Breakable items, is it ever a good idea?

[spectre]

Having stuff break only makes sense if it breaks A LOT.

No way in hell. I think all of the current approaches to breakable items are doing it horribly wrong.

A durability bar for weapons sucks serious cock, as it looks a lot like payment for using an item... as if you were renting it. And the problem is - you see that the weapon will last for the next 20 seconds of bashing, that takes the surprise away.

A small, random chance doesn't work too well for me, cause it is hard to predict when shit will hit the fan (which is kinda ok, since you carry a spare on you), and, more important, it's hard to find a sweet spot, either it's too frequent, and thus annoying, or it doesn't happen enough.

The idea of having a money sink is a good one (and a commendable one), but the problem lies in that it shouldn't be tedious (like going to the toilet), and should reward characters that take precautions and have high repair skill.

Another problem is, that very often it works like this - either the weapon is in top condition, or it is broken = unusable. I think this is a wrong approach.

If I were to design a system like this from scratch, I would do it like this:

(o) Item damage rarely happens through normal use. If you use it the way it was intended, you are safe (or the chance is really minimal ~1%)
(o) There are circumstances when the item will be more prone to breaking - hitting certain things with a weapon (hitting solid object, creatures with corrosive blood, hitting walls with a sword), using items in adverse conditons (shooting in a desert storm, carrying stuff underwater without protection), or just using the item in a way that strains it more than usual - parrying with a weapon, power attacks.

(o)Deterioration is gradual, there are various levels of being broken:
6 -unused, top condition
5 - used, but no bad effects yet
4 - slight penalties to effectiveness, visible signs of use.
3 - Dramatic decrease in effectiveness.
2 - broken, item cannot be used for its primary function anymore.
1 - item destroyed, beyond all hope of repair.

Note: depending on the need, there may be additional stages between 4 and 2.

For each of these levels each item may behave differently. There may be items that have a flat deterioration rate, or it may be so that it is easy to knock it down from 6 to 5, but going down to 2 is harder. Or the opposite, if it is damaged once, it will deteriorate rapidly. Of course, the ease of repair for each such level could be different. For some repairing it back to 6 may be impossible, while other stuff anybody could repair, regardless of wear and tear.

An alternative idea is to have a % wear statistic for each of these levels. Wear can be easily removed through maintenance (cleaning etc.), but once it reaches 100%, one level of durability is knocked off and serious repairs (taking time and specialist tools) will be required.

Overall, the idea goes like this: the player should know that under certain circumstances the items will be subject to stress and may break. The player may then avoid such circumstances (ie. keep the fragile items in the backpack, or not use certain techniques that strain the weapon, not fire the bow in rain, etc.).
Regular maintenance should also dramatically reduce the chance to lose durability. The wear mechanic can simulate that.
Finally, level 5 serves as a buffer zone - the item works at full efficiency, yet there is a chance that it will devolve into 4 - which means slight hindrance. At this point it is quite easy to repair the damage until it becomes much more serious.

Overall stuff in this system will break only if one is really careless with it, or the circumstances force you to use it in the way the manual hasn't intended (like a fierce fight in really bad conditions). I think these are good assumptions.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Ever played Monster Hunter? It had a very cool weapon durability system. Basically, bashing enemies or using the weapon to block would wear down it's sharpness. Without a certain level of sharpness, you couldn't pierce the tougher hides, only the weak enemies/vulnerable points of tough enemies. So in the course of your epic fight against whatever giant ass wyvern you're fighting, you'd have to sharpen your weapon again. Made for very hectic fighting against the faster or less predictable enemies. Although, there was some retardness involved, such as the need to sharpen hammers.

Anyways, the point was that as a weapon degrades, it could simply start glancing off instead of landing proper hits. How to model that depends on the combat system, but it makes more sense than going from 100% effectivity to 0% in a single hit.

 

[zenbitz]

spectre -
I think your system is not unreasonable... but what does it add? Player, once he knows how to keep his weapons at maximum efficiency will always do so - unless he cannot help it.

So, either he will suffer a "break" that screw him, or he will have enough money / back up weapon to shrug it off.

The only way it works is to treat "breakage" like ammo, and ammo should be limited (or ignored).

 

[spectre]

"Player, once he knows how to keep his weapons at maximum efficiency will always do so - unless he cannot help it."

