Starkonja's Head wording

The mod wordage in this game is far different than any other game I have played like this. It is quite literal. So much so that it can be confusing to some and took me a bit of re-training.

That said, I correctly interpreted the description as reduced damage dealt.

Yeah, the wording is very precise and once you're used to it, it's easy to interpret almost everything correctly on your first try.

I have no problem with the description of the helm as it stands.

However, one thing which may help player comprehension is if modifiers whose effects are "beneficial" are grouped together and separated from modifiers whose effects are "harmful" in the description. (Perhaps with a separator between them?)

Of course, it won't always be the case that things fit cleanly into one or the other category, even ignoring the case of things like crit multiplier, you have things like Blood Magic and more complicated effects. Perhaps "beneficial", "harmful" and "other" would do. :)

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MesostelZe wrote:

However, one thing which may help player comprehension is if modifiers whose effects are "beneficial" are grouped together and separated from modifiers whose effects are "harmful" in the description. (Perhaps with a separator between them?)

Of course, it won't always be the case that things fit cleanly into one or the other category, even ignoring the case of things like crit multiplier, you have things like Blood Magic and more complicated effects. Perhaps "beneficial", "harmful" and "other" would do. :)

Color coding might also be an option here.
Bluish for helpful, reddish for harmful, and gold for "interesting".

I testify as being guilty of misinterpreting the first line..

It does literally make sense.. but it is confusing.

The phrase "reduced damage" sounds like "damage reduction" which isn't an ability in the game, but something which everyone knows about and tries to get more of. That's why negative damage is harder to immediately get than positive damage.

I'm not a fan of adding "taken" or "dealt" to every skill node and item in the game, but wouldn't saying "-50% damage" be exactly the same but more clear?

-50% damage is less clear because you don't know if it's less or reduced

I like the idea of highlighting bad modifiers. You could change the colour, font, add a skull icon, or something else.

There's only a few bad modifiers so it's unusual enough to need some way of highlighting it.

The wording is completely consistent with everything else so I think should stay the same.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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Charan wrote:

It's not as though this would be the first time precise, to-the-letter wording has confused players. Increased isn't the same as More? Whaaaat?

What I really regret, is when the big consolidation happened and we settled on More/Less for multiplicative, I didn't take the opportunity to swap out 'reduced' for 'decreased', which I feel more accurately mirrors 'increased'. Every so often I remember that and it starts bugging me for a while.

The problem is you are trying to be clever, and that never works very well (most people are not that bright).

Just say what things DO instead of relying on what is essential a PoE specific meaning of a word.

And I'm not talking about this specific item, but everything.

Reading stuff in PoE is almost, but not exactly, like reading code written by someone who is very clever (and likes to optimize a LOT) - yes it does what it says, and it is very precise and logical, but it is also very compact and requires your full attention.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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Charan wrote:

It's not as though this would be the first time precise, to-the-letter wording has confused players. Increased isn't the same as More? Whaaaat?

What I really regret, is when the big consolidation happened and we settled on More/Less for multiplicative, I didn't take the opportunity to swap out 'reduced' for 'decreased', which I feel more accurately mirrors 'increased'. Every so often I remember that and it starts bugging me for a while.

OOhhh, you should go ahead and do it. It's easy see, open code files, Find + Replace "reduced" -> "decreased", click "Next" a couple thousand times... Or click "Replace All" once and pray the RNG gods that nothing is messed up. Lmao :)

Seriously though, it'd be a good change.