Ok, asdgh, I will address some items in your response to me.

It's a single player game, not sure why someone micromanaging would frustrate a person who doesn't micromanage.

It is more about the fact that players are exploiting a workaround that is not what the game intended (Fizzer said it himself). As players get an advantage doing the solo levels, they will have advantages in the Battle sections. This leaves other players of the option of going through the headache of micromanaging or falling behind.

Why is this a problem? What's wrong with someone using bad strategy, it's their game play in a single player game? I have Alloy & Item values, and Army Camp, Hospital, & Mine discount all @ uncommon; I guarantee I make/save more money using these 5 than I would sacrificing 4 of them to upgrade one. I think it would be bad strategy to do an upgrade here.

I won’t say you are wrong, but that is not correct in all situations and should be evaluated on a case by case basis. I will give you a scenario using real numbers from my game. In the current level I am on, I have made 2.35B total and 2B of that is from Bonuses. I have the Rare Bonus Money Boost (BMB) of 40% and no Tech upgrades currently, so base income from Bonuses would be 1.43B (divide 2 by 1.4). Hypothetically, if I had Uncommon Bonus Money Boost and all the discounts you mentioned, I would be better off sacrificing them to Rare Bonus Money Boost. Let us say that Mine Discount was 10% reduced cost to EVERYTHING (not the 5% to Mines only that it does), and every dime I gets this discount. That means of the 2.35B I have earned, I would save 235M if I switch each time. If my base income would have been 1.43B, then if I had Uncommon BMB it would have been 1.716B, and if I sacrificed my discounts (even that godly discount I mentioned) I would have made the 2B. The extra money I have earned from sacrificing my Discounts for BMB is 284M (2-1.716). Last I checked, 284 > 235.

This can apply to other artifacts and combinations that are harder to measure. I just used this example because it is very easy to quantify money. How do you compare Army Camp Boost to Bonus Money Boost?

Hoarding individual artifacts is generally a bad idea. Swapping them if you don’t have enough for an upgrade does give an advantage though. But if you want to hoard, then you do you.

This would imply that there is a correct way to play and enjoy this game. Just because someone is playing differently than the creators envisioned doesn't mean its wrong or bad. If someone enjoys micromanaging or being a completionist, why are they wrong for their enjoyment?

There is nothing wrong per se, but it is going exploiting a weakness in the system that changes how he intended the game to be played. It is well within his rights to eliminate this workaround.

Seems like this is aimed against micromanagers. I would bet that micromanagers spend more time playing the game vs those who don't, so why would a creator of a game want to limit the amount of time someone plays, seems counterintuitive.

It isn’t aimed at micromanagers, it is aimed at people exploiting a flaw in the design of the Passive artifact system that Fizzer means to fix. If he wanted people to be able to use all their artifacts, he would have made it that way. This is an exploit he means to fix, nothing more.

You said above that keeping a bunch of artifacts instead of upgrading is bad strategy, but here you say it makes the game too easy which would be good strategy right?

It is a bad strategy to hoard, but swapping artifacts that you have before upgrading does give an edge. You essentially have more than 3 Artifacts in use by doing this.

As the game is right now it's going to take at least a half year to beat for micromanagers, why does it need to take longer than that?

It is designed this way because it is an Idle game. It is supposed to be slow. If people are taking advantage of exploits, Fizzer may make it harder to compensate.

Why does everyone that plays this have to go at the same rate?

I never said that. Smarter players will obviously play faster. Swapping artifacts does give an advantage (assuming you aren’t hoarding) that bypasses a control that Fizzer built into the game which is why he wants to fix it.

Implementing any of those 4 options would punish swappers, why do swappers need to be punished? If the artifacts and levels stay as is, no one gets punished.

They aren’t being punished. It is removing an exploit they were taking advantage of. They will be no worse off than anyone else.

Again at it's core this is a single player game and I don't see any reason why swappers and non swappers can't both play the game how they want.
Micromanaging take time and effort. It's fine if there are players that don't want to/can't put in that time and effort in, but why stop those that can and enjoy doing it?

As stated before, Fizzer is trying to eliminate an exploit that subverts his intended design of the game.

Fizzer quote:

I'm thinking something like this: You get two free passive artifact swaps per day. On your third, the artifact takes 3 minutes before its effect kicks in. on the 4th, it takes 8 minutes to kick in. then the time gets progressively longer for the rest of the day.

