Is this poor wording or not?

I have 2 questions involving an arguement i have with someone over a game we both play.
First: There is a stat you can gain called Attack speed (AS) that you gain as a percentage, and is then multiplied by a base. [this is un important to know, but i gave it so i can use units]

now if you have 4 items effecting you, descibed as +40% AS, +55% AS, 32% AS increase, and 20% AS decrease, you have an attack speed percentage of (1+.4+.55+.32)*(1-.2)=181.6%. I say this is terrible wording, as this should imply mutipliers all the way, additions all the way (if you understand a minimum of how the system works), or possibly additions for the first two, with a multiplier to the last two as they are worded differently (either before or after the additions), yet out of these 4 systems, none of them are used, and instead a much more arbitrary distinction is drawn. Yet he says this is the natural conclusion he drew from those 4 figures, that the increases are all additive, and the decreases are multiplicative, and he said a pre-algebra student should have known that (if there is a princple i'm missing, which i'm 99% sure i'm not). Am i missing something that this is a natural way of doing things, or am i right that the wording is terrible there?


Second, i say you can't add a percentage to a whole number without more information, he says you can. My arguement is that if you have 2.5 + 20%, i don't know if that is 20% of 2.5 or 20% of 1 or 20% of the rate of the moon's tides, where he says that 20% is obviously 0.2. Is 20% obviously 0.2, or is more information needed.

For your 2nd question, I would NORMALLY say 20% of 2.5 is 0.5, so 2.5 + 20% is 3. However, if the context is gaming, and you have a base stat of 100%, have worked it up to 250%, and then gain another 20%, that usually results in 270% (for simplicity).

Working from there, in the first question, I would do them all additively: 1 + .4 + .55 + .32 - 0.2 = 2.07 for the sake of gaming simplicity (do you have calculators handy when playing?!). However, there are multiple interpretations possible, particularly because of the distinction between +40% AS and 32% AS increase.

Doesn't your game have rules to cover this? What are you playing?

Quote: GamerMan

now if you have 4 items effecting you, descibed as +40% AS, +55% AS, 32% AS increase, and 20% AS decrease, you have an attack speed percentage of (1+.4+.55+.32)*(1-.2)=181.6%.

Well, you should look at the rulesbook of your game whether or not you can choose the order of the bonus/malus.

If you are allowed to choose the order, I would choose the "20% decrease" first reducing your AS from 100% to 80%, then apply the +40% and +55% bonus to 175%, and at last apply the 32% increase (231%).

If you are not allowed to choose, find the legal order.

I should have been more clear. the actual answer is 181.6%, all positive increases are added additively, the reductions are then multiplied. I am arguing that the wording of the increases and decreases are worded badly because this is no where near the natural conclusion you'd get from the wording "+40% AS, +55% AS, 32% AS increase, and 20% AS decrease" however he says this is the natural conclusion.


The second question isn't involved with the game, it just came up in normal conversation, i say 2.5 + 20% requires more information as anything else is a wild guess, where he says without further information, the natural conclusion is 2.5 +20% = 2.7

i have no idea where he is getting these natural conclusions, so i was checking to see if the wordings are indeed poor, and if these are not natural conclusions

I don't know who "he" is, but if this is a tournament game, ask a judge for the section of "natural conclusions" in the rules book.

I still think you are not understanding:

We know the rules, we know how they get implimented, we know what is the "correct answer" (because they are implimented that way, as this is a pc game)

However, without doing a lot of digging, all you are given as information as a player is (+40%AS, +55%AS, 32% AS increase, and 20% AS decrease) as your 4 effects. I'm saying that if you told someone in english that someone got those 4 effects, that no one would assume they would be carried out as (1+0.4+0.55+0.32)*(1-.2) = 1.816%, and thus the information given to the player is worded poorly, and thus deceptive as an information guide. The person I had this arguement says anyone who has had pre-algebra or higher math would instantly assume said formula is the one you'd use. I wanted to make sure that i'm not totally missing something here in assuming this formula is arbitrary and not indicated at all by the wording given.

the second question came up durring the discussion, and is not directly involved with the game. I say 2.5 + 20% = undefined as i'm not sure if the 20% should be 20% of 2.5, 20% of 1, or 20% of something else, other person says 2.5 + 20% = 2.7, which i don't think is as automatic as the other person thinks it is.

I guess i sorta got my answers anyways since no one else here assumed that question A would use that formula, and that the responce on question B i got was unwilling to make a definative conclusion to what 2.5 + 20% is equal to

I would say that you are definitely dealing with poor wording and/or incomplete explanation. I run into this myself when dealing with games. For example, in Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, you could effectively "break" the game by achieving 100% Invisibility. (I will apologize if my details are incorrect as I haven't played the game in many years.) This was done by crafting 5 different armor pieces, each with 20% Invisibility. The % were added together, to get a total of 100% Invisibility, assuring you were never seen by a bad guy and thus able to sneak attack with impunity. The problem with this, at least in my opinion, is that this isn't really all that intuitive. If you have a helmet that makes you 20% invisible, and a shield that makes you 20% invisible, you are supposed to draw the natural conclusion that you are now 40% invisible. However, I don't think this is something that is all that "natural" in the way it sounds. For example, my initial thought process is that they wouldn't be added together, but rather you would just have the effect of the highest bonus. IE, if you had a helmet that makes you 15% invisible, and a shield that makes you 20% invisible, you are now 20% invisible, not 35% invisible.

To make things even more confusing, the game describes the % invisibility, not as a % reduction in the chance of you being seen by an enemy, but rather a % reduction in the *range* at which an enemy can see you. Thus, if a bad guy could normally see you at, oh say 100 range units, then wearing a helmet with 20% invisibility means he now won't see you until you reach 80 range units. The game assumes you would naturally conclude that wearing a helmet with 20% and a shield with 20% means the bad guy won't see you until 60 range units. However, if you were a mathematician, you might say, ok, bad guy can see me at 100 range units. I put on helmet, thereby reducing the range he can see me by 20%, so he can now see me at 80 range units. I feel this is still too far, so I put on the shield, reducing by another 20%. But 20% off of 80 is 64 range units. Again, not the 60 that the game would assume you would know is the way they are working things.

My point being that game rules are generally not written by mathematicians, but by game designers. As such, they are sometimes written fairly badly. All that being said, I've noticed that in most games, any types of deductions when based on percentages are usually applied last, after all increases, and are usually of the multiplicative sort, as you indicated in your post. The reason for this is that the deductions are usually there for reasons of either making the game more "fair" or for making a boss bad guy a little more "dangerous". An easy example is, no matter how many additions, increases, etc, you have to your attack power, attack skill, attack speed, attack damage, etc, the boss has some magic aura which reduces everything by 75%. So you may have +40% +55% +32% because of magic weapon, magic potion, and special training, but that's all going to be multiplied by .25 in order to make the boss a bit more of a battle.

And yes, in relation to your second question, without any type of definition, "2.5 + 20%" is definitely equal to 3 and not 2.7. I'm not sure that anybody in any reasonable state of mind would think otherwise. And if your friend thinks it's normal, tell him you will go to a store and buy things when they are on sale for 20% off, and then sell them to him for his "version" of 20% off.

EDIT: All those references to "invisibility" should be "chameleon". Ah, memories of old games.