Let's talk about religion.

See what I did there?

Anyway, I am talking about elements. They just don't seem relevant at all. Picking your character's religion at the start of the game effects your character's elemental resistances. Big question is

Why should anyone care?

It would make much more sense if elements had more of an impact in battle or crafting or gardening...something! Elements have been a huge part of Final Fantasy for generations and make Black Mage more interesting to play (for me at least.) Would it be possible to tweak the game to make elements you know...matter? Also as a side bonus, tie in our character's religion to the game's story?

I'd imagine the issue is at this point that any major elemental weaknesses/strengths would make BLMs scream in one way or another, and tweaks minor enough to not cause that won't really affect anything. Kinda backed themselves into a corner splitting the elements between THM and CNJ, but it's a little late to fix now.

They use to in 1.0 then they opted to make stats simplified so thats why its not there now but would be nice to see again. Btw in 1.0 as you leveled up you put points into stats and elemental stats.

It's not just battle that these things could affect. I remember all the theory crafting of "Days and Directions" back in XI - it was an entire mini-game of itself and it had nothing at all to do with elemental weaknesses of monsters.

As an aside, ANYTHING that improves the complexity of the game is worth a couple of butt hurt blms. I hated that the devs wouldn't add tanks to the game in XI because the existing paladins and ninjas stamped their feet and screamed the sky was falling. It was ridiculous then, and it would be ridiculous now. Improve the game no matter who cries that their job might play differently. Some jobs have a chokehold on content and there's nothing whatsoever wrong with loosening that a little.

I remember Yoshi saying that kinda stuff was for RP and there were no plans to make it relevant for gameplay

FF Elements weren't in WoW so they didn't get carried out when Yoshi copied the gameplay.

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Originally Posted by Taruranto

FF Elements weren't in WoW so they didn't get carried out when Yoshi copied the gameplay.

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First I twitched when I read this. Than I though about it, and yes, this is probably it.

I am NOT saying this is WoW 2.28, it does make sense that a modern MMO takes things from one of the most played MMOs.

But Why add elements in anyway?

@BearGrills

Citation Needed. Elements are not RP relevant in any way.

@Blms screaming bloody murder at elements.
I would like to slap each one of them in the face with a spike mythril vembrace. So now thy can't spam fire ignoring their rotations? boo hoo.

What I'd like to see. That us players have the same kind of "immunity progression" as at least every trash mob. Stone *heavy 10s* stone *heavy 5 seconds* stone *heavy completely resited* but nooooo we get heavy by the silliest of mobs. Even on chocobo we go down to a crawl. *stops self from more ranting*

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Originally Posted by BearGrylls

I remember Yoshi saying that kinda stuff was for RP and there were no plans to make it relevant for gameplay

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And this is one place where he could learn a little from Tanaka. I didn't like a lot of things the man did over the years, but making elements, days, directions, and times relevant to crafting was one of his crowning achievements.

Same religion, just pick what god you favour. As people said it's basically an RPG element. They can't make them significant because then that would mean a certain combo would the combo to have in a certain encounter. Boss does massive fire attack, well fantasia and change to the god that gives fire resist.

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Originally Posted by Souljacker

And this is one place where he could learn a little from Tanaka. I didn't like a lot of things the man did over the years, but making elements, days, directions, and times relevant to crafting was one of his crowning achievements.

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How did that work anyway?
I never played 1.0 so I'm interested to know how different the gameplay was (Other than it was at a slower pace, glitchy .. etc.).

That's too bad... cultural armor was one of my favorite crafting elements in EQ.

FYI- Cultural armor was armor for specific races and deity followers. The looks were very unique and the armor was quite good.

Deity faction modifiers were also interesting in that game..... I loved wandering PoG with my druid.

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Originally Posted by KhalidTheGreat

How did that work anyway?
I never played 1.0 so I'm interested to know how different the gameplay was (Other than it was at a slower pace, glitchy .. etc.).

