Eh, I liked weapon degradation. More than this power armor damage system, for sure. There seems to be *no* discount for repairing a relatively healthy part, which is lame. And even the T61 is a lot more fragile than I would expect. I'm only power armor now because I'm rich as balls, both in caps for fusion cores and in scrap. (Plus I'm fast travelling a lot finally, so magically not using fusion cores. Anyway!)
Weapon degradation uses up loot in the field (FO3). Getting loot is great, having to carry it places to sell sucks. This is kinda like sending companions off to sell loot, except more appropriate for a wasteland setting.
Then in NV it's the only late-game money sink. So you've got the hyperbreeder Alpha, game over, you never have to switch weapons again? This gives a moderate cost to its use, so there's some actual choice still... and a reason to to keep looting/stealing caps, or crafting weapon repair kits. Kinda like the fusion cores and power armor damage, except better in my opinion.
The best part was that there were multiple options to deal with it. Carry backup weapons, prioritize Repair skill, craft weapon repair kits, and/or make enough caps to pay the exorbitant repair fees.
When it comes to weapons, FO4 just has scarcity of ammo. Except it's... not scarce, at all, and it's pretty cheap. I don't even have the ammo scrounger perk. Pretty much a step backward in terms of interesting choice.
Actually, yeah, this new perk system was fun at first but it's exactly the dumbing-down everyone was afraid of. I already ranted about how most of them don't matter. They barely change the gameplay at all, and when they do (Intimidation perks, Lifegiver 3) they're still incredibly disappointing or nigh-broken (No XP, no loot, murder is okay but stealing is not). Just level up your weapon class perk (restricting choice!) and learn how to pick locks and hack (when the level cap LETS you). Get the crafting ones if you want... Or just buy the mods from shops. It's not like there's anything else to spend late-game caps on!
The only good thing they did SPECIAL-wise was remove the arbitrary stat caps at 10, so that drugs don't mysteriously stop working if you're too good at a thing. Though managing clothing is hilariously terrible (mostly because you can't mark items without assigning them a hotkey. Why... would I assign a hotkey... to CLOTHING!? I just want to keep track of it to switch back into it!)
Liking the story though, finally got to the Institute. Wow.
Weapon condition basically compounded me to pick up every single piece of garbage gun I could find, so that I could repair them and sell them for mad profits.
Yeah this is all I meant to say, whoops.