Something needs to be done about elements

[Kitru]

you're using phrases like "found to be good game design" when what you mean is "found to be safe game design" or even "found to be the popular contemporary idea of good game design"

Actually, what is considered to be good game design constantly evolves, and the definition I'm using is based upon what other games and developers are doing as they progress. There are certain explicit aspects of game design that transcend fashion, but the fact that many of them are new/newly discovered/becoming more well known doesn't mean that they aren't there. Just because a certain facet is popular doesn't mean it's good nor does the fact that some group of people enjoy it. Some people actually *enjoy* terribly designed games (just look at Risk; it is, quite possibly, the worst designed game *ever* and there are people that love the hell out of it) or specific elements of games that are bad design choices; it doesn't make them *good* though.

Tenets of good game design are based upon maximizing the enjoyment of as many players as possible while ensuring that the game is accessible. As an example, preventing new players from *ever* reaching the same levels as established players regardless of how much they play or how well they play is bad design (EVE does this): it provides explicit superiority to the older players, which many enjoy, but it prevents new players from getting involved or being able to compete on the same level. It's for this reason that the current end game design of most games is good game design: new players are able to reach the same level as existing players and are able to get to the level of progression as established players given a modicum of time and effort.

Keep in mind that I said "as many players as possible". There will be certain aspects of good game design that perturb some players; it's unavoidable because of personal preference. Some people like having incredibly complicated and largely unapproachable subsystems that require intense research and analysis. Some people like being able to troll other people. Some people like inactive time sinks where they're forced to sit around doing nothing, waiting for an entity to spawn (and, yes, ARR does do this; I never said that ARR was perfect).

Whether something qualifies as good game design depends upon the specific audience you're targeting and, oftentimes, there are aspects that are in direct conflict between two populations. EVE was designed for a very specific type of player. If you look at it is a traditional MMO for the "traditional" MMO player, EVE is a *terrible* game. If you look at it as a game designed for the very unique type of player that is drawn to EVE, however, it's an *very* well designed game.

if you honestly think open world pve and pvp is bad design you're crazy.

First off, I said open world *end game* PvE is bad. Open world leveling content and event content are perfectly fine and, in fact, quite good because they foster community. Open world end game content, however, is horrible, because it requires players camp locations and compete with other groups in order to get kill credit instead of allowing everything to actually do it. Even if you don't have to camp the given location because the boss is summoned through some other mechanism, it still affords other players the opportunity to troll whoever is doing said content, which is a bad thing since it allows a small number of players to deny access to the game to other players.

Open world PvP is bad design because it always turns into a trolling mechanism and either ends up being horribly imbalanced or influencing PvE balance. Yes, some people enjoy trolling, but games are not designed to facilitate the enjoyment a small number of people derive from pissing off other players and depriving them of the game (e.g. camping a player). It also doesn't help that open world PvP is naturally unbalanced and there is no effective mechanism for enforcing said balance. The often imagined good aspects of open world PvP (large scale player combat; player competition) only work in controlled environments that don't actually end up being open world PvP; they're, for all intents and purposes, large instances.

Keep in mind, I'm referring to this as it applies to a game designed with PvE in mind. Open world PvP works *beautifully* in PvP-centric games like EVE or Aion. What qualifies as good game design changes based upon the specific type of game you're trying to design, though there are some fundamental principles that are global, like the realization that the importance of one player's enjoyment only extends until that player's enjoyment encroaches upon others (many PvPers enjoy getting their heads kicked in every once in a while so getting killed by other players doesn't encroach upon their enjoyment as long as they have some control over whether they get their head kicked in or they're kicking someone else's).

at least be realistic and recognize that a lot of ARR's features come with a price.

I'm not sure why you seem to think I don't realize that ARR had to make compromises. I explicitly said that they had to when discussing the elemental weaknesses: you can't have a compelling attack string *and* an approachable number of abilities *and* elemental weaknesses. You can only choose 2.

As to cutting out certain aspects of games that other people like, I already said that you'll never be able to keep everyone happy. Game design is all about triage and making sure that as many people enjoy the game as possible. Some of the stuff you choose to do is going to piss off some people. Some of the stuff you *could* do is going to piss off a *lot* of people. Good game design is all about minimizing the number of people that you piss off while maximizing the number of people that enjoy the game.

oh, also your entire last paragraph is just out and out wrong, or at the very least, choking on hyperbole.

