Board Thread:Event Community Discussion/@comment-28069733-20170521154728/@comment-460323-20170525112146

Kupomancer wrote:

1. If you're talking about in-game role, then yes it will cause a fair bit of confusion for newcomers. I admit everything is confusing for a newcomer but this DE adds to it. Someone is bound to think DE as a substitute of DD, although very unlikely since it's only available as an event drop now. (heck people seems to be doing fine with differentiating CL, CA, CT, and CV so this one is a rather minor concern)

2. The more major concern is when the Matsu-class a.k.a. the actual destroyer escort got implemented in the game. Then you'd have to make another poll if you want to call them DDE or DE in which all hell may break loose again. I don't think they're that big an issue (the second one would only meant that older event pages that use DE would be outdated, but it's a past event so the implication would be minimal). Still, I agree that future-proofing in important, and the only real way to do that is to just follow w/e written on the card and abbreviate it by initial.

Still, for your first point, I'm still not buying that new players will be confused between DE/DD since they either won't encounter it very late into the game (if it stays as event-only) or they'll check the wiki after obtaining one and realize they're not called Destroyers (because really, who wouldn't check the ship page and come across the ship type?). Given that we're at the point where using CV(L/B) in event map is deemed necessary, the chances of anyone ever thinking DE can substitute for DD is nil without explicitly specified. Plus, I really can't imagine anyone running DE instead of DD if they can run the latter. It's not like DE's some sort of super DD with godlike stats and absolutely no one would run out of DDs.

In fact, I believe people would be confused by the constantly changing gameplay mechanics and the (not really) super complex mathematical equations for all the damage calculation, proc chance, etc, more than they would be confused by something as simple as mapping an abbreviation to a ship type.

As for your second point, if Matsu-class actually got implemented AND the devs decide to not just classify them as normal destroyers with weaker stats AND the ship card shows "Destroyer Escort", then there's really no debate to be had. DE is for the new api and the current Shimushu-class will just have to suck it up and go with a new abbreviation. I imagine the old event pages will be hit hard, yes, but other things will work just fine given how the backend admins had been modularizing the stuff in wikia. We really have them to thank for all the wonderful ship and event pages.