I think this sounds like a reasonable approach.

My only concern is that the timer seems low. 3 minutes or even 8 minutes is nothing for a game that measures time in hours, days, and weeks. If the recast is too short, it'll be ignored as negligible. Or, people will just do all their actions at once after saving them up for the day, and the problem still remains.

Putting a daily limit on swaps does allow flexibility for larger maps though which still needs to exist.

My thought of a variation on this is one swap every eight hours, and reset the timer on new levels. (Similar to actions in WZIB). You cannot get a new artifact faster than that, so whenever you get a new artifact you can swap as you desire. This would also encourage players to specialize into particular artifacts that they find works best for them.

It is more about the fact that players are exploiting a workaround that is not what the game intended (Fizzer said it himself).

I'll give you (and Fizzer) that. He actually said it himself. The only two problems I have with this is, that 1) I would hardly call this an exploit - you make it sound like I was cheating and I am well within the boundaries of the game with my swapping - and 2) it's okay to change/adjust something when it has proven to be out of balance, the issue here is, that he introduced it one way and all players have somewhat adapted to the current situation and he is about to redesign the system from scratch more or less. Ever heard of Speedruns? Sure, some use exploits/cheats/clitches but others just discovered ways the devs haven't intended the players to use. Variety is good!

As players get an advantage doing the solo levels, they will have advantages in the Battle sections. This leaves other players of the option of going through the headache of micromanaging or falling behind.

What about pay-to-win features like the SuperCamp, more AP per level or - more on topic - artifacts for coins/money? Aren't they unfair in a similar way? How much time do I have to invest to catch up with a player who uses all three of them? I don't want to pretend that nerfing the passive artifacts is making WZI pay-to-win, but penalizing micromanagers is exactly the same as penalizing players who don't want (or can't) invest real money in some game.

If Fizzer intended to force the players to upgrade their artifacts, then just limit the artifact inventory to five artifacts per tier. If you find a sixth common one, let the system force you to upgrade one of them. To be clear, I don't want this. It's just an alternative approach to still let the players enjoy their micromanagement but limit the extent to which they could do so.

Edited 2/10/2021 13:05:11

1)
Phoenix makes a good point - it's not a discussion about whether this is "fair" based on some players getting advantage by clearing levels faster = more AP quicker = advantage in WZIB. First, more AP doesn't necessarily lead to advantage in WZIB (ask those with high AP, sometimes it gets them targeted more enough instead). Second, if someone micromanage swapping is an "unfair" advantage, then buying Legendary artifacts, buying Powers & Supercamps are also unfair, and clearly nothing will be done to stop that, so let's drop the "fair" aspect.

It's really just a matter that people are clearing levels quicker/more efficiently by doing excessive tedious swapping work than Fizzer intended/wants. So either we (A) convince him out of tweaking it to curb this, (B) give him ideas of how to curb the behaviour in the way that works best to preserve fun in the game for the most players, (C) sit back and casually read, watch the story unravel.

My approach is (A). If that fails, (B). If that fails, (C) it is. (;

But it's not a "fairness" discussion.

