It promotes more tactical and thought out combat than just button mashing. All this while not forcing the player to not button mash if they want to, with the caveat of the weapon constantly breaking on them. This unlike some games, that I will not name here, that forces this with slow uninterruptible animations (that makes the game feel clunky and is actual bad game design). It's the limited ammo version of melee weapons (that I guess is hated by some people that just want to be John Rambo in every game that has a shooting element).      

Other than this, as stated by the designers, it also makes players use the wide array of weapons in the game instead of just sticking to the favorite or the latest most powerful weapon they find. I mean everyone that has played games for a while knows that in most games you find a wide array of weapons all the time that you don't even bother to pick up because they are less powerful or more ugly than the current weapon you use. 

Also it's not like the weapons just brakes out of nowhere, both games do give you a warning before they brake giving you an opportunity to, in a split second, switch the weapon out before going in to, for example, a flurry rush. 

I also am fully aware of that people that agree with me in this will continue to do that and people that disagree will not change their minds in the same manner as I will not change my mind around the games that I will not name here. 

For me it is one of the best things in the game. I might in the minority but I love it when one of my weapons break as I can pick up a new one. When my inventory is full of good weapons I just want the next one to break so I can find a new one. I really dislike it in games when you find weapon after weapon but you already have something slightly better so I never end up using anything else or feel like a weapon I found was a reward. Here even weak weapons can be useful. But I do understand that many want to keep their hard earned weapons and not accidentally break it on some rocks or a moblin.

eh, I absolutely refuse to play them until there's an option to turn it off.

If I was 20 years younger and didn't have a kid, job and responsibilities I would agree haha.

They need a casual mode for people like me who just needs to get a gaming fix in lol

Each to their own, to me it was one of the most annoying aspects of BotW. It didn't encourage me to experiment with different weapons, just made me try to avoid fighting enemies as much as possible. Either it was actively discouraging me from fighting altogether for roughly the first half of the game, or it was a completely pointless in the second half when I was constantly finding more weapons than I had room for, so I was basically throwing away weapons long before they even had a chance to break.

I got used to it in BotW and theres at least an option to make them last longer in TotK, so its fine.

This feature is a deal breaker for me, along with a stamina meter.

A game would have to do a lot of heavy lifting to get me to buy into it.

I'm currently replaying BotW via emulator and it's a much better experience this time around not only with much higher resolution and frame rate but also the option to disable things like weapon durability. My game is much more enjoyable when I can actually use a weapon I like without worrying about it breaking in just a few battles (or less). So many interesting and rare/unique weapons just ended up collecting dust because they were so fragile in my last playthrough. Now I'm doing all the shield surfing I want.

Not for me. I dont have the time for this nonesense. That, the very rigid stamina depletion and hell, even excesive rain like why does it rain so much in TOTK? I dont know if its just me but it rains even more than in BOTW, or at least it feels like it does. But yeah, good game. But fuck it rains too much. But yeah good game. 

I agree with the OP, to me the moment I have to get creative on the spot and concoct a better strategy once my weapon breaks les to my best moment on a gameplay perspective.

Not only this, I did a challenge on one of my playthroughs where I could not gain more weapon, shield and bow slots than I already had at the start.

It actually led this part of the experience to be magnified because of this constant hussle for whatever I could get my hands from the enemies I defeated