Can anyone from Bethesda give us insight into the logic behind making all weapons and armor indestructible?

Repairing armor and weapons didnt "add" anything to the gameplay in real terms. Players just ran around with loads of repair hammers and repaired after combat, making the system kinda pointless. Thats my take on it, and I think one shared with many others.

Laziness is probably the best reason. I don't understand why Skyrim couldn't have had a Degradtion system. Not having a degradtion system made the game a lot easier then it should've been.

They considered repair mechanics tedious. In a shooter it works because you can implement upgrades, but you don't need silencers or night vision for swords.

Also the way equipment degraded was unrealistic fast

You can't sharpen swords forever, so why have another unrealistic system over another?

Streamlining, or dumbing down, is intended to decrease production time, and increase the profit...
The rest is just PR spin.

Call of duty.

To dumb down the game to the lowest possible denominator so they can sell a boatload more copies of the game to people who have no clue (or desire to learn) about role-playing games.

Because one system adds to the game and the other svcks and detracts from gameplay. Degrading equipment NEVER added anything to the the previous two elderscrolls games you just had to carry a bunch of repair hammers and eventually you could repair the item to 125% for added quality. It was a sort term irritation that eventually became irrelevant.

Because it was a pain in the a**

Because hauling around repair hammers was more of a chore and did not aid immersion. Examples:

1) You couldn't realistically carry around a large sack of hammers.
2) Equipment broke far to quickly, and even in a single battle at higher levels, and it wasn't realistic at all.
3) As I said before, it becomes a chore after a while.
4) Armor and weapon degradation added nothing to the game. Everything still looked exactly the same, all that changed was the number.
5) The best thing about Armorer was that at higher levels you could repair things past 100% and make them more useful. We have smithing now which does the same thing except implemented better.

I could go on.

This is actually both incorrect, and correct.

Repairing as it was handled in Morrowind/Oblivion was just for the sake of having the Armorer skill. It really didn't add anything to the overall game. But fast forward to Fallout 3, and repairs have become an integral part of the game in three particular ways.

First, and this is possibly something that is intentionally limited to Fallout; repairing placed urgency in situations which helped fortify the "Survival" themes of the game. The unique requirements to repair weapons (Field-strip similar weapons for replacement parts) lent itself to the Fallout mentality very well.

Second, and this is where Skyrim should have taken notes; Repairing in Fallout 3 provided a necessary form of currency destruction. Players in all Bethesda's games are essentially unlimited loot-generators, and every item you buy and sell devalues the next gold or item you get because of inflation. Repairs in Morrowind/Oblivion didn't correct or curb this in any way, but Repairs in Fallout 3 and New Vegas did (Particularly New Vegas). Had Skyrim used the smithing system to repair equipment with the raw materials, a similar effect could have been gained, and maintained the relevance of in-game currency as rewards.

Third, and probably the most important; Durability on equipment was another dimension in determining how the player's horizontal character growth curves. Again, New Vegas accomplished this in a most impressive way. By allowing players to buy weapons like Brush Guns or Anti-materiel rifles early in the game, but making those weapons very costly to maintain at such levels, it gave more depth to equipment choices and a layer of tactical planning that is more-or-less lacking in Skyrim. Furthermore, durability can help differentiate material types from one-another, similar in practice to Morrowind's material balance. Glass armor may protect nearly as well as Ebony, but it wears out much faster.

well. . .its been 200 years sence oblivion, they have not really learned to make new armor, but they know how to make the armor the have indistructable

also agree with above it didnt add anything to oblivion, felt better in fallout though

That is my take. It was one of the most tedious parts of Oblivion. It did nothing to make the game more fun or interesting for me, and certainly did not help immersion when I was pulling out a hammer to fix my leather after every single fight, in every single room, in every single dungeon of the game.

As said, it was boring and redundant.

Something for masochists...

The thing is, it didn't need to be removed and shouldn't have been removed. It should have been fixed. Removing it entirely was the wrong direction to go in. Weapons and armor should degrade with use just not like before. There are plenty of smithing sites spread around skyrim, many inside ruins even. Those could have easily been utilized for repairs. Instead of the stupidly fast breakdown we had before it could have taken much longer as it would in real battle. It could have utilized raw materials found in the game world giving more reason for mining and smithing. Smithing could have reduced the materials needed for repairs. I just don't like that they took the easy way out and made weapons and armor indestructable. If they do this in the next Fallout game I will really be pissed.

1.) Because carrying 300 weightless arrows is realistic.
2.) A weapon can break, realistically, in a single battle depending on what happens in the battle. However it should have been slower.
3.) Many things in Skyrim, and all TES games, can become a chore, your point?
4.) Kind of like current weapon upgrade huh?
5.) Smithing is hardly implemented in any great fashion.

I could go on.

This. After the final quest of the Oblivion Main Quest, both my gauntlets and boots were broken and my cuirass had only 10 point things left. They'd all been on 100 at the start of the quest. Ridiculous!

And how is it dumbing down a game to remove an element? Because CoD players don't know how to click on repair hammers? CoD players are smarter than you think. A surgeon told me that the first thing you should ask a surgeon is 'Do you play CoD?', because if so they probably have excellent hand-eye coordination

Weapon quality made the game feel that much more realistic in my opinion. Keeping your mortal equipment up to par was part of the experience. It made your gear seem that much more precious, and polishing them up every now and again just...felt right.

Not sure if serious...

Imagine if you will that Alchemy was just like Smithing. You never had to test ingredients and never had to get recipes through purchase, word of mouth or loot. If the Alchemy Skill Tree was set up like so: Make Potions, Make Poisons, Make Fortify Potions, Make Illusion Potions, etc. That would be "dumbing down" because you are removing an aspect of a mechanic to make it easier for the average player and require less upkeep.

That said, I wasn't a big fan of how fast gear could degrade, but removing it completely wasn't really needed.

And as somebody said already, you can't polish a sword forever. If you wanted realism, you'd have to change it every few hours. Not very fun IMO.

I'm glad they removed it. One less annoyance to worry about. Personally, I'm more bothered by the lack of a (Vanilla) hardcoe mode.

Its not precious though, who really cares if some iron armour breaks?
Armour loot was that thick on the ground...

I'm glad it was removed to be honest. Repairing equipment in morrowind and oblivion, like in basically every RPG that has an item degradation feature, wasa very boring and tedious task that added little to no value to the gameplay. I can see where the hardcoe role-players might be upset that its gone, but I think it was a good change to replace it with the smithing system currently in place.

You could carry sharpening tools with you. That would be ok. Not a damn, 10 lb hammer, but a small stone would be suffice. The other issue was the rate of degrading. I have shot a lot of Bows in my time. I can tell you that shooting 100 times, that Bow will perform just as well that 100th shot as it done on the 1st.

A melee weapon (blade) is another story, Then a blunt weapon, well unless you break the handle...what's going to happen?