I'm not talking about what a game wants. I'm talking about whether there's a problem to be solved. If the argument is that weapon durability systems are required to avoid having OP weapons in games, that argument is silly because that problem has been avoided in other open world games. It's not an actual problem.
And I experimented a lot with weapons in Elden Ring so that's quite funny to me. I never felt punished for it, so I'm not sure about the whole "ER wants you to specialize". In fact, I often felt different enemies were vulnerable to different things (which is how you actually get people to experiment, btw).
The problem with an approach like BotW is that you end up with a lot of "trash" weapons that you have to use on weaker enemies while collecting the less trash weapons for other enemies. Durability is also so low that often you have to get a new weapon in the middle of a battle. I had a fight once that saw 3 weapons break. The UX for this isn't amazing, either. The whole thing is pointless busy work and means you can't freely explore because without weapons you physically can't continue (which is why most games do not make them consumables, lol). It also places a hard limit on where you can go because you can literally run out of hits. Whatever it is they meant to accomplish with this there are many better ways to do.
And I experimented a lot with weapons in Elden Ring so that's quite funny to me. I never felt punished for it, so I'm not sure about the whole "ER wants you to specialize". In fact, I often felt different enemies were vulnerable to different things (which is how you actually get people to experiment, btw).
The problem with an approach like BotW is that you end up with a lot of "trash" weapons that you have to use on weaker enemies while collecting the less trash weapons for other enemies. Durability is also so low that often you have to get a new weapon in the middle of a battle. I had a fight once that saw 3 weapons break. The UX for this isn't amazing, either. The whole thing is pointless busy work and means you can't freely explore because without weapons you physically can't continue (which is why most games do not make them consumables, lol). It also places a hard limit on where you can go because you can literally run out of hits. Whatever it is they meant to accomplish with this there are many better ways to do.