Update's Up! (Destiny)

by CyberKN , Oh no, Destiny 2 is bad, Monday, March 30, 2015, 18:27 (3316 days ago) @ Cody Miller

The practical value is in how much. How much better or worse is gun A than gun B in these specific areas? That is the perfect time to use numbers, questions of how much are the reason numbers even exist.

No that is the perfect time to shoot the gun yourself, and see if you like it better. Oh, this hand cannon takes two shots to kill a Vex Goblin, but this one only takes one? That's practical knowledge you have in determining the gun's usefulness that you don't get with numbers. I don't need to look at any numbers to know that Black Hammer hits hard; it kills Hive Knights in the Crota Raid in one shot. Icebreaker takes two.

That, sir, is slander. :P

Numbers alone tell you jack shit, whereas USING THE GUN and playing the game tells you everything. The numbers should be completely hidden in my opinion, which they are (aside from damage).

Well they're not. Like it or not, Those bars represent numbers. As much as you might hate them, they're not going away, so we might as well make the most of it.

You're right. Numbers alone are meaningless. but when you use a scout rifle with 10 impact, and see another that the vendors are selling has 20 imapact, why is it so bad that I use that information to deduce that the vendor gun will do precisely twice as much damage per bullet at the same range?

You are playing a first person shooter, not a spreadsheet simulator. The bars exist to just give you a general sense of whether you'd want to use the weapon or not.

Oh, come ON. NO game advertises itself as a spreadsheet simulator. but when your first person shooter has as many guns as Destiny does, don't you think it's kind of impractical to expect a player to try every single one? Isn't it much more efficient to compare guns based on their stats, instead of grinding out marks for weeks on end, just to purchase a gun I might not even end up wanting to use?

Clip size is the only exception, since that number represents something meaningful.

Why is clip size so important, compared to Rate-of-Fire for example? As far as I know, there isn't a sniper rifle in the game that holds more than 6 rounds a standard clip. Therefore, The bar for sniper rifle clip-size would be full at 6, and half at three. Other weapons would follow suit.

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I spent way to long laying awake last night concocting a scenario that illustrates why numbers are useful, so here it is:

House of wolves comes out. I get a 365 handcannon from a legendary engram. It's got really low impact, but a very high RoF. I level it up, and then we all go play the new raid together.

The raid throws a bunch of stealth vandals at you, and to succeed it's important that you kill them before they can close and start hacking away. Problem is, Due to it's Damage Cap limitation, Fatebringer takes a little more than 2 head-shots to kill, and your new handcannon takes a little more than three ("little more" meaning they have a sliver of health left).

Neither of these feel powerful enough, so you limp back to the tower, looking to purchase a new, better handcannon- hopefully one that can just one-shot the vandals.

The tower crucible vendor has two handcannons for sale, "Lefty" and "Righty". Due to the way the game currently is, you can only compare vendor items to your currently equipped weapon. Fatebringer's lower attack stat will make for inaccurate comparisons, so you equip your new 365 HC and use that to compare.

Here's what you see:

Lefty:

Righty

At a glance, the stats look very similar, but "Righty" has the Outlaw perk instead of feeding frenzy. Outlaw is faster reload, so we buy that one.

So you spend the next day and a half grinding out the XP to max it out, then take it back into the raid, hoping to one-shot those pesky vandals.

You can't.

The impact is *just* low enough that the vandals still require two shots to take out. Boo.

However, if when you go back to the vendor, you're able to compare The two HCs against each other, and see that "Lefty" has a little bit more impact. Too bad you have to grind out another 150 crucible marks over two weeks to get that one.

But what if we had numbers?

I know from expereince that it takes a little more than three shots to take out the vandals. Therefore, at the same range, I need a handcannon with a little more than three times as much impact for a one-hit kill.

Numbers would help determine which HC will help me accomplish this, and which would fail:

Lefty

Righty

Now I'll admit that this is a very specific example. But I don't see the downside to including the numbers. Giving the player more information is rarely a bad thing.