Can someone explain accuracy?

[Shunten_Satsu]

I have a mod that will decrease my accuracy by -5% and increase damage by 15% (Heavy Caliber).

I equipped it and it seems to take off more than just 5%.

For a weapon with 
accuracy 12.5 -> 12.1

accuracy 100 -> 78.7

 

I do not have any positive accuracy on those weapons and I took off my mods, so I assume that there must be something else that goes into calculating accuracy.

The damage did increase as expected though.

[(PSN)LeBlingKing]

To answer the titular question, the wiki is more than willing to explain accuracy to you. 

[Echorion]

8 minutes ago, (PS4)LeBlingKing69 said:

To answer the titular question, the wiki is more than willing to explain accuracy to you. 

I actually was in the same boat as OP and never really found an answer either. I checked the wiki but I either missed or didn't understand it entirely.

Because I still don't get it either.

I have a gun that says 100 accuracy. I put on heavy caliber or something that reduces it by 40%- but the accuracy goes down to like 13.8 or something like that. Percentages don't work that way, so there has to be other things at work there; it doesn't really explain what they are.

I get that fire rate and all that affects it, but it doesn't explain why the information is shown the way it is.

[1tsyB1tsyN1nj4]

3 minutes ago, Echorion said:

I have a gun that says 100 accuracy. I put on heavy caliber or something that reduces it by 40%- but the accuracy goes down to like 13.8 or something like that. Percentages don't work that way, so there has to be other things at work there; it doesn't really explain what they are.

 

You have to actually read the entry on Heavy Caliber for that. It seems to affect some weapons more than others. It helps the Ignis actually by giving it a better spread, but makes other weapons unusable such as the Ogris. It really messes up projectile and beam weapons at higher ranks more so than hit scan ones, not that you need the mod anyway because it gives the same damage boost as Serration, and Serration has no penalty

[Echorion]

7 minutes ago, 1tsyB1tsyN1nj4 said:

You have to actually read the entry on Heavy Caliber for that. It seems to affect some weapons more than others. It helps the Ignis actually by giving it a better spread, but makes other weapons unusable such as the Ogris. It really messes up projectile and beam weapons at higher ranks more so than hit scan ones, not that you need the mod anyway because it gives the same damage boost as Serration, and Serration has no penalty

That is incredibly stupid. Not just that it works that way, but the fact it doesn't reflect any of this in game properly in a way people would automatically understand. 

As for needing it; generally I find it's bad on a lot of weapons but there are some weapons where accuracy doesn't matter. I use it on my torid atm for example. Between the multishot and the aoe gas and such; and the fact I use it on my Nidus- I've never missed what I was shooting at even with heavy caliber on- so the damage boost is nice.

[(PSN)Carnatus]

1 minute ago, Echorion said:

That is incredibly stupid. Not just that it works that way, but the fact it doesn't reflect any of this in game properly in a way people would automatically understand. 

As for needing it; generally I find it's bad on a lot of weapons but there are some weapons where accuracy doesn't matter. I use it on my torid atm for example. Between the multishot and the aoe gas and such; and the fact I use it on my Nidus- I've never missed what I was shooting at even with heavy caliber on- so the damage boost is nice.

Yeah, certain weapons actually benefit from less accuracy (more spread) and so it's two positive attributes in those cases.

Likewise, Tainted Shell can be beneficial with weapons that spread too much, such as the Phage.

I love using my Pox and Torid with my Nidus, but I've been putting off my forma hunting too long. Not to mention I need to do more vault runs- Heavy Caliber and Tainted Shell have been on my wishlist for awhile now, and I'm pretty sure that's where you get them yeah?

[Echorion]

1 minute ago, (PS4)Carnatus said:

Yeah, certain weapons actually benefit from less accuracy (more spread) and so it's two positive attributes in those cases.

Likewise, Tainted Shell can be beneficial with weapons that spread too much, such as the Phage.

I love using my Pox and Torid with my Nidus, but I've been putting off my forma hunting too long. Not to mention I need to do more vault runs- Heavy Caliber and Tainted Shell have been on my wishlist for awhile now, and I'm pretty sure that's where you get them yeah?

I got tainted shell that way, I think I bought Heavy Caliber but I can't remember.

Yeah the torid takes a ton of formas. I have a riven for it that increases reload speed, and adds a ton of heat/toxin damage.

[(PSN)Carnatus]

6 minutes ago, Echorion said:

I got tainted shell that way, I think I bought Heavy Caliber but I can't remember.

Yeah the torid takes a ton of formas. I have a riven for it that increases reload speed, and adds a ton of heat/toxin damage.

Oh, gas damage is my favorite. Especially on Pox and Torid.

[Xekrin]

I ask the same question here

Although the wiki goes into great detail about it and attempts to explain it to the layman so to speak it is still one of the most confusing stats we have.  

Simply put we need the 'accuracy' stat to be broken down into its underlying sub-stats that determine exactly how it affects weapons in the game.  Otherwise it is always going to take 2 or 3 reads of the wiki just to get an inkling of what accuracy actually does.

[Echorion]

1 minute ago, (PS4)Carnatus said:

Oh, gas damage is my favorite. Especially on Pox and Torid.

I still need to forma mine a little more.

 

[Echorion]

4 minutes ago, Xekrin said:

I ask the same question here

Although the wiki goes into great detail about it and attempts to explain it to the layman so to speak it is still one of the most confusing stats we have.  

Simply put we need the 'accuracy' stat to be broken down into its underlying sub-stats that determine exactly how it affects weapons in the game.  Otherwise it is always going to take 2 or 3 reads of the wiki just to get an inkling of what accuracy actually does.

