Merely a Funds Sink?

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Item Durability

The two games I have played that had some sort of mechanism for item durability are World of Warcraft (WoW) and Star Wars The Old Republic (SWToR).

WoW has its Spirit Healer and your equipped gear suffers a durability hit if you use that healer when you die, or you can go retrieve your body and get back onto action. If you use the healer, everything you had on you will have to be repaired at some point, more than likely very soon. This will cost you gold and or silver depending on how badly damaged all your gear is.

In SWToR there is a medical shuttle that comes to rescue you and heal you, or revive you. How this really happens is left kind of vague however, bacta tanks can do some major miracles. And again your gear takes durability damage and again there is a cost in credits to fix everything equipped.

In both games, at certain times, the cost to repair everything was an expense i could not afford. Especially at lower levels. I had to go out and grind lower level creatures to get enough funds to do the repairs. Questing or missions were put off for a while.

Some players hate any sort of item durability. It adds too much realism to the game, not so entertaining. Others say if this is done right its not too much of problem. And finally some say there isn't anything you can do about it if this is in the game so learn to work with this mechanism and play on..or play a different game entirely.

In my experience, this has been a burden and a funds sink. At higher levels, the cost was easier to bear however it would cost a lot more to repair everything. In WoW, I can recall paying almost 500 gold to do repairs. Some times I could only repair a few items and asked the powers that be for help until the rest could be fixed.

What do you all think about this?