It is already hard enough to have a strong passphrase, complex multi-word and special characters, that you can get away with, without writing it down somewhere.
If I pass or become mentally unable, my beneficiary/descent must be able to open it, and the password hint is the only way. How are they supposed to derive my masterpass from the hint, if all they can have is a 6 words hint? There is no space for descriptions, riddles, etc
If you give me few characters, I have to be very direct and obvious
“Julia’s from japan nicknm uppercase +5 and ?” vs, be descriptive and include information only few people can possibly know →
“the nickname of girl we met when traveling together on our second international flight, replacing bla bla bla, and concatenate with the number of mama’s favourite object bla bla blabla blabla bla”
What’s the point of having the character counts of the “master password hint” in a first place??
EDIT: out of curiosity, how would a wizard deal with backing up their passphrase using best practices, given this limitation?
hint → “Solve the riddle in my safebox under the mattress” ?