Elemental Resistance: Why Even Have It?

So, there are a couple little things in this game that really bother me, but none quite like elemental resistance.

I can't wrap my head around this concept, it seems so half-baked. Does it have any meaningful impact on anything and if not, why even have it in the game to begin with?

The way I see it, they should either completely do away with it, or make it meaningful, yet with each new primal we get more of it.

The same could also be said about the member of the twelve we chose, or our character's birthday. If choice is to be in the game, make it an actual meaningful choice, not an arbitrary construct.

Has anyone found a practical use for elemental resistance or elemental potions?

Not really useful. Due to all the 1 shot moves from the various primals.

I think I've read before that someone made experiments with resistances and 1point amounts to 0,016% less dmg (but I'm not sure how credible that actually is). Eitherway elemental resistance does not Play a big role in this game, not even in fights against Bosses which only use attacks of on element (Garuda Ifrit Titan Leviathan)

It's really poorly implemented at the moment, and probably will remain so without some significant design philosophy changes.

Elemental resistance tends to work on a sliding scale: Either it's so weak that it's irrelevant and can be survived anyway, and thus people generally won't bother - or it reaches a point where it's necessary to survive things, in which case you put extra weight on players to have an entire separate set or pieces of gear just to deal with it.

Both options are valid; XIV's philosophy seems to not want players to need to carry around multiple sets of gear. But it still has the mechanics, for some reason, so it falls into the former camp, where it just sorta looks like a sloppy loose end.

Because it is the only valid reason to wear a bikini in Ifrit? At least that was my excuse for wearing a bikini before glamour.

its just a left over from 1.0... Yoshi doesnt really want it in the game

Just made me think of FF VIII where you work your resistance to an element up so high that it actually healed you. It would be great to have that much flexibility but balance it so that having a lot of something means neglecting something else. If you think about it you are very locked down to be exactly the same as everyone else playing your class in XIV, plus or minus a bit of core stats depending on your gear level.

so leviathan doesnt kill you when he dives you too much

This is something that bothers me as a SMN. I will eventually have access to all elemental damage, but due to elements being worthless, it will never be worthwhile to try and match the right egi with the right battle. So long as I use the highest DPS one, I'm golden.

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Originally Posted by Razzle

its just a left over from 1.0... Yoshi doesnt really want it in the game

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Why though? What's wrong with an elemental wheel? How do its negatives outweigh the positives?

Did Yoshi even ask the community if it should have been gotten rid of?

No clue what the original intention was. As soon as you hit Level 50, 100% of the Gear (crafted items left aside) you get in dungeons or can exchange for tokens has no slots for any Materia anyways. And even below Level 50, there is no real purpouse. Stack yourself with Earth resistance in Titan HM or Wind Resistance for Garuda HM and you will still die because of the amount of Damage you receive. The reduction of damage is so low that it can't be taken into account. Only purpouse of Elemental Resistance right now is to use them for spirit bonding.

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Originally Posted by Razzle

its just a left over from 1.0... Yoshi doesnt really want it in the game

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The first part would be my guess as well. I'm not familiar with any interview where Yoshi said he wouldn't use it; anyone know of one? I kind of wonder if elemental stuff was taken out for the same reason we have Fire 2 instead of Fira (for example), American players wouldn't "get it". /rollseyes

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Originally Posted by Sadana

The first part would be my guess as well. I'm not familiar with any interview where Yoshi said he wouldn't use it; anyone know of one? I kind of wonder if elemental stuff was taken out for the same reason we have Fire 2 instead of Fira (for example), American players wouldn't "get it". /rollseyes

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Ok I did a quick google search and found this:

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Will the battle system ever include some sort of elemental weakness wheel? I don't like killing a fire element using fire. This will help with some of the "bland" battle system complaints.
Already addressed in live letter. Yoshida says it's better to make all classes viable for all content rather than exclude or prioritize classes for each fight.

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http://avalanchegroup.enjin.com/foru...ready-answered

I don't have a quote but I remember YoshiP saying something about him not wanting specific jobs with specific elementals to have more advantage on certain fights and thus exclude the other DPS jobs. (which is what happened in 1.0 on primal fights for example)

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Originally Posted by NovaUltimatum

Why though?

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Because they wanted to dumb the game down in every way possible.

Elemental wheel was probably the first to go.

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Originally Posted by NovaUltimatum

Why though? What's wrong with an elemental wheel? How do its negatives outweigh the positives?

