Those are really good points, but to me it doesnt make me think: Its good there is no more repairing.
I think it would be great if we had to 'upkeep' our weaponry and that such a feature would be nice in the game.
Instead of a repair hammer you would have a maintenance kit, and possibly have it tied to the weapon skill, not the smithing one.
I would like a feature like that, especially if like in Fallout: New Vegas you could improve/ upkeep/ repair your gear with similar pieces you find in loot.
It makes sense that if your armour is becoming a bit shoddy, you might use the leather strapping of another piece of armour to get it back in tip-top shape, and things of a similar nature.
It also makes random loot less boring, if you have a chance to find for instance a bow with which you can maintain your own.

^

This! It would add the function only for people who are actually using smithing and it would make creating ubergear virtually worthless (who wants to gring his equipment every few hours?) and would therefore kind of fix the crafting system.

Must... resist... raging... Must.... not.... kill...

Anyway, I'm thinking they'll keep repair in Fallout and also keep smithing as part of repair, probably.

Armour maintenance would be a bit different, and perhaps a bit more like repairing. If your chainmail has been pierced, you will need tongs, hammers and spare rings to mend it, likewise a torn leather harness would logically require rivets and extra pieces of leather to patch. There's not much realism to compare with as in typical real examples of these kind of damages to armour, you would be dead or severely injured so repairing your armour would be the least of your problems, but in fantasy rpg characters typically take a lot of hits to the armour and it would seem likely that it will wear down.

A hardcoe deterioration feature where weapon and armour wear down over time, and you can't fully repair them, just extend their lifetime, with proper maintenance, would be quite a cool and challenging feature. Feeling the sadness of having your precious ebony sword slowly but surely wear down and eventually break and at the same time create the motivation to explore, loot and keep a good storage of weapons around to replace those that break down.

I remember the incredible amount of planning and forethought it took for me to carry around a sack of hammers wherever I went. I felt so smart for having a sack of hammers. And the strategic triumph of banging my sword with that sack of hammers? It's like the feeling you get when you have your first child. Truly a magical mechanic that not only deepened my experience of the game, but never, ever, ever felt pointless and frustrating.

i know about it i really wish they would change it though

Yeah, it was so deep and sophisticated having every equipped piece of armor completely shatter when a Clannfear tackles you, even though any articles of clothing you wore were nigh-indestructible.

And now we dont have it, so there is less planning and forethought required.
It really isnt hard.
It doesnt matter, and I certainly dont care, that you dont find yourself smart for carrying a sack of hammers.
I never carried more than one or two and never needed more.
Then again, you probably only know Oblivion armour degradation and like many things, level scaling destroyed that one. Daggerfall did it well, Morrowind wasnt bad either.

Weapons are now magically sharp forever. There is one less RPG element to the game now.
Its simply not an improvement when the next installment of the series has less features, more handholding and less RPG.

It would add to the challenge

I appreciate the insinuation that I've only played Oblivion. I haven't. I agree that Morrowind handled weapon degradation better, but it was still something that felt tedious instead of "immersive".

I don't care so much that you do think that carrying a sack of hammers around with you is "strategic" and involves forethought. For many players it just involved a ridiculously unrealistic mechanic that quickly became more of an annoyance than a gameplay consideration.

I actually liked the FO3 degretation of weapons.. it kinda makes sense that weapons become worse if you use them a lot..

maybe not in the FO3-rate, as it seemed to be quite fast. Though, it would make the smithing skill more usefull (besides abusing it to level that is).. I've never thought of it before, but now i do, i actually kinda miss it..

I like this. Also, if I might add on to this: I liked repairing my stuff. For me, it felt like real weapons getting worn and beat up over time. But I can understand why people wouldn't want their characters to be armorers or carry around a million repair hammers.

So, if you don't want to focus on an Armorer or Smithing skill, you'd have a smith available to repair it at a reasonable price. Or, if your character was a Smith, you could repair your stuff at the Smithing stations. Finally, if your character was a Smith and you found yourself out in the wilderness, you could get a small repair kit. It would be lightweight and have unlimited uses so people won't complain about dragging around fifty pounds of hammers, but maybe it would be limited in that it could only repair an item back to, say, 70 or 80% efficiency. Or something like that. That way, you'd have multiple options for repair without turning your character into a blacksmith or being weighed down by repair items.

Of course, there will still be people who don't like it no matter what, but hey...can't please everyone all of the time.

Repair in Oblivion was annoying for me personally. I would get a weapon to 100% and then it would drop to 99% right away. Even though this is very minimal I am sometimes a perfectionist and need it to be 100% tip top shape.

