My suggestion is for armor and weapons, when they reach 0 durability, to enter a ‘Broken’ state. Instead of completely disappearing from your inventory/existence when they run out of durability.
Once the durability on your weapon or armor reaches 0, the item would gain some kind of quality or debuff that disables its stats and attributes. Essentially rendering it useless, until the item is repaired again.
Broken weapons would ideally end up back in your inventory, provided there is enough inventory space left, but are unusable and can no longer be equipped. Armor would remain equipped, but your character would no longer benefit from its stats (and you might not be able to reequip broken armor once you have unequipped it).
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The reason for this suggestion is twofold:
- To prevent your precious weapons/armor from vanishing because you were so enthralled with the combat (or the level design or the RP or whatever else), you did not think to pay close attention on the remaining durability. (Has not happened to me yet, but is bound to at some point!)
- To prevent that awkward moment when characters are suddenly stripped naked in the heat of combat and end up fighting in their undies when their gear goes poof!
My knowledge of scripting and coding is almost non-existent, so I have no idea how doable or difficult such a system would be to implement. Just consider this a possible suggestion for the long term?