Hello! Just here to give my own thoughts on durability.
I will likely misspell a few things.
First off, i am certain that before this patch so was repair hammers allready a consumable and tongs is what gave infinite amount of repairs, i remember it clearly because i put it in my feedback thread how i didnt see the point in repair hammers when you had tongs.
But perhaps i am just crazy?
Anyway, we will now go with the premise that tongs dont repair and we just got the repair hammers now.
How to punish bashing chest and doors without durability
I am a bit suprised this was one of the issues with removing durability. I have never paused and thought about my decision if i wish to bash down a door or not because of the durability hit, for the simple reason that i find spells actiully more efficient.
If you want to make players think more carefully about bashing chest and doors i would not look at durability but look on the chest and doors.
Chest is a easy one which many has suggested, make it clear you have destroyed items in the chest, having useless loot pop up called "broken item" when you do it.
Doors is a bit more tricky because it depends on the area they are in, but if there is npc around then have them react and be alarmed.
If they are more in a dungeon you could make a sort of mimic door that attacks back if you attack it, spitting splinters, or they could have seals/runes/whatever on them that either give extra protection like regenerating armor/magic armor, or work like traps that for example cause a poison cloud when attacking.
These things is what i believe would make people pause and consider if they really want to bash that chest or door, very few has probebly ever decided not to bash in order to save durability.
So remove durability then?
Well i am not saying that, durability can have a place as long it aint annoying and serves a purpose, the annoying part is honestly rather easy, and it is what many has pointed out, have a repair all, both at vendors and somewhere outside like on the repair hammer itself or a button beside the character sheet.
So what purpose would durability serve?
Sure some find immersion in it, but that is rather subjective and i will focus more on a practical purpose.
You could have it in combat, but i aint so sure how well that would work, only if durability is at 0 so is that useful for you as the aggressor, a wepon at 1 durability works just as fine as one with 60, if this process is slow then it aint worth it, just focus on taking down the health.
And if the process is fast, then that is just annying as the defender, remember that gear gives more then just armor and damage, they give stats, and sometimes you can not use certain abilities or even other gear without it, and getting durability to 0 in combat is a permanent debuff, it aint like stun that goes away after a turn or two, trying to fix it with repairing mid combat honestly sound more annoying then fun.
So what purpose can you give durability?
You could change so you dont lose durability when wearing it, and instead focus more on it being a way to achieve loot, with that i mean you find broken items, perhaps just be chance on a field, or as a penelty because you bashed a chest, and in order to use the item so must you repair it.
You could as well have so if you repair something that is full durability so will it be "refined" and give for example 20% more armor or 5% more damage, and the effect wears off like current durability works until it reach the base amount.
You could also use the hammers for repairing objects in the world, such as a broken door, table, chair etc. It serves no real purpose on its own but one could always make some sort of quest or path centered around it, for example there could be a broken lever to a bridge/gate and you can either go around it, or you can repair the lever and go throu.
The point is that these suggestions would make it so you can go throu the game without even repairing once, but if you do repair so are you rewarded.
And yes with these suggestions so do i think hammers should be consumables.
PS: Dont like identify glass be a consumable, dont see the point with it, just makes you either run back to town or hold on un-identified items in case you find something you want to identify more, what is the reasoning behind that?
