Melee weapons never have limited ammo. I think what you mean is that there are games where melee weapons will wear down and break. Some games allow you to repair your equipment, either yourself or at a shop, but it always means that you need to have at least one backup weapon at all times.

Weapon breakage isn't always handled well. Sometimes it can lead to a situation where the constant repair upkeep of melee weapons makes these classes severely under balanced in comparison to classes that use magic thus don't have to deal with it as much or at all.

As for ammo itself, it really depends on the game as to if it should be unlimited or not.

I cannot play FPS games as they give me motion sickness, but I would hope that every FPS game out there gives players at minimum one weapon that has unlimited ammo. Nobody should find themselves in a situation where they cannot progress further to get to the next ammo drop without killing a bunch of enemies, but they've already run out. Knives don't count.

Neverwinter Nights handles ammo extremely well. I've run into an infinite ammo crossbow during one module, but it could only shoot the very basic bolts. This meant that besides having inferior stats to the bow I already had, it also used inferior ammo to the acid arrows that I was using. Although acid arrows needed to be bought from a shopkeeper, drops of generic regular arrows were common enough that a dedicated ranged combat player wasn't going to find themselves in a situation of not having arrows. Basic arrows are also extremely cheap in this game, making them very affordable.

The game that actually comes to mind is Vomitoreum, by scumhead. It's not a survival game per se, but there is that element of combat having a very heavy cost to it, with boss encounters being pretty much all about circle strafing and bullet hell-style avoidance movement -- against massive, bullet spongy enemies.

All of the ranged weapons have unlimited ammo, which to me makes sense because the world and the gameplay loop is so unforgiving in and of itself that an ammo limit seems like an unnecessary extra layer of difficulty.

The javelins in diablo 2 are melee weapons with limited ammo. This is because you have the option of throwing them or stabbing your opponents.

Edit: There's the gravity hammer and plasma sword in Halo. And also the daggers/hatchets in the newer Wolfenstein games.

In Zy-El (D2 mod) you can use a scroll to get auto-regen of quantity for thrown weapons, so in theory unlimited ammo, or auto-repair is there, just rarely unlocked in vanilla. So it's not like you can't have unlimited. Zy-el also made batches of 500 arrows (or was it 5,000? i forget)


Though back to the OP, why not simulate every character carrying a rucksack with 80lb of gear to include water, food, pots and pans, plates, fork/spoon, knifes, stakes, tents, extra batteries, extra ammo, binoculars, radio, flashlight, 200ft rope, toilet paper, seasonings, sleeping pad, sleeping bag, spare boots, extra sets of underwear, water purification kit, toothbrush, toothpaste, mouthwash, flint & steel, shovel, chair, emergency bandages, and an assortment of fuel? (the 'radio' in the army would be like 30lb by itself)

Quite simply it will be impractical. D&D does do some of this, but usually as 'light/medium/heavy' load and if you've used a backpack or ruck sack before, there's a quick release so the effects other than 'distance you can travel' is minor and often just ignored.

Or, depending on the game:
* You use your bare hands instead of using a weapon. (Your bare hands usually can't break. (Exceptions: SaGa 1 and 2))
* You magically create a weapon and use that instead of a permanent weapon (TES: Morrowind and Oblivion)
* You look for a weapon that has infinite uses and use that (SaGa Frontier 2)
* You give the weapon to a robot, who only gets half the usual number of uses, but they recover at the inn (SaGa 2)

If the weapon is something like a Glass Sword (Ultima 5 and later, SaGa 1 and 2 (but not Final Fantasy Legend 1 because of a localization goof)), then the weapons themselves are limited ammo, as each one can only be used once.

* Shillelagh - D&D/pathfinder, & Dark sun series. Makes a club/stick/quarterstaff a +1 weapon for a duration. To which the upkeep cost is nothing as you just find another stick when the current one breaks.

Not sure if it's in other series.

But then you might have characters with mental attacks, presence attacks, or hacking where they enter the cyber-verse and might disable your equipment while you're holding it... Not exactly ammo-related items either.

