We care about Elements and Moon Phases!

The downside with element-based days and moon phases affecting the game is that you have to play on the game's time instead of your own time. In FFXI, you could literally have to wait a whole week for the "perfect" conditions to show up for the right moment to H.Q. a craft. If it turned out the next window opened at 3 a.m. while you'd be sleeping, you'd either have to wait even longer or risk ruining your day by staying up in the middle of the night for the sake of a game.

Game play mechanics like this that tempt you to disrupt your real life just aren't healthy, for one thing, and are completely unnecessary and avoidable.

In my OP, I was mainly referring to combat, when I alluded to the effects mentioned in the thread title. And when I envision a universe subject to these forces, I immediately assume an arsenal (or armory=D) readily available to compensate, exploit, and otherwise deal with these influxes. No force should happen in the natural world affecting our efforts, that the devs haven't given us an antidote for, or a way to exploit, channel, or compensate for.

Handicapping should be allowed to be overcome by means available to all. Half of the handicapping in FXI crafting, I'm convinced, was an urban legend... but there still were effects that we had no way to compensate for. This is not what I'm referring to when I say that "we care about elements and moon phases."

The apperance of the undead at the "witching hour" and that of elementals during spasms of weather... being given a bonus in the strength of your earth actions during earth day, or having to wait a few minutes for a battle to happen on its ideal week day, when the specific NM or herd of mobs would be at their weakest. These things added elements to consider when planning and traits you had to learn about the mobs and the world, not impossible delays. When used correctly these factors build lore, topics of discusion, learnable facts, and most definitely should not become mechanisms to torture the player base.

I believe the official statement on moon phases was "If you believe in it, who knows? It might help. If you don't, well don't worry because it's not hurting you." Talking about how people need something to believe in.

Personally, I'd rather they just say one way or the other. I don't care if it has any effect on anything at all really, as long as we can get the stupid superstitious bullshit out of the way.

Arcell I took it more to mean something along the lines of a plecebo effect.
ie if you think its working then you can convince yourself that it is.