Improvements to the Battle System - Each Monster Should Have One or More Weakness

[Rongway]

For the sake of argument, let's assume this happened. We'll use Leviathan Unreal since he already has a mechanic which resists range attacks. If said mechanic persisted throughout the fight on both his head and tail, that means bringing anything but four melee would be detrimental. If we said limit it to say, he only resists magic attacks, Casters are worthless and healers can't DPS.

I'm really glad you bring up Leviathan, because this was a minor annoyance for NIN and RDM in Leviathan NM and EX and is even more pronounced in Leviathan UR.

Leviathan does have damage type weaknesses--at least, insofar as the head and the tail each have a damage type that they don't reflect. And it's pretty neat on paper. But man is it a pain in the ass for RDM. Fleche and Contre-sixte "deliver an attack", which mean they are physical. Spells are of course magical. Enchanted weaponskills "deal unaspected damage" which mean they're magical. This has a few consequences.

RDM, which double weaves attack oGCDs quite often, can no longer double weave Fleche and Contre-sixte effectively, because that involves the following sequence of actions: slow cast on head, instant cast on head, find and target tail, Fleche on tail, Contre-sixte on tail, retarget head before the GCD ends so you can start casting again. In practice, we can only really use one at a time. Even a quick-swapping target macro can't solve the problem entirely because there still might not be time to switch, use both oGCDs, switch back, and start casting; and it would need to be re-primed after any add mechanics.

Further, if the party fails to prevent hysteria puddles from going out, and any of them are on the head, the only available target for an Enchanted melee combo is the tail. However, the tail reflects magic. So the choices are a) do a melee combo on the tail and hope you don't annoy the healers or b) dump excess mana with E.Reprise.

NIN's Shuriken is physical but all the other jutsus are magical, so they might have similar target juggling issues. This problem also occurs in Void Ark against the demondog+demonasparagus boss pair, which don't reflect the wrong type of damage but are at least immune to it.

I'm glad this isn't the norm for fight design.

[lezard21]

I miss the old battle system where elemental weaknesses existed. I'm really sad they took them away, and wish they would bring them back.

It's a great system that exists in most RPGs, not least of which most other Final Fantasy games and Pokemon. And I would really like to see it again.

See, I know that a lot of people play this game because of the Final Fantasy IP and expect it to be like the rest of the franchise, but the thing is, this is not an RPG, nor an RPGMMO. It's an MMORPG.

The genre is called MMORPG for a reason, the Massive Multiplayer Online aspect is at the forefront and the main focus of these kind of games. As such, when taking decisions regarding the design of different aspects of the game, there is a social component that needs to be taken into account aside from the technical aspects.

In FFVIII you don't run the risk of Quistis saying "sorry Squall, only students with Blizzard aspected weapons are allowed to take the Ifrit cavern test" or "sorry Zell, we are only taking a full Snipers team, melees just don't do well against a witch". These kind of problems however exist and will continue to exist in MMOs if you give advantages to a certain group over others. Which would be the case of elemental weakness/resistances.

[Hasrat]

Technically speaking, BLU offers this via Condensed Libra. Inflict either Astral, Umbral, or Physical weakness. Would be a little nice if we had a bit more control over which one you get...

[linayar]

See, I know that a lot of people play this game because of the Final Fantasy IP and expect it to be like the rest of the franchise, but the thing is, this is not an RPG, nor an RPGMMO. It's an MMORPG.

The genre is called MMORPG for a reason, the Massive Multiplayer Online aspect is at the forefront and the main focus of these kind of games. As such, when taking decisions regarding the design of different aspects of the game, there is a social component that needs to be taken into account aside from the technical aspects.

While I do not think elemental weakness should be a feature in this game, I don't agree with what you're saying here either.

First, I think you're thinking it in reverse. If you think of the phrase "red car" in the English language, "car" is the subject while "red" describes what kind of car it is. MMORPG means Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. The subject is at the end, and all the descriptors follows along from right to left.

So, it is

A game
A role-playing game
An online role-playing game
A multiplayer online role-playing game.
A massively multiplayer online role-playing game.
An MMORPG

An RPGMOO makes as much as sense as saying "car red" in the English language. It is an RPG with MMO features. An MMO is nothing by itself, just a bunch of descriptors.

Second, MMO doesn't inherently mean social. It is massively multiplayer online, not massively social online. The social aspect is up to the players. The game merely facilitates the multiplayer aspect.

[Seraphor]

Try Blue Mage

[Sotaris]

Maybe OP just should go play FF11 instead.