That's the trick, and I'd say fine-tuning the whole system so that it isn't annoying and actually feels fair, would be a challenge.

For example - if I wanted to do something similar in Diablo, it is really hard to do because of the Town Portal. The player needn't worry about the tedious conservation and repair skill, cause the town smith is just a few clicks away. Now, if we take the Town Portal opportunity away, we now have some room for strategic decisions.

Of course, it wouldn't at all work if money and repairmen are plentiful, so the whole system needs to support this from top to bottom, otherwise, it's just a gimmick.

 

[Black Cat]

I like Dungeon Crawlers and stuff, so i think degrading anything is always good idea, more so when it is degrading anything in a very short supply. If your weapons are a step closer to being garbage every swing you take and, like, every arrow you shoot it doesn't only add usefulness to the weaker equipment and complexity to what weapons to use in each situation, but it also makes the choice between being a generalist or a specialist much more meaningful, nya.

And it also makes much harder to exploit obvious imbalances in the system when, like, yes, maybe having everyone being able to use bows is going to turn one dificult boss into a pincushion, but you are also going to waste a lot of arrows and stuff when you can't just go back to town and buy more and you just wasted everyone's character points in something that was useful when only one had it but now that you ate through half the game arrows is just a points sink and stuff.

And it actually adds an element of choices and, like, onsequences not related to being a LARPer, just like food and water and resting being bloody dangerous in all but a handful of safe areas and all your equipment, arrows, potions and stuff coming from looting does. It also creates the posibility of hiting an imposible to win situation later one if you really mess up and stuff, but then that's part of the fun.

So make bloody everything degradable and limited in amount: Weapons, food, water, potions, armors, ammo, wands, mana, resting places, etc. Then you have all the choices and consequences you will ever need without needing to start going emo about being a nice person or a jerk.

 

[Derper]

Shit

 

[zenbitz]

Spectre - my whole point is that to balance the system, you have to make breakage/degradation happen basically as often as, say, getting hurt in battle and needing a health pack. It cannot be a rare occurrence

 

[DraQ]

Spectre - my whole point is that to balance the system, you have to make breakage/degradation happen basically as often as, say, getting hurt in battle and needing a health pack. It cannot be a rare occurrence

Apart from the fact that getting wounded and needing health packs often is bad mechanics (yes, most games have bad mechanics), rarity of such situation should not be a case of gameplay before realism. The main function of rich mechanics of any kind is it's potential for generating cool and memorable situations. In PnP games all you really need is some token mechanics (RNG and some rudimentary ruleset) and a good GM/storyteller.
Computers absolutely and horribly suck at narrative, especially adaptive, non-predetermined one. They do however excel at simulation and general number grinding, so the more complex and rich game's mechanics is, the better. As RL proves, sufficiently rich simulation can generate narrative. Swords breaking and guns jamming/exploding definitely fit right there.

 

[shihonage]

I think it would be hilarious to make the game keep track of "unfortunate events", such as critical failures resulting in item breakage, and explicitly forbidding reload for some time after.

 

[zenbitz]

DraQ -

I am with you on the simulationist aspect... but not every detail simulated makes a game better. You have to chose which details are worth simulating (because they effect the game materially, or stylistically) and which are not.

For example, eating, drinking, excreting. Sometimes these are worth simulating. Other times, no so much.

Most table top RPGs have rules for "fumbling" or "guns jamming"... but these occur (in games) roughly 1-5% of the time! This is outrageously often.

There is a famous Murphy's Rule from Runequest:

Cutting Mistakes -
In a 30-minute RuneQuest battle (Chaosium) involving 6000 armored,
experienced warriors using Great Axes, more than 150 men will decapitate
themselves and another 600 will chop off their own arms or legs...

But if the fumble rate was reduced to something reasonble (like .001% instead of 1%) then you would basically never it see it in a game - so why implement it?

Rare events in general are very hard to script into systems like these.

 

[DraQ]

I think it would be hilarious to make the game keep track of "unfortunate events", such as critical failures resulting in item breakage, and explicitly forbidding reload for some time after.

No.

I'd, however introduce some reload penalty that would adversely affect character's luck (including cutting the chance to find some interesting random loot, etc.) for some time after reload (not counting fresh load - after just starting the game executable).

