Fix the Elemental Wheel

"You cast water on the grease fire!"
"The grease fire goes ape-shit and kills your party!!"

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Originally Posted by Lux_Rayna

You said you don't care if its fire<->ice or lightning <-> water. That is FFX's elemental system. I'm asking you to explain how that is any less ludicrous than wind-> fire.

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If you're responding to my edit, then you should be asking to explain how water -> fire makes more sense than wind -> fire, no? In which case I can point you to the wiki link again, every culture believing in basic elements used that combination, with wind being opposite of earth. Water is also more likely to quench fire than wind, as I already said.

Changing it to fire <-> wind is just changing it for the sake of changing. While every game strives for originality, there is good and bad originality. Ver 1.0 was bad originality and the wheels are part of it.

As for water <-> lightning, they just coupled fire <-> ice and wind <-> earth, so the only ones left were water and lightning. I never stated water <-> lightning makes more sense than wind -> fire, I only said the other systems made more sense as a whole. One absurdity is better than... uh... about 6?

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Originally Posted by Soukyuu

If you're responding to my edit, then you should be asking to explain how water -> fire makes more sense than wind -> fire, no? In which case I can point you to the wiki link again, every culture believing in basic elements used that combination, with wind being opposite of earth. Water is also more likely to quench fire than wind, as I already said.

Changing it to fire <-> wind is just changing it for the sake of changing. While every game strives for originality, there is good and bad originality. Ver 1.0 was bad originality and the wheels are part of it.

As for water <-> lightning, they just coupled fire <-> ice and wind <-> earth, so the only ones left were water and lightning. I never stated water <-> lightning makes more sense than wind -> fire, I only said the other systems made more sense as a whole. One absurdity is better than... uh... about 6?

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Who says this winds just blows air how do you know this wind isnt sucking the air from the fire. You can make up a lot of thing, but back to lux point its a fantasy game and they made it this way cause they wanted to....

I agree with OP. We should go back to the FFXI on this one. I hate this elemental wheel, it is convoluted.

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Originally Posted by Firon

Who says this winds just blows air how do you know this wind isnt sucking the air from the fire. You can make up a lot of thing, but back to lux point its a fantasy game and they made it this way cause they wanted to....

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Wind is defined as: "The perceptible natural movement of the air, esp. in the form of a current of air blowing from a particular direction."

If it sucked air, it'd be noted somewhere that it was a Vacuum sort of spell, since that is a pretty big difference. (And it would be pretty awesome.)

On a side note, I think the spell "Choke" was a "vacuum" spell.

So I'm not arguing that fire being put out by wind is "OMG IMPOSSIBRU," but doesn't water putting out fire make more sense?

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Originally Posted by Zyph

Wind is defined as: "The perceptible natural movement of the air, esp. in the form of a current of air blowing from a particular direction."

If it sucked air, it'd be noted somewhere that it was a Vacuum sort of spell, since that is a pretty big difference. (And it would be pretty awesome.)

On a side note, I think the spell "Choke" was a "vacuum" spell.

So I'm not arguing that fire being put out by wind is "OMG IMPOSSIBRU," but doesn't water putting out fire make more sense?

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Don't need to make sense you just don't like it cause it's in your comfort zone, you guys really need to stop trying to apply real life to games it will get you no where.

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Originally Posted by Soukyuu

If you're responding to my edit, then you should be asking to explain how water -> fire makes more sense than wind -> fire, no? In which case I can point you to the wiki link again, every culture believing in basic elements used that combination, with wind being opposite of earth. Water is also more likely to quench fire than wind, as I already said.

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>_> based on what? If the wind is strong enough it will put out the fire. If the water is vast enough, it will put out the fire. The two are as likely to put out fire. If I blow a candle, it goes out. If I throw water on it, it goes out. If i throw ice on it, it goes out. If I throw DIRT on it, it goes out.

Water isn't more likely to put out a fire than anything else. The conditions for putting out a fire are universal for everything, drop its heat faster than it can produce it, or otherwise interrupt the process. Dirt, water, ice, wind...they all have to meet the same condition: be bigger/stronger than the flames they are trying to put out.

Again, this is why elemental wheels are illogical. There are no such thing as "elements" in the magical sense, so *anything* is convoluted.

Well this was a fun change of pace from the war <> pld arguments. Kinda wish I had read it all from day 1 but eh.

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Originally Posted by Soukyuu

The real problem is, they were using a reasonable element system throughout nearly all previous FF titles, with fire <-> ice / earth <-> wind / water <-> lightning, but decided to change it for ffxiv. why? because...

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A thought on the basis of things in general: ALL fiction is rooted in some fact, a fantasy world, ignoring the fact that it's one carrying the FF torch and all that goes along with that, has to have rules, and for the sake of making it easily accessible and enjoyable to the majority of people drawing on laws found in our own reality is how it tends to work.
Yes those laws can be modified, but to toss them all into the marble bag and pull shit out at random and see what happens will make people put away your book/game/movie.

