Every time I'm reminded that Quick Time Events aren't already dead, it's really shocking. You have to wonder what mindset the developers were in when they decided that a QTE was the proper way to handle a dramatic event.
Generally speaking, game designers face a very dire question of "What can we give the player to do?" The need for some sort of variation in answering this question often leads to awful game mechanics, like awkward turret sequences and jamming buttons to open doors. I think, when asking this question, many designers need to be a bit more discerning about which answers are good enough to warrant being implemented and which ones should be left out.
On an opposing note, I'm going to come out in favor of both weapon durability and encumbrance. The assumption that these mechanics stem purely from some delusional pursuit of "realism" is a misconception. While different games use them differently, they most often exist to force player the make decisions on a micro-level. Saving a good weapon for later, choosing not to pick up the iron armor because it's not worth carrying, these are small, incremental decisions that are part of the difference between playing a game and simply watching one. They can also allow for weapons to be balanced on standards other than simply level-based stat allocation: if Fallout 3/NV's "Big Guns" weren't all unreasonably heavy, they'd fill a very different space in the overall balance of the game. In Bethesda games particularly, where every character's clothing is literally represented as an item, I think encumbrance is particularly important. You're simply not intended to strip naked every single bandit that crosses your path.
Now, I feel the need to address the idea that these things should be able to be toggled on and off. I'm not inherently opposed to the notion: in an ideal world, this would be fine. However, there are two things to consider: first, if they can be turned off, the developers can no longer use them as a tool in any way (the "Heavy Weapons" balance example above being one example of such a usage.) Additionally, I worry that allowing them to be toggled off will cause the designers to make decisions based on the assumption that these things will be turned off. This will inevitably create a situation in which turning them on doesn't just replicate "how things used to be," but actually makes things worse. A good example of this is the dynamic objective markers in Skyrim. Morrowind didn't have floating arrows in the environment telling you where things were, so you had to rely on the directions provided by NPCs. Skyrim has floating arrows, which "hardcore" players can supposedly disable... except, NPCs no longer give you directions. Ever. That's not to say that things are hard to find in Skyrim: Bethesda isn't stupid, and they've compensated for that fact that nobody ever gives directions by never requiring you to go anywhere without dropping a blacked-out version of the map location exactly where it is. But the very specific experience of being told that your destination is "North of X landmark, West of Y landmark" and actually trying to find it from there is entirely gone. They're struggling to reconcile this new hand-holding approach that's given them so much success with the older, more thought-intensive (and yes, more "realistic") ways of doing things. The ideal world where toggles can let players flip between the two design paths doesn't appear to be entirely realistic.
Limited lives also has a place in gaming. In games like Geometry Wars, lives being used as a barrier to progression is an important part of the game. They essentially serve the same purpose that "Damage" serves in most other games, and if you're going to argue that damage is stupid and everybody should be invincible all the time, then that's a very different conversation. Lives aren't always used in an appropriate manner these days (Mario.) but they're not something to be dismissed out of hand.
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