Rife Spoilers and Wild Speculation ahead. :p
Frist off this isn't a go at the eureka wheel being different element wheel having water and earth flipped.
which it is
https://img2.finalfantasyxiv.com/acc...289.1605681936
More that thinking of the elements as something 2D is.
The elements as most expect it at the moment
https://img2.finalfantasyxiv.com/acc...289.1605681936
wind-fire-lightning toward astral
water-ice-earth toward umbral
If we think in 3D and look at the 6 elements as points you get the shape of a "D8"{ 8 side dice.}
interestingly enough 6 + 8 = 14 {also the number the shards and source equaled after the sundering}
Importantly it has a correlation the Convocation of Fourteen
The image seems to imply with the "inner" triangles on the image as;
wind-fire-ice toward light
lightning-water-earth toward dark
This also brings other face of this "D8" into question
example
https://img2.finalfantasyxiv.com/acc...289.1605681936
these two sides as the possibly the actual passive and active.
wind-water-ice (physical forms)
gas, liquid, solid
fire-lightning-earth (forces of energy)
thermal, electrical, kinetic
that leaves the last two sides as maybe
water-wind-lightning (life?)
fire-earth-ice (death?)
2d elemental depiction flawed
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10-13-2021, 05:54 PMfay22d elemental depiction flawed
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10-13-2021, 07:17 PMIscah
The Eureka wheel is flipped so that the two rock-paper-scissors triangles rotate in the same direction, whereas they go in opposite directions in the original circle but there's also a separate logic for the six circle elements to progress in order.
As for the rest of your theory...
The elemental wheel "in 3D" would not be an octahedron with six points and a square cross-section. The six elements ARE a circle (or hexagon) on a flat plane, and to render it in 3D would be an irregular twelve-sided object or double-cone with the flat ring of elements in the centre and astral and umbral points "above and below" the centre of the wheel.Quote:
Originally Posted by fay2
Eight is the total number of elements and forces, but then you can't count the six elements separately and add the number to itself.
The grouping of the astral and umbral elements seems to be, as rendered in the background of the illustration, nothing to do with the light/dark or active/passive divide but simply sky and earth – wind, fire and lightning as "airy" elements and ice, water and earth itself being "grounded". -
10-13-2021, 10:03 PMVyrerus
Still kinda miffed that they didn't just reference the Vana'diel elemental wheel where Fire > Ice > Wind > Earth > Lightning > Water > Fire -> repeat. And Light = Darkness. Instead they got like 4/6ths of it the same, but then Water > Earth and Wind > Fire... which one is basically pokemon logic while the other is idk... Avatar the Last Airbender?
Looking at it like Umbral/Astral terms or whatever...
Wind > Fire = an Astral effect beating an Astral effect... ok...
Water > Earth = Umbral beating Umbral... ok...
Ice > Wind = Umbral beating Astral
Fire > Ice = Astral beating Umbral
Lightning > Water = Astral beats Umbral
Earth > Lightning = Umbral beast Astral
Normally
Wind > Earth = A > U
Fire > Ice = A > U
Lightning > Water = A > U
Water > Fire = U > A
Ice > Wind = U > A
Earth > Lightning = U > A
Perfectly balanced... but FFXIV's is jank for, to me anyway, seemingly for no reason. -
10-13-2021, 10:59 PMAnonymoose
When I think of the 3D elemental wheel I like to use the shape of a crystal in the game, an elongated hexagonal bipyramid. But for the sake of removing one more complication I just did a regular hexagonal bipyramid when I made this reference back when Shadowbringers inverted the polarities.