2)
I mentioned this earlier, but Thomsenian also commented on it, so I'll recap & provide a recommendation. There are currently only 2 artifact types: Active and Passive, but in reality there are 3 kinds: Active, Passive which have constant effect, Passive which have action-based effects. And Thom added to the thought beyond what I did ... perhaps the problem isn't with limiting swapping, but rather in regards to that the players even need to swap to get such benefit. Thinking realistically, there are many more artifact types than usable slots, thus the game is designed around having players collect artifacts, upgrade/sacrifice them, swap in/out based on the need, but the way the Passives have been implemented actually drives a greater need to swap in/out than there should be because (aside from there not being enough usable slots) many of these are action based, ie: they are designed to have a very small, very finite usable window of benefit. Only when you're capturing a territory - Hospital Boost, or when you're upgrading a mine - Mine Discount, when you're buying mercs - Mercenary Discount, etc. By design, these give you a point on time benefit and then cease to have effect once that action is complete. Let's separate them into a separate class of artifacts and (I'll call them "Functional" in this post) deal with them separately. Instead of nerfing the ability to use them (swap them in/out), instead empower the player to more effectively use them so they don't even need to swap them in/out. The point being made here is that 95% of the time, having these items equipped makes 0 sense. I don't need Alloy Values or Item Values equipped except for the 30-40 seconds I'm selling alloys or items. Same for Hospital Discounts, Mine Discounts, Tech Discount, etc. These just aren't in the same category as Army Camp Boost, Money Boost, Territory Money Boost, Mine Boost, Speedy Smelters, Craft Double, Efficient Crafters, etc. Then consider items like Idle Time - very situational specific ... if you're prevented from swapping this in when you go Idle and out when you come back, what's the point of it at all? By design it provides 0 zero while you're actively playing and only provides value minimally 2 hrs after you've gone idle (more if you have AP idle benefits). Also consider now that the concern with frequent swapping is really with these Functional artifacts. Quickly swapping in/out the Passive artifacts doesn't actually give you any benefit. You swap out Army Camp Boost - ok, fine, you stop generating the benefits of it, and regain them when you put it back in. It's the Functional artifacts that really drive the need for swapping. So add rules to this set of artifacts to govern more effective usage, rather than the tedium of quick swaps. Whether it means making these Active (hopefully with smaller timers than 16 hrs though!) or just using a separate set of rules for them. My recommendation is separate them into a different class, different slots, different rules. So make 3 slots for Passive artifacts with no swap limitations (b/c none are required), 3 slots for Active artifacts (already have swap limitations), 3 slots for Functional artifacts (add some swap limitations for these - and this goes back to Fizzer's original options 1,2,3,4 plus my 5 & 6, and these rules should only apply to these artifacts). Regarding the recommendation for "3 slots for each category" - is 3 for each too many? Imho not really, but I'd also correlate this back to WZ levels & membership & AP upgrades. There are already achievements and thus points for WZI activity = some degree of level increase. Add more level correlation to WZI activity. And as level increases, add slots. Membership adds a couple more slots. And maybe AP upgrades add a few more slots (maybe even helps to reduce swap times for Active and Functional artifacts, etc). Lots of options and opportunity here.

Closing point - imho, putting "swap" restrictions on how usable the artifacts are will detract from the fun of the game, and actually the main draw of artifacts. What's the point of collecting many artifacts if you can't actually effectively use them? It essentially makes most artifacts throw away just to get a handful of them to useful levels, and then everything you encounter from that point on is just Upgrade (sacrifice) fodder for upgrading those, which really dampens the appeal of artifacts. The "dramatic reveal" of brushing off the dust becomes far less dramatic b/c you don't really care what it will be, b/c it's just a means of upgrading your chosen 3. But separating the artifacts into Active, Passive & Functional, and have slots for each re-opens the discussion. Adjust the benefit %'s if you really think it's necessary (I don't btw, tbh, the % benefits are often so low that it's barely worth swapping in/out - but that's another discussion) but having different slots for Active, Passive & Functional will actually go a long way for vastly reducing (if not eliminating) any need to even swap in/out at all most of the time. Using myself as an example, I can easily pick 3 Passives to use most of the time (early to mid-level: Army Camp Boost, Money Boost, Territory Boost, but mid- to end of levels: Mine Boost, Craft Double, Speedy Crafters). I could similar easily pick 3 Actives (Supercharge Mine, Market Raid, Fog Buster). And also easily pick 3 Functionals (Hospital Discount, Merc Discount, Item Values). And each of these choices would likely be useful for days at a time, not requiring micromanaging swaps. It would also preserve the fun of artifacts, knowing that I'm actually getting use of a wide range of artifacts, not just 3, and thus continues to incite me to collect & upgrade them.

Just to add on from a player who started with Warzone Idle, I think it would probably be fine to start with 1 passive,1 active and 1 "funtional" artifact slot and eventually get to 3 passive,3 active and 3 functional slots, it would probably even be fine if it would be like every 10 levels add a slot(so all slots at level 60)
That would go a bit against the "stand alone" Idea of idle, but there is nothing bad about people that want to more actively play idle, actually playing WZClassic.

As to why I would be fine with 1 of each at the start? It gives more personal experience to each player, most of the artifacts that are being used are always the same, but if I only have 1 passive slot I would have to make a decision, and a higher tiered artifact would actually be worth more.
If there are more slots tho, I feel like upgrading maybe should be changed from sacrifice 4 same tier artifacts to sacrifice 3 same tier (maybe also same category?).
Not cause I want upgrades cheaper, more so because tiers get more important if u only have 1 passive slot, so the decision to stick with 1 passive is more important than if u can have every bonus anyway, maybe I just worry to much about not being able to change an artifact that u leveled up later on, so an option to upgrade artifacts with a higher tiered artifact would also work( upgrade 1 common with 1 uncommon artifact) or disassembling 1 artifact into 4 generic artifacts 1 tier lower.

