The Impact Factor

De-Grating On My Nerves: Item Degradation Systems Suck
Article

Abstract: Item degradation systems have neither historically nor contemporaneously added anything of value to the gameplay. They are tedious, archaic, and uniformly unfun. Please give good thought to their inclusion.

There I was, knee-deep in swamp water facing against a seemingly endless horde of angry Drowners. I had just come from a coastline shipwreck, and before that spelunking in a magic filled cavern. I had gotten caught up sweeping across the lush and vibrant countryside. I am a Witcher. Nothing was going to stop me. Monsters cower before me. Humans do well to remember the power my training, conditioning, and rituals have afforded me. As I sit atop my trusty steed Roach watching as a storm gathers out on the horizon, whipping the grass and trees around me in nervous anticipation, I remember something. Oh yeah, I need to go get my freaking weapons and armor repaired. So I trek to a signpost, warp to a miserable little town with a miserable little dwarf, pay him an exorbitant amount of gold, and then make the trek back. Nothing says epic fantasy adventure like my thirtieth trip to the same stupid blacksmith.

I'm here to kill monsters and chew bubble gum. And I'm all out of gum.

That’s right folks. I don’t often like to focus on negatives here on The Impact Factor, and even less so about nitpicking games, but here we are. I’ve been spending a lot of my gaming time recently playing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. It’s an exceptional experience. I cannot wait to spend dozens (and dozens and dozens) more hours exploring its rich world, great writing, unique take on fantasy lore, and compelling quests. Throughout the time I’ve been playing, though, I couldn’t get this topic off my mind. I tried. Believe me. I also debated whether or not to write anything about it, especially since it’s one of those things that is discussed fairly frequently in the games space. But I just had to write about it. I know you’ll forgive me in time. So what’s the thing that bothered me enough to write an article about it here? Item degradation systems in role-playing games.

I’ll reiterate my takeaway right up top here. Item degradation systems have neither historically nor contemporaneously added anything of value to the RPG genre. They are tedious, archaic, and uniformly unfun. Please stop putting them in games. Or at the very least, give good thought to their inclusion.

It should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me, or has read more than an article or two on this blog, that I love role-playing games. The moment I moved out of the edutainment games space of my early childhood, RPGs became my bread and butter. Sure, I loved all kinds of games from all sorts of genres (platformers, fighting games and arcade racers in particular), but it was RPGs that truly spoke to me. Tales of Destiny. Final Fantasy IV. Hell, even Magi-Nation on the Gameboy color. And it only grew from there.

Not ashamed to admit that I spent a lot of time playing Magi-Nation on the Gameboy Color.
The card game was pretty sweet, too.

The more RPGs I played, the more I noticed a recurring annoyance. A particular system that always frustrated and perplexed me at its inclusion. Item degradation.  So many of my favorite RPGs include some form of weapon or armor degradation. The Souls games, Fallout 3, and Dark Cloud are just a few of many examples. The systems were usually pretty simple. When you use an item in combat it wears down. The amount of wear and tear an item (piece of armor, sword, etc) can endure is based upon an in-game statistic. When the item gets too low, you’ll generally have one of three things happen: the item will become less effective (less damage or less damage reduction), the item will become unequipable, or the item will break. To avoid these terrible fates, the player will need to travel to an NPC, generally a storeowner or blacksmith, and pay money to repair the item.

On the more innocuous end of the spectrum, you have games like Dark Souls. Repairing your weapons is relatively cheap and, with one nearly unmissible item purchase, you can fix your gear at any of the game’s many bonfires. Cool. On the hair-ripping-out-of-your-head end of the same spectrum, you have games like Dark Cloud and Fire Emblem. In Dark Cloud, if an item is broken, you lose it forever. Yep. Spend 60+ hours upgrading and evolving your sword? Have fun never using it again or going back several hours with that backup save you hopefully made. The game has an item called Repair Powder that you can keep in your inventory and use to fix your weapons, sure, but put it out of your mind for too long and enter a particularly long dungeon and you’re screwed. Fire Emblem can feel even worse when it gives you items that cannot ever be repaired. What’s shared between all of these systems, though, is that they all add nothing of any real value to the gameplay.

I can't tell how how scared & annoyed the Dark Cloud item degradation system made 12 year old me.
I broke out in a cold sweat when my weapons got low.