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In analysis I'm not even sure there's a positive.

If you want players to target an elemental weakness, you end up with
1. Characters are now forced to carry more gear to be 'properly equipped' for encounters, forcing a lot more farming. (There is an argument though that this is a positive for things like reducing content obsoletion, but this is distinctly not the philosophy XIV takes)
2. Classes spontaneously have various tools restricted from them in fights simply because they're not the right element.
3. Classes that do play the elemental game and avoid 2... now have six functionally identical spells that aren't actually adding any gameplay because you're using the same one over and over and ignoring the others, creating unnecessarily clogged skill lists.

It's not even a 'smart' thing. It doesn't take intelligence to pick which spell to use, just foreknowledge of which one's most effective. The only time it might get interesting is bosses which rely on changing elements, which has heavy impact on other classes in the process.

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Originally Posted by NovaUltimatum

Ok I did a quick google search and found this:

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This is about elemental wheel, but we discuss about elemental resistances.

"This enemy is ice element, attack it with fire for more damage and don't attack with wind" - elemental wheel
"This enemy is strong against fire, attack with all what you have but not with fire" - elemental resistances

During beta Yoshida wrote why he think that elemental resistances is better than a whole elemental wheel

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Originally Posted by Felis

This is about elemental wheel, but we discuss about elemental resistances.

"This enemy is ice element, attack it with fire for more damage and don't attack with wind" - elemental wheel
"This enemy is strong against fire, attack with all what you have but not with fire" - elemental resistances

During beta Yoshida wrote why he think that elemental resistances is better than a whole elemental wheel

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The in-game elemental resistances don't quite work that way, it's player defence only, not enemy defence that counts. I bring up elemental wheels because it's related to elemental defences in general.

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Originally Posted by Pride

So, there are a couple little things in this game that really bother me, but none quite like elemental resistance.

I can't wrap my head around this concept, it seems so half-baked. Does it have any meaningful impact on anything and if not, why even have it in the game to begin with?

The way I see it, they should either completely do away with it, or make it meaningful, yet with each new primal we get more of it.

The same could also be said about the member of the twelve we chose, or our character's birthday. If choice is to be in the game, make it an actual meaningful choice, not an arbitrary construct.

Has anyone found a practical use for elemental resistance or elemental potions?

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I think a lot of it is just carry overs from 1.0.

It makes BLM's Apoctastasis feel even more useless then. They couldn't think of a real ability?

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Originally Posted by Garlyle

In analysis I'm not even sure there's a positive.

If you want players to target an elemental weakness, you end up with

1. Characters are now forced to carry more gear to be 'properly equipped' for encounters, forcing a lot more farming. (There is an argument though that this is a positive for things like reducing content obsoletion, but this is distinctly not the philosophy XIV takes)
2. Classes spontaneously have various tools restricted from them in fights simply because they're not the right element.
3. Classes that do play the elemental game and avoid 2... now have six functionally identical spells that aren't actually adding any gameplay because you're using the same one over and over and ignoring the others, creating unnecessarily clogged skill lists.

It's not even a 'smart' thing. It doesn't take intelligence to pick which spell to use, just foreknowledge of which one's most effective. The only time it might get interesting is bosses which rely on changing elements, which has heavy impact on other classes in the process.

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Honestly I wish the game had an elemental wheel. Makes it more interesting instead of the boring setup we have now. Your points are good, but I think the key thing is it forces variation. You can no longer have "BIS", you must equip yourself to the fight you are going into. It does require more work balancing, which SE doesn't seem to want to worry about with their streamlining. It also makes sense as an immersion thing, ie attacking Bombs with Fire or ice elementals with Blizzard.

Elemental weaknesses were the first thing I missed when getting back to my Black Mage in 2.0. Given the BLM playstyle, I understand *why* it's not there anymore, but it still feels like they cheapened what could've been a very tactical mage into routine button-basher.

Element resistances are so pitiful they might as well not exist. Materia bonuses only give the tiniest boosts, making elementals the most worthless materia in existence. Even Apocatastasis, a BLM skill which greatly raises elemental strength, provides minimal defense against elemental damage. Say what you will about FFXI's complicated affinity for elements, at least they MEANT something. The offering FFXIV has is barely a footnote in comparison.

It used to have a purpose in 1.0, now it's worthless.

