I guess you won't be using fast-travel then, since the more immersive experience is to walk?
Personally, I think escapism is a part of gaming. Implementing every menial minutiae of every-day life is swiftly obsoleted by the real thing (real life). Games are an essentialised distillation of some facet of reality, they aren't supposed to be reality simulators. If they were we'd have no time to play them.
Immersion is a value, sure, but there are many things in games that aren't realistic at all and i've been able to take at face value. The ability of a game to immerse you is greater than the sum of its parts and isn't so crude as simply imitating how the real world operates.
I'm still curious as to what else people think it adds to the game, besides the inherent realism.
In response to your first comment, yes, I intend to never ever use Fast Travel. As for the rest, well my point was already in the bit you quoted:
Realistic or not, I'll take any system that enhances that immersion and creates atmosphere, and I see weapon degradation as something that could potentially add both
It's also why in my full comment I placed "realism" in those scare quotes, because I wasn't saying realism HAS to be there or else the game isn't immersive, but merely that sometimes the implementation of a realistic feature can lead to an enhanced experience, immersion or possibly otherwise (And the fact that people have different definitions as to what "realism" actually means when implemented into different games).
Absolutely not. You have this nice and cool sword and then it will break apart and bye bye nice sword. I don't like this super special weapon to decompose as I fight with it. Sure, if the blade gets a bit dull, you could sharpen it with some stones. That would be okay. But I really dislike weapon degradation.
The weapon won't break, that was cleared up as a mis-translation. It will get dull to a certain point (How far we don't know), but it won't actually just shatter or anything like that.