since at a minimum the game needs to know whether an item pierces or not, it is a stat like any other at the dbr level. Whether that stat is then displayed in the item info or not does not change that it exists at the item level and 3rd party tools can therefore chose to display it or follow GD’s lead and also hide it
Random: Holy hell I have NEVER seen anyone else with an Art of Greg Martin avatar, and especially not that particular image. You have excellent taste! 
I usually use the Glacial or Glacial+Inferno image.
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Yeah but now both of us have the same. Needs to be changed
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Now you must fight in a burning cage and the one who wins will keep the avatar
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And video proof is required
+1 to showing it; I don’t agree with the reasoning against showing it. Better to let the player know it exists (explicitly) and entice him to try it out than to drop some vague hints in the fluff text and hope that’s enough (it isn’t). Most weapon fluff text is hyperbole anyway and shouldn’t be expected to be taken literally.
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You mean “cuts through reality as if it were air”? (Btw, Crate, a little newsflash: air IS reality) 
Anyway, someone should make a poll or sth. “Is hiding stats a good practice in aRPG design.” Not imposing my view but personally I think it’s a terrible practice. Almost as bad as producing stats that do nothing like in those crap Chinese RPGs for mobile phones.
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It’s never too late to make that, especially being as now - unlike the old forums - you can edit a poll into a post after the fact.
This phrasing made me realize the key difference in point-of-view here. I think those that dislike this view Passthrough as a stat, as much evidenced by your comment as by the OP’s title. But I don’t see Passthrough as a simple statistic, because it doesn’t vary (it can, actually - see Phantasmal Blades), rather a unique, boolean feature.
While I’m on the side of keeping some mystique in the game instead of handrails at every possible location, I think the pierce effect should be listed in the stats.
I assume it’s another one of those TQ-era remnants of how it was coded at the time, but this stat has such a big effect on items that it can make or break your choice of adopting them, so you shouldn’t need a website to see it.
Other things like being able to cast Devastation with the Spellscourge shield is fine though, and people just need to use their noggin a bit to figure it out. Discovery is fun in that case.
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That’s not really so much discovery though, that’s just “Hey, why does this shield give me bonuses to something it can’t work with?..unless…”
You don’t need to try Spellscourge to know what it does, and I think that takes away a bit from the experience as consequence.
I think this is also a grave overvaluing of this particular feature, too. The performance impact of Passthrough is not too great. But that’s another conversation.
^Perhaps not, but I believe I’ve still seen a few people bring it up or even report it as a bug.
I think the pierce is strong enough to make an item go from “meh” to “whoa, that’s pretty interesting” but YMMV.
Discovery is fun only if you have the ability to discover. In this case only a third party provides the info and if they had decided to turn it off ? Then we’d be completely pooched.
+1 to that. What db file stores the info, how can I see it and know what flag turns it off/on. Just point me to the documentation. It must be available if GT site shows it.
I have made a poll in the main post. Don’t forget to vote everybody.
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I’m not sure whether or not we’d repeat having hidden stats if we did a sequel, but it always seemed like a fun bit of flavor and a fun discovery, even if it is accidental for some players, so we left it as a hidden stat.
There are no plans to display it in the tooltip.
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It’s just a field listed in the confirguration of various items/skills. As far as hiding/showing particular things from view in this case, that is not a database change and thus not easy to mod out. You’d be looking at code injection into the game’s DLL, which is not officially supported. Regardless, you’re looking for this field:
They don’t have everything straight up in their face. They have to farm to acquire the items first. Existence of unique mechanics are the “joy”, not testing to discover them.
In a game that features huge build diversity like this, the more hidden mechanics there are the more that player enjoyment is frustrated. The overwhelming majority of players will make value judgments based on stats they can see (thankfully grimtools reveals this information).
Same for hidden/obscure mechanics like wps and cadence etc, ideally these should (imo) also not be obscure.
Very bad. I’m against hidden stats.
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Thanks Ceno. Piercing is not the only attribute hidden - there is another one related to skill duration I listed earlier in the thread. I’m assuming it will be another, similar field somewhere else, and to show it would require much the same effort. How someone could “stumble” across this is a little hard to believe. Even if you were datamining you’d have to already be aware to find it (unless the word hidden is listed as a property). More likely someone got some very good intel and then went looking. It will be interesting to see if the gear and other items start showing up more now, or this is just a storm in a tea cup. It still irks that only via a third party was this found but …life goes on. Back to Cairn. I have some celestials to nuke !
The clues for this mechanic are in the item description e.g. Will of Fate - every bullet is destined to meet its true mark regardless of who stands in its way. What distinguishes top tier games from others are rewards for the curious. Same with this game including hidden areas to find.
Hindsight is always useful. That description does nothing to reveal what it is that’s hidden. Look at where Ceno indicates the parameters are. No way anyone is going to go looking for that. And that “clue” provides no indication that it’s a 100% pass through. As the British would say - it’s just not cricket.