The Twelve, The Calendar, and The Dusty Tomes (I'm Sorry.)

[Catapult]

Also, maybe the element wheels will be changed - anyone notice how the primals are laid out on the primal poster behind Yoshi-P and co. during the live interview?

Bahamut
^
Ifrit <-> Shiva
Garuda <-> Titan
Leviathan <-> Ramuh
v
Odin

It could just be coincidence, but seeing the opposites now in place...maybe an introduction of polar elements, rather than wheels? And back to the old FF tradition where Fire was paired with Ice, Water with Lightning?

While it could just be artistic license, you could indeed be on to something.

This elemental wheel seems to have fallen progressively into obscurity over the last year or so.

[whoopeeragon]

While it could just be artistic license, you could indeed be on to something.

This elemental wheel seems to have fallen progressively into obscurity over the last year or so.

It's just that current wheels are a bit...complicated. We have 4 current wheels if the tomes are to be believed.

There's the polar opposite wheel:

Astral <-> Umbral

Then the two elemental wheels:

Fire > Ice > Wind > Fire
Water > Earth > Thunder > Water

Then you have the defence wheel:

Earth > Fire > Lightning > Wind > Water > Ice > Earth

but even the last one has been thrown into obscurity with the addition of Garuda, who still take large amounts of damage from Thunder.

And seeing as Yoshi-P seems to be wanting to go back to the FF roots, having the elemental wheels changed to the traditional polarities isn't out of the picture either.

[Anonymoose]

I'm actually really hoping that this isn't the case. It may be simpler, but it doesn't make as much philosophical sense and it messes with lore of The Twelve, iinm.

I should state early on that the reason Garuda takes so much damage from thunder is that Thundara and Thundaga's combo bonus effect is a considerably spike in Magic Attack Potency - this is why many BLM players stack intelligence (which can push thunder combos further, while M.Pot cannot) unless running a raid where Fire is a much better ally (Cutter's Cry). This hike in potency far outshines the two alternatives, fire (which she has a considerable resistance to) and ice (which is rooted more in controlling enemies than damaging them).

[Catapult]

Yet ironically, Garuda's greatest weakness is still ice. People just don't use it much due to the issues it has with MP, inherently lower base potency, lack of a combo, longer cooldown and heavy being less useful. And there is no other source of ice damage in the game.

[Catapult]

I'm bumping this thread, not only because I'd love a juicy reply, but because something else is bugging me along these same thematic lines.

Seasons.

As we know, Eorzea does not (at least currently) experience the impact of seasons upon its flora and fauna. In spite of this, it does have a summer festival (Firefall Faire) and a Winter Festival (the Starlight Festival). Putting aside the asbsence of an autumn (fall) as a consequence of graphical limitations, there is something I would like to re-examine...

The Dusty Tomes:

Chapter 3 - The Years
The Year is made when the Moon goeth round the two Astral and Umbral poles, fluctuating between the six elements, and that in turn.

In this, the Year can be said to be the length of twelve Moons. The first and second Moons of the Year are the first astral and first Umbral, and together they share affinity with Ice.........

So our year is linked to the elemental cycle. Check. Next up...

From Winter is not Coming:

Waldomar: Sent here by the Black Rabbit Traders? Aye, I was told to expect you. A little late, to be sure, but late is better than never, I suppose. You've already been briefed aout our objective, I don't doubt. Aye, building a giant of snow to usher in the blessing of winter and all that. Now, I'll wager you're curious as to why we'd go to such lengths to celebrate a season synonymous with death. Well, my friend, death is but a spoke on the wheel of life. Wihtout it, the wheel would inevitably become warped…or so Grandmama used to tell us. To say it plain, plants and animals rely on the turning of the seasons. The coming of the cold tells them to hoard their food, to shed their leaves against the chill. And in its passing, winter leaves behind melted snow to nourish the land. But winter hasn't come to the North Shroud. The conjurers believe an imbalance in the aether is to blame, but no one can say for certain. Anywise, when we saw how despearate they were - and we Ala Mhigans are no strangers to desperation - we thought it might help to tell them about Winter's Knell.

This suggests to the geomancer in me that Eorzea doesn't have a solar seasonal cycle, which here on Earth is caused by a tilted planetary axis that moves through a changing intensity of the sun's rays as the Earth moves around the sun. Rather, Eorzea's seasons are a consequence of the elemental cycle rather than the cause of the elemental cycle.

Now if we align December and January to the months/moons of Ice in order to align the Starlight Festival to Wintery elements, this allows August and September to align to Fire for the Firefall Faire. In doing so, we create an Eorzean year that begins with the First Astral Moon (ice) in December and concludes at the end of November.