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In my opinion, it was a myth, it didn't work with me, neither it did with my friends.
The community made it up, and they believed it.

Yes even Yoshi and 1.0 dev team said there was no elemental/moonphase/constellational minigame with crafting, the players just made it an urban legend people believed.

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Originally Posted by KhalidTheGreat

How did that work anyway?
I never played 1.0 so I'm interested to know how different the gameplay was (Other than it was at a slower pace, glitchy .. etc.).

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It helped to increase the dropchance of specific shards (put all points in water element to find more water shards)

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Originally Posted by Nouran

In my opinion, it was a myth, it didn't work with me, neither it did with my friends.
The community made it up, and they believed it.

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If you mean 1.0, the people didn't believed it. They only said it as a joke because crafting in XI worked like this.
The only thing that helped wih crating in 1.0 was equipping the proper gear, get the crafter buff from the guil npc or repair npc and buy the right crafting licenses with guild marks.

The issue now is that fire is the main damage spell for blm's. If they had the full elemental wheel available a la FFXI, then it would be more relevant. But unfortunately, thunder and blizzard have been reduced to dot/situational/added effect spells, while stone, aero and water (fluid aura) are part of the cnj/whm's repertoire. So if you take Titan, for example, and made him weak to thunder, it would be kind of pointless unless the dot's took a rather significant chunk of his life per tick.

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Originally Posted by Kimikryo

But Why add elements in anyway?

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I guess i'm an old nostalgia dog. I have fond memories of casting scan/libra to learn elemental weaknesses and such (I know this mechanic can't work in an MMORPG but still...)

I wouldn't want it something that one must to learn in order to play the game. Just a little extra something that us loyal Final Fantasy fans can play with ya know?

Little things like that are a nice love letter to the fans. But a guy can dream right?

Linkbait! I call shenanigans.

On the topic: Elemental wheel or riot (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

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Originally Posted by kidvideo

Linkbait! I call shenanigans.

On the topic: Elemental wheel or riot (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...alm_statue.jpg

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Originally Posted by Xmbei

Yes even Yoshi and 1.0 dev team said there was no elemental/moonphase/constellational minigame with crafting, the players just made it an urban legend people believed.

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Yeah, people will believe just about anything these days.

Now, if you'll excuse me, it's almost the window for my atma drop.

It's the same religion, it's just choosing your focus. They're based on Greek and Roman polytheistic religions.
Used to be that it had an elemental effect, but sense that's too complicated for our poor wittle heads, so it's just nothing.

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Originally Posted by Ilenya

I'd imagine the issue is at this point that any major elemental weaknesses/strengths would make BLMs scream in one way or another, and tweaks minor enough to not cause that won't really affect anything. Kinda backed themselves into a corner splitting the elements between THM and CNJ, but it's a little late to fix now.

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This could be negated by giving BLM a single target and an aoe that were element neutral like scathe that were lower damage. It would mean that there were fights where BLM were sub optimal but they would still be playable. However, if they went the route of adding back in the elemental wheel they should also add in mobs with higher/lower slashing, piercing and blunt resistances as well. This would even the score among the other dps and could add yet another layer of strategy into fights.

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Originally Posted by Felis

If you mean 1.0, the people didn't believed it. They only said it as a joke because crafting in XI worked like this.

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Even in FFXI, it was a myth, even though half the crafting community will swear on it as gospel. Skill-up rates were so absymally low and RNG-dependent, players would latch onto ANYTHING that would make them feel like they weren't wasting their time.

However, folks that actually did the research, showed it was either all bunk, or any "boost" you got from direction or day was so miniscule as to not be worth considering. As an example, I read a study someone did once (long since lost the link, sadly) where they crafted several thousand of the same item (Ash Rod, I think? Something cheap, using Wind crystals) over a several weeks of different days and moon phases. His results indicated day has NO effect on HQ or success rate - though there was some indication that moon phase might have had an effect (but if it did, it was NOT the community-accepted new moon / full moon thing; instead it was like waning gibbous, or something).

