Elemental Resistance: Why Even Have It?

[Pride]

So, there are a couple little things in this game that really bother me, but none quite like elemental resistance.

I can't wrap my head around this concept, it seems so half-baked. Does it have any meaningful impact on anything and if not, why even have it in the game to begin with?

The way I see it, they should either completely do away with it, or make it meaningful, yet with each new primal we get more of it.

The same could also be said about the member of the twelve we chose, or our character's birthday. If choice is to be in the game, make it an actual meaningful choice, not an arbitrary construct.

Has anyone found a practical use for elemental resistance or elemental potions?

[HumsterMKX]

Not really useful. Due to all the 1 shot moves from the various primals.

[Tam_Hawkins]

I think I've read before that someone made experiments with resistances and 1point amounts to 0,016% less dmg (but I'm not sure how credible that actually is). Eitherway elemental resistance does not Play a big role in this game, not even in fights against Bosses which only use attacks of on element (Garuda Ifrit Titan Leviathan)

[Garlyle]

It's really poorly implemented at the moment, and probably will remain so without some significant design philosophy changes.

Elemental resistance tends to work on a sliding scale: Either it's so weak that it's irrelevant and can be survived anyway, and thus people generally won't bother - or it reaches a point where it's necessary to survive things, in which case you put extra weight on players to have an entire separate set or pieces of gear just to deal with it.

Both options are valid; XIV's philosophy seems to not want players to need to carry around multiple sets of gear. But it still has the mechanics, for some reason, so it falls into the former camp, where it just sorta looks like a sloppy loose end.

[Farah]

Because it is the only valid reason to wear a bikini in Ifrit? At least that was my excuse for wearing a bikini before glamour.

[Razzle]

its just a left over from 1.0... Yoshi doesnt really want it in the game

[NovaUltimatum]

its just a left over from 1.0... Yoshi doesnt really want it in the game

Why though? What's wrong with an elemental wheel? How do its negatives outweigh the positives?

Did Yoshi even ask the community if it should have been gotten rid of?

[necrosis]

Why though?

Because they wanted to dumb the game down in every way possible.

Elemental wheel was probably the first to go.

[Garlyle]

Why though? What's wrong with an elemental wheel? How do its negatives outweigh the positives?

In analysis I'm not even sure there's a positive.

If you want players to target an elemental weakness, you end up with
1. Characters are now forced to carry more gear to be 'properly equipped' for encounters, forcing a lot more farming. (There is an argument though that this is a positive for things like reducing content obsoletion, but this is distinctly not the philosophy XIV takes)
2. Classes spontaneously have various tools restricted from them in fights simply because they're not the right element.
3. Classes that do play the elemental game and avoid 2... now have six functionally identical spells that aren't actually adding any gameplay because you're using the same one over and over and ignoring the others, creating unnecessarily clogged skill lists.

It's not even a 'smart' thing. It doesn't take intelligence to pick which spell to use, just foreknowledge of which one's most effective. The only time it might get interesting is bosses which rely on changing elements, which has heavy impact on other classes in the process.

[Magis]

In analysis I'm not even sure there's a positive.

If you want players to target an elemental weakness, you end up with

1. Characters are now forced to carry more gear to be 'properly equipped' for encounters, forcing a lot more farming. (There is an argument though that this is a positive for things like reducing content obsoletion, but this is distinctly not the philosophy XIV takes)
2. Classes spontaneously have various tools restricted from them in fights simply because they're not the right element.
3. Classes that do play the elemental game and avoid 2... now have six functionally identical spells that aren't actually adding any gameplay because you're using the same one over and over and ignoring the others, creating unnecessarily clogged skill lists.

It's not even a 'smart' thing. It doesn't take intelligence to pick which spell to use, just foreknowledge of which one's most effective. The only time it might get interesting is bosses which rely on changing elements, which has heavy impact on other classes in the process.

Honestly I wish the game had an elemental wheel. Makes it more interesting instead of the boring setup we have now. Your points are good, but I think the key thing is it forces variation. You can no longer have "BIS", you must equip yourself to the fight you are going into. It does require more work balancing, which SE doesn't seem to want to worry about with their streamlining. It also makes sense as an immersion thing, ie attacking Bombs with Fire or ice elementals with Blizzard.