This is where we hit a snag...

From our first Heavensturn:

With the festive spirit of the Starlight Celebration still lingering in the air, the nations of Eorzea have already set about making ready for the next grand holiday—Heavensturn.

Heavensturn is a celebration that marks the passing of the twelve moons in the night sky, and with them, the vigil of each of the Twelve over the realm. It is on this sacred day that one among the gods wins celestial favor, and whose aspect thus exerts the greatest influence over the fate of Eorzea throughout the coming year. Clergymen, soothsayers, shamans, and others versed in such matters foretell that with this turning, the time of Halone, the Fury, will come.

By celebrating Heavensturn on the mundane and Western New Years, this suggests Jan/Feb is Ice, which makes the Starlight Festival held during the Umbral Moon of Earth while the Firefall Faire begins during the Umbral Moon of Lightning.

Why is everything off by a month? If we celebrated Heavensturn in late February for the Chinese New Year, this would be even more skewed.

On a slightly related note, we don't yet know which of the Twelve will have favour this year and is represented in distant lands by the Snake. If it is Nophica, a simple and logical assumption given her patroned city has twin adders in their emblem, then we've gone Halone (rabbit, astral ice) > Althyk (dragon, umbral earth) > Nophica (snake, astral earth). Why are they then rotating in reverse order?

[ArkhamNative]

Excellent thread pulling together the inconsistencies of the cycles and elements.

From some references I saw back in 2010, it seemed like SE changed the order of some of the guardians/months around late alpha or early beta (1.0). It was like the system wasn't thought out well, or they were trying to correct inconsistencies but introduced more. That's just speculation, but there was evidence of other inconsistencies.

The phase of the moon in the sky in v1.x rarely matched the phase on the icon. SE did fix the nighttime sky "ticking" like a clock's seconds hand early on, but never the moon's phases.

Also, not a small effort was made by some players to figure out elemental effects, especially in crafting. A lot of people in FFXI enjoyed this scholarly aspect and hoped to master this knowledge for FFXIV. Not only was no pattern was found, it was determined that spamming "Standard" synth any time/day/weather yielded consistently more success than any other pattern. That signaled "game over" for that effort.

Even if SE has to change some things from v1, I hope they will add this deeper element of elemental effects into ARR. This current cataclysm is a perfect opportunity to fix the inconsistencies noted throughout this thread. And for FFXI players, its absence makes the world seem a bit less real than what we're used to from SE.

SE doesn't have to spell it out in lore books or forum posts, but hopefully can drop hints from crafting guild NPCs if such effects exist. They are, after all, the ones who should know about and teach such things. A worldwide army of statistician gamers armed with spreadsheets and elemental effects charts will do the rest.

[Anonymoose]

From some references I saw back in 2010, it seemed like SE changed the order of some of the guardians/months around late alpha or early beta (1.0).

This is true, and also sort of sad in a way because some of their lore was based on things that changed. I'll use Nymeia as an example. The conflict of XIV is based on the Greek city states when faced with invasion by the Persians (even though the Empire in this game takes more cues from Rome than Persia, but I digress). Nymeia is kind of a fusion between the Greek fate Clotho and her Roman equivalent Nona. The relationship to Saturn (Althyk) is still visible, but the connection to Nona has faded a bit - the fate spun by Clotho/Nona is that of life itself, and Nona (The Ninth) was invoked during the last (9th) month of pregnancy. Originally, Nymeia was associated with the Ninth moon, but that got shifted around when the elements were realigned to act in the Ice-to-Ice cycle mentioned above.

I'm still not really sure what they have up their sleeve for ARR - whether it's changed at all or what. I'd love to get a guide together for helping people choose name days and patron deities that fit their style, job preference, etc. but I just don't know for sure, yet.

SE doesn't have to spell it out in lore books or forum posts, but hopefully can drop hints from crafting guild NPCs if such effects exist.

XI was rather merciless in that regard - by the time half of the mechanics were understood, the game was past its prime. Hell, XIV was released before players even figured out how to spawn a few of the NMs! I'm not looking forward to a repeat of that, especially not a repeat of using java calculators and third party calendars to figure out when to do everything. As you say, I hope it's more of a take in some clues and trial and error your way to skillful play kind of thing. Long calculations and extreme manipulations are neat and all, but only for that last 5% of effectiveness OOMPH if you really, really care.

[nokinator]

wow its pretty deep in here...

[Yoohre_WildRiver]

good news, after the awakening of bahamut the tomes seem to have been pulverized into nothingness... a new version of time flow and elemental charts is been developed in PDF format so or eorzean citizens will be able to read it on the aether Kindle 1.0