Amend Ambiguous Wording for Implants

[Bella_Cadelanne]

I know to some it may seem unimportant as most folks here are veterans like me and are aware of how most multipliers stack in the wonderful universe of eve.

But the wording of set effect multipliers for implants with secondary effects seems a little ambiguous
I’m forever having to explain to less seasoned pilots that “yes it may be worded that way but this is how it actually works” and I’m sure many of us have had the heated discussions about it with people that don’t quite understand.

Il use Ascendency as an example because those are the ones in this head.

”Set Effect: 15% bonus to the strength of all Ascendancy implant secondary effects”

After playing many other games back in my gamer prime time i would understand this as ‘Once you have the full set you get this bonus’
However playing eve I’m aware that this isn’t fact, I and a few others have commented that the above line should be amended to something like
“Set Effect: 15% bonus to the strength of each Ascendancy implants secondary effect per set implant”
As the bonus is applied to each implant regardless of the number of implants and its a multiplicative bonus per implant, so having 3 is 0.15^3 all five is 0.15^5 not just a flat 0.15 for the set.

I contacted support because I don’t really use the forums and they quite rightly kicked me here to have it delt with.

it seems like a low priority task but is relatively simple to implement. and hopefully it will quash the misconception about how implant bonuses work among those that have not yet been educated my the veteran leagues in lengthy debates and mountains of numbers as proof (and pyfa also shows the math) but the young do not always listen

Anyway, Fly Safe….. or Dangerously if you live in HS

[DeMichael_Crimson]

Agree 100%…

Having the item info text be more specific would definitely help… Unfortunately CCP likes being more cryptic than straight forward with their descriptions…

[mecrotic]

Bella; the key word is “ALL”….lol

[Gerard_Amatin]

There are a couple of things ambiguous with implants:

1. When the set effect kicks in
2. The exact way the bonuses stack

1 When does the set effect kick in?

The first one is ambiguous for those who do not read well and have (wrong) assumptions based on other games. Some other games like World of Warcraft have set bonuses that you need to unlock by equipping a specified number of pieces of a set.

Does EVE also require a specified number of pieces before the set bonus is unlocked?

If we read the description in EVE there is no specified number, instead it says:

Set Effect: 15% bonus to the strength of all Ascendancy implant secondary effects

Without specified number you can interpret this two ways:
a. You have to equip the full set for this bonus to start working
b. This bonus works on any Ascendancy implant secondary effects, no matter the number of implants

Of course the first interpretation is easy to make, but it’s a mistake. It says nowhere that we have to equip a full set for the bonus to apply. It merely says it increases the strength of all secondary effects of implants of that set.

And it does exactly what it says.

One other thing you might misinterpret is to see the mid-grade Ascendancy set as a different set than the high-grade Ascendancy set.

This too is covered by the very exact wording: “all Ascendancy implant secondary effects”.
In other words, the description says can mix low-grade, mid-grade and high-grade sets and still get their set bonuses.

The wording is very exact and descriptive, not ambiguous at all.

2 What way do the bonuses stack?

It’s not immediately clear how the bonuses stack. 15% bonus is nice, 1% bonus is nice. Does it multiply? Add? Is each bonus individually applied or are they first all added together before applying the bonuses multiplicative?

To be honest, most of EVE’s mechanics aren’t described to this point within the game. Merely the bonuses are shown, and once applied we get to see the end result, so with a calculator we can deduce how the game applies those bonuses if you’re interested.

If you are interested.

Most players aren’t interested in mechanics in that detail, and adding that all would make descriptions needlessly complex.

Usually in EVE, and in this case too the case of these bonuses all implant bonuses are individually multiplicative, and the set bonuses too are multiplicative, so each additional bonus adds exactly what it says:

15% bonus to the strength of all secondary effects means you multiply the effect you currently have from the implants of that set by another 1.15 for that one implant, regardless of how many implants you already have of the set. It’s not all added together first and then multiplied, but simply individually multiplied.

To conclude

Personally I think some things are unclear of implants at first sight, especially as to how the bonuses apply.

But the wording is not ambiguous. If you read the way it is worded it’s very clear that each set implant will boost the other implants of that same set. And that’s exactly what it does.

The biggest ambiguity comes from expectations some players may have after playing other games which have similar mechanics with different rules. But I think that’s not EVE’s problem.

This is the same problem as people who come to EVE, lose their ship in combat and ask why their ship ‘did not respawn’: different game, different mechanics.

[Power_Armor]

The term “set” is the problem here and needs much more explanation or a different term.
A “set” implies a sense of completeness for me, but also homogenity.

It took me several years to find out that neither is true and you can have “incomplete sets” and get the set bonus for the plugged ones and also mix different grades of the same type implants.

[Gerard_Amatin]

CCP could remove the words ‘set effect:’, that might make it less ambiguous.

On these modules it has a similar role as ‘role bonus’ on ships: it’s just a description of the type of effect but has no other meaning of itself.

Deleting ‘set effect:’ could make it clearer.