If I knew I'd be using it so long I would have proofed it better; that green line is going to haunt me for the rest of my days.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ETIQpJ1W...jpg&name=large
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ETIQp6pX...jpg&name=large -
10-13-2021, 11:34 PMIscahIt's still "Pokémon logic", but it's two intersecting trios of three elements while also spinning a different logic of how all six form a single circle when the two sets of three are overlaid. Moose's graphic lists the reasonings behind each link.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vyrerus
I'm not sure if Avatar had any kind of logical progression or links between the elements, or if they were all just "there" with no specific theoretical superiority besides the natural outcome of throwing the things at each other. -
10-14-2021, 04:54 PMVyrerusNether elements below ground... Dirt/Earth > Molten Rock / Lava = Heat = Fire = what were those aetherologists smoking? They're on a planet with active volcanoes T_T! Ice is nowhere down there, being most common at the tops of mountains / when the sun/light is farther away.Quote:
Originally Posted by Anonymoose
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10-14-2021, 06:56 PMIscahWhen you say "fire" my mind doesn't jump to volcanoes, but flames rising into the air.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vyrerus
(Also lava is, as you say, rock. Logically part of earth rather than fire.)
Ice is on the ground. Glaciers and frozen lakes.
Water – in a large mass as an ocean or lake rather than as rain or cloud – is also ground-based.
Water/ice/earth are also more permanent and tangible objects compared to wind/fire/lightning. -
10-14-2021, 07:23 PMVyrerusLava is almost always described as fiery, even given that we know its true nature. Everything it touches bursts into flames, save for when it's earth or ash already. Eruptions cause wildfires where active volcanoes are near vegetation.Quote:
Originally Posted by Iscah
Snow and hale come from the sky, things must be covered in water/composed of water before they freeze. Ice being born of earth makes little sense. Glaciers are formed over many many years where snowfall exceeds the rate at which it melts. They generally form at the top of mountains and don't slide down until their weight causes them to move. Sea and Lake ice forms from water on top of water.
Water as an ocean or lake is the only one that fits these ideas. More overtly, underground water/springs fits quite nicely.
Water/Ice/Earth are all actually easier to change/observe change in. Fire/Lightning/Wind remain static, only varying in amount and intensity.
Suffice to say though, FFXIV elemental tomfoolery is a swing and miss for me.
Also, now that you mention it, don't think we have an example of an actual glacier anywhere in the game. Though Coerthas is probably gonna generate one in about another couple hundred years assuming its climate doesn't revert to 1.0. -
10-14-2021, 10:47 PMIscahOkay, even treating lava as a symbol of fire, that doesn't make it the only symbol of fire – and if you're focusing on the particular description in the elemental wheel then "fire born of lightning, rendering all to ash" is clearly flame and not lava, which would be fire born of earth.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vyrerus
Groundwater also freezes. Ice forms in caves. (Ice caves are a specific phenomenon where ice stays frozen year-round because the surrounding ground temperature is below zero.) The ice in glaciers might have originated in the sky but is now on the ground. Mountains are still part of the earth and not the sky.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vyrerus
It's a wobbly link compared to some of the others, but it's not nonsensical.
(Late edit to add: Frost is another type of "ice on the ground".)
I didn't say unchanging, I said permanent and tangible. (For a varying degree of permanency, certainly, but they don't just cease to exist.) They are objects. You can hold them and store them.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vyrerus
Wind, flame and lightning are not remotely static, but are in constant motion. They are forces and energies with no lasting existence beyond the effect they have on the objects around them.
If this is "tomfoolery" then you're searching for an excuse to call them that. Just because you could interpret and represent the elements in another way doesn't make theirs incorrect. It seems to intended as symbolic rather than a literal depiction of how every single manifestation of that element might form.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vyrerus
And yes they do have a glacier – Snowcloak, which formed in a rush of minutes rather than centuries. -
10-15-2021, 01:10 AMkaynide
Yeah.. not really on topic, but the Elemental wheel as presented in FFXIV ALWAYS bothered me. Not quite OCD levels, but pretty near!
I have always used Wind-Water-Earth for Gas/Liquid/Solid, and Fire-Ice-Lighting as energy (basically thermal dynamics; added energy making heat, removing making cold and straight up movement of energy in electric)
Moreover, the 2 of the 3 Astral/Light related magic are used by BLACK mages and vice versa. That Blackmage based magic isn't all Umbral and White mage all Astral is mind boggling to me.
