Elemental Resistance: Why Even Have It?

[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.

[Lemuria]

Elemental weaknesses were the first thing I missed when getting back to my Black Mage in 2.0. Given the BLM playstyle, I understand *why* it's not there anymore, but it still feels like they cheapened what could've been a very tactical mage into routine button-basher.

Element resistances are so pitiful they might as well not exist. Materia bonuses only give the tiniest boosts, making elementals the most worthless materia in existence. Even Apocatastasis, a BLM skill which greatly raises elemental strength, provides minimal defense against elemental damage. Say what you will about FFXI's complicated affinity for elements, at least they MEANT something. The offering FFXIV has is barely a footnote in comparison.

[Limecat]

It used to have a purpose in 1.0, now it's worthless.

[Kisshu]

Say what you will about FFXI's complicated affinity for elements, at least they MEANT something. The offering FFXIV has is barely a footnote in comparison.

When you look at it, FFXI had a much more complex battle system than FFXIV, you really had to learn how to fight. Some mobs like skeletons took less slashing and piercing damage but more bashing damage while most birds took increased piercing damage. Also certain weapons changing the base type of damage, like monk weapons normally doing bashing, but claw types did slashing or the rapier sub class of swords doing piercing instead of slashing. This is something I miss in XIV, it feels so simple in comparison, but then again I don't miss having 3-4 equipment sets and 8 main weapons on my BLM back in the days.

[Magis]

When you look at it, FFXI had a much more complex battle system than FFXIV, you really had to learn how to fight. Some mobs like skeletons took less slashing and piercing damage but more bashing damage while most birds took increased piercing damage. Also certain weapons changing the base type of damage, like monk weapons normally doing bashing, but claw types did slashing or the rapier sub class of swords doing piercing instead of slashing. This is something I miss in XIV, it feels so simple in comparison, but then again I don't miss having 3-4 equipment sets and 8 main weapons on my BLM back in the days.

Also mobs grabbed aggro based on different reasons. Some aggroed by sight (los them), sound (like worms... use sneak... I think you could also walk slowly to "sneak past"), tracked you using smell (lose the scent by running through a river), blood (undead would aggro if you had low health), and magic (elementals would aggro if you cast a spell). In FFXIV 2.0, it's just sight.

Oh yeah, and healing did damage to undead! (IIRC, this one I may be misremembering to other FFs). In an effort to streamline, they made the battle system extremely simple and boring. The most "interesting" thing we do is dodge mechanics which has become way overused.

[Penguinmayhem]

It has to basically do nothing because if elemental resistances/weaknesses were in the game the classes wouldn't all have the same difficulty curve and balancing is hard.

[givemeraptors]

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.

If it's a sliding scale you only demonstrated 0% and 100%. There's no reason why it couldn't be used as a legitimate alternative strat. For instance, is your healer slightly undergeared for Titan? Load up your party with earth resist to take off some, but not all, of the burden. Parties with good healers can pass without it, parties with struggling healers can get a boost. Things like this would create some much diversity and allow alternative strategies that aren't game-breaking.

Also mobs grabbed aggro based on different reasons. Some aggroed by sight (los them), sound (like worms... use sneak... I think you could also walk slowly to "sneak past"), tracked you using smell (lose the scent by running through a river), blood (undead would aggro if you had low health), and magic (elementals would aggro if you cast a spell). In FFXIV 2.0, it's just sight.

Not true. Several mobs in FFXIV 2.0 aggro by sound including mudpuppies (efts?), morbols and kedtraps.

[Pride]

If I'm not mistake we also have blunt, piercing and slashing resistance, all of which we cannot augment in any way.

Also, if they were worried about BLM being forced out of parties, why not give it use of all the elements? Have them work in the same way that Fire and Ice work and give BLMs some neutral spells that deal unaspected damage? There are ways around this, the devs just have to give up their silly rule that all jobs get the same amount of abilities.

[Amberion]

Oh yeah, and healing did damage to undead! (IIRC, this one I may be misremembering to other FFs). In an effort to streamline, they made the battle system extremely simple and boring. The most "interesting" thing we do is dodge mechanics which has become way overused.

Yeah, you could heal to death undead in other FF games. Even Pheonix Down them to death. I also agree that streamlining and trying to have everything extremely balanced has made it boring and classes feeling the same.

It has to basically do nothing because if elemental resistances/weaknesses were in the game the classes wouldn't all have the same difficulty curve and balancing is hard.

That is in my opinion not a bad thing.

[SchalaZeal]

That is in my opinion not a bad thing.

Throw in elitism, and it will be X class or bust.

Heck some Bray groups only take bards and black mages for it and refuse anything else for dps. Now imagine this, but for every single encounter, speed run or not.

I played enough Pokémon on my Game Boy, don't need "it's super effective" to come into this game. Keep it for offline RPGs where balancing doesn't matter.