Exactly. I don't have a problem with the micro management of how it works; but it needs to be displayed properly in game.

[1tsyB1tsyN1nj4]

49 minutes ago, Echorion said:

That is incredibly stupid. Not just that it works that way, but the fact it doesn't reflect any of this in game properly in a way people would automatically understand. 

 

You aren't the first one to think that. The Arsenal UI is supposedly getting an update sometime soon to reflect all the information we want. I do hope DE sticks to that

[Tsukinoki]

1 hour ago, Shunten_Satsu said:

I have a mod that will decrease my accuracy by -5% and increase damage by 15% (Heavy Caliber).

I equipped it and it seems to take off more than just 5%.

For a weapon with 
accuracy 12.5 -> 12.1

accuracy 100 -> 78.7

 

I do not have any positive accuracy on those weapons and I took off my mods, so I assume that there must be something else that goes into calculating accuracy.

The damage did increase as expected though.

1 hour ago, Echorion said:

I actually was in the same boat as OP and never really found an answer either. I checked the wiki but I either missed or didn't understand it entirely.

Because I still don't get it either.

I have a gun that says 100 accuracy. I put on heavy caliber or something that reduces it by 40%- but the accuracy goes down to like 13.8 or something like that. Percentages don't work that way, so there has to be other things at work there; it doesn't really explain what they are.

I get that fire rate and all that affects it, but it doesn't explain why the information is shown the way it is.

More and more people are coming to the forums when they run into this problem, and it's something I really hope DE starts to notice.

Just to quickly cover what's happening:
-The accuracy stat is a conglomeration of other stats such as:
 -Initial Cone of Fire
 -Maximum Cone of Fire
 -How quickly the CoF grows/shrinks
 -Accuracy of first shot
 -Chance of shots not landing on reticule(shot deviation, which has a much larger impact on projectile weapons vs hitscan)
 -How quickly said chance changes through continued fire and not firing
And a few more beyond that.
Now the tricky part comes in: Every gun weights the different accuracy sub-stats differently.  A phage has no weight on the accuracy of the first shot as that's fixed so it doesn't play into the accuracy number at all for example.  Anyways the arsenal UI takes all of the sub-stats for accuracy, feeds them through a function that combines them with the weight the weapon puts on those accuracy stats and spits out the singular accuracy number you see in the aresenal....which is basically useless due to all of the behind the scene math and weighting.

So now that that is out of the way what about the accuracy effecting mods?
Well, it has its own internal weights and numbers for each of the substats that it affects and boils it down through a similar function to spit out a singular number, such as "-45% accuracy" in much the same way the guns do.  Again a basically useless number due to all of the behind the scenes math and weightings being used.

So what happens when you combine an accuracy effecting mod with a weapon?  Well the mod changes the base stats of the weapon.  In fact it changes each weapon the same way.  For instance (and this is random for examples not actual numbers) it could make the initial cone of fire 20% bigger.  The weapon meanwhile takes the accuracy stats with these modifiers and applies its weights to those numbers to re-calculate the number given in the arsenal UI, which is why the number can change so drastically on some weapons and not much at all on others.
For example: If the accuracy mod drastically increases shot deviation within the CoF this wouldn't have a huge effect on an automatic weapon but would have a massive effect on a sniper rifle, but the mod changes both weapons the same way.  But since the different weapons weight it differently the automatic weapon won't show nearly as large a change to the accuracy number as the sniper rifle would if all other accuracy-relating stats stayed the same.

Basically it boils down to: That arsenal UI accuracy number is complete and utter BS and DE really needs to make accuracy a far more transparent system, especially with the mods that interact with it.
Hopefully DE actually gets around to doing that....

Edited March 22, 2017 by Tsukinoki

[Xekrin]

23 minutes ago, Tsukinoki said:

That arsenal UI accuracy number is complete and utter BS and DE really needs to make accuracy a far more transparent system, especially with the mods that interact with it.

This is the exact reasoning behind my plea for them to workshop it, to explain it in detail and potentially (finally) notice how utterly useless that stat number in game is for us.  Unfortunately, the thread I linked above didn't gain much traction and was lost on the wayside as are most requests for in the game.

57 minutes ago, 1tsyB1tsyN1nj4 said:

The Arsenal UI is supposedly getting an update sometime soon to reflect all the information we want.

Yep, thus far we only know for certain we will get secondary (alt-fire) stats on weapons that contain them.  I don't think its even been confirmed if we'll see the "range stat" on melee weapons from this supposed arsenal upgrade.

Chances are it'll just show the basic stats based on what we see now just for alt-fire mode and nothing more.  What really concerns me, and I pray I'm wrong, is that it won't even be in the arsenal itself, but in the "select weapons" area, which is what the screenshot on Pablo's twitter shows.

If we can't see them change as we add/remove mods the new stats will be a touch pointless.  Of course, that was just a teaser and likely isn't even close to everything they plan on adding, but I tend to expect the worst just so I can be surprised and not disappointed.

[Arniox]

4 hours ago, Echorion said:

I actually was in the same boat as OP and never really found an answer either. I checked the wiki but I either missed or didn't understand it entirely.

Because I still don't get it either.

I have a gun that says 100 accuracy. I put on heavy caliber or something that reduces it by 40%- but the accuracy goes down to like 13.8 or something like that. Percentages don't work that way, so there has to be other things at work there; it doesn't really explain what they are.

I get that fire rate and all that affects it, but it doesn't explain why the information is shown the way it is.

 

@[DE]Steve plz look at teh problems.

Hopefull de_stiv will fix with new info about stats of a weapon.

we can only dream :P