Ask yourself, honestly now, when is the last time you read/played/watched a movie, a work of pure fiction that strayed from our own realities natural laws so wildly as to say that the majority of the time wind is detrimental to fire or that dark and light can occupy the same space at the same time. The last time that people walked on space and breathed stone, swam in fire and were burned by air? These things feel horribly wrong, you can tell me all about how they don't but deep down you just know it's wrong. The suspension of reality in a fictional work is more a matter of allowing a person to easily transition into a fantastical world than it is about creating a world that has wildly unique laws of physics. The more a person has to "learn" to accept the fiction and understand it, the less enjoyable it will be, and this leads to it being placed on a shelf behind that 1992 copy of CompTIA Server+ in a nutshell.

Ok on the wheels:
I won't say that one shape of wheel or number of wheels is better than the next, just that having them rooted in something that people can already easily relate to simply makes sense.

I can memorize the wheel/s no matter which way they run or what effects what, wrote memorization does not mean intuitive, it's actually quite the opposite, if I had to study and memorize this thing it was rather unintuitive.

If you feel the current wheels are intuitive "now" ask yourself, again honestly, how long was it before you had memorized what spell to use against what mobs? Do the mob families make sense having the elemental alignment they do? I have no clue, I don't even care that much about the wheel/s, again I can memorize it no matter what it ends up, but more importantly until(less) they add elementally aligned weapons I'll go right on stabbing things merrily.

cure should hurt the undead

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A thought on the basis of things in general: ALL fiction is rooted in some fact, a fantasy world, ignoring the fact that it's one carrying the FF torch and all that goes along with that, has to have rules, and for the sake of making it easily accessible and enjoyable to the majority of people drawing on laws found in our own reality is how it tends to work.
Yes those laws can be modified, but to toss them all into the marble bag and pull shit out at random and see what happens will make people put away your book/game/movie.

Ask yourself, honestly now, when is the last time you read/played/watched a movie, a work of pure fiction that strayed from our own realities natural laws so wildly as to say that the majority of the time wind is detrimental to fire or that dark and light can occupy the same space at the same time. The last time that people walked on space and breathed stone, swam in fire and were burned by air? These things feel horribly wrong, you can tell me all about how they don't but deep down you just know it's wrong. The suspension of reality in a fictional work is more a matter of allowing a person to easily transition into a fantastical world than it is about creating a world that has wildly unique laws of physics. The more a person has to "learn" to accept the fiction and understand it, the less enjoyable it will be, and this leads to it being placed on a shelf behind that 1992 copy of CompTIA Server+ in a nutshell.

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Truth.

Most people ask for games to be more real, but in fact, they want the games to be more "truthful", big difference. Using magic in a realistic way in fiction don't work, sicne magic isn't real, so instead you would want magic to be used in a truthful way.

Whether they "fix" the wheel or not, I hope they only use the wheel(s) for specific high magic type enemies such as espers and elementals, and just make everything else a case by case basis.

Build enemies and their strengths/weaknesses truthfully on a case by case basis. I never liked how, every earth enemy is weak to water and strong to lightning.

I'm of the opinion that normal creatures shouldn't be elementally aligned at all, with some exceptions of course, fish live in water, of course that we fight monstrous crabs ... Following the theroy of electricity a bird hit by lightning in midflight would actually be unaffected by the electricity itself as it's not actually grounded and therefore provides no path for electricity to follow to ground. It's the heat generated by the strike that causes that damage, not unlike the squirell running down the high voltage lines running down the road.

Vaymathias your absolutely right, it's not that we are after realism as the above examples point out. It's that we want something that can be believed, where what we know of reality isn't demolished but rather enhanced to become the fantastic.

Everywhere I say we I mean I, and anyone else that chooses to agree with me.

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Originally Posted by Soukyuu

Based on the majority of the games out there.
edit: also, this. Water being opposite of Fire makes more sense than Wind anyway.

They might have had different rules, but base element relationships were never twisted as they are in FFXIV - I'd remember that.
I don't care if it was fire <-> ice | lightning <-> water or fire -> ice -> lightning -> water -> fire
But going wind -> fire is ridiculous. Speaking of realism: why do you think we fear the wind when there are fires around?

No, it won't. I played this game since alpha and I still have to keep the elemental wheel chart open. They tried to be different for the sake of being different, and you see where it got them. They're fixing the things with 2.0, so they might as well fix this too.

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Oh my god this is literally real life Idiocracy.

Did you read that Wikipedia article you linked? The only culture that had any kind of cycle in the elements was ancient Chinese, and even that one was nothing like any of the FF elemental strengths and weaknesses. This entire discussion is about the elemental wheel, and not the elements themselves. And there is no standard of what an elemental wheel should be. It's made up on the spot, in any game, because it's fantasy.