Hmmm... I'm reminded of reading the Herosystem 5/6 books, which is fascinating reading. You buy powers, the cost of the powers usage is 1/10th the powerpoint cost. (costs 30 active points? It's 3 endurance to use). To make it an ammo-type weapon rather than full usage you have to give it a disadvantage, to which 12 ammo shots is +0, but doesn't cost you any endurance to use. Although if you say have 1-2 shots out of it, it can be a -1 1/2 (30 / 1+1.5 = 12pts to purchase vs 30pts). Said powers would either be ones you recover, or have to go out of your way to re-fill, or are 'trump cards' powers which are basically for emergencies. But in those cases you do need to keep track of your ammo.

But why do that when you can just do finger-guns and hit your enemies as an X-men or something? That sounds more fun...

It depends on the game.

What are the alternative options available to the player? Is a completely stuck situation (no melee and no ammo) possible and if so, is that something the developer wants to let happen? How are guns balanced against other options? Are certain guns stronger or weaker than others?

Even when tracking ammo, there can also be the question of whether ammo should be interchangeable or not and if so, what guns can use the same ammo?

If guns are overpowered weapons or you want a game where the player really feels scarcity where each shot needs to count (i.e. TLoU on grounded), then yes, ammo should definitely count and be varied depending on the weapon. If guns are actually just a form of damage, no different from a sword strike (less damage but more range for example), it should be unlimited although specialized ammo with status effects/elements/etc are limited (FFT).

The default should be no, unless there are compelling reasons to.

If it's a particular BFG/grenade/whatever that is just an ultraweapon, sure, track that one separately while not for all the other weapons.

Unreal ammo was plentiful for a long time. Then in the 3rd fifth of the game or so, you had a sequence where it was fairly rare and you had to scrounge. This made razor gun headshots all the more important. A nifty experience that wouldn't have been possible without limited ammo. And the game returned to plentiful ammo after that. But it may not have been worth it in the big picture of things.

In level design, "drop some ammo here" is an easy, essentially no-cost, way to reward the player for exploring the map. Putting "real" power-ups there might make too much of a difference.

Horizon Zero Dawn: It has limited ammo that you craft from more generic components. But, past the very first bit of the game, you basically never run out of the generic components to be able to keep your ammo bags full. Except for two things: If you rely on one particular weapon too much (not the basic arrow types), you may exhaust that weapon's ammo's components required and need to seek new. I did run into this a few times with the Tearblast arrow and metal vessels needed to make it. And secondly (more importantly), ammo crafting is used as a pacing mechanism. It puts a lot of pressure on you to complete a skirmish before you run out of ammo and have to go hide to craft it because it takes a little bit of time. (Or, that was the goal. They forgot to disable crafting from the paused-game menu while you're engaged. Ditto changing armor once you're already engaged.)

In ttRPGs: No, no tracking for basic ammunition. Yes tracking for special (read as: magical, costly) ammunition. And no, no tracking of spell material components too. If it's a GP cost one, just spend the GP.

Addendum: And no, the fix isn't to add durability to melee weapons.

Adding another thought: I do appreciate when a game has limited ammo, but shares ammo cross different weapon types. While not realistic, it's convenient. "physical ammo" shared across traditional guns [that use them at different rates] and "energy cells" shared across energy weapons, and "explosives" shared across those weapons types. It's not too common, but is a fine half-way for when you want ammo for whichever reasons, but still want to have player conveniences.

I would argue that the glass sword isn't ammo. You load bullets into guns (or slings in fantasy settings), bolts into crossbows, arrows into bows. Swords aren't loaded into anything. Socks in real life have a limited durability and feet can be used to kick other people (not recommended), but that doesn't make socks ammo. That glass sword just a durability that is significantly lower than socks.

Also in games where you can be disarmed, such as Lands of Lore and Neverwinter Nights, you just need to look around on the ground for your weapon. I've yet to play a game that was cruel to the point of having an enemy that could disarm you then use your weapon against you or just keep it. When you fire off an arrow, bolt or bullet, these tend to be gone for good. (I think that I may have encountered all of one game that let you recover arrows, but I couldn't say which it was at this point.)

But let's stop debating terminology for a moment.

I think we can agree that most games let you have infinite durability and let magic users rest as much as they want, but they don't always balance things well when it comes to ammunition (arrows, bolts, bullets)... and that plus your comment about bare hands reminds me of the time I was going to play multiplayer Neverwinter Nights with someone, only to have him rage quit on me during the prologue after he read something about how the monk class that he was playing (which fights with bare hands) was severely under-balanced versus every other class. However that's getting a bit off-topic, so back to ammo.

