How about this - it's more intuitive. Is that better?
Yes, if one is six, or terminally stupid.
I have experience with and Innova flight numbers, as do many other people who favor Prodigy's naming system - not sure what that has to do with anything. Knowing that a Destroyer is 12/5/-1/3 does not mean you can't appreciate that by virtue of the name alone you recognize a D1 is more stable than a D3.
Perhaps, but knowing Innova (or some non-Innova company if you want to check a third party resource) made a 12/5/-1/3 disc can give you insight on what disc might be a hair faster, slower, fades a little more, or glides less. A D1 being more stable than a D3 tells you that a D1 is more stable than a D3. It also tells you that if a company uses four consecutive numbers to show stability that gives them no room to make future molds (except on the US side which they could conceivably go forever), unless they want to get fractions or negative integers involved. Prodigy I guess decided to add more letters, which to me throws the whole "D is for distance, M is for midrange" scheme off its rails.
So I don't want to memorize the relative flight characteristics of a bunch of random names - why do you care?
Who said you have to memorize them? They're stamped on all new Innova discs and if you needed the numbers on a mold you don't have available, they're easy to look up. There's no concrete science behind them anyway.
This is the funniest part. In my experience, people want to throw discs that feel good, fly predictably, and help them score well. I have yet to talk to anyone who has said something like "I was going to get an F2 because I really liked how it felt and how it flies for me, but that just didn't sound as cool as Rival so I didn't get it."
The thing is, a disc consumer doesn't always get to test the merch before they buy. In online sales, they don't even get to feel. What does that bingo number name do for the guy who hasn't thrown either mold and only has enough money to pick one? Companies attach sexy names to everything from cars to gadgets to craft beers for a reason. It helps that product stand out for consumers that have nothing else to go on.
I would suggest that people initially try and end up throwing discs for a lot of reasons, and the name is not very high on the list.
I'd suggest that too, but to Joe Q. Discgolfer who just started last week, that sort of critical reasoning hasn't sunk in yet.
If you don't like Prodigy for some reason that's your prerogative, and you've made it clear that you really don't like the way they have chosen to name their discs - that's cool.
I have no problems with Prodigy whatsoever, except in perhaps the lame way they went about marketing themselves like the second coming. They make quality plastic. I have a few of their molds. But once you put their stuff into the sea of all discs that I can potentially buy, they're rather unexceptional molds with pedestrian names.
My personal preference is different - I was at the discgolfcenter.com retail store this past weekend browsing through hundreds of discs and appreciated the ease with which I could search for another understable mid and an overstable fairway driver when looking at the Prodigy section compared to any of the other manufacturers.
Which only serves you if you're going to buy nothing but Prodigy.
The awesome names of animals and forces of nature? Didn't do anything for me, but there was a 10 year old kid in the store with his dad that was getting excited about them...
And what? I could have walked into the DD store in the days before they took the non-Trilogy plastic out and seen a 10 year old in there getting excited about their discs. 10 year old kids get excited about a lot of things. They're also very fickle, and they usually move on to other exciting things by the time they turn 13.