As to giving slots by AP upgrade, I would also like that, right now it seems like AP upgrades are mostly usefull for more armies/production and idlebattle, so there are a lot of options I feel, u also don’t need to treat idle/challenges/idlebattle the same as I would feel disadvantaged if I need to get level 60 in idlebattle to get a fair fight against those old players, and I couldn’t get AP from challenges which those old players could get.

If AP upgrades would change the cooldown on active artifacts I would warn about the time warp artifact as it could get op

Edited 2/10/2021 18:06:48

I think krinid nailed it. The so called functional artifacts are the problem and separating them from others into their own category with its own rules would be a preferable solution.

Coming back to the original post from fizzer, he wanted us to play with the best 3 we have, if I look at a start with 1 passive,1 active and 1 funtional artifact, I feel it would fit quite nicely, u have to decide between
Army/production and money for the passive one(switching could make sense)
Which discounts for the funtional one(rules aren’t clear so no further comment)
Which active one is the best(which u would only use 1 probably as switching is tedious)

Switching would still make some sense, but a situation where I have one of every kind gets eliminated for passive and functional artifacts, because the need for more than 1 (or maybe 2) is lessened, there is more of a feeling that it’s useful to upgrade 1 instead of having 4 unused

It would also get rid of the feeling that passive artifacts are to overpowered, as that might come from the fact that I can have money AND army production AND smelter/crafter production, If I could only have 1 of them early game, a second one mid game and a third late game (as in first 10 maps, 11-20th map,21-30map (assuming there are 30 maps))
Those Boni would be more balanced, it also wouldn’t make the earlier maps more difficult as ur artifacts grow with u anyway, funtional artifacts aren’t really op as far i read the opinions, and actives....would actually get used.

Edited 2/10/2021 19:48:36

Right now I think we can all agree that about half the artifacts are useless. Limiting swapping of artifacts will make all but four or five useless. What's the point of making so many different artifacts if almost all of them aren't worth keeping? Shouldn't the goal of fixing artifacts be making as many as possible useful, not limiting how many are useful?

I still haven't heard a good reason why swapping is bad. Its not about fairness when people can buy artifacts or powers or win them in raffles. Really the only reason for the change is because this isn't how Fizzer envisioned people playing, but that's not a good reason either because he made a game that people enjoy. Fizzer said it's not fun, but it seems that plenty of members do think it's fun, so that's true or a good reason. There are members that wish they had the benefit of micromanaging without having to micromanage, but none of the solutions out there do that, they just get rid of micromanaging and no one gets a benefit.

Also I guess drafting needs to go as well. Someone drafting every 6 minutes gets an advantage over someone doing it only a couple of times a day, plus it isn't fun. That means it needs to go too right?

If Fizzer intended to force the players to upgrade their artifacts, then just limit the artifact inventory to five artifacts per tier. If you find a sixth common one, let the system force you to upgrade one of them. To be clear, I don't want this. It's just an alternative approach to still let the players enjoy their micromanagement but limit the extent to which they could do so.

I love this idea. It prevents hoarding loads of artifacts to swap out left right and center, and makes its more beneficial to upgrade artifacts instead.

As for the limit, 5 is too low to hold both usable artifacts and the garbage ones you need to upgrade them, but leaving the limit to high just makes the limit useless.

To both keep the limit and allow players to upgrade their artifacts, something like a garbage bin should be added, where you can store artifact (but never take them out and use them again) for upgrading only.

Alternatively, all artifacts could be sacrificed and reward the user with upgrade points (UP).
A poor artifact is worth 1 UP, and to upgrade it you need 4 UP, a common artifact would be worth 4 UP and need 16 UP to upgrade, etc

Despite all what is said in this thread, my position still is that active artifacts are the problem and not the passive ones. Just compare (passive) artifacts with advancements: Unlocking an advancement gives you a slight benefit, having a common (or poor) artifact gives you a slight benefit. Maxing some advancement gives you a significant benefit, maxing (upgrading to legendary) an artifact gives you a significant benefit. The only difference being that you can upgrade as many advancements as you like but you can only use three artifacts at a time, so swapping is the only way to make having more than three usable artifacts work. Nerfing passive artifacts in any way makes them not desirable anymore. As I said regarding artifact stacking, new players need to have SOME benefit of spending time and money on digging or there will be no incentive to take notice of digging sites at all. And that would mean, that WZI would just be played without artifacts. But artifacts are an integral part of what makes WZI a new type of idle game for me.

