In the latest Zelda, the durability system was served for limiting the usage of any "unbalanced" weapon. But its casual inventory system backfired its amateur durability system, combined together turning the experience of weapon usage similar to card playing in Stonehearth or Slay the Spire, instead of weapon swinging in an action game.
There are actually good examples of weapon durability implantation among those action games, such as Sifu. In Sifu, the weapon or makeshift weapon player acquired were only good for delivering very few strikes, but the whole game's pacing was not disrupted but instead enhanced, just like those many arcade games back in the old days.
Diablo 2 also had pretty decent durability system that help control the inflation. So does WOW back then when players' level was capped at lvl60. For these two games, the item durability system helped balancing the economy of the game and did a solid good job.
In post apocalyptic games like Underrail, or Fallout News Vegas, the durability system also did an okish job at pacing the equipment progression which I feel BG3 somehow lacks: player party get overwhelmed by magical gears very early on once clearing the goblin camp.
But, well, on second thought, maybe we don't need item durability system at all in BG3. After all, we have Gale, that pain in the a** will help getting rid of anything that actually worth keeping.
