I didn't argue semantics or postulate anything. Go back to your thesaurus and try again.

First, we all need to admit we all are wasting our breath: the devs have demonstrated they just don't care; they are going to do what they want.
Secondly, there's bigger things that need to be fixed. like the glaring lack of innovation, spellmaking, dynamic economy. there's other places that lack depth that would benefit more from less investment.
Thirdly, like most systems in TES lately it needed fixing, not cutting:

A bit of history: Repairing was an important part of the old games (arena, daggerfall). There wasn't always a skill because being skilled in blacksmithing would be its own profession (so you would be a blacksmith instead of an adventurer). You had to leave your weapon with a smith for several days while he repaired it at a high cost. That provided opportunity for game changing decisions -- what to invest in maintaining, when to repair, and staying out of trouble while your best stuff was in the shop.
when they switched to MW's system, it ruined alot of that because you could repair anywhere for very cheap. (and were strongly encouraged to do so because armorer was one of the few ways of getting endurance -- another broken system that was cut instead of fixed.) What was an important money sink became a gimmicky tacked on skill.
OB system was no improvement -- just simpler, easier, and cheaper. (and eventually essentially cut itself via perks)
Cutting was about the only step they could take to continue the trend, so no surprise.

On the fix: I disagree that armor degraded too quickly; IMO it went way too slow. If your taking damage, then your either getting hit where there is no coverage, or your armor is destroyed (in that specific location) not because the max damage reduction is capped at 80%. To accomplish that you would either have overly long fights, or your armor would give out pretty quickly. ofc, any system modelling that would require a fairly advanced locational damage combat system and a rebalance of HP. I would say that making it worth including would require a lot of rethought on the whole combat model and not "here's a skill / feature we want to include, let's tack it on / force it to fit."

I agree that packing around a bunch of hammers was silly. Hammers are just not that expendable. So in that sense, yes. Oblivion's system was flawed. And yet, gamesas provided the answer in Skyrim: There are grind stones and work benches everywhere. You would no longer need to horde hammers, just use the existing smithing tools. But they cut degradation. Now the environment is liitered with smithing tools and populated with dozens of smiths and guess what? There's no purpose to any of it.

because there is no item durability in first person shooters, you know, the games that the kind of people this game was in part marketed to play

For the same reason they added Health Regeneration. To make gameplay smoother and less tedious.

One word. Casuals.

I dont get how people actually miss carrying 30 lbs worth of hammers so you can constantly select it in your inventory every 20 mins? Wow. Great mechanic that was! Btw, theres also no way of really 'fixing' it because if you just do it 'less' then why even bother? Smithing is fun because youre creating and improving... Moving forward... Not repairing. I cant count how many annoying times in Oblivion i was stuck with my assassin in some long dungeon crawl with 0 armor and 0 weapon health. No way i was able to repair it either because its enchanted gear and it just didnt 'fit' my character. If they remedied this by making you do it less, then its still a little annoying and completely useless. Its 'realistic' in a way, but not every realistic thing has to find its way into ES.

If you look up a few posts, you'll see that I have already explained the solution. Bethesda actually solved that problem for themselves (and us) by providing blacksmithing equipment throughout the game world. Then, they completely failed to capitalize on their own inspiration by making these various grindstones and workbenches nothing but clutter. Without degredation, the blacksmithing equipment and the smithing skill itself are little more than window dressing.

Once again. Don't cut a feature that can be fixed

Having to recharge Enchanted items can be viewed as equally annoying and tiresome, especially if your weapons only had 10-20 charges on them.

Degradation didn't make the game harder, it just made it more tedious.

So does simply dumping a boat load of Health into enemies but that doesn't stop Skyrim or many other games for that matter.

Degradation in prior games was far too fast, that's a given, but removing it completely isn't really needed, especially when you can combine it with the current upgrade system and make it so your weapons and gear last longer before requiring repair.

It's really interesting to see the breakdown of opinions on this and by whom. I have to admit, I was taken aback when I first realized that my armor and weapons were not degrading yet we now had central places to smith and upgrade weapons. It did make me pine a bit for that feature. But, when I really thought about it, I realized that I didn't really like having to carry around dozens of hammers and go through the repetitive routine of repairing my equipment in Oblivion or Morrowind after every battle. It simply became automata and not something that svcked me into the game. It was simply a mechanic that I had to utilize in order to keep my weapons and armor healthy.