Nicer, softer ironman, with none the frustration and restartitis, but good disincentive for dying.

You could also introduce incentive to survive for all cost, for example some especially difficult and rare random encounters may yield some very useful stuff, but, being random, you might not get second chance if you die and reload.

Preventing player from reloading is not the way. Making player willing to do anything to not have to is the key.

DraQ -

I am with you on the simulationist aspect... but not every detail simulated makes a game better. You have to chose which details are worth simulating (because they effect the game materially, or stylistically) and which are not.

Those that add variety to gameplay should be in, those that detract from this gameplay, out. Things like random weapon breakage are good, because they create potentially interesting situations.

Now, I have a little story, it doesn't have anything to do with breaking weapons or RPGs, but it does deal with breakable equipment and combat situations.

Once upon a time I was hurtling through a system in my iron ass Asp in FFE.
My port of destination lied on some Earth-like, but rather massive (>2 Earths) planet and I was carrying small quantity of high demand goods (if you know what I mean), as well as a big laser and willingness to blow any criminal scum that might cross my way to atoms for fun and profit. Along the way I was intercepted by some guy in an Imperial Courier - a much larger and slower ship, that can, nevertheless, mount some serious firepower. Now, I was already an experienced commander, and Asp is pretty damn manoeuvrable vessel which allows it to fly circles around the likes of IC with relative impunity, however, the guy got lucky. In a split second I must have crossed his ropes, and in this split second his powerful laser raked my ship from port to starboard overloading my shields (all eight generators) and dropping hull integrity below fifty percent. Despite the severe damage I managed to dispatch the aggressor, then frantically fumbled through ship's status screens. Even though the ship had just narrowly avoided being severed in half, all the most vital systems were working which meant that with a bit of luck I should be able to touch down and get my ship repaired. I set my autopilot, and activated "stardreamer". As my craft closed on the orbiting planet I noticed that something was very wrong - the autopilot, although undamaged, evidently couldn't cope with final approach. Again I performed some checks, this time more in-depth - then it dawned on me - I no longer had lateral thrusters, now part of thin, ever expanding cloud of metallic particles hurtling through space with same average velocity I had during my skirmish with the IC. I switched crippled automatics off and attempted manual approach - it wasn't easy, as planet was circling it's sun with considerable speed and current ships are ill-equipped for manual navigation, but eventually I managed to match velocities and enter the atmosphere. Atmospheric flight, mostly over the ocean, was rather uneventful, but the trouble started when I began my descent - Unable to use automatics or even manual bursts from lateral thrusters to cancel my lateral velocity I was forced to turn around and try doing it with retros or main, each time adding some random side momentum to my ship thanks to the inherent inaccuracies of manual flight. Additionally, I had to cancel the planet's relentless gravitational pull using short bursts of ventral thruster operating, as is the norm in direct thruster control mode typically used for rather abrupt movement, such as in combat, in all or nothing fashion. It resembled riding a pneumatic drill attached to some gargantuan pendulum slowly rotating and swinging left and right across the day lit sky, hoping to touch down gently on the landing pad rather than plough through a nearby city in a maelstrom of fiery doom. Finally I managed to land - I only hope the inhabitants had as much of a rotten day as I did, but given sheer terror badly shot up vessel fitted with a fussion reactor allowing it to keep constant >20G for days hovering above your head and drifting around aimlessly on the verge of tumbling down must cause, I trust they did.

What's the point? It would not be possible were it not for destructible equipment.

For example, eating, drinking, excreting. Sometimes these are worth simulating. Other times, no so much.

It's quite interesting, actually - the very same thing may enhance and detriment the gameplay depending on the level of implementation. For example, having to feed my character by hand would be a clear anti-gameplay element in most games, however, if handled implicitly by characters automatically consuming food ratios while camping, it would enhance gameplay thanks to added depth, necessity of planning, etc., without all the hassle.

Excreting? Just assume that my character does it while camping, add freshly dug cathole afterwards if you really want to be meticulous.

But if the fumble rate was reduced to something reasonble (like .001% instead of 1%) then you would basically never it see it in a game - so why implement it?

Because implementing stuff that most players will never see is one of the things RPGs are all about?