As any FFXI crafter if they've done any test like this to verify day/direction/moon phase, or even READ about anyone who has, and I guarantee you they'll say, "No, it's just common knowledge that it's true!" The best you'll get out of any of the lot is anecdotal stories like, "This one time, on Firesday New Moon I got, like, six HQs in a row!" Of course, since that crafter would ONLY craft on Firesday New Moon, he's bound to see a lucky streak every now and then, no?

More on-topic, the loss of elemental effectiveness is a sad, sad thing. It's pretty much a Final Fantasy staple, and it breaks my heart that it doesn't even receive a nod in this game. That said, it's difficult to see how it would work. Even if you discounted the possibility that players would only invite certain jobs to certain events, the structure of spells and job abilities in the game means that certain elemental weaknesses would be silly. Ifrit is vulnerable to water? Send in the WHM to use Fluid Aura every thirty seconds! Elemental weaknesses only make sense if there are effective attacks of each element; right now only Earth (CNJ's Stone attacks) and Fire (THM's Fire attacks).

Maybe they could add something like this to future Raids, where players are typically expected to construct their own party. Nothing major; something like "Fluid Aura will interrupt Gerthrot Firebreather's Firey Breath attack which is otherwise unstunnable". Players can survive the firey breath, but having a WHM along for Fluid Aura makes the fight a bit easier.

I want to use Cures on the undead.

They removed the elemental wheel so every class would be even for every fight. Giving some bosses elemental weaknesses would make BLM overpowered for that fight or if the boss had elemental resistances BLM would be underpowered. This is what happened in 1.0. It made tuning fights impossible for the devs. Blame the people in 1.0 who would do 8 man BLM parties to burn down Garuda and whatnot. If you didn't have BLM leveled at a certain point in 1.0 you weren't getting a party. This is what SE wanted to avoid going into 2.0.

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Originally Posted by KhalidTheGreat

How did that work anyway?
I never played 1.0 so I'm interested to know how different the gameplay was (Other than it was at a slower pace, glitchy .. etc.).

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1.0 had a lot of flaws, yes, but just because it was released too soon, that was a bad call from the directives.

But if you check all the elements that 1.0 had compared to ARR, you are playing a totally different game, first the character build, you had 2 levels, one was physical like a general level that could level up along with your class level, but at a slower pace, you needed around 3 to 4 classes leveled to 50 to get it to 50, once at 50 you could start a class at lvl 1 but your stats would be capped, so it was easier to level new classes, you could move stats at your own will all the time, elemental resistance and other stats that weren't very clear helped to personalize your gameplay and matter a lot.

The armoury system was very different from what we have now, it had a lot of flaws, but the main idea was to make pseudo jobs with all the classes, it was very important to level all your classes, you could make Red Mages, Dark Knights, Ranger, a full black mage or elementalist, paladin, pseudo dragoon, without jumps, etc. You could do lots of stuff with every class, because of all that freedom people misused some classes and people started to rage quit, in 1.19 to 1.23 they fixed the quantity of skills you could cross class so it was more organized, the system worked really good at that point.

There was no auto attack, you had a stamina bar so if you used regular attacks too much it could be empty really soon and had to wait for it to replenish, so you had to manage that while getting TP to use a WS, there was a Battle regimen, that was something similar to Limit breaks now, but I think it was a bit more thoughtful, everyone in the party had to put a ws, normal attack or spell and depending in the order the damage done could be low or high, the incapacitation system, something that I really miss, was really good, added more depth to every boss fight, some NM's or bosses dropped items only if you incapacitated certain part of their body, like breaking the Ram NM left horn would give you a mat to make a gear piece or weapon or incapacitating and NM from Coerthas would give you some skin to make a piece of gear, and every class had certain WS that could hit certain body parts of mobs and you had to be in certain position to hit it, had lot more stuff like if you broke the Ram's horn it would stop doing a very high damage skill, so some fights could be made easier if you achieved incapacitation.

