This!
It encourages players, even those operating bulkier, more damage-resistant frames, to not just charge into situations, throwing tactics and often any sort of skill aside. Like amateurs flailing around, just thoughtlessly unloading magazine and magazine, without having to worry about death and its consequences.
What's the point of tactics, terrain, omni-frames, combat gear customizing, if no one has to worry about consequences. The only ones being getting respawned somewhere farther back and a loss of minimal resources.
If you want to be a bullet-sponge, just dive head-first into battle, without a plan, without care, without having to concern yourself with sustaining damage and just fire your precious little blaster...then expect consequences. Your frame might not even take as much damage, depending on its archetype and you'd only need minimal amount of resources to maintain it. But, for recon types, who were always more fragile and careful and had to keep a distance or try their damndest not to get hit too much, when engaging a target from closer, damage to the frame was always an incentive for approaching a situation with more care.
Having durability (that could easily be kept up, as in FF. A few crystites, really? That's too much for some?) would add another layer to operating in the world Ember. To combat, survival, tactics. If one gets seriously banged up and continues to run around looking for trouble, without running a little maintenance, first (even cheap carried repair kits could enter here), then they should be punished for their foolishness and take increasingly more damage.
It was a good idea in Firefall and it's not in any way annoying or an inconvenience, unless someone is too lazy to be bothered with actually making an effort to do more than run and gun without thought or care.