Generic basic ammo should be plentiful enough, either through drops or weapons default to it if nothing else is loaded, but shouldn't have be giving out infinite special ammo. I may prefer acid arrows over basic arrows in Neverwinter Nights, but I also agree that it's appropriate to make me look for stores that sell them and stock up when I think I might be entering a location where I either won't be able to run back to buy more or doing so would be inconvenient.

Anyway -- I have a dr appointment to go to, so need to cut this short.

There's a nice mod also which increases the max inventory, to 600 items, and ammo can be 3000 of each type. This primarily helps when you start doing two or three arrows at a time shooting and you eat through basic arrows a lot faster. That and you don't have to keep breaking down components for half their scrap value all the time.

By that argument, you could argue that darts, throwing daggers, and shurikens aren't ammo.

(Glass swords disappear after one use, just like those thrown weapons I mentioned.)

In the games I mentioned, if you attack with a glass sword, it's gone for good.

(There's no way to repair such a weapon, and it disappears from your inventory before you can do anything else with it. (Excluding FFL1 which, again, due to a localization goof has 50 uses instead of the intended 1.))

That's reasonable (though I'd prefer regular ammo to be infinite), provided that there's enough of an advantage to using acid arrows to make them worth the extra effort.

Also, sometimes it's not obvious when you won't be able to go back to buy more, or in some cases, outright impossible (point of no return or an event that makes the shop inaccessible).

To many players, including myself, there's a psychological bios against using consumables, and they need to have a significant advantage over non-consumables. There's another barrier if the item is something that is in finite quantity, or if the infinite sources may become inaccessible; for such items to be viable, they need to be useful in boss fights, emergencies, or for restoring some resource that's hard to restore. (Also, the way I, and many players, play the game assumes that the game will get harder, hence the tendency to hoard consumables until the final boss, even though sometimes the final boss often isn't the hardest (mandatory) part of the game.)

Blade of Darkness for one, though in that case I was the one doing it, so many times I zig-zagged through range of archers, usually skeletons, to make them fire arrows and miss so I'd then collect them.

As for the OP's question, I'm definitely one of those who won't use consumables, so on the one hand if the ammo is tracked it tends to make me stay away from ranged weapons. On the other, seems just... messed up for it to not be tracked, if melee is also available, because ranged usually offers quite an advantage, attacking enemies that may not be able to defend, or flying targets, so there should be some limitation on that. But maybe a fair balance is, maybe a bit later in the game, where better ranged ammo and weapons would become the norm, to have very basic unlimited ammo, and recall for example the endless arrow in infinity engine games, or a basic ranged weapon that has unlimited ammo in itself, so ranged characters will be able to keep shooting but with much weaker power than what'd be expected at that point in the game.

I don't consider darts, throwing daggers, and shurikens ammo. They're not loaded into a weapon that launches them. I agree with wikipedia's definition in that ammo (short for ammunition) "is the material fired, scattered, dropped or detonated from any weapon or weapon system."

If you consider the game Veil of Darkness, not on GOG, there's darts in the game that can be thrown then recovered to be thrown again.

The fact that the glass sword can be used once does not change the fact that it is still just a sword. It can be used one time only because it has a limited durability, not because it's ammo. I have a bunch of really fancy glass plates in my kitchen and if thrown, there would be no way to repair any of them. They're not ammo, just like glass swords are not ammo.

Otherwise if a glass sword is ammo, then the master sword from Legend of Zelda is ammo with unlimited charges. They're both just swords.

If you're playing table top D&D and the DM allows you to throw your bow at an enemy to try to kill them as you've run out of arrows, but the bow is destroyed in the process thus can be used once only as a thrown projectile, you can argue that bows are ammo. What about crossbows? Guns? Can they be ammo too?

In a system where you have durability on equipment and a monk class, you can now argue that gloves are ammo. If gloves are ammo, what about boots? PC game has a list of games where you have a kick skill and are doing damage with your feet. Games where you have a limited durability don't give boots a pass so that your character doesn't have to go barefoot.

This is why I don't consider glass swords ammo. They're just swords. Just like plates and bows don't turn into ammo if thrown. Gloves and boots don't turn into ammo either if someone is punching and kicking.