A lot of people dislike the abandonment of equipment maintenance as a gameplay mechanic/skill in Skyrim, their argument being that it removes depth. However, I really don't think this is the case. Repair hammers and the armor skill in past game added practically nothing to actual gameplay or character development. It was simply a prerequisite for the effective use of physical armor and weapons. For a warrior, it was never really a decision to use it or not, it was pretty much mandatory and the aspiring bandit slayer would stock up on cheap hammers as soon as possible, and that was that. Use and progression of the skill was an invariably static experience. Compare this to Fallout 3 and Fallout:New Vegas(I must give a shoutout to this games item health threshold, losing item effectiveness after 1 shot in F3 was just silly/maddeningly irritating), where repair is beautifully implemented, encouraging the player to scavenge and piece together their equipment. It added a dimension to the gameplay experience, something all skills should be required to do. However, since this sort of hobo repairman/mechanic savant style of gameplay may not suit the world of TES in quite the same way, I think the current implementation of Blacksmithing is preferable to the annoyance factor of the arbitrary armorer grind of previous installments.

I liked using them in Oblivion, however I didn't miss my armor or weapons breaking in the middle of combat. I prefer the smithing system used in Skyrim.

It was not mandatory to use repair tools, there were smiths everywhere.
At least before Oblivion, when they started hollowing out the game.

It was a decent mechanic, added depth and its removal means we now have a shallower game.

It didn't need to be Like Oblivion. and no need to delude yourself that there is a system, it barely passes off as a Dynamic if you look at these factors.

Items only get stronger.

The Material needed never changes

The material has 0 effect beyond just making said item and making it stronger.

will end up being thrown away or sold when something better comes along.

if they paid attention to morrowind where weapon types had different enchantment levels, or added quality to the material you gathered that effected weight, swing speed, attack strenght, special abilities/defense/offense things that amount to more than click click click (the lauded mocking statement against hammers from Oblivion works fine here too) then maybe it would have been a system.

It worked the exact same way in Morrowind. Click click click, there were just multiple types of hammers.

Same with material, they were always like tiers, and even in Skyrim different materials have different weight and thus different attack speed as well.


As for the whole degradation thing... why? Frankly I'm not missing anything, enchanted weapons need charges and bows need ammunition, adding some hammering every now and then adds nothing.
In Fallout it worked as you needed to collect parts to repair your items, this just wouldn't work in Skyrim.

You do reralize that in Skyrim you already have the perfect thing to repair weapons and armor, right. It's called a workbecnch and a grindstone. Removing degradation was uneccessary, it wasn't broken to begin with. Sure, it needed some changes, like no repairs on the fly (in the field), (much) slower degradation etc. Bethesda, in all it's wisdom, decides that instead of using a scaplal to repair a game mechanic, they'll just use a giant [censored] axe instead. It was overkill and certainly does remove a little bit of depth to the game...depth that I as well as others, sorely miss.

It was if you didn't want your armor or weapons breaking inside an Oblivion gate at a high level.

What was your point bringing up Morrowind in the way that you did? did I say something contrary? did I say morrowind did it different? did I insinuate that it was superior? no I brought up Materials and then gave examples no TES game had and my statement was more along the lines of having dynamic end products that can be shaped multiple ways rather than a singular get stronger with arbitrary (FLAWLESS) marker next to it.
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and as floyd stated the infrastructure is there, just underutilized and its basically a straightforward factory processing than actual Smiting. and since players don't have facilitated Jobs you'd think the process would be more involved to make said weapons more personal than...click click click.

My philosophy of game design is very simple: I want to be rewarded for actions I take, not punished for actions I do not take. Degradation punished me for not taking an action, and, as such, felt irritating rather than entertaining. Repairing an armor or weapon added nothing to the armor or weapon, it merely brought the armor or weapon back to its original state. It felt like "busywork" to me.

Slower degradation would've gone a long way to help alleviate this. Besides, in Oblivion at high levels it's not like there any shortage of Daedric weapons you can use temporarily until you can get to a smith.

Punish you for action you didn't take? you taking that leather shield to block against a torrent of Dragon Fire seems like a reasonable punishment...action you took..or smashing that iron sword against a daedra donned in Daedric Armor...

