#16 is something video games taught me, particularly Path of Exile. In PoE resistance are a flat multiplier to incoming damage. Eg monster does 100 damage per attack and you have 60% resistance then you take 40 damage.
The interesting thing is that the higher your resistances the more effective each additional percentage point of resistance is.
Let's say a monster does 100 damage per attack.
If you have 0% resistance and increase it to 5%, then your incoming damage went from 100 to 95. You take 5% less damage than before.
If you have 75% resistance and increase it to 80%, then your incoming damage went from 25 to 20. You take 20% less damage than before.
It is pretty unintuitive until you realize that you need to focus on the remainder rather than the other part.
Yes, the fuel savings in the former case are larger than the initial fuel consumption in the latter case, but is it really unintuitive in practice? What I mean is that we generally pay for fuel per volume, not per mileage. Now, I am not sure about others, but I would always base my decision based on the money I'd save over a period of time, which in this case would require considering each vehicle's actual fuel consumption over that period of time.
If you think of it as a family that keeps obstinately driving both cars the same amount despite massive cost differences its weird but you could think of it as a mixed fleet of delivery or work trucks that are all needed regardless, the question is how you manage or prioritize upgrading them.
Interestingly, the same logic applies to vaccination rates. Going from 0% to 5% vaccination has no impact on the course of the pandemic (except for those few vaccinated people, of course). Going from 75% to 80% has a much larger impact, and could stop the pandemic in its track (depending on R_0, and many other real-world complications of course).
(And the reason is just the same: what matters is the remainder.)
OK, let's assume you have 75% elemental resistance. You also take 15% reduced damage and 10% less damage. You have 5% chance to avoid elemental damage and 10% to dodge it and are under the effect of Elemental Equilibrium and Gluttony of Elements. How much better is it to just kill everything before it can kill you?
You joke, but PoE's use of stuff like 'increased/decreased' and 'more/less' to distinguish between additive and multiplicative calculations is one of the smartest game design decisions I've seen.
The game has a lot of seemingly arbitrary distinctions and concepts that you just have to learn over time, but once you actually learn them, the consistency of it all makes it very easy to handle the large amounts of complexity in the game.
It's completely unbearable going back to other games that just say crap like "+30% to x" without actually distinguishing between the different ways calculations can be done, forcing you to either experiment endlessly, look up every tiny thing on a community wiki, or just wing it.
It's a nice contrast to something like WoW where every time you get a new item you just chuck the item code into some ten million LOC simulator and fuck around with limiting permutations until it doesn't take 15 minutes to run, just to find out through some totally opaque process that you have 189 more dps. And then 2 months later you find out there was a bug in the simulation and the item you deleted 1.9 months ago was actually better.
The interesting thing is that the higher your resistances the more effective each additional percentage point of resistance is.
Let's say a monster does 100 damage per attack.
If you have 0% resistance and increase it to 5%, then your incoming damage went from 100 to 95. You take 5% less damage than before.
If you have 75% resistance and increase it to 80%, then your incoming damage went from 25 to 20. You take 20% less damage than before.
It is pretty unintuitive until you realize that you need to focus on the remainder rather than the other part.