“Alex,” you might ask, “why are item degradation systems even added to games in the first place?” Great question, glad you’ve read the article up to this point. I asked myself the same thing. So let me try to unpack a little about why I think they are included. What the “point” is. In some ways, I can see how an item degradation system is supposed to resemble real life. As I’m sure anyone who has swung around a sword would be happy to tell you, it doesn’t take very long for the blade to dull. Armor gets beat up pretty easily, too. All that being true, why include the most boring part of armed combat as a game system? It’s a video game, items can magically not degrade and I think most people would be a-ok with it. Item degradation systems also serve as experience / gold sinks. If a player needs to spend gold or items they obtained to fix up their gear, it should encourage the player to put more time into the game to get more of said gold and items. Except it doesn’t do that. It just an annoying waste of your resources. And it’s certainly not a fun way to think about playing. “Boy I’m so excited to grind for a bit to make sure I have enough gold to keep my weapons in tip-top shape!” Finally, I can see how item degradation can create a balance of risk and reward. For something like Dark Cloud especially, you need to nervously approach all combat, because do too much for too long without the right preparation and you can lose your best weapon forever. But most systems don’t go this far (thankfully) and just lower your items damage or prevent you from equipping them. You’re never on the edge of your seat thinking will it or won’t it break. It’s almost always more along the lines of, “ugh, I have to stop what I’m doing and repair it AGAIN?!”

Hello again, friend. Be seeing you here again real soon.

In the end, I can’t see any solid reasoning behind an item degradation system’s inclusion in a typical RPG. You don’t need to look any further than Skyrim to see the proof of this. The Elder Scrolls had item degradation systems in all releases until the fifth installment, Skyrim. Not having to deal with repairing your items streamlined the game. It let you spend more time killing dragons and less time worrying about how low the durability on your axe had gotten.

Killing a dragon in Skyrim. No whetstone required.

As I mentioned above, my time with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt inspired me to write this piece. Managing item durability is my number one grievance after about 15 hours of play. The Witcher 3 has a fast, action-based combat system that tasks the player with swiftly striking foes, dodging, and parrying. That means you’re constantly hitting stuff with your swords and getting hit by monsters and bandits and ghosts. For me at least, it has created a rampant need to repair my gear. The Witcher 3 also included a big and obtrusive icon that pops-up on screen when one of your items falls below 50% durability. I get it, The Witcher 3. I know I need to fix my stuff. Without exploits or spending too much time grinding, gold doesn’t come too easily. That means each time I have to repair it puts a significant dent in my coffers. Less gold has made for less flexible purchasing habits, too. I would love to spend more gold on Gwent cards or bomb formulae, but knowing that I need to have enough to constantly fix my items keeps me from buying. Even getting to the locations in which I repair my items has been a frustration. The Witcher 3 has a huge open world. So far, I’ve only found three NPCs who are able to fix my weapons and armor. Until just recently, the two I’d found were on a different section of the map than my current quest line. This meant that I had to find a sign post, fast travel to another map (which initiates a long load sequence), run a bit to get to the blacksmith, run back to another sign post, fast travel back (another long load) and then resume what I was doing. It’s annoying. So far, The Witcher 3’s item degradation system has taken my time, taken my gold, and taken me away from what I want to be doing. Even though the consequence of weakened or broken items is minor (they block / do less damage), it still makes me wonder why the system was included at all.

Yes game, I know I have to get my sword repaired. Kind of
fighting some harpies at the moment.

That’s not to say that item degradation systems can never work. I just want there to be serious thought about their inclusion. I want them to be implemented smartly. For example, you could do a lot with an item degradation system in a survival horror game. It could create that tension I mentioned earlier, balancing risk and reward. Is it worth killing this zombie even if it makes my baseball bat one step closer to being broken and unusable? Or what if the degradation system can be used to make a new item? Like if the baseball bat were to break, it gives you a sharp killing tool with a more limited range. There are also opportunities for item degradation systems in loot-heavy games like Diablo or Borderlands. Items weakening with use could prompt the player to try out new and radically different kinds of weapons and armor, which could in turn change up the way you play the game. It opens up new avenues of gameplay, rather than add a tedious wrinkle to the same gameplay that you see with traditional item degradation implementation in RPGs.

So that’s that. Stop including item degradation systems unless they really add something to your gameplay. I am loving The Witcher 3 so far, even for as much as it makes me repair my gear. For me it’s back to the grindstone. And the forge. Oh well. I have a Shrieker to kill.