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.

Actual numbers would not make it any less ambiguous as to the "best" choice. In case you didn't know, most guns have similar DPS across their archetypes, and across the primaries. On paper they are all the same essentially, except for certain exotics. The "best" choice is whatever you prefer; something you do not know until you go shoot stuff with the gun.

I know what I prefer. I prefer high impact and/or fast reload. Currently, estimating reload times is a crap shoot, and I can't tell what has high impact outside of hand cannons and kind of shotguns, and that's only because I've spent a lot of time looking at impact bars for them, and have seen numbers for the actual impact bars in the case of hand cannons. Having numbers would tell me "hey, you'll like this gun", without me having to possibly buy and possibly level up that gun and then test it.

To counter your argument about the number of shots it takes, that doesn't account for switching weapons, or for using grenades or melees-- and melees are extremely relevant to me as a Hunter.

For your recurring argument about immersion, the point is to be able to look, make a decision, and then move on with the actual game. Maybe not being sure what you're getting increases immersion for you, but for me it causes worry (which is realistic, but not enjoyable).

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.

Taking a guess, probably because you're presented with that number in the HUD, and because you can count the shots.

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.

I totally forgot to mention that, that's another reason to have them. It would be nice to be able to have the right trigger comparison for any two weapons, but failing that, or even along with that, having numbers instead of bars would let you remember or write down the number and then go compare it to any other gun.

If you think those mock-ups I made with the numbers at the side of the bars flip the switch from "immersive" to "not immersive"... I don't know how to respond to that.

I think it's just completely and utterly redundant, and provides you with no new significant information.

You have a point about comparing two guns not in your inventory, and I don't know the solution to that.

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.

Actual numbers would not make it any less ambiguous as to the "best" choice. In case you didn't know, most guns have similar DPS across their archetypes, and across the primaries. On paper they are all the same essentially, except for certain exotics. The "best" choice is whatever you prefer; something you do not know until you go shoot stuff with the gun.

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.

Hand Cannons have exactly three possible impact values. There's no in between. Your scenario is impossible. Hand cannons in the same archetype will do the same amount of damage all things being equal.

There are low impact high rof (Devil you Don't, Word of Crota)
There are medium impact medium rate of fire (Faction hand Cannons, TFWPKY, Fatebringer, Devil You Know)
There are high impact Low Rof hand cannons (Timur's Lash, Sir Isaac)

You only need to try one from each type to know how the archetype performs.

Okay. I think you're being kind of nit-picky, but if you replace handcannons with scout-rifles, sniper rifles, or pretty much any other weapon in the game, the argument holds.

The downside for including numbers is that just looking at a number isn't going to tell you the final damage done to an enemy. It's superfluous, and has you worrying about numbers instead of actually playing the game. More numbers = less immersion in an FPS.

I'm not asking for the final damage (It would be nice, but there's too many unexposed variables). I'm just asking for a more precise way to compare guns before I buy them.

If you think those mock-ups I made with the numbers at the side of the bars flip the switch from "immersive" to "not immersive"... I don't know how to respond to that.

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.

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.

Hand Cannons have exactly three possible impact values. There's no in between. Your scenario is impossible. Hand cannons in the same archetype will do the same amount of damage all things being equal.

There are low impact high rof (Devil you Don't, Word of Crota)
There are medium impact medium rate of fire (Faction hand Cannons, TFWPKY, Fatebringer, Devil You Know)
There are high impact Low Rof hand cannons (Timur's Lash, Sir Isaac)

You only need to try one from each type to know how the archetype performs.

The downside for including numbers is that just looking at a number isn't going to tell you the final damage done to an enemy. It's superfluous, and has you worrying about numbers instead of actually playing the game. More numbers = less immersion in an FPS.

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.

I don't see how, there's nothing making you look at the numbers, and you already have several to keep track of if you want to get the most out of what you do. On top of that you have numbers appearing whenever you do damage to an enemy. It seems wrong to me to show the player how much damage they're doing but not why they're doing that amount of damage.