You could just have easily gone with what FFXI did, which I also didn't really like: Fire melts Ice, which ???'s Wind, which erodes Earth, which grounds Lighting, which shocks Water, which douses Fire
The best alternative I've seen is more or less what Fay2/Iscah say above, with three loosely representing Energy and three roughly representing Matter...but even then then the wheel doesn't match..as she says.
Ultimately, I think they just made a wheel and we're just making up whatever rhymes or justifications that fit. -
10-17-2021, 12:27 PMGoldStarzI mean, isn't that intentionally to avoid repeating the mistakes Mhach and Amdapor which kinda super fucked over the world?Quote:
Originally Posted by kaynide
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10-17-2021, 03:11 PMkaynideQuote:
Originally Posted by GoldStarz
I’m not talking about how it’s organized according to in game lore, but how the devs decided to organize it outside of the game. -
10-18-2021, 11:05 AMGoldStarzI mean umbral and astral aspects don't really exist outside of 14 afaik?Quote:
Originally Posted by kaynide
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10-19-2021, 01:26 AMkaynideNo we are talking in FFXIV, but I’m talking a human on earth decided how to organize them before the lore was even written, and that said human decided that BLM two thirds of spells would not be Umbral despite the name clearly meaning dark or “black” magic.Quote:
Originally Posted by GoldStarz
As in “I’m gonna design a class called Black Mage, but the magic they use is actually White mostly” when the dev could have designed it however they wanted because they are literally creating the lore. -
10-19-2021, 02:15 AMIscahExcept that "umbral" observably does not "clearly mean black magic" within the story, so nobody made the decision to give black mages "white magic". Inversely, by deciding to give black mages those elements, they made it a fact that astral and umbral are not the same thing as white and black magic. Whether that was a good idea or not, it's canon now.Quote:
Originally Posted by kaynide
Additionally, all six elements can have an astral or umbral charge to them, so the grouping seems somewhat arbitrary in any case.
From what I've read in the past, apparently 1.0 approached it differently anyway, with thaumaturges being focused on astral and umbral magicks and conjurers having power over all six elements, but that got reshaped into our current simplified pathway from class to job. -
10-19-2021, 05:13 AMBrandedbladeThis is where the fact the elements are Astrally and Umbrally aligned come into play. You could argue that a flickering flame or wildfires are the astrally charged aspect of Fire, whereas magma could be argued as an umbrally aligned version of fire.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vyrerus
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10-19-2021, 05:24 AMBrandedbladeBlack Mages use two Astrally Aligned Elements (Fire, Lightning) and one Umbrally Aligned Element (Ice). And Shadowbringers essentially stated Darkness is the force that leans things towards an astral alignment. Hence Black Mages use spells like Foul and Xenoglossy imply that its a pure burst of Astrally aligned magic. Hence with speculation, Black Magic adds activity and chaos to their magics, making them incredibly destructive.Quote:
Originally Posted by kaynide
White Mages use two Umbrally Aligned Elements (Earth, Water) and one Astrally Aligned elements (Air). Shadowbringers stated Light is the force that draws things umbrally, hence why once white mages get to the point of power that their spells loose their elemental aspect. they become "Light". If you want to go into massively speculative territory. This is the reason why White Magic heals and Holy Stuns, its bringing order and stasis to a body's aether. -
10-22-2021, 03:01 PMkaynideQuote:
Originally Posted by Brandedblade
I would just chalk that up to the system being not as well thought out as I'd have like. "Umbra" literally means darkness. To say a WHM is based on a job that uses "Darkness magic that is technically actually light, or eventually evolves into light" feels weak for me.
..I think it's more that they had Conjurer from 1.0, and the devs wanted to make it WHM... they just wrapped whatever lore they needed to make the shift from elemental spells to light based.
