base stats, so you're not forced to do it if you find it too tedious. However, if you do it, then you're rewarded with better gear as well as a raised smithing skill that lets you improve things more (and create better gear). It requires different resources depending on what you're handling, some of which may be less common than others. It also requires having to be at a workstation, you can't just do it in the middle of a forest.

If you want to go the other way, you can check out how it was done in Daggerfall. It would take in-game weeks for an item to lose its New status and become Almost New (it would take a really long time for an item to be damaged beyond use). However, if you wanted to get it repaired, you had to pay a smith who would then hold on to it for several days. If you wanted to go dungeon-diving in that time, you either had to use a backup, or do without.

Except running out of enchantment doesn't render the item useless. An item may lose its magical properties, but it will still always do physical damage or provide physical protection (unless we're talking staffs, but those aren't typically a character's primary means of offense).

Not every character carried hammers around. Only charcters with high strength could do that. There was two strategies: encumber yourself with heavy repair hammers or carry backup weapons.

I can say that when I played stealth characters, I never bought hammers. I always carried an extra backup weapon or two. And whenever I stumbled upon a repair hammer in dungeon, I used it right there one the spot and moved on.

Not me. I'm glad repair is gone. Good riddance.

I agree, this is a feature that shouldn't have been removed. They could bring it back integrated in an optional "hardcoe" mode. Every tool that enhances my roleplay is great for me, and gear/resource management is definitely one of them.