Early builds did not display damage numbers. I think it was a mistake to include them in the final. Halo did fine without damage values, and so would Destiny. It'd certainly make it more immersive.

Destiny has some fundamental differences from Halo, and with the volume and variety of stuff you get, you need something to make discard/stash/upgrade decisions with. It could have been qualitative differences instead of quantitative, but that would need a whole different approach to making the game.

If you want a video game that came out about half a year ago to completely scrap a system and port it over to a new location, then you need to get a better understanding of what goes into these kinds of changes.

I made games for 13 years. I understand.

Also, Destiny already did a major overhaul about a year before it launched, right?

Ah yes, and I'm sure we are both familiar with the technical details of that overhaul, the resources required from each department, and what it caused to be cut. Or not. No, neither of us are. All we know is "a bunch got removed and changed or redone". The question of vault changes is solidly rooted in technology and implementation hurdles. That much we DO know.

This is a very good point. I don't think it's as bad as you suggest, since you have the bars to give you a general sense of the weapon, and again, even showing exact number would tell you nothing about how it performs in the field that the bars don't already reveal.

True, but they give me a sense of how it relates to weapons I have already used before. I know Felwinter's Lie will kill me from farther away than, dunno Secret Handshake, or that Devil You Don't sucks compared to Thorn. It's not about getting a gun as a complete rookie and divining how it plays out, but getting ANY non-Exotic as an experienced veteran and already know how it compares to any other gun you already had.

Still, you are right in that saving up for a week only to buy a dud would suck. I think the solution is either to eliminate vendor gear (bad)

Heh

add a way to test guns in a practice environment like a gun range before you buy (good)

If the game can't even handle the extra Vault spaces without throwing away something, I doubt there's any good way to implement this.

or have a mode in the crucible where you select the guns you can take into the match from a pool of crucible / vanguard gear (best).

What? But how about PvE?

When currency to buy guns in the Tower is rare (it theoretically takes a full week and change of playtime to gather enough marks to buy weapons), "use it to evaluate" simply does not work.

This is a very good point. I don't think it's as bad as you suggest, since you have the bars to give you a general sense of the weapon, and again, even showing exact number would tell you nothing about how it performs in the field that the bars don't already reveal.

Still, you are right in that saving up for a week only to buy a dud would suck. I think the solution is either to eliminate vendor gear (bad), add a way to test guns in a practice environment like a gun range before you buy (good), or have a mode in the crucible where you select the guns you can take into the match from a pool of crucible / vanguard gear (best).

I guess it all boils down to the feeling that, since they HAVE the number displayed in some form or another, why not simply display it as a hard number?

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. 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.

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

I don't see how, there's nothing making you look at the numbers, and you already have several to keep track of if you want to get the most out of what you do. On top of that you have numbers appearing whenever you do damage to an enemy. It seems wrong to me to show the player how much damage they're doing but not why they're doing that amount of damage.

Early builds did not display damage numbers. I think it was a mistake to include them in the final. Halo did fine without damage values, and so would Destiny. It'd certainly make it more immersive.

The whole idea of even having a Vault as it was was something I thought was neat and wasn't expecting.

I was, because of Borderlands 2. Destiny has always been Bungie Borderlands in my mind.

Just like damage, those values have no upper limit, and will grow with the game and level. Compare that to Stability, which will always be on a 0-100 level. Once you have perfect stability (100%) it makes no sense to add 10 stability, or to increase stability by 50%. Same for reload, or most attributes.

At the end of the day, FPS only players that want a pure FPS won't like Destiny, and RPG players that want a pure RPG won't like it either. It's a hybrid, which means not only taking elements from both, but also tossing out elements from both. Destiny isn't such a hard core RPG that (imho) we need numbers for everything. In fact that would take away from the "jump in and have fun fast" that they were aiming for.