 

[shihonage]

I'd, however introduce some reload penalty that would adversely affect character's luck (including cutting the chance to find some interesting random loot, etc.) for some time after reload (not counting fresh load - after just starting the game executable).

It would be an absolutely genius idea if it wasn't immediately exploitable by terminating and restarting the game.

I really like this idea, though, and am trying to think of an alternative implementation. What if the game kept track of the time since your last savegame, and based penalties on that ?

It has to do it via relative in-game time, so that exploiting it won't be as easy as altering the system clock.

Everything can be exploited, the goal is just to make it NOT TEMPTINGLY EASY.

 

[PorkaMorka]

I like the Fire Emblem method a lot. (for reference, weapons just have a fixed number of uses, ranging from 60-18 (ish))

It avoids the frustration of more complex systems; you know exactly when your weapon will break and you control it. You aren't gonna die suddenly because your weapon randomly broke (although you'll do plenty of random dieing, hohoho).

But it greatly benefits gameplay. It adds a strong element of resource management to require you to think more about your tactics, and when you want to bust out your best weapons, and it allows powerful weapons to be added in, without trivializing the game, making your character's stats less important, or making party members who don't have uber weapons useless.

Since it's likely that generic enemies in most games do not have +5 Swords, this mechanic ensures that while the player has +5 Swords, he will only rarely use them on generic enemies (saving them for bosses and emergencies) so it allows the generic enemies to remain competitive without having their stats inflated.

It requires much more thought than the method used in most RPGs, where you find a +5 sword and your +4 sword is useless, unless you can hand it down to another PC.

 

[laclongquan]

Silent Storm system, Jagged Alliance 2 system, Prince of Qin

JA2 system using a degradation quite similar to Silent Storm system. At higher maintainance level your weapons perform according to specs. At lower, there's an increasing chance of jamming and misfire.

The maintainance limit points of Ja2 is static, meaning a glock 18 gun with 1000 points will still be 1000 despite the fumbling finger of mechanic. The MLP of Silent Storm is changeble, that if your mechanic is so-so he will lower the MLP each time he repair. Of course, if he's the best as he can be, coupled with top of the line equipment he can make MLP better. It's expensive as hell, since the repair equipment also has limit to use (one set can be used for 3 times, for example). and them repair thingies are quite rare as well. I remember hoarding the best repair stuffs to fix my best weapons so they can perform longer in battles

So? so this is the chance to fix the broken economies of games that you've been complaining about: limited reusable items, and money sinks.

Make it that weapons has limited durability, with that limit being changeable each time it's repaired. make that repair items are rare, costly, and link to money sinks. Like, you have to invest money in a small factory to keep it working. In exchange, each month they can sell you a selection of repair items, the which are very hard to find in game. So items in game have chance to break down, money has outlet to be spent, and more quests for players.

In case you want to make-item system, ala Prince of Qin, you can also make a various factories, farms to supply you with raw materials. You sink money in them to keep them working and in return you can buy their products.

 

[mondblut]

Betrayal at Krondor + Daggerfall makes a good degrade/repair combo.

 

[zenbitz]

This is basically what I have been saying - making weapons breakable is OK if you are trying to make the player worry about it (spend resources to repair, limit uses of better items). But there has to be some kind of trade off, otherewise, player just allocates the precise amount to maintain everything perfectly. In which case, game might be better off just skipping the whole maintenace/wear mechanic and just cutting player income 10%.

It's only a good mechanic if there is some reason for the player to deviate from a default allocation of resources.

However, the Fire Emblem thing just strains my credibiilty - although it is a reasonable way to balance weapons (making more powerful ones fragile), but it seems somewhat artificial.

 

[Martin]

Personally I dont think adding a new layer of complexity with fully degradable items is a good choice for an rpg, even a heavy combat oriented one.

Having items completely degrade until they are unrepairable/disappear sucks imho.
There are plenty of other things you can do to create money sinks or balance the economy, besides in the case of dungeon crawling for example is forcing the player back to the nearest trader/smith very often a good design decision? Does it add depth and challenge or just extra work?

I think its a bad design decision, this is why I also tend to support unlimited or very large inventory space and encumbrance only being tied to equipment worn.