The zones were larger, but copy pasted a lot, in some parts you could find certain unique elements too, that's a very good point for ARR zones are really awesome full of uniqueness, but they are missing the danger we had all the time, mobs were a lot tougher, we had open dungeons like copperbell mines, satasha, Mun Tuy cellar and there was another in the black shroud with higher level mobs, you could find NM's inside too. The weather was somewhat important like if it was raining in la Noscea it could pop the Ram NM and it had to be just at certain day time, Mor Dhona purple weather popped the Eye NM, Dodore, etc.

Actually you can compare 1.0 zone dangers with ARR zone dangers in the North Shroud, theres 2 roads that lead to the little town in the north where Gerolt is(the relic crafter), one is where you cross the bridge and the others is where the giants are, try crossing both as 40 to 50, that's the difference, I would love having more of that in ARR.

Hamlet defense and chocobo caravans were really good, first time I see a crafter in battle making their own part to help you win, caravans had their meaning and were entertaining, a big element they could add to ARR very easily.

1.0 had lots of flaws but there's a lot of elements that I think could be used in ARR to give more depth to our gameplay, if you play Paladin, theres only one way to play it, that makes it boring in the long term, same for other jobs, if you don't do the same stuff that everyone else does you may lack damage, healing or tanking. In 1.0 we had several ways to play the same class and be good at the same time, that made it interesting and awesome.

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Originally Posted by Daragust

This could be negated by giving BLM a single target and an aoe that were element neutral like scathe that were lower damage. It would mean that there were fights where BLM were sub optimal but they would still be playable. However, if they went the route of adding back in the elemental wheel they should also add in mobs with higher/lower slashing, piercing and blunt resistances as well. This would even the score among the other dps and could add yet another layer of strategy into fights.

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Bringing back the Astral/Umbral elements I recall existing would work as well. Make Astral work similar to fire but not proc Firestarter, and Umbral work like Ice, maybe balance the damage a bit (Though how you could do that and not break BLMs further is beyond me.), and then you could have Fire/Ice resistant mobs. I dunno, I don't actively play BLM to worry about balance issues.

In regards to the different resistances to the War DPS, I figured Amon would do something like that, where he would shift what type of damage he was resistant to as the fight continued, similar to how his fight went in FFIII. Would be fun.

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Originally Posted by kidvideo

I want to use Cures on the undead.

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If this means MNK gets Earth/Light affiliated Dragon Kick again, I'm all for it.

Oh oh and DMG modifier on Bootshine is 30% VIT and 30% STR so I can have a reason to not run around with 1 HP. :D

Important interviewhttp://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...w-with-Yoshi-P

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Originally Posted by Ilenya

Bringing back the Astral/Umbral elements I recall existing would work as well. Make Astral work similar to fire but not proc Firestarter, and Umbral work like Ice, maybe balance the damage a bit (Though how you could do that and not break BLMs further is beyond me.), and then you could have Fire/Ice resistant mobs. I dunno, I don't actively play BLM to worry about balance issues.

In regards to the different resistances to the War DPS, I figured Amon would do something like that, where he would shift what type of damage he was resistant to as the fight continued, similar to how his fight went in FFIII. Would be fun.

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You've just proven why it's a bad idea. To have meaningful resists you either have to overhaul the classes like you suggest, giving meaningless complexity, or just accept that some classes/jobs would be useless. If you have to do that then isn't the system flawed. That is why it works the way it does now. Having variety/flavour is nice but if it has dramatic affects on game play then it's not worth having.

I want to make this clear before this thread becomes too intense. I started this thread manly out of nostalgia. I have accepted the fact that some maybe even more then half of the FFXIV community may not like the elemental wheel coming back. I will still love FFXIV.

If it does come back, I would like it to be in a format that acts more like a "bonus" of sorts. Meaning that mobs wouldn't have any new resistances or immunitys, but rather extra boosts in damage or special effects depending on elements used against them (think "Mega Man".) That way raid parties won't keep Black Mages out just because their hardest hitting attacks are fire based for example.