I'm going to guess you're one of those people that thoroughly enjoys FPSs and/or sports games. I challenge you to go back and look at the games that I talked about and actually look for what has changed appreciably about those games. Certain aspects have been *refined* somewhat and graphics are most definitely better, but the games are still fundamentally the same (especially sports games). It's not just sports and FPSs either; RPGs haven't changed much since the SNES era.

[BlueMage]

So you see a Bomb, and to defeat it, you use...

Fire?

Come now, SE, this is Final Fantasy. You use Blizzard to kill bombs, not Fire. Fire heals bombs, and yet in this game, elements (or "aspect", as the tooltip calls it) means abso-freaking-lutely nothing. Thunder? Earth? Wind? Don't care. Potency is where it's at.

What's the point in elements? Just to justify the elemental materias and reduce the likelihood to get vitality and critical materia?

Bombs have always been weak to Fire...

I get your overall point, but your example is facepalm for someone trying to lecture about the way an FF is supposed to work.

[Mardel]

They could fix this by making THM lore state that you are not really using "Fire", "Ice", "Thunder" but instead are shaping aether into elements that are considered destructive. This technique is called... a loophole!

[MilesSaintboroguh]

Bombs have always been weak to Fire...

I get your overall point, but your example is facepalm for someone trying to lecture about the way an FF is supposed to work.

What are you smoking? Bombs in the series have always been weak to ice or water. They always absorbed fire.

[Itseotle]

What are you smoking? Bombs in the series have always been weak to ice or water. They always absorbed fire.

Iirc, bombs in II and XI were weak to fire. Using XI in this example because a lot of people here seem to be using XI as there baseline.

Source: http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Bomb

[Kitru]

Iirc, bombs in II and XI were weak to fire. Using XI in this example because a lot of people here seem to be using XI as there baseline.

I seriously have to wonder why some people seem to think that FFXI somehow amounts to the entirety of the series. This actually goes over all of the various iterations of bombs throughout the series and you'll note that a massive majority of the time, Bombs are fire elemental, which, even if they're not weak to ice or water, means that they're immune to fire.

Going through the mainline games one at a time...

• FFII: weak to fire and lightning
• FFIII: weak to ice and water
• FFIV: neither strong against nor weak to any element
• FFV: neither strong against nor weak to any element
• FFVI: absorbs fire, weak to ice and water
• FFVII: immune to fire
• FFVIII: absorbs fire, weak to ice and wind
• FFIX: absorbs fire, weak to ice, water, and wind
• FFX: absorbs fire, weak to ice
• FFXI: weak to fire, strong to everything else
• FFXII: absorbs fire, weak to water
• FFXIII: absorbs fire, weak to ice
• FFT: absorbs fire, weak to water, strong against ice
• FFTA: absorbs fire, weak to water and ice

That's 2 occasions where bombs are weak to fire, 2 occasions where they're weak to nothing, and 8 cases where they absorb fire and are weak to either ice or water. So, yeah, the people that think that FFXI defines the entire series need to get it through their heads that FFXI is in no way a game to use as a basis for examining something across the entire series. FFXI is a massive anomaly in so very very many ways.

[Mimilu]

Sorry to detract from the Bomb-Element-Weakness-And-Resistance debate (BEWAR, for short) but, while I understand Bombs were the OP's opening example, we've sidetracked FAR behyond the actual subject of this thread; The implication of elemental weaknesses and resistances: Gotta Have It vs No Way Jose.

[Mardel]

I think in current MMO(s) elemental weaknesses really serve no purpose outside making a class OP or weak. Thus it doesn't need to be implemented. Like I've said in many posts they should just change the lore on BLM and conjurer to state that the "elemental" spells we cast is simply the mana we use taking that appearance.

Now had they made the game accommodate elements from the start of 2.0, I would be okay with it. However since summoners functions the way it does; adding elemental damage would break more than fix. To the point where they would have to almost make a 3.0 In other words the ends wouldn't justify the means for them as a company. Their time would be better vested in discovering how to make each class/job more unique w/o the use of elements.

Side note: they should make apocatasis just be a flat magic damage reduction buff, instead of being for specific elements.

[Ordoric]

you keep bringing up XI well I was a blm main the ONLY spells that where used where ICE spells and Thunder spells THATS IT. so please explain to me where the problem is? besides that can some one remind me who had water fire earth wind thunder and ice based spells in XIV.1 was it not CNJ? I remember THM using DIA BIO Scourge absorb TP?

[Mihael_Longclaw]

FFXIV: ARR is the only Final Fantasy game I know of without elemental affinities, that goes for nearly every RPG I know.

It's a worse game off for it too, it makes the combat more bland than it already is.