Final Fantasy XIV going back to Final Fantasy Roots

[Metathetical]

Elemental damage in traditional FF games is actually really boring from a design perspective, for the most part. You usually get each tier of elemental damage spell at roughly the same time, which means it doesn't introduce any tactical choices: either the enemy is more vulnerable to one element, in which case you always want to use that element, or they're not, in which case you use whichever one you like the most. You might as well just give the black mage one 'generic damage' spell and have certain monsters take more or less damage from it.

There are some exceptions, like enemies with changing/randomized weaknesses, putting on elemental absorbing gear and using it to heal, etc., but in general it's actually a pretty boring mechanic. I can't imagine how you'd implement it in an interesting way.

Monsters doing elemental-aligned damage is somewhat more interesting because it creates decisions like 'do I want to wear this gear with really nice defensive stats, or this gear that has moderate defensive stats but lets me absorb the boss's huge fire-aligned attack?'. But in traditional FF games you have unlimited gear space, so 'forcing' the player to keep around fire-absorbing gear has no downside. You can't really do that in FFXIV.

I think the grindy nature of MMOs compared to traditional RPGs also pushes people towards making more 'optimal' decisions. If you're going to fight a boss once, then sure, you don't have to think about what your gearing strategy is. But if you're going to do it hundreds of times for XP/loot/whatever, you're going to gravitate towards the one optimal loadout and ability rotation.