I don't blame the devs as they had to work with what they had- just the original concept doesn't work well for me. -
10-22-2021, 03:59 PMIscahAstral and umbral are ultimately just fancy labels stuck on active and passive forces, and not actually part of the elemental wheel at all.Quote:
Originally Posted by kaynide
Also, "white magic" and "black magic" have never strictly been about using light-themed and dark-themed magic, but healing and harming. Fire and lightning are traditional black mage spells throughout the FF series but both are essentially bright lights, not darkness. -
10-22-2021, 04:20 PMkaynideThat's just more lore-wrapping imho. You can make up whatever lore you want to match what you want it to be sense-be-damned.Quote:
Originally Posted by Iscah
Like, Wind and Water are incredibly active forces. Thermal dynamics (Ice/Fire, essentially) are active. Lightning of course is active. Even the very earth is an active force with earthquakes and pressure.
Even going "Healing and Harming"- Sure, water is a basic healing/soothing material..but it is also incredibly dangerous, with disease and whatnot; if anything else, Pure Water would represent balance. Similarly, Fire can be both healing and harming (Cauterizes wounds, purifies water).
I know it is what it is, and "Their house their rules/their lore", I'm just critiquing it.
Even then, the spells have a long and weird history- Aero for example bounces regularly between Blue Mage, Black Mage and very rarely White Mage.
Me? I would have just said there are 6 elements that are harnessed for magic. Black Mages, for reasons unrelated to dark or light or labeling or whatever, is focused on using Fire, Ice and Lightning. Not because they are dark or light or forces of nature..but because the guy who founded Black Mage School back in the day decided those were the spells used. Or those were the magic forms they personally mastered and could pass on.
I probably would have reworked Aero/stone and Water to be some kind of black mage buff and simply had conjurer also using all 6 elements in different, curative ways…eventually becoming more pure “light” as they become WHM.
This difference in how to use the elements ties in nicely with the cause of their War of the Magi; perhaps Black Mages using all 6 in an “umbral” way, with White using in an “astral” way…
..but that’s just me, and I’m not an expert storyteller..so I trust the devs to do what they can, even if I don’t really like it. -
10-22-2021, 08:51 PMBrandedbladeAs I stated earlier. Black Magic adds chaos and activity, thus destruction to their spells. White Magic is its opposite, bringing order and inactivity to its spells. Taken to extremes you have Spells like Foul which are essentially pure blasts of chaotic aether and spells like Holy which shock bodies into 'stasis'.Quote:
Originally Posted by kaynide
Magic in FFXIV is ultimately down to two things, it's elemental Aspect, and it's Astral/Umbral polarity. The origins of the word Astral/Umbral are mostly irrelevant at this point when they essentially mean "Active or Passive". Would it be better if the game just called it that from the start? Of course it would. But unfortunately they screwed this up back in 1.0 and now they're trying to make it work.
The elements prefer one charge or another but can ultimately exist within that spectrum. Hence what you said about how water can soothe and cleanse but also destroy. That too me would indicate that the element is charged in one way or another, water that heals and soothes can be argued to be more umbrally aligned since it's bringing order to something, whereas a destructive tidal wave can be argued to be more astrally aligned since it's full of force and activity.
The reason why black mages don't call forth destructive tidal waves and White mages can't heal with warm flames, from my perspective, is purely a game flavor thing. I don't see any reason with these rules set in place for that to be an impossibility. They did what they did to make White and Black mages completely distinct from one another in aesthetic and gameplay. -
10-22-2021, 11:53 PMIscahIsn't that the whole point of the exercise though?Quote:
Originally Posted by kaynide
There is an acceptable lore justification for the current system, even if you could make alternate ones if you were building a similar elemental system from scratch.
As long as the explanation for the system as it stands makes sense, that should be all that matters. -
10-23-2021, 01:05 AMkaynide
I guess I would just say the tl;dr of my thoughts on it, is that it feels like a bandaid solution to shoehorn it into the system they wanted for 2.0 (basically weird classes that could mix and match suddenly becoming very rigid classic FF jobs).
Again, don’t blame anyone as the devs were racing just to even make 2.0 possible, so getting super tight lore on how magic works is a level of minutia that ultimately doesn’t matter.
Not that I’m mad or even overly against what they did- I’m just being fussy ;). -
10-23-2021, 05:32 AMBrandedblade;) Understandable. I personally like the way it makes me think and speculate, hence why i was so eager to provide speculation and my interpretation of the matter.Quote:
Originally Posted by kaynide