The Add-On Measurements are Bad
"Slightly, moderately, considerably, tremendously."
These vague descriptors have been plaguing most add-ons in the game since release and are probably one of the single worst game design decisions in the game. They don't tell you what your perk is actively doing to your power, they just tell you some vague description.
Why? Probably to avoid the ire of people who will realize that these add-ons are either very bad or too good, and probably to avoid actually having to balance the add-ons out.
I'm certain without a doubt that if the add-ons were changed to be hard numbers instead of vague descriptors on what they do, the community would be much happier about it since now we know what the add-on actually does for our power. This absolutely moronic and archaic system of using words to describe an add-on are problematic to the health of the game and need to be gotten rid of.
It's only worse when these words aren't even consistent to the hard numbers people have researched before. Take Spirit's add-ons for example, which I will be posting two examples of what the description would be.
I want you all to read these and see which one is easier to understand, then I want you to notice how inconsistent the descriptions actually are upon noticing that they don't line up properly.
- Zori
- BHVR Description: "Slightly increases Yamaoka's Haunting movement speed."
- Better Description: "Increases movement speed by +9% while in a phase walk."
- Muddy Sports Day Cap
- BHVR Description: "Moderately increases Yamaoka's Haunting movement speed."
- Better Description: "Increases movement speed by +18% while in a phase walk."
- Dirty Uwabaki
- BHVR Description: "Considerably increases Yamaoka's Haunting movement speed."
- Better Description: "Increases movement speed by +26% while in a phase walk."
- Mother-Daughter Ring
- BHVR Description: "Tremendously increases Yamaoka's Haunting movement speed."
- Better Description: "Increases movement speed by +70% while in a phase walk."
The slightly and moderately add-ons increase by 9%, the considerably increases by 8% and the tremendously increases by 44%, the latter two being heavily inconsistent with the first two. For lack of better word, this is stupid; I'm all for variance in a system of this kind, but locking hard numbers behind a vague wording only hurts the community's knowledge and awareness, and hurts the balance of the game as a whole.
Almost every Perk in the game, bar a few exceptions, also have hard numbers on their descriptions, rather than actually using vague terminology for the sake of confusing people.
So developers, I've got a genuine question: Why?
Comments
They don't want to put numbers because that would confuse players.
I don't agree, but that's their reasoning.
I do believe it is because if not they'd need to rework way more add-ons that they want to. As an example the Hag one that doesn't allow Hag to teleport but increases her speed, if you say to players, it increases the speedo from 4.4 to 4.5 instead of the usual 4.6 then players could understand that her add-on is useless.
Slighty increase the set-trap from 2 s to 1.8 s... I am not sure about the real value of Trapper's trap at the moment but this is an example of how many add-ons works and even, sometimes those are green or purple ones to have such a low value.
That makes sense. It’d be nice for more experienced players to have a setting which displays the actual numbers. Or they could stick them in the corner of the box if they want to be snazzy.
No, what confuses players more is not putting numbers in to begin with.
If we were told that the Mother-Daughter Ring increased Spirit's movement speed in phase walk by 70% or 4.9m/s (estimate used), then people would be like, "Wow, this makes her move so much faster."
Saying it's a "Tremendous" increase doesn't give people enough knowledge about what it does and will thusly confuse players who don't actively research it. Giving hard numbers makes it more understandable on what happens.
Like think of Nemesis' speed add-ons for zombies:
For the last one, there's no need to even put a number since double literally means that, "Double". It's easy as hell to understand from any player's point of perspective.