Going Wind > Fire is not ridiculous because this is all made up bulls**t. Can you get that through your head? None of this is real. Whatever reasoning for it exists in the game now (which it does) is sufficient. The fact that you don't think it's a good fit or that it's ridiculous is a testament to the fact that you have preconceived notions from other games' equally made up bulls**t about what an 'elemental wheel' should be.

The fact that you're bringing real life arguments into this is completely irrelevant. A strong wind will snuff out a weaker fire, a strong fire will be spread by wind or will suffocate it, throwing water on a grease fire will intensify it, boiling water will evaporate it, throwing dirt on fire will extinguish it, fire can melt rock into lava. You can make a case for literally anything if you start bringing real life examples because there is no such thing as an elemental wheel or cycle in real life.

stop this thread so i can stop +1ing wolfie >.>

look at pokemon, look at .hack, look at FFX, elemental wheel needed? nope.

Aww, you're saying that like it's a crime to agree with me.

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Originally Posted by Wolfie

Aww, you're saying that like it's a crime to agree with me.

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I'm silly like that ;)

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Originally Posted by Wolfie

Did you read that Wikipedia article you linked? The only culture that had any kind of cycle in the elements was ancient Chinese, and even that one was nothing like any of the FF elemental strengths and weaknesses. This entire discussion is about the elemental wheel, and not the elements themselves. And there is no standard of what an elemental wheel should be. It's made up on the spot, in any game, because it's fantasy.

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Classical elements did set the standards of elemental opposites. I don't care about wheels, all I want is classical elemental opposites, which ffxiv doesn't have.

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Going Wind > Fire is not ridiculous because this is all made up bulls**t. Can you get that through your head? None of this is real. Whatever reasoning for it exists in the game now (which it does) is sufficient. The fact that you don't think it's a good fit or that it's ridiculous is a testament to the fact that you have preconceived notions from other games' equally made up bulls**t about what an 'elemental wheel' should be.

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Yes, the elements are not "real". So what? Does it make sense to change elemental relationships? If it's "all made up of bulls**t", then hey, why not make water burn ice! It doesn't have to make sense! It's just magic! Let's be original!

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The fact that you're bringing real life arguments into this is completely irrelevant. A strong wind will snuff out a weaker fire, a strong fire will be spread by wind or will suffocate it, throwing water on a grease fire will intensify it, boiling water will evaporate it, throwing dirt on fire will extinguish it, fire can melt rock into lava. You can make a case for literally anything if you start bringing real life examples because there is no such thing as an elemental wheel or cycle in real life.

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Yes, there isn't such a thing as an elemental wheel. There is common sense though.

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Originally Posted by Soukyuu

Classical elements did set the standards of elemental opposites. I don't care about wheels, all I want is classical elemental opposites, which ffxiv doesn't have.

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I'm thoroughly convinced that you didn't actually read that Wikipedia article. Classical what? Classical Greek? Where does Ice, Thunder, Astral and Umbral fit on that model?

Classical Chinese? Where does Air, Ice, Thunder, Astral and Umbral fit on there? Classical Buddhist? There are no opposites. Hindu? Nope.

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Yes, the elements are not "real". So what? Does it make sense to change elemental relationships? If it's "all made up of bulls**t", then hey, why not make water burn ice! It doesn't have to make sense! It's just magic! Let's be original!

Yes, there isn't such a thing as an elemental wheel. There is common sense though.

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Dude, there is no common sense here because there is no standard, and you can argue for any opposition. Do you not understand this?

Wow. Seriously now? I give up, it's like talking to a wall.
Last hint: the diagrams show the opposites. And of course they don't have umbral/astral because they only used aether, if any.

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Originally Posted by Soukyuu

Wow. Seriously now? I give up, it's like talking to a wall.
Last hint: the diagrams show the opposites. And of course they don't have umbral/astral because they only used aether, if any.

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I am now thoroughly convinced that you don't actually read my posts, but only briefly skim over them and cherry-pick a few words or phrases to argue against or disprove with more baseless, illogical claims and half-answers.

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Originally Posted by Soukyuu

Wow. Seriously now? I give up, it's like talking to a wall.
Last hint: the diagrams show the opposites. And of course they don't have umbral/astral because they only used aether, if any.

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This is the classical case of when a belief is so strong ppl convince themselves of a reality that never existed. There was never a standard...ever. Different cultures around the same historical period developed different ideas about elements and their relationships. Some had opposites, some did not. Some had some elements, others did not. You speak of standard but that article proves there *was* no standard. There was only cultural difference. For some reason you take Greek for standard, but there were plenty of systems in opposition to Greek, so I dont know where you get this notion from. Greek is the one you like, fine, just admit its personal preference. Outside of that you are making things up, standard did NOT exist.