Also, the "Twelve" is a great concept that I would love to see SE expand on. Just look at greek mythology. Can you imagine the possibilities for FFXIV lore on that scale? It gives me goosebumps just thinking about it!

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Originally Posted by elreed

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That's was one of the most in-depth explanations that I read about 1.0 and one that I've been looking for for a long time. Thanks for making the time to type all of this.

It seemed like 1.0 was more personalized but more complicated at the same time. I guess they simplified it so more people can play even ones like me who have little mmo experience. Although I would love to see some of 1.0 elements in ARR, I doubt that they removed it just to bring it back again.

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Originally Posted by KhalidTheGreat

It seemed like 1.0 was more personalized but more complicated at the same time. I guess they simplified it so more people can play even ones like me who have little mmo experience. Although I would love to see some of 1.0 elements in ARR, I doubt that they removed it just to bring it back again.

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The problem is, they watered it down to much. Now most of the content can be facerolled.
Yes 1.0 was overly complicated in some regards, but near the end of it it was the game I wished ARR would start at and remove the small but still persistent downers.
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I still love the game, and there is much that I still can do. But every time I look at it and see how devs leave out stuff that was in 1.0 which players liked, stuff even in FFXI people begged them from Promathia onward (which they got later on).
It feels like the FFXIV:ARR devs have 0 experience in MMOs, or a strong case of Amnesia.

Take things from WoW like games, full OK with that. But why take something from 1.0 WoW ignoring the improvements of that part?
Why even implement ANYTHING with elements, if they NEVER plan to include them because "...it is just for RP"? My stats don't show up when examined, I always could say in RP "I am x from y I am nearly immune to z" and get away with it. It also shows nowhere which God is my Patron. Neither does happen anything special if it happens to be my in game birthday.
If it is just for RP, why do drops of Primals have elemental resists if they do NOTHING.


BLMs whining about that they MIGHT not do as much damage as now if this is implemented. How about learning to adjust and not just face roll? Even in WoW you had to watch out with few mobs not to cast certain things on them. It was in EVERY FF that casting certain magics on certain mobs would cure them, while sometimes Raise 3 could be use to kill a Zombie. Do you see us melee whine because some mobs have "improved resistance to blunt/slashing/piercing"?
BLMs rather wish to have the full elemental wheel in your spell base instead of whining about something.

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Originally Posted by Kimikryo

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The blm thing is pretty easy to adjust in my opinion. I mean just switch fire / blizzard / thunder spells into neutralized ones, and add an element manipulation skill like maybe the one mnk has (fists of fire / wind / earth).

That way they can choose witch element they want to cast dots with or do powerful single target attacks or aoes.

I don't think it's gonna change their gameplay that much. So I don't think this is the real reason to not implement elements in-game.

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Originally Posted by Kimikryo

The problem is, they watered it down to much. Now most of the content can be facerolled.

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It is team based content, so that is the natural result. Go with a team that can't cooperate and suddenly, difficult fights! If you use voice chat and play with friends, you really shouldn't be able to die to any content in any game. Unless said game uses instant kill mechanics combined with lag/RNG to catch you when you can't dodge.

You expect choice of Deity/Religion to be a meaningful choice? Have you been playing this game??

ARR has virtually no meaningful choices... gear, battles, skills, progression,... everything is rigidly scripted and mapped out for players.

Why should this be any different?


EDIT:

Actually, there is ONE aspect of ARR where players can make real decisions: The Economy/Market wards

However, as crafted items don't have much impact on the game, even ARR's economy struggles for relevancy.

My other character, a paladin/white mage, picked Azeyma for one reason: Praise the Sun!

What I find funny is that FFXIV is following Square's anti-secular tradition with religion always being evil in their games. The beast tribes worship their Primals and are answered by having them wreak havoc on Eorzea. Who remembers in the main story quest after Titan what happened when you prayed for your fallen friends? You heard the sounds of nature, and nothing else.