Update's Up! (Destiny)

by General Vagueness , The Vault of Sass, Monday, March 30, 2015, 18:41 (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.

Numbers alone tell you jack shit, whereas USING THE GUN and playing the game tells you everything.

You do realize two and one are numbers, right? They could base the numbers in something very practical, like how many shots it takes to kill some enemy, that would be fine. Even without that, if I know the numbers and how they interact, I can make that determination.

The numbers should be completely hidden in my opinion, which they are (aside from damage). 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.

I thought it would be clear by now, but maybe it's not: I don't want just a general sense of whether to use a weapon or not, I want to know which one is the best choice. If the bars made that completely unambiguous I wouldn't be complaining. I know there are multiple factors in what makes a weapon better but as it stands I can't even get a good look at those factors without going to some website or going and testing the weapon, and even in testing, I'm bad at estimating and I have a bad memory, so I can easily miss a difference that might be clear to someone else.
As I said, maybe I'm coming at it wrong and the point is just to intuit or guess or even just mostly ignore the bars, I just don't want it to be that way.

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

I don't see how you can argue numbers that we aren't seeing wouldn't be meaningful if we could see them. In particular, reload could easily be put in terms of seconds, and rate of fire could easily be in rounds per minute, as it is in real life. Having numbers for those would be both meaningful and helpful.