I don't see how, there's nothing making you look at the numbers, and you already have several to keep track of if you want to get the most out of what you do. On top of that you have numbers appearing whenever you do damage to an enemy. It seems wrong to me to show the player how much damage they're doing but not why they're doing that amount of damage. Numbers would only give part of that-- I and others tried and failed to figure out the other parts-- but it would be a good start.
I don't know, maybe it's the wrong approach, maybe we're supposed to intuit how good a weapon is, it's supposed to be one of those things you can tell just by looking (at the bars). Unfortunately intuition isn't my strong suit, and neither is accurate color perception. Bungie is helping me in one of those areas, I wish they'd help me in the other one too.

That might not be it though. It could just be that the bars are all too often not correct, and can even go down when they should go up, or vice versa, and using numbers instead would make it easier to confirm that.

We've been over this. The bar already represents a number, AKA how full the bar is.

Yes, it does. You know what represents a number better? A number. An honest-to-goodness Hindu-Arabic digit sequence. Heck, I'd take Roman numerals or hexadecimal.

No bar is 0, full bar is 100. Displaying a number would be less useful, since the bars offer a quick way to compare.

I never said they shouldn't have the bars, I just said I want numbers. It's completely trivial to have both, you don't even need extra space, just put the number next to or inside the bar.
The bars do give a quick way to compare, but many people are like me and are not good at eyeballing differences in length. That's why they let you pull the right trigger to see an overlay. That's not incompatible with showing numbers either.

As far wanting to know the absolute number, that is meaningless since so much affects your damage.

I don't even know what you're saying here. I want to see the numbers for all of the "so much" that affects my damage-- that would help me to put them into perspective.

The numbers only make sense when compared to another weapon - This scout rifle has more impact but less stability than this other one. This is what the bar does anyway.

Yeah, but it's not precise-- or at least, it's hard to get precision from it. It's been shown different stats vary in different ways based on what you see. Generally a small visible change gives a small change in effect, and a large one gives a large change, but that's not universal, and different people have different ideas of what's small or large on the bars and what's a small or large effect.
On top of that, this might be on my TV or my setup, or just the fact I'm using an old standard analog TV or an older-generation console, but it can be hard to even see what the bars are communicating, even with the right trigger comparison. It can be hard to tell if there is a difference, and which thing is larger, and if it's the difference is a tiny sliver or a minuscule smidgen.

Look at the bar for a sniper rifle. Not very full is it? Well, the sniper certainly does more damage than a hand cannon, whose bar is large. That bar is only meaningful when looking between sniper rifles.

I don't see the relevance, I'm not asking for a comparison between different classes of guns-- and if I was, it would still be warranted, because the right trigger comparison feature takes no account of that, and gleefully tells you a sniper has half the impact of an auto rifle when that's clearly not the case. Understanding you should mostly only compare values between the same type of gun is something I already have, and it's already a prerequisite for using the comparison feature properly.

If you want a number, look up the gun on DestinyDB. It lists the exact numerical value, which has zero practical value over the bar.

I don't want to have to go to a website though.
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.
None of that addresses the part you quoted anyway, which is that on top of not being precise, the bars are often not accurate either. This is relatively easy to miss with bars but more evident with numbers, because you can be sure a number didn't change or actually went down instead of up. I was being cynical, thinking maybe that was a reason, they don't want us to see their errors, but whether it is or not, now I think having numbers would be good because it'll give them immediate and plentiful feedback about which perks aren't depicted or described properly-- showing us the numbers could help us to help them make the information more accurate and consistent.

I'd be hesitant to say anything at all about the future, with that kind of rhetoric floating around, but I guess then they wouldn't be transparent. They can't win.

Exactly. As Cortana once said:

"Don't make a girl a promise if you know you can't keep it". Basically, don't hype the specifics of your game until you know exactly what you have and can deliver.

Mentioning something once is not hyping it. What things did they talk about more than once that were specific?