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Originally Posted by Lemuria

Say what you will about FFXI's complicated affinity for elements, at least they MEANT something. The offering FFXIV has is barely a footnote in comparison.

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When you look at it, FFXI had a much more complex battle system than FFXIV, you really had to learn how to fight. Some mobs like skeletons took less slashing and piercing damage but more bashing damage while most birds took increased piercing damage. Also certain weapons changing the base type of damage, like monk weapons normally doing bashing, but claw types did slashing or the rapier sub class of swords doing piercing instead of slashing. This is something I miss in XIV, it feels so simple in comparison, but then again I don't miss having 3-4 equipment sets and 8 main weapons on my BLM back in the days.

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Originally Posted by Kisshu

When you look at it, FFXI had a much more complex battle system than FFXIV, you really had to learn how to fight. Some mobs like skeletons took less slashing and piercing damage but more bashing damage while most birds took increased piercing damage. Also certain weapons changing the base type of damage, like monk weapons normally doing bashing, but claw types did slashing or the rapier sub class of swords doing piercing instead of slashing. This is something I miss in XIV, it feels so simple in comparison, but then again I don't miss having 3-4 equipment sets and 8 main weapons on my BLM back in the days.

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Also mobs grabbed aggro based on different reasons. Some aggroed by sight (los them), sound (like worms... use sneak... I think you could also walk slowly to "sneak past"), tracked you using smell (lose the scent by running through a river), blood (undead would aggro if you had low health), and magic (elementals would aggro if you cast a spell). In FFXIV 2.0, it's just sight.

Oh yeah, and healing did damage to undead! (IIRC, this one I may be misremembering to other FFs). In an effort to streamline, they made the battle system extremely simple and boring. The most "interesting" thing we do is dodge mechanics which has become way overused.

It has to basically do nothing because if elemental resistances/weaknesses were in the game the classes wouldn't all have the same difficulty curve and balancing is hard.

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Originally Posted by Garlyle

Elemental resistance tends to work on a sliding scale: Either it's so weak that it's irrelevant and can be survived anyway, and thus people generally won't bother - or it reaches a point where it's necessary to survive things, in which case you put extra weight on players to have an entire separate set or pieces of gear just to deal with it.

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If it's a sliding scale you only demonstrated 0% and 100%. There's no reason why it couldn't be used as a legitimate alternative strat. For instance, is your healer slightly undergeared for Titan? Load up your party with earth resist to take off some, but not all, of the burden. Parties with good healers can pass without it, parties with struggling healers can get a boost. Things like this would create some much diversity and allow alternative strategies that aren't game-breaking.

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Originally Posted by Magis

Also mobs grabbed aggro based on different reasons. Some aggroed by sight (los them), sound (like worms... use sneak... I think you could also walk slowly to "sneak past"), tracked you using smell (lose the scent by running through a river), blood (undead would aggro if you had low health), and magic (elementals would aggro if you cast a spell). In FFXIV 2.0, it's just sight.

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Not true. Several mobs in FFXIV 2.0 aggro by sound including mudpuppies (efts?), morbols and kedtraps.

If I'm not mistake we also have blunt, piercing and slashing resistance, all of which we cannot augment in any way.

Also, if they were worried about BLM being forced out of parties, why not give it use of all the elements? Have them work in the same way that Fire and Ice work and give BLMs some neutral spells that deal unaspected damage? There are ways around this, the devs just have to give up their silly rule that all jobs get the same amount of abilities.

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Originally Posted by Magis

Oh yeah, and healing did damage to undead! (IIRC, this one I may be misremembering to other FFs). In an effort to streamline, they made the battle system extremely simple and boring. The most "interesting" thing we do is dodge mechanics which has become way overused.

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Yeah, you could heal to death undead in other FF games. Even Pheonix Down them to death. I also agree that streamlining and trying to have everything extremely balanced has made it boring and classes feeling the same.

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It has to basically do nothing because if elemental resistances/weaknesses were in the game the classes wouldn't all have the same difficulty curve and balancing is hard.

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That is in my opinion not a bad thing.

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That is in my opinion not a bad thing.

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Throw in elitism, and it will be X class or bust.

Heck some Bray groups only take bards and black mages for it and refuse anything else for dps. Now imagine this, but for every single encounter, speed run or not.

I played enough Pokémon on my Game Boy, don't need "it's super effective" to come into this game. Keep it for offline RPGs where balancing doesn't matter.