I love durability systems when they’re done well such as in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. In these rare games, the designers have clearly kept the durability system as part of a carefully designed gear economy. Part of the intended difficulty of these games is learning to improvise and not relying on a singular weapon or tactic. The action doesn’t stop when your sword breaks. It often becomes more frantic and desperate unless the player has planned accordingly, and then they can feel rewarded for proper preparation. In other words, proper implementation tends to look much more like Resident Evil resource management than the classic Diablo money sink.

Unfortunately, most games do not justify these systems. In Dark Souls, Skyrim, old Diablo, and countless others, the durability system is more of a grindy chore that forces the action to stop whenever the player has to “return to town” to repair their stuff. The player dreads their gear breaking not because it’ll happen in the heat of action, but because they have to basically babysit their gear and put all action on hold while they regularly check their gear’s “health” and occasionally focus on getting it repaired.