In the case there had to be some kind of item degradation in a game personally I would just implement a couple of distinctions, that is it could degrade just one or two levels bellow "top condition", but from that point onwards it couldnt get more damaged and it wouldnt break.

Someone mentioned in this thread there could be specific and powerful items who are very prone to break or always break, like for example the "glass sword" item in the ultimas, im fine with that as long the player isnt forced to depend on those item types for tough battles.

Just my opinion.

 

[deuxhero]

Having now played system shock 2, I have found another good use (at least it seems that way after shuffling through 3 pistols of varing starting quality in the first 3 hours). The weapons degrade a bit too quickly, but it works with the survival horror aspect.

 

[denizsi]

I'm leaning towards stat-tied degradation and maintenance and further maintenance equipment, while also the ability to repair certain FUBAR items as well. A broken sword is one thing. A pierced and cut leather armor is another.

For a "traditional" RPG (passage of time + travel map + rest), I'd make maintenance a part of the travel and camp/rest options to affect or be affected by travel time/speed and other variables and possibilities (hostile/neutral/friendly encounters, weather) present during travel. The model in my head has options as such selecting the pace of travel, eating, camping and resting habits, carefulness etc., and I'd add maintenance to the list, as something to be done automatically during your travels, provided you have the equipment and you want it done, preferably with the ability to choose and/or prioritize between certain items or item types (equipped items, equipped weapons/armor, all items, all weapons/armor etc).

What I have in my mind to combat reloading is to have a hidden and semi-random FUBAR buffer that can not be detected by the players, even though the player can normally tell the condition of an item depending on his/her stats, so if the player neglects maintenance long enough, items will reach FUBAR buffer long before the player can tell and once an item ever reaches the FUBAR buffer, this FUBAR buffer will start going down no matter what and the item will become practically unusable when the bar hits 0. So, even if you reload several games back, the chances are that you triggered the FUBAR buffer long ago due to your negligence and as a result, the item will "break" no matter what you do.

Players will still reload though, but that's ok with me. As I said, this is to "combat" reloading by making it a practice in futility (or to screw them good), not to make players avoid reloading. Making sure that the players understand that they have brought breaking of items on themselves by their own negligence would hopefully be sufficient for this to work beautifully.

That said, I'd also prefer per-item-type handling of item degradation. As I mentioned above, treating all the items as same and using the same damage-phases for everything is somewhat silly, at least for the game I have in my mind. It's certainly ok in games where dealing with broken equipment is simply out of focus of the game.

I thought the Fallout 3 concept was good, though not well balanced.

It was a good start, if overly simplistic and consolitic. But a good start nonetheless.

6 -unused, top condition
5 - used, but no bad effects yet

What's the point of having two identical stages? Cosmetic condition?

 

[denizsi]

Personally I dont think adding a new layer of complexity with fully degradable items is a good choice for an rpg, even a heavy combat oriented one.

Having items completely degrade until they are unrepairable/disappear sucks imho.
There are plenty of other things you can do to create money sinks or balance the economy, besides in the case of dungeon crawling for example is forcing the player back to the nearest trader/smith very often a good design decision? Does it add depth and challenge or just extra work?

It all depends on the specific game, plus you're making very generalist assumptions. Forcing the player revisit the repairmen very often sure doesn't sound good, but does this how it has to be with all games, or even how it has always been?

I think, regardless of how often the game sends you to Mr. Repairman, there should be other factors to create a conflict of interest and challenge for maintaining and repairing your equipment. You must be balancing up something else by keeping your equipment at moderate condition.

Take my model suggestion and put it in a game where time is almost always of essence. Everything you do when you're travelling means it takes you longer to reach where you're going. If you're short on time, you'll need to balance how often and how well you eat, rest, how safe you travel and whether you'll have time left to do anything else like maintaining your equipment when you're camping. Maybe some of your equipment are in so bad a condition, you need to make a trip to a town with a Mr. Repairman but since you also need to be fast because you're short on time, taking that route might be risky plus can you trust to get your equipment back when come back for it later? (in Daggerfall, you can't. Repairs have deadlines. Miss it by a day or two and your repaired items go *poof*); or maybe you need to travel hidden and keep a low profile, and visiting the local Mr. Repairmen might not be the best way of maintaining that. It's an ever-present conflict and challenge. You must prioritize and plan ahead or you're screwed.

