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Why is there little-to-no consistency in add-on descriptions? Why not just use flat numbers?
Reposting this from Questions, as I feel it merits discussion, not just posed as a series of questions.
The usage of "slighty, moderately, considerably" in add-on descriptions is wildly varied and inconsistent, haphazardly thrown around and provides little to no indication of what they actually do. Some descriptions do not accurately depict their effect, and some flat-out lie or do not function.
Legion's Cold Dirt add-on "considerably" reduces the post-Frenzy cooldown. It actually reduces it by 0.6 seconds, or 15%. This is also strangely worded; many think the cooldown refers to the recharge of the Feral Frenzy power bar.
Plague's Exorcism Amulet add-on "moderately" increases Corrupt Purge duration. It actually increases it by a piddling 4 seconds, or 6%.
Compare The Shape's Hair Bow add-on, which "considerably" increases his Evil Within III duration, which increases it by a whopping 50% in length, from 60 to 90 seconds.
Cannibal's "Chili" and "Award-Winning Chilli" add-ons claim to increase the chainsaw charge acceleration. They literally do nothing at all, as confirmed by a developer.
Why the strange wording and inconsistencies? Why not just be transparent about the functionality, using direct numbers and values? Why keep completely non-functional add-ons in the game for 2.3 years!?
Comments
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Sigh I remember when legions cooldown add ons actually did something those were the days
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The devs don't like transparency.
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Because BHVR is rarely transparent.
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Because devs are ebil and dont like us knowing the truth.
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It's not a conspiracy. If they didn't want us knowing the truth, they would go to a bit more trouble to hide the values in the game files. It's not like this information isn't publicly available on the official wiki.
OP - I'll copy and paste the answer I gave on your original question, in case you'd like to have a discussion about it.
I believe the reason they use words is to make the add-ons easier to compare to one another. Everyone knows what the word "moderate" means, so you can get a rough idea of how effective that add-on is just by reading the description, whereas if it said 10% you would have to do the maths to understand how much difference it really makes in the context of the power.
And the reason that particular words aren't associated with specific percentages - for example, "considerably" could mean 20% on one killer's add-on and 15% on another - is because they are relative terms. Meaning that their purpose is to give you an idea of how effective that add-on will be at enhancing its corresponding killer power. 15% might be a "tremendous" amount in some contexts and only a "moderate" amount in others - a 15% movement speed increase, for example, is huge, but a 15% increase in healing speed only makes about two seconds' difference - so in some ways it's more useful to know the relative effectiveness of an add-on instead of just a number.
Having said all that, and while I do think that using relative terms to describe certain add-ons is actually useful, I think it would also be a good idea to include the actual percentages in the descriptions for those who are interested in exact figures.
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I would rather know the seconds over percentages. Like saying "increases Evil Within III by 30 seconds" instead of considerably or even 50%
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That's another good option, and would probably be clearer too, because it removes the common confusion over how the percentages are calculated when stacked - whether they are based on the original value or the modified one.
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I think the worst part is that "slightly" doesn't always mean "slightly", and the words are literally just thrown around randomly.
While these comparisons could be done with literally everything in the game, I don't want to make a large wall of text, so I'll just give my favorite one:
The Pig's Common Add-ons
Workshop Grease: 1% increase in Skill Check chance.
Shattered Syringe: 20% decreased Ambush Attack cool-down.
John's Medical File: 50% decreased Ambush Attack charge time.
Combat Straps: -0.3 seconds Crouch time. (If I did the math right, it makes your crouch speed 23% faster)
So our numbers are 1%, 20%, 23%, and 50%. And what single word do they used to describe all of these?
Slightly!
And how does a new player who just bought the game figure all this out without using an unofficial wiki?
They don't!
I'm more upset about this then I should be 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
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Just put the exact numbers in brackets in descriptions. That would litterally take only 5 minutes of work for the developers, and be a MASSIVE quality of life change.
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Anything would be better, really. Giving people this information is a downside to nobody.
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One shouldn't have to go to the wiki just to get information that valuable. Whether the info is publicly available or not, if it isn't contained in the dbd.exe its irrelevant. This isn't 32 bit fallout, I shouldn't have to put together a research doc just to explain perks and add ons to my friends. this lack of mechanic transparency contributes massively to new players struggling. This is unintuitive.
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That's not what I'm saying. If you had read my comment more carefully, you would know that I actually totally agree that the numbers should be included in the descriptions in-game. My point was that the developers aren't maliciously trying to hide information from us, the way some of the commenters above were suggesting, because if they were the information wouldn't be as easily accessible as it is.
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