Gamers do not understand the concept of additive vs multiplicative

I've been reading up on some Another Eden endgame discussions and suddenly realized that, holy shit, some of these kids are literally mixing up the concept of additive vs. multiplicative.

Additive: Percentage modifiers add onto the previous percentage.

E.g.:
A damage modifier of +30% under additive rules means that applying it three times gives 100% + 30% + 30% + 30% = 190% modifier to the base damage.

Multiplicative: Percentages modifiers multiply onto the previous modifier percentages. Due to the nature of <1 multiplication, multiplicative percentages have diminishing returns.

E.g.:
A damage modifier of +30% under multiplicative rules means that applying it three times gives 100% + 30% x 130% x 130% = 150.7% modifier on the base damage.

"Multiplicative" is indicating that the same-type modifiers are first multiplied before applying as a modifier. You're not multiplying the total damage by 30% thrice. You're multiplying 30% increase thrice.

When you want to describe a modifier that's modifying on top of a previously modified damage, the word you're looking for is compounding. AKA, the damage modifier is applied exponentially (or in math lingo, the modifier is compounded).

A damage modifier of 30% applied three times under compounding rules works like this:
(100% + 30%) x (100% + 30%) x (100% x 30%) = 219.7%
In other words, (100% + 30%) ^ 3 = 219.7% modifier on the base damage.

Multiplicative modifiers that are <100% will always have diminishing returns and under perform additive multipliers. This is why it's utter nonsense to say that multiplicative modifiers are better than additive ones when you're talking about 20% increase in damage under condition A. You're not saying what you think you're saying, child. Staaaaahp.