Elemental Weakness and ResistanceFollow

I'll have to see if I can find Kachi's WALL O TEXT on this subject...

Nevermind, Kachi wasn't overly verbose in this thread, but here's the discussion we already had on this.

http://ffxiv.zam.com/forum.html?forum=152&mid=136809096896419977#6

Yeah, if 1.0 is an indication, it would have been weird to stretch the system like that.

For example, all Fire spells (at least as far as we know) are AoE. What if we're fighting Shiva or insert ice raid boss, that spawns adds. Black Mages are screwed if they are simply doing their job by casting the spell that does the most elemental damage, but are hitting unintended targets.

Also, speaking 1.0 terms, you wouldn't want to be casting Flare on Ifrit. Flare is centered around you, so if you're casting Flare on Ifrit, you're far too close.

Edited, May 30th 2013 10:46am by UltKnightGrover

I'm on the fence about this. This system i thought was cool giving players a way to deal extra damage, or being able to debuff a mob with a high success rate because they were weak to something. To me it's like they are removing strategy from the game.

Besides i can't think of any classes that couldn't perform because a mob is weak to a certain element. WHM's had multiple elemental spells, and so did BLM. The melee had no problems either...unless they are planning to have classes that are extremely specific?

This kinda feels like all spells will be the same with the only one being used is the strongest one, which would normally vary with the elemental system. Maybe i'm just thinking to much into this, but i don't see the benefit in removing elemental properties.

I guess i'll have to wait and see how this pans out.

Edited, May 30th 2013 2:08pm by Keysofgaruda

There's certainly a strategic element, still. It's just not based on the enemy's innate element.

Fire is better for group targets. Flare is radial around you and does large damage over time on top of good area damage.
Lightning is better for single target spike damage. Burst's damage increases if you are low on HP. (Good for post-convert spike damage)
Blizzard spells are good for stunning/slowing the target. Blizzara stuns all targets around you, and Freeze reduces a lot of hate.

Edited, May 30th 2013 11:09am by UltKnightGrover

While I'm not a big fan of elemental wheels, I do think their reason for removing it is pretty poor. You honestly can't just maintain the mechanic and then actually balance it?

Honestly, it's like the first time they realize that a feature won't work perfectly, they decide to remove it, rather than figuring out how to implement it correctly. The gameplay already looks to have the depth of a puddle, but clearly designing a game is just too damn hard for some people.

But it seems like a lot of game developers don't understand when, why, or how to balance a game, or that almost any mechanic can work if your balancing protocols are the least bit planned out.

I'm mostly wondering what they plan to do with Scholar, which was also a class very dependent upon elemental affinities. That and Scan were pretty much the definition of the job.

Maybe they secretly felt modern gamers would find the concept too confusing. Better off sticking with 1, 1, 1....

Edited, May 30th 2013 8:19pm by Dizmo

It's more lore-oriented.

BLM gets access to destructive elements while Whm gets access to nature-related and holy elements. I like the stylization, and I think any work-arounds would be awkward and forced.

Sorry, but that's not even close to true. That's like saying that the only way to get the number 5 is by subtracting 1 from 6. Fundamentally, that's what balancing IS--taking different approaches to evening out the numbers. There are literally an infinite number of ways they could have addressed encounter inequalities in the elemental wheel, but it's true that the easiest way to balance two things is just to remove one

Just off the top of my head, let's see...

BLM can have the entire elemental wheel and be perfectly reasonable.
WHM .... is not a dps, moving on.
SMN has no problem having elemental minions
SCH COULD be given the whole wheel, but let's do something different and let them modify elemental weaknesses. So we adjust their role from pure dps to more of a combat support role where they're helping to enable the rest of the party to do more damage while putting out decent non-elemental damage of their own.

BOOM

And there are infinite other ways to make it work too.

Elemental wheels are IMO at the core of FF and RPGs in general.

If you want to do the most damage to Ifrit use something other than fire.

It seems more odd not to cure and undead to death or cast stone and not have it heal Titan.

Its an admittedly small thing but is just one of those staples like blunt weapons vs bones.

You could have it where fire does damage vs. Ifrit but water just does more. People are going to min/max anyway ...

It just seems as though there's an extra effort to homogenize the game; first with the lack of meaningful racial stats and now elements, the differentiation is seeming more and more superficial.

To be honest I don't know if this is good or bad, and if its an attempt to balance the game or if it is just lazy design (in this one area).

I wouldn't be surprised if the elements were put back in, in a few months from now.

Very unlikely. They'd have to go in and add the code to too many things. If they can't see the value of it now, they almost definitely won't add it later when it will be even harder.



BLM doesn't need the entire elemental wheel. The only issue is if there's a class that has only or mostly only access to elements which would be a significant weakness in battle. If you can't design your way around that problem,you can't design your way out of a paper bag.