Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Durability: yay or nay? Neither says me: new idea

So, it’s kind of in all rpgs, right? More or less. The question is, does anyone actually enjoy it, or feel it adds to the challenge? This is a game, after all – and the challenges that are fun to solve are the reason people get into these things. Is durability fun? In every game I’ve played with ‘weapons etc degrade’, it’s hit a real bum note regarding enjoyment of the experience.

Some might say it adds to the tension and randomness of battles – something could break at any minute, ruining your previously certain victory, and that’s a good thing. I’d agree with that, but is it actually any fun afterwards to try and hunt down some NPC who can repair things to fix your now unusable armour?

In most instances, you have to trek halfway across the map (boring) to find the one NPC who can fix your equipment. Then go all the way back to your previous location. For what? Where was the challenge there? Remembering where that armour-fixing NPC was to begin with? I prefer to reserve my memory for more important things in life, thanks.

Suggestion for improvement:

Keep the ‘durability’ thing. But relegate it only to battles. After each battle, durability goes back to ‘full health’. But during battle, something may just break.

The mechanic would involve that breakage lasting x amount of rounds, before it’s repaired. This is fantasy, after all – some magical reason for this could be invented, the point is gameplay-related rather than anything else.
Keeps the randomness factor, which we all like. And removes the boring, tedious factor of finding someone to fix the item after it’s broken. What do you reckon?

It's an interesting take on it, I'll give you that. Infinite durability is a bit bland, but having to periodically check every piece of equipment equipped by every character is a bit tedious, so an alternative look at durability is worth doing.

On the plus side, at least DOS2 doesn't have the weirdly fragile repair hammers we saw in Oblivion (which I renamed to "repair kits" to make the idea a bit less absurd, but it was still tiresome).

DOS had the mech creatures that could attack the entire durability of items.

I always felt durability in the game was kind of needless and tacked on. More of an annoyance after battle really. I think it would really be interesting if it were counted for in more ways. For example, spells that deliberately rust or damage weapons, environment effects like heat or wetness having extra effects on metal, different kinds of weapon/armor material besides leather,cloth,metal being accounted for and having their own different properties, etc.

Hmm, in general I agree that durability as it is now doesn't really serve a purpose. We can look at this from multiple angles. For DOSII I think game mechanics, strategic / tactical depth and thematic / narrative purpose are of importance, and I'll discuss these points of the current system. At the end my suggestion.

For game mechanics, it enhances item interaction with the player. A new 'statistic' of an item. However, at the moment this boils down to 'carry repair equipment and watch out for the yellow UI'. To me and I think most players, the resulting interaction with items (repairing = clicking the item and waiting, or even worse, going back to town to repair) is pretty dull.

At the moment, there is very little you have to think about strategically or tactically. Again, just make sure you have repair tools and watch for the yellow icon. Most scenarios where you broke something (you forgot tools or you didn't know), are not fun. It doesn't make the player feel like they made a bad choice, it's just like forgetting real world stuff.

Now thematically it makes a lot of sense. It gives the items more personality and story development (however limited). But I think that a counter going from 60/60 to 20/60 to 0/60 is, again, pretty boring.

Your suggestion definitely adds (in my opinion) some possibilities for tactical decisions. For example, a skill that can break or damage equipment. But what would happen if you have a 2H knight, and his weapon breaks mid-fight? Is he going to fight with fists? I'd imagine the damage reduction would be really bad.

The question is, what are we trying to add to the game here? I think thematically, it would be fine if there would be no durabilty, but you find 'broken' gear (trash items), similar to gold plates or cups which are currently found in worms and crocodiles. To give items more personality, I think upgrading or enchanting them at a blacksmith would be better. Or maybe the items can gain bonusses from certain activites. If your character walks on fire a lot, boots could get additional fire resistance. It's not realistic, but it doesn't have to be. Getting or investing in gear for bonusses adds more decisions Use your old gear, now upgraded, or use newer gear that has more upgrade potential? Maybe NPC's could demand 'personalized' old gear in case of a robbery, or newer gear? Maybe items don't break, but lose monetary value over time?

At the moment, Durability adds nothing. Repairs are both infrequent and cost nothing after you get your first hammer, making it pretty pointless. I have two ideas:

1) Eliminate Durability completely.

2) Add an element of management or resource consumption to Durability: Repairing consumes hammers at a rate proportional to the quality of item. I might have the power rank of the colors wrong, but the general idea is this:

White items consume 1 hammer to fully repair an item.
Blue items consume 2 hammers.
Green items and Uniques consume 3 hammers.
Purple items consume 4 hammers.

And of course there are blacksmiths with infinite supplies of hammers to buy. If Blacksmithing is added back into the game, it can affect this mechanic as well.

As it's been stated, the mechanic needs a change:

Whether that change is to get rid of durability all together (not my preference)

Add consequences and make durability a more involved affair that requires thinking (my preference)

Or switching it out for something else altogether such as regenerating health (as OP states)

Changing hammers to consumables and adding consequences seems like the easiest method at the moment and one I'd push for.

Good thoughts all round. I think it’s safe to say that durability is more a nuisance/annoyance than something that adds tactical depth. It needs a revision, it needs some new idea, before it’s actually viable, gameplay-wise.