I like it, degradtion just waste my time and they broke way too fast anyway and as far as depth goes i would be more worried over removal of attribute system than item degradation but thats sadly gets more and more common.

i preffer this way i mean at least i dont have to spend every battle just doing a repair because my armor is at 99 just because i fought a mudcrab thats just silly, i preffer skyrim way

Exactly and it's been replaced by a much more fun smithing system. I really enjoy smithing in Skyrim. I didn't really enjoy pressing A repeatedly until my repair hammer broke. Don't know what's deep about that.

I'm amused the OP doesn't seem to think raising Smithing in Skyrim requires 'arbitrary grind'. Ironicly, the only thing adding weapon repair would do would be to give the grind some purpose, rather than it just being there for it's own sake.

Yeah smithing is actually fun, way more than repairing.

The degeneration system was tedious, but instead of fixing it they just got rid of it. They should have included it as part of the refinement process in smithing, swords would have positive statuses and negative statuses, legendary to broken. With each successful hit the weapon would gradually lose status until it became worthless, until it was resharpened or repaired at the smithy.

I like the sound of this. It would give me a reason to smith after I had maxed my smithing skill. Yes if the degradation was much slower than in Oblivon I would like this.

This. The introduction of smithing gave them a perfect opportunity to rework the repair system, but instead they just cut it, which seems to be their philosophy towards just about everything these days.

In oblivion it was just annoying. Yes, it does add a bit more "depth", but weapons are made of steel and materials that don't degrade that fast. Sure, some do like maybe glass or some other stuff, but I just felt it was so stupid to go hack away with a sword for a half hour and have it half as effective.... And then having to "repair it" every hour or so.

Skyrim did it right. I think it WOULD have been cool to see some differences between material types. Like maybe have glass chip easier, or iron to get dentednor damaged easier than steel. Just my take.

The difference is that smithing is com[letely optional and non-intrusive, while instilling a more tangible sense of progress. Repair was just there nagging you. And it wasn't a meaningful nag. You just threw money at the problem. The system in Fallout works so much better because you often CAN'T repair after every fight. It's less tedious and is so much more meaningful. Its not a grind, it's a feature. I would rather not be forced into using a tedious skill for realism's sake. Thats why there are acceptable breaks from reality in games. The truth is, armorer hardly added true "depth" at all.

Always found it annoying in Oblivion. Between the obnoxiousness of having to repair Light shields after every single encounter with trolls/ogres/daedroth/etc, and feeling forced to grind/train/force Armorer up to 50 so that I could start using enchanted gear...... meh. No great loss.

(Only positive Armorer had in Oblivion was that it was an semi-easy source of Endurance stat points.)

The skill was always entirely optional. While it's true that there's a more tangible sense of progression in Skyrim, the horrible mess that the skill is drains all joy from it. It's a pointless grind to raise (literally! Practically nothing you do to raise it has any value to the player), dull, shalow and just uninteresting to use. At least in previous implementations the skill's use flowed somewhat naturally from gameplay.
While it could've been good, even great, the smithing implementation in Skyrim is a really shallow, amateuristic effort. Like many of the game's skills it wasn't thought through enough.

I'm not saying repairs are necessary to make the skill work in principle, but it could've solved a bunch of issues with the skill in Skyrim at least, and new mechanics should've been (and for future games will have to be) developed to fill the gap it left in the game.

Item degradation would be a great update, I have far too many smithing items after being at 100 smithing for a long time. and I just sell and sell and sell and eventually stop picking up stuff. But in addition to loot I think it would help with "cleaning up" the environment too and stop alot of the bloating problems without so many items laying about. I say yes for decrepid items.

I'd like to edit my statement to add to someone elses. Depending on the rate of degredation of course, it really doesn't fit skyrim as well if at all like it did in fallout because you're not trying to conserve or avoid anything in Skyrim. you're trying to kill it all for one side or the other so the system would be so dailed in and so limited I would imagine that's the exact reason they just scrapped it all together. but i do miss is somewhat but I will contribute that just to habbit.