Yes, I know that you can compare any weapon with any other, and equip any item with any of its respective ammo's. My example was that my current equipped and unmodded level 4 wooden bow (which was using Steel arrows), when compared with a level 6 compound bow was telling me that the compound bow did -6 damage compared with the wooden bow. And that I never managed to craft/spawn in with a cheat menu (for testing purposes) a level 5/6 wooden or compound bow that managed to be better than -8 for level 5, or -5 for level 6, in over 20 attempts for each.
However, this was only because of the Steel arrows I was currently using.
To make them compare the bows directly I would have had to craft a Stone arrow, re-equip it to my current bow, and then compare them to see how the damage differed between the two, because the newly looted/crafted bow was using Stone arrow stats instead of Steel arrow ones.
Before figuring this out, I had just assumed that my current bow had just been super lucky with RNG on its stats, hence why I tested it using the cheat menu, to see how long it would take to spawn a better bow, and never managed to.
I get that in the grand scheme of things, this is probably about as trivial an issue as its possible to get, but with random stats on items being a thing (which I love btw), being able to more easily see stat comparisons between items without having to actually craft something first would be a tad more user-friendly IMO.
I'm going to go one step further. If ammo is changeable, WHY is it included in the comparison damage stat anyhow? The arrow's damage should be the arrow's, and the bow's should be the bow's.
Bit of a hobby horse for me, but the comparison system is terrible. You should be showing raw numbers, not numbers modded by ammo, you should be showing stats AND NAME of the item you're comparing, since it's not always immediately obvious what's being compared against, and green/red should be used to show the one that's better, not as an accent to a modifier. It's really a fundamentally bad UX design.
Example: I loot an iron helmet. I go to look at it, and it's showing me Heavy Armor 12 (-1).
1. What the hell does that even mean? Did I accidentally click another piece of armor in my bag and not realize it? Is it comparing it to what's equipped in my head slot?
2. What if what's in my head slot is a Leather Hood? That's Light Armor, and from previous comments I've been led to believe that they are NOT in fact the same stat, so why are they being compared?
3. What is that -1 there for? Is it because the equipped item is worse, or is this item worse than the equipped one? Is that the same way it works if it's a selected item?
4. Let's circle back. Say it's saying 12 (+1) instead. So is the equipped item better by one? It's a leather hood? Am I going to take less damage or more damage by replacing the leather hood with the iron helmet?
And I've been playing for over a year now, over 500 hours in-game and lots of forum reading. Not a patch on some folks, but I guarantee you if
I'm this confused after 500 hours, Joe Noob off the street is going to be totally lost.
You guys really, really need to put a little pop-in window with the name of the compared item at the top and all the stats side-by-side, with whichever one is better in green and the other in red. Don't do math for them, just highlight better vs. worse and let them look. And for the sake of the gods, if Heavy Armor and Light Armor do different things in terms of protecting you from damage, DON'T compare them. Either that, or just make them "armor" and scale them properly against each other.
I can do a mock-up if you'd like of what I mean by the pop-in window and side-by-side, but it's going to look fairly crappy. Basically, shift the current object's stats left in the window as-is now (any time there's a comparison), add in the stats of the item being compared against in the now-open space to the right, and have an item name (or even "equipped" or "selected") at the top.