I like Nivv’s suggestion of skills that can strategically cause havoc to certain items. I also think Aerlynn’s point about some equipment being so essential to a character (a warrior’s weapon, for weapon), that a skill that can just break it would be too OP.

So is there a happy medium?

Let’s take Nivv’s idea of certain skills ruining the effectiveness of particular items – that is pretty cool, and far more interesting than the way durability currently plays out.

Say there’s a generic fireball skill that has x% chance of randomly knocking back the durability of some armour pieces. The durability knockback (since it’s restricted to just this fight, if durability ideally goes back to full health after each battle) is significant enough to be meaningful, but not enough to be overpowered – helmet is now 25% less effective, boots are now 20% less effective, after that fireball - all of which is totally random: it might be that nothing gets ruined.

Weapons, then, are a VERY special case, in that only the most uber, high-cost spells/skills can damage them – and although the damage is still meaningful (30%, say), it doesn’t completely nullify that character’s usefulness. And we still have some 'recharge' mechanic going on - like when you're frozen for 2 rounds, but after those 2 rounds, the weapon recovers its loss.

Have I missed or something or have people forgotten that you can repair your own gear with a repair hammer?

Yeah. Sebille seems to like to be my handy smith for some reason. I've given her a whole stack of repair hammers just in case, but I don't think I've lost one yet, which is refreshingly unlike TES.

I think this is exactly the issue we're discussing here though. What fun is it to have a character that just has a ton of repair hammers that occasionally get used, and that's about it?

To come back to the earlier point about durabilty during combat, say you can break the armor item. Wouldn't the armor value be much easier to take down? For instance, armor that has like 50 defense only absorbs 50 damage. So essentialy you do break it at 50 damage. It doesn't reflect in the durability, but for gameplay purposes its broken.

Durability has no purpose.

Doors that are worth breaking are unbreakable, chests when broken drop less/nothing so the cost of breaking them is already there, and it serves no practical purpose on armors.

Instead of durability and repair hammers, we should have a Disarm and Disrobe status/effects that allow an enemy to strip your gear(forcing AP use to re-equip), and Crowbars that act like super-lockpicks(rare, but require no skill to use).

With Crowbars in game, no door should be breakable through damage.

I don't see any durability here.

'nuff said.

Well, if we're using D&D as the standard, then all other RNG systems should also be in place..such as spell failure chance and ability to cause and resist effects and spells based on main stats....and everything else such a system is inclusive of.

Not that I don't see anything wrong with a digitized format of the basic D20 system. It works, is proven to work, and I think most would be happy with it.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/exploration.htm#tableCommonArmorWeaponAndShieldHardnessAndHitPoints

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/specialAttacks.htm#sunder

http://www.d20srd.org/search.htm?q=Sunder

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/rustMonster.htm - (bonus: lel)

Yeah, there's a point to durability. Currently is it be utilized? Not really. We're in chapter 1 though.

The real question is: is this fun? Can it be fun? How do you balance it?

.....Totally forgot about Hardness O.o Generally cause, unless it's specific instances, it doesn't crop up.

But hasn't it already been mentioned that by creating skills around, such as Sunder, and making it more involved than "take a second to repair items after every battle when yellow symbol is there" <- this seems the major problem. We know that isnt fun, so we gotta change the circumstances before we can say if it's a system that should go away in its entirety.

I think Sunder would be a good warrior skill, could add corrosive spell to earth, a disarm to wind, and so on. Gives more tactical flexibility.

EDIT: I guess, I'm trying to say we should push for Larian to expand on Durability and how it's used before casting judgement.

Looks to me like most people get the original argument. We're talking about the entertainment value of durability here - is it a strategic challenge that provides any kind of challenge? The answer is a unanimous 'no'. Carrying around repair hammers = yawn. What we're saying is - if it's to stay, how can we make it actually interesting?

Anyway, I think I've said all I can on the topic, using the ideas of others above who've given this a bit of thought. In a nutshell, I can't see any reason for it to stay outside of combat - repair hammers and/or looking for a repair shopkeeper is drudge. It's like the kind of task you might get on a Monday morning in work. The kind of thing that makes you close the game and do something else with your precious free hours.

Easiest solution is to drop it. No one complains, no one feels the loss, the game is all the better without it. Hardest solution is to keep it and invest enough thinking into it to turn it into something that's actually enjoyable and contributes to the strategy. I vote for the former (simply because it requires less intellectual effort, and the game has more interesting mechanics already that only stand to benefit from extra time/resources/thinking).

There aren't enough strategic resources if we're only taking EA into account.

In BG1 there was "durability". Non-magical melee weapons could break but there was a plot related reason for that.

I don't think that durability adds anything to the game, I don't remember ever losing a battle because an item broke or got close to breaking. I remember having to open the inventory, remove said item, repair it, and equip it again.

Perhaps they should keep durability for non-magical items only. Unless they want to be inventive I don't see why keep it at all.

If they want to keep it, they could have broken magical gear have a random magical effect on use.
Say you are wearing a broken armor, if an enemy hits you maybe there is a burst of magical energy that lashes back at him, or maybe this burst hits you. The same could happen if you're attacking with a broken weapon.

So remove it, do more with it, or make it more situational and specific in context and use?

Would people be happy with durability if it only mattered in relation to specific events and skills? Such as sundering weapons or armor on an opponent?