A custom weapon durability thing

[BBHood217]

I've been thinking about how weapon durability was done in all the FE games, and have been brainstorming about how I'd implement durability in a game that I'd make for FEXNA or whatever other FE maker assuming any of them are released within my lifetime.  So hear me out here.

Take the durability stuff of the GBA games, and then cut them all down to around 2/3 of their original values.  They still decrement per use as normal, but running out is where my big change is.  When a weapon's durability runs out, it doesn't break; instead, it only becomes unusable but you don't lose it.  Don't worry about throwing them away though, because they're not dead weight forever; the durability of all items is reset back to full after a chapter is finished, ready to be used again for the next chapter.

So there's my concept.  It no doubt needs more adjusting, like with store prices where maybe they should be doubled since items are now more permanent.  And of course, consumable and promotion items still run out into nonexistence as normal.  Anyway, I'd like to hear your opinion on this; I'm open to responses both "good idea :)" and "bad idea >:(".

[Punished Dayni]

Will staves count as consumables in this system? I'm genuinely curious as the implications for a system where even low level staves can be reuseable is quite palpable.

I do disagree on how many uses a weapon would have in the system: rather than having blanket durability, I think it will have to be a bit more considered than just dropping all weapons by a third. I think one way to see might be choosing arbitrary numbers for testing purposes. It also has implications for bosses, as they'd now have less weapon uses to work with if you don't change inventories to compensate.

I think it has potential, similar to weapons hanging around like in Judgral but with a different system for repair. An alternative might be that you have to pay to repair the weapons after the chapter, but you'd have higher durability as a result.

[BBHood217]

I'm still undecided on staffs.  On one hand, you'd be more free to use high level staffs instead of just hoarding them; on the other hand, being able to use said high level staffs on every chapter might be unbalanced.  And reducing their usage numbers might not be a solution either because enemies use them too; a druid with a berserk staff would be a lot less annoying if he could only use it once instead of three times.

And what about the hammerne staff?  What's its purpose now that weapons no longer break?

[Corrobin]

Maybe it permanently doubles the maximum uses of a weapon? Just spitballing.

[CatManThree]

So basically FE4's durability system, but refined to work within a GBA game. Certainly an interesting concept.

(edit) Hold on. So you are sayin there's no draw back to fixing broken weapons? That's a bit ridiculous. The repair systems from TRS and FE4 are way better than this. You should try thinking about a systems like that.

Edited March 19, 2018 by CatManThree

[Solvaij]

4 hours ago, Corrobin said:

Maybe it permanently doubles the maximum uses of a weapon? Just spitballing.

I like this idea, but I half is probably too much. I also think you'd need to reduce weapon uses by more than a third.

And yeah, you might have to keep staves breakable for the reasons mentioned.

Edited March 19, 2018 by Solvaij

[Nébulya]

It is a good idea but it should be polished. First, as you don't mention any repair system.. I would simply not make weapons unusable but weaker the more you use it when the weapon has reached 0. Or maybe having 10 points below 0 (-1 to - 10) and when it reaches - 10, it becomes unusable.  And the more you use it below 0, the more it becomes weaker obviously. 

This way, it'll prevent some enemies to loose their effectiveness until you found a strategy to make his weapon weaker?

And the player will need to be careful when he organises all inventories, I would even reduce the inventory to 2 weapons and 2 items to prevent abuse from using other weapons.. 

What do you think? I tried to find something to make this choice more useful. 

In fact, I already searched something to replace the current system and here is my idea with some changes I've made here, but I already rewrote every standard aspect of the game for myself.. :) obviously I didn't write everything haha

Edited March 20, 2018 by Metakirby