So as long as there are other factors that can take precedence to maintenance/repairing and vice versa, I think it's all good. With the exception of Daggerfall ( I've had enough "emergent" challenges due to my own negligence in Daggerfall to feel that it was always natural. Plus, as I said, the game had a very reasonable threshold for items breaking down ), I've always felt that items degrading just because they can, is a chore.

I think its a bad design decision, this is why I also tend to support unlimited or very large inventory space and encumbrance only being tied to equipment worn.

Because it's bad to send the player back to repairmen very often, you want to have unlimited/very large inventories. Do items degrade and break in your model? Judging by what you said, I guess not, but then what's the point of having the ability to pick up and store every piece of anything you can ever find? I'm not making the connection.

edit: fixed some wording.

 

[deuxhero]

However, the Fire Emblem thing just strains my credibiilty - although it is a reasonable way to balance weapons (making more powerful ones fragile), but it seems somewhat artificial.

"artificial"? Thousand year old relics being fragile is artificial?

 

[denizsi]

It all depends on your point of view, if the game doesn't impose one on you. He sees these legendary, powerful weapons that ridiculously go poof as you swing them; you see naturally declining relics with legendary powers contained within and perhaps deteriorating due to these very same powers, wearing the host item's resistance down all the time.

 

[DraQ]

It would be an absolutely genius idea if it wasn't immediately exploitable by terminating and restarting the game.

I really like this idea, though, and am trying to think of an alternative implementation. What if the game kept track of the time since your last savegame, and based penalties on that ?

It has to do it via relative in-game time, so that exploiting it won't be as easy as altering the system clock.

Everything can be exploited, the goal is just to make it NOT TEMPTINGLY EASY.

Everything can be broken, yes, though is terminate and restart viable solution? It would be very time consuming, and laborious with repeated use, so it would also create pressure to just not die - trying to survive would become more desirable than severe temporary suck or spending a few minutes restarting and reloading each time you die.

Keeping track since the last savegame, on the other hand, would mostly hit legitimate players, as it would discourage saving and encourage sessions as long as humanely possible. It would be even worse than consolish save-points in this regard.

Now, keeping track of time passing between reloads in a single session or even (it would have to rely on system clock, though) between separate sessions, would be a vaid addition to my proposed mechanics.

Mind you, the idea is not to break or permanently detriment progress on reload. The idea is to make the reloads undesirable without any permanent effects.

It avoids the frustration of more complex systems; you know exactly when your weapon will break and you control it.

Predictable, dumbing down, banal, shit, boring.

But there has to be some kind of trade off, otherewise, player just allocates the precise amount to maintain everything perfectly. In which case, game might be better off just skipping the whole maintenace/wear mechanic and just cutting player income 10%.

It's only a good mechanic if there is some reason for the player to deviate from a default allocation of resources.

Playing different builds in different ways automagically does that. I don't expect to be visiting repair guy very often with monk, mage, stealth dude or diplomatically oriented character.

Personally I dont think adding a new layer of complexity with fully degradable items is a good choice for an rpg, even a heavy combat oriented one.

(...)

I think its a bad design decision, this is why I also tend to support unlimited or very large inventory space and encumbrance only being tied to equipment worn.

:codexrage:

Go die in a fire, kind sir, or at least leave the codex and go play a jpg.

And yes, having weapon break sucks. So does dying, catching a disease or failing in any other way - let's eliminate those as well, after all, games are played for fun and should never diminish player's feeling of being a beautiful, unique snowflake.

Also, "Martin" as in "Martin Septim", right?

(3 posts)

This.
(although I'm not entirely sure about FUBAR meter, but it sure does look interesting)

Daggerfall

Also, this.

 

[zenbitz]

Hey, I thought of a game that does "breakable" items well:

Oregon Trail! The faster you moved, the faster your wagons would get worn down and you would have to spend money to repair them. Of course, the slower you went, the more food you ate...

 

[deuxhero]

I'm leaning towards stat-tied degradation and maintenance and further maintenance equipment, while also the ability to repair certain FUBAR items as well. A broken sword is one thing. A pierced and cut leather armor is another.

I think you have it backwards, a broken sword has to be melted down (Might as well just make a new one, your only reusing it's metal) and reforged. Is leather armor made all at once, or in piece?