BUT, if we can't convince Fizzer that the passive artifacts are in fact fine, krinid's suggestion is the first and - so far - only one that sounds halfway decent to me. I guess you won't get nine slots in total, but if nothing else, active artifacts would be usable (again - meaning, if your first ever artifact is an active one, you will use this no matter what, until you find decent passives).

EDIT:

they are designed to have a very small, very finite usable window of benefit. Only when you're capturing a territory - Hospital Boost, or when you're upgrading a mine - Mine Discount, when you're buying mercs - Mercenary Discount, etc. By design, these give you a point on time benefit and then cease to have effect once that action is complete.

Those "functional" artifacts are what negatively impacts the way we discuss passive artifacts in general. The only two differences for me between functional and active artifacts are:
- actives need a cool down of currently 16h and block the slot, while functional don't
- actives give (at the same tier, so e.g. common "Mine Discount" (the functional) vs common "Discount Mine" (the active)) a higher benefit.
So, this is the point where seeing these differences, my interpretation clearly was: "So the developer gave me the choice what type I prefer and if I choose the functional one despite the lower effect, I can swap it out after usage". So, if Fizzer now blames me for swapping out functional artifacts, ...

Edited 2/10/2021 22:46:02

Passive artifacts: they can be swapped as many times as needed, bu twill remain 'inactive' until activated.
Once activated, they are locked in place for 16-24 hours.


?

Well, for artifact collectors like me, I also see a chance to spend AP here: 500 AP (just a random, round number) to unlock another artifact slot.

Yes, I'm an active swapper, although I often forget to take out the draft artifact,....

And everyone refers to Krinid, so now I have to scroll and find his proposal.
Can we sort the thread replies according to the number of likes a post has?

@JK

your sheet is incomplete. There are Insane Artifacts too.


I also second krinid here. Pretty much on the point.

Edited 2/10/2021 23:45:54

If fizzer do indeed make restriction on artifact swap
Please make sure swapping be done more manageable
Instead of freely toggling artifact as in now, try make a window and put the artifact in new slot, then press. Confirm

I will go on record saying that swapping artifacts is fun. It's tedious, but I try to set things up in a way where I only have to swap every few hours when I am not idling and need to purchase things/change smelters etc...

A lot of people have suggested fixes and alternatives. I have an idea as well, one that does not fundamentally change the gameplay. It's based off the simple and in my opinion, accurate, assumption that nobody likes active artifacts.

The idea is to combine active artifacts into the functional/passive ones. Example: With a cache boost artifact, it would also have the ability to get a free cache every 24 hours, or whatever is deemed fair to not make them too OP. Or with Mercenary boost, you get a free inspire "x%" of Mercenaries every "y" amount of hours. Or for artifacts are being described in this thread as "functional artifacts" such as Army Camp Discount, you get special double or triple discount once every "x" amount of hours.

Yes, this would make artifacts much more valuable, but you could just make harder to acquire. This would somewhat do away with the concept of "upgrade fodder" and make upgrading your artifacts a much more strategic endeavor. Also, you could switch out your artifacts like we do today, but then obviously if you activate the effect, then you're stuck with it for the rest of the cool down period. What's nice is that it wouldn't be a wasted slot.

And I know that not every passive/functional artifact has its active counterpart, so some work might have to go into fleshing that out, but alternatively it could be really fun if the correspondence was actually totally random, so you get a Smelt speed increase artifact that also gives you a discounted mine upgrade every 24 hours, or a Draft increase that gives you a 3 minute time warp every 24 hours, etc. This would also have the added benefit of never getting the same artifact twice based on all the possible variations.

Thoughts?

*Edited to include Krinid's new terminology of Passive/Functional/Active Artifacts

Edited 2/11/2021 15:46:15

So, if I understand you, ChillHouzVanHoutn, correctly, your suggestion is to combine actives and passives in a way that I can use them passively - just like today - or could use their active part for a greater effect but while cool down they will still give me the passive portion of them. It's definitely an interesting approach but I still dislike the part where a slot is blocked for 16h. Sure, you are making up for this. But I would probably keep using them passively (because of the slot blocking) and Fizzer will still complain, that this doesn't mitigate swapping.

