ELEMENTAL WHEEL REWORKED ?

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

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These concepts are great in theory but the more you dilute their implementation the less meaning it has. At this point; why include elemental strengths & weaknesses if you're going to soften them to the point of not mattering in the first place?

FFXI as an example you began to only use your most powerful spell regardless of it's strength/weakness to a particular element because the more powerful spell still did more damage than the "right" spell. After this trend happened for awhile Square implemented a decreasing return on consecutive same-spell use so even if you did use the "right" spell it yielded increasingly less damage and you were forced to ignore the Elemental Wheel.

People seriously don't think about this topic at all when it's brought up or the trends it encourages in play style, group composition, or what fixes it will then entail.

Yoshida put a a metaphorical bullet through this particular issue's head by just eliminating the mess before it could happen.

FFXI; and it's weird little Element Wheel that eventually was entirely disregarded for most content.

http://www.oocities.org/returnersls/images/elem.jpg

It's because FFXI had a huge difference in basic potency. Of course you'll use Thunder if Thunder I is as powerful as Stone II and Burst if the highest ancient spell.
By the time you learn Ancient Spells II, the potency is the same, so the wheel can be used again.

And if FFXI uses diminishing damages, it's because BLM were outrageously more powerful than physical DD (Manaburn, anyone ? :p)

All offline FF use elemental weaknesses, even the previous online one, and even the spin-off/sequels do. It it was really pointless, it would have been scrapped way earlier.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

It it was really pointless, it would have been scrapped way earlier.

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It is not pointless if you are guaranteed to have access to the spells, like in single player games. Making it a guaranteed thing that your party of 4 will have a BLM, would not work very well in FF14.

ITT people with rose tinted glasses hope ffxi-2. Really give it a rest, this isn't ffxi. Yoshi made the right choice getting rid of this.
it didn't even work in XI. And as others have said, XI was out of the norm for BLM in Final Fantasy games.

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Originally Posted by Nalien

How is Black Mage in XIV not an actual FF Black Mage? If anything XIs Black Mage was an abomination, before that I'm pretty sure Aero was almost exclusively a White Magic spell, and Stone was a non-element that inflicted confuse

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Wind element spells was only WHM in FFIII if I remember my games correctly. Stone was non element, confuse in only 1 game also. might have caused confuse in IX also, but can't remember that fight where it was used. You can correct me here if I'm wrong, my memory might not be accurate.

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Even in the (few) cases where Black Mage even had a Water spell, they didn't have it in the same way they had the others. I think Lulu is the only Black Mage ever to even have a host of Water spells, Vivi just had the single Water.

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Well, that is because it was only introduced as late as in FFVII.

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Once you learn the next tier of spells, the previous become worthless. That is a stupid mechanic.

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No it's not. It gives the player a sense of getting something new and better for the job. And well, if leveling actually took a bit of time, it would have been something to look forward to. Instead of getting an ability that might be used once a day.

And well, saying the next teir makes the previous useless.. We see that with equipment in the game, so why would it not work with magic?


EDIT:

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FFXI as an example you began to only use your most powerful spell regardless of it's strength/weakness

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That is because BLM got access to too much skill/magic accuracy gear. And no, you used your 2 most powerful spells. One for light and one for dark. ;p

In early FFs the Water element was only represented by things like Bio/Poison. As for the tier system and the wheel in FFXI... Yah they screwed it up. The potency differences between the various elemental spells were too great even though there was justification due to the spells being higher level. There was nothing wrong with having Thunder do the most damage but it didn't need to be so strong that even a double damage Stone spell was weaker. Also as much as the next tier obsoleting the previous made some sense in single player FFs (and in some you usually used the TWO highest tiers as the top tier tended to drain all your MP rapidly), it doesn't work in MMO. All it causes is bloat in your spell list. Scaling spells accomplishes the same thing with less waste.

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Originally Posted by Zaft

It worked in FFXI because every caster had access to every element. This is not the case in FFXIV.

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Can't really say it "worked" in XI rather it made mage classes more useful in content because of the elemental weakness circle which is why they pullled away from using such a concept in 14.