@Envy:
You underestimate the base that would totally fall for this feature and spend money.
Nope, I'm talking about something completely different. Was responding to maxter's "don't want to start an argument" about weapon durability in Zelda.
In a mobile market they'd definitely work, but would still require more work than what breath of the wild did. High power weapons would make sense as having low durability to balance out their impact, but low-level weapons would need to be either dirt cheap, last forever, or have stupid high rate of appearance if randomized. Not to mention that all this would have to be transparently clear to the player through UI or mechanics.
In breath of the wild there's no tacit or overt way for the player to feel control over durability aside from things being at breaking point, which imo mucks up the whole argument of "planning", since all you can plan is for stuff breaking, not for an entire inventory's durability prior to entering long fights.
I didn't think that an individual could spend literal thousands of dollars on Kingdom Hearts Unchained/Union Cross to literally gamble for medals (one could spend a thousand dollars on a banner and not get the medal they want. For real.). I was wrong.
Still, I could be off here in that it'd actually be tried. I do, however, think that it could work (and that's what is scary). I've seen the way these games can fool people into spending absolutely absurd amounts of money on nothing.
I want to say Nintendo is above this. But I know they're not. Although, I haven't even touched the Fire Emblem game. And, on another note… I'm very, very, very scared for the Animal Crossing game. We don't have to worry about the general direction of the series for Zelda, Kingdom Hearts, and Fire Emblem... but Animal Crossing, I fear very much. I've seen how that kind of game can manipulate a lot of money out of people with The Sims. On a mobile platform with the F2P model, this could get unspeakably bad.
I know, I'm all over the place. Sorry. I'm just disgusted by the practices of mobile games after seeing Kingdom Hearts. People WILL spend money, no matter how raw of a deal they're getting. I'll give a Zelda mobile game the benefit of the doubt, but Animal Crossing I will watch like a hawk.
I can understand the disdain towards this practice, because for the most part I also feel that way and recoil any time a game involves simple skinner box methods to hook people into giving away money.
That said, what we have to understand is that when it comes to games, the reason the mobile market does so stupendously well and why so many companies in Japan want to jump gun to it (or to making pachinko machines) is because those actually give returns.
As a developer, it is hilariously easier to make a low-quality game with F2P monetization schemes and have it work well than it is to make anything else and have it work well. And ultimately, as much as I want to keep on believing games can be art, at the moment it is still a business and these are people who want money to have a decent living.
Of course, there's still ethics that matter in the whole deal. There's things like companies making sure kids aren't spending money without parental consent, ensuring that quality content exists for both whales (people who pay thousands) as well as people who don't want to pay anything, and having games that actually have exit points for the player.
I've been playing non-FE Heroes mobile games recently for research purposes and it's fucked how some of them literally don't give the player room to stop, which can be problematic for addictive or compulsive personalities. For what it's worth, so far Fire Emblem always has moments where I simply just don't have much else to do until events update or new content is released. And ultimately I like to think it's the fact Nintendo has actual game designers who understand what they're doing, and whatever company they work with will probably have to adhere to those standards.