Let me just propose a slight variant that I like more but that has similar downsides to your idea:
Again, we get rid of all active artifacts and add an active part to each functional one (the actual passive artifacts really don't need an additional effect tbh) especially to the ones that have an active counterpart. You are free to swap as you like, but if you manage to keep a functional artifact for some time in some slot (moving an artifact from one slot to another shouldn't penalize you), you can on top "claim" some additional goodie. So, e.g. we have the "Draft Boost" that while equipped gives you x% (depending on its quality) more armies for drafting. And if you keep it equipped for - let's just say - 16h you can claim a few more armies, perhaps equivalent to four drafts or so. After equipping an artifact, there is a count down for when the bonus effect triggers and as soon as you claim whatever additional bonus, the count down starts anew.

What I like about this approach is that there is no artificial limits to what I do with my artifacts. But if I play more like Fizzer intended, I profit from not swapping too often. I would suspect that more users WANT to wait another hour before swapping to get this bonus, than they enjoy HAVING to wait.

I think - unless someone proves me wrong - that is should be pretty straightforward to extend this idea to all other artifacts. Army Camp Discount has x% discount passively, and one time 3x% or so in its "active" phase, ...

As a consequence, there would be no active artifacts anymore, no activation buttons, no cool down. So, this change is still extensive.

I just realize, that players that DO ACTUALLY prefer the active artifacts would be totally screwed by my idea, so let me fix this myself:

I equip my "Draft Boost" like in my last post. Now, the count down starts from 16h. I can now benefit from the passive boost effect and gain some more armies after each 16h (given I am awake and claiming the active portion of my artifact). BUT - and here's the change - if I need the active effect right away at some point, the game offers me this, but converts what is left of count down into cool down, but still with the passive effect while it is cooling down.
So if for example, I equip the Army Camp Discount for general cheaper camp upgrades and 8h in, the most expensive army camp of mine gets almost into reach and I really want to upgrade now rather than in 3h when I would have collected the money passively, I can activate the Army Camp Discount for the greater effect, but then I have to keep this artifact in its slot for another 8h and the next goodie count down will only start after the cool down has ran out.

So, the activate button would be back, but the cool down essentially would decrease with the time the artifact was already in slot before activating it.

I would still rather have nothing changed, but here's a new idea:

Keep Actives as they are and have all Passives converted to X Ap based on if it's Poor, Common, ect. Other than the two money bonuses which might be in Phase 3, I think all of them have Advancements that do the same as Passive Artifacts. Yes the Mine bonus is split up, but I'm guessing no one ever spends AP on those so maybe get rid of them and make a general Mine bonus like the artifact. You still get Passives or Actives from dig site, but the Passives are immediately converted to AP. This would solve Fizzer problem with people micromanaging and make Actives useful.

***edit*** If the two money bonuses aren't in Phase 3 there are free spots it the Tech tree to add a couple of them to make up for the lose.

Edited 2/11/2021 14:57:26

Here is phase 3:

Another impact of swap limitations to consider ... the math on artifacts is wonky and not clear.

Example: what is better, 100% territory money boost or 40% bonus money boost? Both are Rare. The answer is ... it depends on what you've captured so far, and you don't know until you compare with 1 equipped then swap one out and equip the other. There are occasions during a level where TMB > BMB and sometimes TMB < BMB. But given that neither territory money/sec nor bonus money/sec show up as a stat anywhere, it's difficult to measure before equipping the artifacts.

If the artifact could forecast what the impact of using it would be, that would help, eg: current 2M/sec income, with the 40% BMB will become 2.2M/sec income (note: net 10% benefit b/c of other related bonuses, not actual 40% b/c of the wonky math which I won't get into here - but the point is that just makes it harder for players to predict the real benefit, and thus rely on swapping in/out to figure out the real value) could show; "Current 2M/sec, With artifact: 2.2M/sec", then we wouldn't have to swap in/out to know. In lieu of this though ... players will be confused.

Honestly, WZI math is not obvious. Stats help a lot but there are still a lot of calculations just not visible to us so we need to experiment to figure things out, and some of it we can never figure out accurately.