The Legendary Game Mechanic No One Likes

What're your thoughts on durability? Correction: As some comments have pointed out, Ultima III doesn't have durability mechanics. I came across some incorrect information during my research, it's a massive oversight on my end and I apologize for that. In the future, if I discuss a retro game, I'll consult directly with players and community sources to ensure accuracy. However, I'm confident in the accuracy of the rest of the video, since those are games I have personally played! Also since I'm seeing a few comments asking this, the texture pack used at the start of this video is by "Retro NES Texture Pack" by Befarrar. :)

How Mojang could fix durability mechanic: 1. Removing the cumulative XP cost for repairing. 2. Making items not evaporate when their durability reaches 0 (just like the elytra).

I like durability, I just hate minecraft's garbage "too expensive" "let's make this cost 500 levels to repair" repair system

"Without durbility, the game becomes less realistic" AND???

I totally agree with you. Mending is NOT the problem, durability system is ... if players worship mending so badly, it means durability system is broken

4:26 "Until One fateful day in 2001 when durability boarded a plane. Everyone's lives were about to change." Me: sweats

That's why I like the Tinker's Construct mod when it comes to Minecraft. When a tool breaks, you can still repair it instead of having to make a new one

"oh hey look, gold armor! it must be good right?" 1 minute later gold armor: screams in durability

You almost gave me a heart attack once durability bordered a plane in 2001

I believe the saving grace for durability systems is the concept of soft-breaking, under which items turn into tombstones instead of vanishing upon reaching 0 durability, allowing you to repair completely busted items, as with Minecraft's elytra (honestly not the best implementation around). The reason this doesn't inherently suck is that soft-breaking effectively turns durability into an obfuscated ammo system, and ammo systems can indeed encourage exploration, weapon variety and provide meaningful challenge, as demonstrated by the "pistol start" concept for Doom playthroughs, which has the player reset their weapons, health, armor, ammo and ammo capacity to the initial values upon loading into a map, integrating them into the map's own specific weapon progression and allowing the map author's intended restrictions on weapon use and damage tanking to apply per-map.

Durability not only discourage you use good tools instead of bad. It either make you constantly go back and craft new one at home or making you carry materials for crafting them again and again in a trip. That aggravates already exising inventory issue.

I like how Valheim does it. Nothing ever permanently breaks, and every thing is free to repair at the correct workbench

I've always hated the "People would use the same weapon all the time" argument. Because, even when they're right, who cares? It's that player's loss if they just decide to never use other weapons. If you wanna use other weapons, you don't need the game to force you to. If the game's other weapons are fun, you'll use them just because you can.

Durability really acts like a manual reset of your progress in a game. It just makes the game feel repetitive to get your tools or weapons back over and over again. I hate the fact that several games do it and force you to spend more time to get stuff that you previously had.

how many times has "durability" being said? yes

My issue in breath of the wild wasn't about the weapons breaking, but that you couldn't buy new ones. you had to go all the way out to timbuck two and wait for a blood moon then fight some annoying monster for the 100th time to get a new flame sword every sing time.

In my personal opinion, if a game you are playing has a tool that breaks, your controller or keyboard should just crumble away also. Would definitely make games more immersive.

This video was literally an eye-opener and made me actually rethink the way I view Minecraft and its durability mechanics. I was so used to this feature that I've never ever fully realized that it was THAT problematic. I always thought that mending was the issue, or the anvil's obnoxious limits, but I guess I was wrong all of this time. I remember building a railway in my survival Minecraft world. In order to do so, I had to dig up a big-ass tunnel. And when I got to work, in a shocking turn of events my ultimate netherite pickaxe almost got sent to Heaven, so I had to severely slow down the process of mining to save the pick. What adds insult to injury is the fact that to repair a netherite tool you need a bloody netherite ingot. Did the durability mechanic provide any fun gameplay on that occassion? No. I had to use severely limited unenchanted iron pickaxes to mine out the tunnel or alternatively dig out ANOTHER tunnel just to get the materials to repair mine or make another pickaxe. This is extremely time-consuming and tedious. Yet, at the same time, like Xay said, if you remove it - it'll leave an empty space and maybe cause an even bigger outburst. However, I don't think that durability mechanic in Minecraft will ever receive any major change like that. It's too fundamental in the game with so much other mechanics built on it. It's too big of a risk, and we all know for sure Microsoft and Mojang don't have the balls to make such a move. Not after the Combat Update. On the contrary, is durability such a problem in Minecraft? You can easily bypass it using Unbreaking and Mending. With some xp bottles, you'll basically create an undestructable machine that'll last for your entire playthrough. Yep, the setup is quite tedious, but not as tedious as mining for the materials back and forth for the eternity. So yeah, it's actually an interesting and mind-breaking video, probably one of the best on Xayllernste's channel

4:38 Plane flying without retracting the wheels >:^)

Ngl, durability in horror games makes so much sense. It adds to the experience. But in many games it’s not necessary