ID:265334
 
_>
I don't know if I should make durability, so people can't go and chop down all the trees for a cheap price. :9
Or, to make durability, to whereas every object has a toughness level.
Soft: Every 10 slashes will lower your weapon's durability
Average: Every 5 slashes will lower you weapon's durability
Hard: Every 2 slashes will lower your weapon's durability

Should I go doing this system? It may be simple, but I think I should. =/ I just want some opinions before I go about doing this.
When adding in a "feature" such as this, you need to look at how it will help the gameplay, or balance the game. It depends somewhat on the specifics of your game. If people need to buy a new axe every couple of trees, and axes are expensive, then players aren't generally going to be happy. If you can manage to balance the feature out and integrate it nicely, then you should be able to add something that both fits into the gameplay AND helps balance out the game.
In response to Malver
Yes, it would be balanced. As of with an axe, you get seeds from trees, and a few other things. Thus, letting you grow more, then sell the seeds for some cash that will basically for the axe plus a bit more. Or, you could sell them to players (farmers), and raise the price a bit. Thus, creating an economy. Then, people can buy food from farmers for cash, and so on for a never ending loop.
In response to Malver
I remember playing an Ultima Online shard that had item use-counts. For example, you could only harvest from trees with the same axe 50 times. Since you got 10 logs per harvest, that meant 500 logs per axe. An axe was worth less than what you could sell the logs for, so having to carry around a pack full of replacement axes was really tedious and unnecessary.
In response to Mertek
I don't really see where you are coming from. A player-based economy would make lumberjacking, blacksmithing, whitesmithing, carpentry, and a few other things worthwhile.

The weight system in the game will also be unique, if you try carrying 500 logs, I'd like to see if you even move. You'd move 1 space about every minute. And logs won't be able to be sold, you'd have to sell them to carpenters and then they can build houses/other stuff with it.
In response to Hell Ramen
While having items break down can help curb inflation in the economy, it tends to be one of the more annoying methods of fighting inflation. In Mertek's example, having the axes break didn't stop anyone from mass logging--all it did was slightly reduce the profit you got from each tree. In that case they might as well just have reduced the price you got from each log, which would have the same economic impact without requiring so much hassle on the player's end.

I think good wear-and-tear systems should be built to differentiate between "use" and "overuse"--a player who chops down 10 trees a day and then goes back to town to repair their axe and pursue other activities is going to be able to keep using the same axe day in and day out essentially forever, but a player who goes out to the woods and tries cutting down 50 trees in a row is going to go through a lot of axes; if they bring a bunch of axes and try cutting down a few trees with each, they'll still find that they get too tired to log effectively, signaling that they should go do something else for a while. It's the general idea of diminishing returns--a player who does X amount of work earns Y amount of money, but a player who does ten times as much work earns less than ten times as much money. A working diminishing-returns system for this sort of thing does tend to stretch the imagination a bit (I mean, there's not an awful lot involved in, um, axe care, nor does excessive logging actually tire out any particular "tree-cutting muscles"), but I believe that having an economy with sub-ridiculous inflation is worth more than having a super-ultra-realistic game. Especially since virtually anything that attempts to make itself super-ultra-realistic inevitably ends up being even more silly and arbitrary than rules which are just made up to fit what the game needs.
In response to Leftley
_>
So, a nono? There's also stamina, each slash takes stamina(I'm keeping that no matter what).