I had sent their Twitter a message about transparency and visible stat options, and their reply was to just send me here.
I think there should be a toggle in the options menu that says “Show Advanced Stats,” or something similar. What that would do is to show the actual values of every piece of equipment and every stat, rather than having almost EVERYTHING invisible to us. Look, I get that on a casual level, which is their main target, people don’t care about stats.
However, a lot of us are interested in min/maxing our builds, and non-transparency of stats makes this very difficult. Hell, many of the patch changes such as “Increased melee damage of Alpha Predator” actually has zero notation in-game. If I don’t read the patch notes, how will I know this?
I am not sure on the reasons why the stats aren’t made public(even if made as an advanced option), but my best guess is Illfonic would rather people not know exactly how they’re manipulating the game stats, and that perhaps many of the values are totally irrelevant, but face-value makes them seem relevant.
For example, if a new predator class came out and we were told it had increased ranged damage, we would think “hey! this class might suit me better,” but in reality the increased range damage is only 8%, and with the health values of fireteam members, it doesn’t make any ranged attack down someone any faster than a predator without increased range damage.
Hiding these values brings the illusion of making a ‘smart’ choice, but in reality, the choice has no actual advantage. This, to me, feels disingenuous, and I do hope these conscious actions are not what Illfonic has chosen to do.
Why Public Stats Would be Good!
If public stats were made, you then have people crunching real numbers. You then have more people willing to test out and maximize their build. With stats being public, you give community members and content creators more to work with, which will in turn, grow the game and community. With public stat values, you will have more focused builds, as well as a more focused meta, which then can give Illfonic more data on how to balance the game. In my opinion, the most valuable part of this would be content creation. The sheer amount of people who would want to crunch the numbers and make video content would skyrocket because they have something to work with!
That’s all. I’d like to see this game explode and grow. I think it would be a fantastic idea to implement this whenever you can, or at least let us know you’re working on it or very much considering it. In the end, it would financially benefit you as a business.