Fix the Elemental Wheel

[Wolfie]

So what are you saying...? That there's a satisfying sense of structure, consistent with itself and discernible in other manifestations of the world, that somehow explains the rather ambiguous current elemental structure? Are you saying that criticism of the current system is uncalled for?

Yes, I'm exactly saying that the criticism is uncalled for and baseless. There already is structure to it, and it's not satisfying to the people complaining about it because it doesn't conform to the structure that they've already convinced themselves is the "best" structure. These things are completely arbitrary and subjective, and the Final Fantasy series as a whole doesn't adhere to any specific elemental wheel. It's complaining for the sake of complaining; or more accurately, complaining because this game doesn't directly rip from FFXI.

By the way, to those that say that Earth, Fire, Air, Water, etc. are not real elements, allow me to respond that--at least at some point of human development--they totally were. Greek philosophers identified the four mentioned above as the building bricks of all matter. They also included a fifth element (in Latin, quinta essentia or quintessence, which the Greeks called Aether, a prophetic forerunner of modern-day consmologists' Dark Matter. More to the point, Aether is a definite reference pointing to the inspiration for SE's elements and the current game's cosmogony.)

If later science found the Classical Elements to be a rather simplistic model, the beauty of this simplicity and structural elegance, guided later scientists and the scientific mind in the search of the fundamental materials of the world. So let's treat the simple elemental scheme with pride, and honor it as a forerunner of the hyper-complex building-block theories in today's Nuclear Physic's and Cosmology.

Many centuries of scientific development later we have compiled a somewhat more complicated elemental table, which is now beyond doubt, thanks to the scientific method and its experimental demonstrations. And yet, the initial, fundamental concept of the "elements" was advanced by the classical philosophers all those centuries ago, in classical antiquity. They, the inventors of our systems of thought, who named these basic substances as Water, Air, Fire, and Earth, would have recognized the patterns in these games. Adding a few more elements to make it more practical for gaming purposes doesn't sound that out of bounds.

R

The similarities between FFXIV's elements and the elements that the Greeks proposed is superficial at best, and it's a completely irrelevant point because this game is not set in Ancient Greece and is not based on their mythological (and then scientific) writings. The Greeks didn't have an 'elemental wheel', and people didn't possess an inherent 'element', causing them to be weak to another element. The only parallel you can draw between FFXIV's elements and the Greek elements are names and maybe in concept; but all that Greek science and philosophy goes out the window when you throw in your own elements.