#so if you want to hear me rant about any particular game's durability mechanic you can just send an ask and I'll respond

[catgirltoofies]

durability in a vacuum often isn't necessarily a bad mechanic, but it can be bad when put into certain contexts, and can be good when put into certain contexts.

let's take minecraft, as an example. minecraft's durability system is bad, but i've come to believe that it's actually due to other mechanics that the system is truly bad. on a very basic level, losing all the durability in a tool breaks the tool, destroying it permanently. this tends to be an annoyance more than anything, because it's relatively inexpensive to just make new tools, especially with how common iron is. once you have access to a good cave, you're likely to amass a decent pile of diamonds as well.

of note here is that tools can be repaired in numerous ways. if you make multiples of a tool, you can combine their durabilities to repair them. you can also use an anvil to repair them with their base material - though this is only economical with armor, for unenchanted tools, it's better to just make a new tool. of note, however, is that the experience cost to use an anvil doubles for that tool each time you repair it, and if the cost goes over 40 levels, the anvil will refuse your repair. in this case, your only option is to bring the tool to a grindstone, which will clear its enchantments, but also reset its anvil cost. and, of course, the king of enchantments, mending. mending is an enchantment which uses dropped experience - not stored experience - to repair the tool as it's used.

within mending lies the fatal flaw of minecraft's durability mechanic. once you have access to mending, there is no longer any mechanic - durability is functionally turned off, especially for tools and weapons. in general, if a mechanic can easily be turned off through gameplay, there's a huge issue.

every game has mechanics to provide challenge for the player. one of the most common mechanics is the combination of health, defense, and damage reduction. these are all different terms that functionally refer to the same thing: how much damage can a player take before they die. there are multiple ways this idea can be worked on, the three most common being increasing the maximum health pool, reducing incoming damage by a flat amount, and reducing incoming damage by a percentage. in most games, there will usually be some kind of limit to how hard to kill a player can make themselves. most often, health increases give diminishing returns, damage can only be reduced to 1, or damage resistance caps at a certain percentage (80-95% is a common breakpoint range)

imagine, now, a mending-type enchantment for player health. you can still lose health, of course, but whenever you would gain experience with missing health, you instead regain a heart. in this way, it would be very, very easy to simply never die again - with a bow (enchanted with mending, of course), you can defeat any enemy functionally for free, only costing an inventory slot or two for ammunition. you can take damage from pillagers and skeletons and witches, sure, but you can just kill them and then you heal off whatever damage you took, if you even have any missing after saturation regeneration. by that same token, if the enchantment instead gave saturation, you would become functionally unkillable even in melee, as any damage you took would be immediately regenerated through natural healing.

that was an extreme example, of course, but it makes clear the problem - the mechanic can just be disabled. and this disabling isn't just a meta option - indeed, there is no game rule you can change to disable durability altogether - it's an in-game intended method of outright ignoring what actually has potential to be an actually interesting mechanic.

and i want to be clear, i don't think durability as a mechanic is necessarily bad. I've played games that have genuinely good durability mechanics. i just think in many cases, it doesn't make the game any more fun or interesting, and it's especially egregious when the developers agree and add a way to circumvent it, rather than either try to make it better or outright remove it.

actually i want to talk about a game that i think does durability very well. valheim.

in valheim, all weapons, armor, and tools have durability. dealing damage, using the tool, or taking damage reduces the durability of the relevant item. when an item runs out of durability, it's disabled, and you can no longer use it - in the case of weapons and tools, they can't be swung, and armors can't be worn. importantly, though, you never lose the item - it simply becomes useless dead weight until you can repair it. repairing an item, though, is free! the only requirement is that you're at a relevant workbench of a high enough level. this is a relatively small touch, but that single requirement heavily ties into and enforces the base building. repairing your items necessitates having a home to come to, or an investment into building an outpost to repair items far from home. durability in valheim acts less as a resource sink, and more as a timer on how long you can adventure from home and do your work; the longer you're out, the more wear and tear your gear picks up, and if you run out of durability and you can no longer swing your sword or your warm clothes get torn off, you go into panic mode because you need to get home or risk dying. this can be partially circumvented by carrying duplicates, but this comes with higher risk and lower returns: if you die, you risk more valuable things, and every duplicate item takes up a valuable inventory slot. with very careful play, one can simply keep repairing their stuff and never actually have to worry about it, and this rewards preparation - before you set out, make sure everything is in good condition lest you be forced to run home naked through the snow.