I wouldn't mind repair if it actually took a long time to degrade but did slowly, but it would still be a nuisance as it doesn't incease challenge just an extra chore, similar to New Vegas hardcoe Mode. The idea was great but in game it wasn't increasing the difficulty or making the game more hardcoe, but just adding extra chores to the game. If it had severe consequences or just made it much more challenging I think it would of been great.

Weapon degradation suffered the same fate as so many things throughout the history of TES games - it was implemented poorly in previous games, and rather than improving it, Beth just removed it entirely.

It's a convenient strategy for the devs, since it saves them time and resources, and it's always defended by the using the false dichotomy that the only possible choices were to do it EXACTLY the same way as it had been done in the past or to eliminate it, and the resulting straw man that anyone who advocates the thing in question is advocating doing it EXACTLY as it had been done in the past.

Look through this thread, or pretty much any thread on pretty much any aspect of the game that was removed rather than being improved, for countless examples....

Armor degradation was one of the features that instead of it being improved they decided to remove it.

In Morrowind at least you could get better versions of the hammers and they did not break to frequently.

Now using armor and weapons requires no thought on the condition of what you have and you do not have to pay attention to your own safety as much because of your depleting armor rating. This is just another hand holding thing they have added to Skyrim.

Hmm... weapon degradation and the need to keep your weapons in shape is a feature that I personally enjoy having. In a game like Fallout, it made sense that weapons would fall apart as you use them, because let's face it ...you're shooting weaponry that's been lying around for hundreds of years. They're not brand new, and they're going to need some MacGyver style repairs to stay operational. And it's just a simple fact that overuse causes weaponry, both guns and swords, to fall apart with time.

Swords get dull, handles loosen, gun parts get dirty, jammed, and loose.

I think the removal of weapon degradation and repair in Skyrim was just to simplify the gameplay. The problem is, Bethesda did a lot of simplifying, and yet did not make up for that with any quailty writing or depth to the storylines and characters. So it's a shame that they took it out, and instead focused on... pretty much nothing except pretty graphics. Not to knock Skyrim too much, because I do love the game for what it is. Even if what that is is a mediocre action game with minor roleplaying elements.

I agree, I would like the armor and weapon repair with items you find within the world.
It would make some of the random loot more useful.
It would add a missing RPG feature and it would be less tedious to manage if they dis the degradation properly.
I am all for the feature being added in a hope they consider it.

This.

Repairing was awesome and people who think otherwise are wrong.
Maybe it was badly implemented in previous games, but that doesn't mean it should be removed, but improved instead.
Not to mention that having an actual need of spending your money would improve the economy of the game a lot.
In next TES, they should simply make a casual mode for people who don't like all the RPG elements and want an action-adventure.

I miss the repair to be honest. It hasn't always been done very well but it is definitely an RPG feature that should be here. Weapons and armor would realistically degrade over the course of use in combat. I thought the portable hammers were pretty silly but with the black smith stations all over the game in Skyrim it would have been perfectly ok to have repair as a feature. I wish they could somehow add it as a difficulty option with one of the DLC's.

That's right. Everyone who doesn't agree with you is just wrong. Just. Wrong.

Even though you go on to admit that prior implementations of this mechanic never worked right (nor have I ever played an RPG where I felt like repairs not only made sense but were implemented in any effective way). Even though you admit that they're basically a money sink.

How about in the next TES, they make a button for people who use the word "casual" as a pejorative? When you click it, it tells you to take out a pen and paper and starts giving you a series of math problems to solve.

This.

The remove instead of improve ideology is beyond me. Things should be improved in a series not gutted and cast aside.
I liked the feature in the series it did require some thought to what you had on you and the condition of your gear.
I like the idea of repairing your gear with item found around the world that would be more interesting I would think anyways.

Weapon and Armor Degradtion needs to come back in the next Elder Scrolls game, Hell maybe this one if Beth can patch it in right. Now I'm going to hear the argument that Oblivion's Degradtion was too fast and incredibly tedious and I would agree but I'm going to counter that with a Game that did weapon and Armor Degradtion perfectly and that's Kingdoms Of Amalur Reckoning. The Weapon and Armor Degradtion in that game is perfect, it's not incredibly fast like Oblivion but it's also not like Skyrim. You'll eventually need to find a Repair Smith person or use a Repair Kit to fix your gear after a while.

I don't see why Skyrim or any future Elder Scrolls game couldn't use a similar system, to not use it is a sign of laziness on Beth's part.

A repair Smith or a kit would work as well.
I for one an hoping this will be an inclusion in one of the expansions or patches.
Skyrim does need more depth than it has.
With more depth cones back mire of the RPG features and no its not hard to repair your gear for those that think it is.
I also agree that armor degradation should be.slower but it should still be in the game.