Yes. Arcanum golems are actually a very good example on how it can add another layer of decision-making into a game. It can also be used to make items stand out more from each other, e.g. a light but brittle sword versus a heavier and more durable one. However, rather than equipment being permanently destroyed, I prefer some sort of a repair system, as balancing economy is hard in an open world game, and weapon and armor maintenance can provide a useful money sink. Besides, if your game has a single weapon that you can get early on and is better than anything else, there's something wrong with the itemization.
I don't think it added any new layers to decision making. Micromanaging your party's equipment was already a big thing in the game at that point. In the end all that you needed to do (iirc) was to micromanage their weapons so they don't accidentally use their good weapons. I don't see the positives. Even one off special weapons are a bit gimmicky and overused in rpgs already.
Equipment durability is also class dependant. A mage's wand or staff probably doesn't wear out unless it is used in physical combat. But a melee character of any kind or weapons character will surely pay more attention to it which can make resource heavy characters even more heavy to play. But the s tone golems were only annoyance to you if you played melee character.
One of the issues with weapon durability is that people are detail oriented. If your weapon is at 98% and as such it does 99.5% instead of 100% of damage then I'm sure that many people will simply stop and fix their weapons to 100% just to get the best out of it. Especially if you have challenging combat in the game. Some of this can be then countered with making the fixing more resource intensive so you need certain amounts of x and y and z to fix an armor made of xyz. So you end up carrying all that stuff with you as well. Or you counter that by making the skill and equipment requirements for equipment fixing so heavy that you need someone else to do it for you. Which adds useless travelling to the game. Maybe the use of the world map adds another layer of decision making to your equipment management but I don't see it a positive layer either.
When it comes to weapon durability I think it would be more fun to just not make it possible to fix the weapons at all. Instead just have 2 stats. Sharpness and durability. Sharpness is just damage modifier and is taken care by a passive skill. More sharp more damage, more skill more sharpness and done automatically as a passive skill. Durability is just wear and little by little towards the 0% the equipment starts to lose effectiveness and once the equipment eventually wears out then it just turns into pile of random bits. To fix it you need high quality blacksmith and so forth.
But I really don't see the point in stopping in every once in a while to fix your weapons. Having a passive skill or equipment would work better. Because otherwise it is just micromanagement that becomes a chore very quickly. I don't think having thust and hunger is good either for a rpg. It just adds annoying micromanagement. I did not like it even in minecraft... Although in minecraft equipment management worked pretty well but on the other hand minecraft did not have unique items.
But in the end with weapon durability you are going to get some of these:
1) players having to carry more stuff
2) players having to stop playing to micromanage/wait more often
3) players having to travel back and forth more
In general I think that open world RPGs would benefit from a flatter power curve, both in equipment and character development. Rather than items having a single damage stat or whatever, give them some different properties that make them feel different from each other, so that finding one great weapon doesn't make every other weapon in the game world obsolete. Also, while starting out as a weakling and ending up a demigod half-way through the game is undeniably appealing, it becomes a nightmare to balance the content so that the game always offers reasonable challenge, especially if the player is allowed to go anywhere from the start.
I'd argue that one of the key aspects of rpgs is trying to find better equipment. This generally means you have 4 different level of equipment in the game. Level 1 is really basic stuff. Rusty swords, cheap daggers, baseball bats etc. Level 2 is good quality basic stuff. Single shot rifles, spiked baseball bats, decent swords. Level 3 is castle guard swords and armor. Better than 99% of the stuff out there. And then you have level 4 stuff. Ancient magical swords, unique items.
If the game has level 4 stuff then everybody wants it. Managing your equipment and getting the best out of your group centers heavily on 2 things. Skills and equipment. And improving those two is one of the key aspects of rpg game. One way t make different equipment more different is to add more different stats. To have more variance you generally need more stats. But even if you have endless amount of different stats one kind of weapon is usually going to be the best. And having tons of stats will also make it super annoying to compare the weapons. And can lead to players carrying lots of different weapons so they have the right one for most scenarios. Or if you limit weapon carrying then you just make the player travel more to go the right weapon.
Most often times players are filthy rich and powerful towards the latter part of the game anyways so the only real way to keep (all) the best absolute equipment away from the hands of the players is to hide it in the world. This also means the equipment is going to be rare and once again leads to situation where players go for the best weapon as soon as they can and use it for the rest of the game. Or if you give out special equipment to the player all the time then it is not special and again imho hurts the equipment collecting experience.
I don't think flatter power curve really works. Definitely not for open world games. Shadowrun games for example don't really have any really special weapons but it kinda works as shadowrun is not open world. No crafting and no unique weapons or armor or even stats. But even then everytime I play any shadowrun game I'm left with wanting something little better than everybody else. I have all this money and all I can get is the same level stuff as the next wannabe shadowrunner. As a player I don't want it because it is more overkill. I want it because it is unique. I just like the equipment finding aspect of the game and the flatter power curve ends up limiting the game imho.
In order to circumvent this problem, some games use a chapter-based structure, others resort to level-scaling, some might put visible level numbers above the enemies' heads, but it's not really ideal. For open world games horizontal growth is generally a better fit than vertical — give the player new abilities instead of just making his numbers go through the roof. It potentially gives you a greater sense of progress (taking out enemies with a new spell or learning to levitate as opposed to just hitting a bit harder with a sword), and it allows for more freedom when it comes to exploration. Of course your numbers can and should go up as well, but not to a point where low-level enemies can't even put a dent in your armor.
Adding more abilities and then balancing it can be a lot of work though. Levitation for example can instantly create balance issues when the enemy mage can fly around your bestest swordmen and shoot fireballs from complete safety. Better stats are easy because all it takes is adding more numbers into txt files basically. New abilities can easily lead to feature creep.
Also I think if you add too many special skills and abilities to a game then it becomes too random. Instead of rock/paper/scissors you have 10000 different attacks and counters and the battles can easily become such that you keep using your special ability and win everyhing until you come across the one npc in the game who has the ability to counter you ability and as such you just switch to your 2nd best ability and easily kill him. Or you can just add more attack abilities. But 99% of the time those are just damage multipliers.
Anyways more text = I'm more right.