I totally understand your concern with how durability works. I can assure you that how good or bad this feels is based primarily on how it is tuned. How much durability loss verses how much resource is gained. That is to say, it shouldn't feel like a "grind" to keep your gear working, so much as just something you have to be aware of.
For what it's worth, even World of Warcraft has a durability system where your gear takes damage and, if durability is allowed to reach zero, the gear will stop working. To repair gear is as simple as paying to have it fixed. In most cases, it's not a particular problem for folks to keep their gear in perfect working order, though it does make folks care a bit more about getting into a long cycle of deaths as that can start to get expensive. One might say that it's not so much a source of grind as it is just something that makes players respect death just enough to not put themselves in a position where they will die every 2 minutes for an hour.
Now obviously EM-8er isn't World of Warcraft, I bring up this contrast only to show that a similar durability system is used in the biggest MMO in the world, which suggests that players can accept it if it's done properly.
Also you mentioned how firefalls durability worked. To clarify the history on that: Firefall went through many iterations. There was a time in firefall where gear had durability, and there wasn't even a way to fully repair that damage, when durability reached zero the gear would permanently break. Completely break, as in the gear no longer existed. The player then had to completely replace that piece of gear. It was an extremely controversial thing in Firefall. To this day some hate it, some love it, and some didnt care either way. At any rate, Grummz decided very early on not to go in that direction for Em-8er.
For what it's worth, even World of Warcraft has a durability system where your gear takes damage and, if durability is allowed to reach zero, the gear will stop working. To repair gear is as simple as paying to have it fixed. In most cases, it's not a particular problem for folks to keep their gear in perfect working order, though it does make folks care a bit more about getting into a long cycle of deaths as that can start to get expensive. One might say that it's not so much a source of grind as it is just something that makes players respect death just enough to not put themselves in a position where they will die every 2 minutes for an hour.
Now obviously EM-8er isn't World of Warcraft, I bring up this contrast only to show that a similar durability system is used in the biggest MMO in the world, which suggests that players can accept it if it's done properly.
Also you mentioned how firefalls durability worked. To clarify the history on that: Firefall went through many iterations. There was a time in firefall where gear had durability, and there wasn't even a way to fully repair that damage, when durability reached zero the gear would permanently break. Completely break, as in the gear no longer existed. The player then had to completely replace that piece of gear. It was an extremely controversial thing in Firefall. To this day some hate it, some love it, and some didnt care either way. At any rate, Grummz decided very early on not to go in that direction for Em-8er.