That said, I did like the way it worked in Fallout 3/New Vegas... and, like someone else said, it seemed to fit that game style a bit more. I'm fine without it in Skyrim, but I can definitely understand how the nostalgia effect can make one miss it. After playing the Fallout games, where it felt so right, it has made me realize that it felt so wrong in the previous TES games. But, if they ever decide to add it back, I wouldn't mind.

I don't think the designers and devs left it out to "dumb down" the game, though. That's just silly talk. The previous system could be considered "dumb" by others (and obviously has). I don't think it was dumb, neither do I think not having it is dumb.

Yes, yes it does add to gameplay when what was removed was an incredibly tedious and annoying feature. It absolutely adds to gameplay, because you can focus on - you know - playing the game, instead of worrying about the tedious garbage that is in the game for no other reason than to punish the player.

I don't want to be punished simply for playing the game, which is exactly what equipment degradation did.

Then why should Enchanted items have charges on them?

Ask Todd Howard, not me, I didn't design the game.

Having to recharge your enchanted weapon after every battle is just as annoying and tedious as having to repair it.

I think equipment should degrade as it does in OB, except it should degrade at about 1/5 the speed (as in OB it is WAY too fast to break stuff).
You shouldn't be able to repair your equipment in the field (unless you find a random anvil and forge etc.) like it was in OB. That makes no sense. Repairing equipment should have been included with the smithing skill

So you wish that to be removed as well?

I think enchanted items should slowly recharge over time based on your enchantment skill (like they did in Morrowind) with the option of 'quick-recharging' via soulgems.

I also belive that repair would have been good, if using the smithing items (forge, grinder ect.) for the repairs and the degredation rate was a little slower.

Weapon health added extra variety to different materials and equipment (glass does good damage, but has less health ect.)
same reason I feel the removal of attributes is a loss. It results in less player choices and diversity. In older games you could have a low strength, but highly skilled PC with high damage but not very durable weapons.

It would be reasonable to instead of having items 'break', have them degrade to a 'worn' level. (even better if they visualy change to have nicks and dents in the item.)

I would have loved the crap out of this. Giving something like Daedric a high damage value but degrades from Legendary to Normal quickly would have been fun.

Yeah well, I've already addressed this concern in two or three posts. Maybe they were too long and you didn't read them.

I've never understood the logic behind the whole "Stronger weapons will degrade quicker" school of thought. Stronger weapons are made out of stronger materials, and are therefore more durable. Iron is weaker than steel, and would need more maintenance than other weapons, not the other way around.

Also, I don't get the logic behind weapons only being made out of x material and being bound to that look. You can make weapons out of various materials. You shouldn't be bound to using Steel to forge Blades Swords (not the best example, considering you can't actually make those weapons). Dragonsbane is made out of Quicksilver, so why can't I learn to make one out of Ebony?

Right now Ebony/Elvish/Orcish/Dwarven Weapons/Armor refer to both the make and materials, joined at the hip, but it'd be better if these were separate.

It's the same logic behind higher damaging spells requiring larger amounts of mana/magicka. It's simply for balance purposes.

I severely would have liked to have been able to make an Ebony Scimitar.

I would also have loved if the material used actually had some sort of effect on the weapon other than damage and degradation, for example making a Sword out of Quicksilver meant it would swing faster or weigh less. But design it to look like a Dwarven blade.

I get that, but it still seems counter-intuitive to me. Some people complain about the lack of weapon and armor degradation as being completely unrealistic but the system they want is equally unrealistic.

That being said, I wouldn't mind weapon degradation as long as it was done better than I've seen it in past games. I've always hated finding the legendary weapon that killed 1000 dragons in a single swing.... that breaks after 10 hits.

As it stands, I think the ability to forge our own weapons in the smithing tree is a good first attempt, but can be much improved. Letting us smith a wider variety of weapons, and letting us choose the style and materials that we use when we craft a weapon would be really nice.

I feel the best way to have handled it, to include the wear and tear aspect, is to mix the upgrade and degrade features but have it degrade at a slower rate... or even have it degrade relative to the enemies' own Armor rating (if they have one). Breaking would not occur, instead "breaking" would degrade the item to a low damage output or defensive Armor rate, perhaps even zero. So one could upgrade a sword to Legendary but over time it would slowly degrade to normal level and need to be re~upgraded at a grinding stone.

This. I wouldn't mind degradation being part of the Smithing skill, but not as it was in Oblivion. Oblivion was just simply tedious. Degradation for the sake of degradation is tedious, and nothing but a punishment to the player.

Also - the person who said that enchanted items should slowly recharge over time, or use a soul gem to instant recharge it, that is my preference for how it should be.