Elemental damages

[kaynide]

...

I wasn't necessarily advocating so much as saying the elemental part of the damage has been rendered largely irrelevant.

Final fantasy does pretty good with this, as BLM for example has a "This is the main DPS line of abilities", "This is the downtime abilities that also recharges MP", and "This does DoT". It could have been fireballs, or turtle shells, or chucking hammers... but because obviously Black Mage, they went with the traditionally used Fire, Ice and Lightning famous in past FF games.

For me this is good, as the mechanics themselves are the focus, with the elemental bit being more about aesthetics and ease of use.

Samurai does something similar where the three Sen are based on the major traditional seasons in Japanese poetry (Winter, Fall, and Spring; or more literally Snow, Moon, and Flowers). They really just needed something to work into a 3-part rotation that was also Japanese and poetic to match the image of the Samurai. It's much easier to do this and then make it look like and ice-attack or flower petals than to actually have to tie to a specific element. (Like what would "Flower damage" even be..?)

Even for defensive purposes, while it could allow for horizontal progression and/or interesting choices, it just becomes confusing to someone who wants to "just play the game". It boils down to the game just being one you're meant to jump in and just play. Prepping can be fun, but then that's a different game. If I want to prep for 10-15 before getting into something, I'd play THAT game (like Monster Hunter).

This is coming from a person who played in old 2.0 days, who remembers having to get specific tank rings and use Vitality materia -on any job- just to survive Titan EX's limit break. It was tedious.

[PlushyprincessMusa]

reading through this honestly it makes me think when a game goes towards MMO style it does casters wrong the reason being is how games treat casters

having a rotation is fine for mele, range and tanks.


However when it comes to casters they shouldn't have a rotation instead they should have a large number of spells and have a knowledge requirement to know what spell is better in certain scenarios. Using the classical fire demon for example to me in games in general it doesn't make sense just because its a mmo that you would cast fire on something that would obviously be immune to it, the solution to this is having other elements water-ice-thunder-earth-air-darkness etc. The reason why this self balances in games that have it (single players) is yes it does more damage however you can also come across enemy's that can change types and non magical jobs have combos that can do almost the same damage.

My point being is honestly (all games) should stop doing casters the same as mele, range, tanks and other job types. Instead give them an as needed type then throw in a half rotation for each typing for example Fire-fira-firage =burn status for some bit on things it makes sense on.


edit:

The other off set is mele moves are basically free to use, same for tanks and rangers. Casters require a source such as MP, Aura and so forth.

[SeverianLyonesse]

Samurai does something similar where the three Sen are based on the major traditional seasons in Japanese poetry (Winter, Fall, and Spring; or more literally Snow, Moon, and Flowers). They really just needed something to work into a 3-part rotation that was also Japanese and poetic to match the image of the Samurai. It's much easier to do this and then make it look like and ice-attack or flower petals than to actually have to tie to a specific element. (Like what would "Flower damage" even be..?)

Flower element is clearly the most arcane element. Between Red Mage's chaos spells and White Mage's blood lily...

It started as a joke, and then the more I thought about it the more I accepted it as canon.