FF14 Alternative for Final fantasy's Elemental weakness system

[P0W3RK1D]

For those of you who dont understand the elemental weakness system in final fantasy its basically this:

You see slime.
You hit slime with a water element attack.
the slime completely ignores this attack , or worse yet HEALS from it because its a slime and they like water.
You change your strategy and use a lightning elemental attack instead, theorizing the slime is conductive like water.
The slime takes critical damage because your theory was correct; slime is weak to lightning attacks.
You proceed to spam every lighting based attack in your arsenal until the slime is dead.

So as i would assume most of us would know that elemental weaknesses are a thing in final fantasy, in fact nearly every final fantasy game incorporates this mechanic; Its been sort of a staple in the franchise, but for some reason in FF14 its been banished to being a eureka thing alone (for what i assume is to keep the delicate balance in high end raids and fights), and from what i assume, the guaranteed crit/extra damage from an elemental weakness would totally break the meta in end game content -- which in that case i dont know why they dont just add the elemental weaknesses to everything, but make the boss monsters immune, but i digress.

SO an alternative/idea is to make elemental weaknesses work by potentially inflicting status effects onto thoes weak to the element rather than granting large chunks of damage; This will incentivize the player to consider elemental weaknesses more, and also not completely break the meta of fights. And before ya say that this will still break extreme/savage fights, may I remind you that just as with the current elemental weakness system already in the game Square enix could have solved this problem already by simply giving the bosses elemental immunity (like some bosses have in classic FF games already).

Fire: will have a 10% chance to inflict burn on an enemy weak to fire
Ice: will have a 5% chance to inflict freeze on an enemy weak to ice
Wind: will have a 5% chance to inflict bleed on an enemy weak wind
Water: will have a 5% chance to inflict weakened on an enemy weak to water
Earth: will have a 15% chance to inflict slow on an enemy weak to earth
Lighting: will have a 8% chance to inflict paralyze on an enemy weak lighting
Holy (unaspected): will have a 5% chance to inflict confusion on an enemy weak to holy
Poison: will have a 10% chance to inflict poison on an enemy weak to


Just a small idea -- please try not to roast me to hard

[ItMe]

and from what i assume, the guaranteed crit/extra damage from an elemental weakness would totally break the meta in end game content -- which in that case i dont know why they dont just add the elemental weaknesses to everything, but make the boss monsters immune, but i digress.

I assume bosses would also be immune to your elemental debuff system?
So... what would this be used on?
Overworld mobs and dungeon trash packs?
I'm not sure this is the kind of spice those mobs need.

[Brightamethyst]

The game used to have more damage types but they were removed because they caused more problems than the solved (BRDs and DRGs, and such.)

[Enkidoh]

The game used to have more damage types but they were removed because they caused more problems than the solved (BRDs and DRGs, and such.)

^This. 1.0 had elemental weaknesses and buffs and ARR inherited it, but SE neutered the potency so that elemental attacks and buffs really did not have too much of an effect, and eventually SE just scrapped it entirelly. And the reason is because Yoshi is trying to avoid 'class favouritism' where players would just find the class that has the best elemental attack for a certain battle and refuse any other class to participate (in FFXI, this very thing resulted in nonsense like 'manaburn' parties consisting entirelly of BLMs or a similar mage Job with elemental attacks to blast the enemy with the elemental attack it was weak against.).

Hence why attacks are all non-elemental now, with elemental effects moved into Eureka, which is designed to emulate FFXI style gameplay anyway so you can a taste of exactly what elemental attacks were like in FFXI. In normal 'main game' combat elemental attacks and weaknesses/buffs are a thing of the past, and just an unnecessary complication in the grand scheme of things.

[P0W3RK1D]

I assume bosses would also be immune to your elemental debuff system?
So... what would this be used on?
Overworld mobs and dungeon trash packs?
I'm not sure this is the kind of spice those mobs need.

First of all gotta say nice signature picture (Neo G red from gotchaforce, i didnt think anyone else knew what that game was)

secondly. This would work on overwolrd mobs, dungen mobs, some mini bosses, and some big bosses. but it will not work in trials, or 8 player boss raids, ex, savage or otherwise.
Note: if bosses are affected with something that stops them from acting, like Paralysis, freeze , ect they will break free from the status in order to do fight-essential mechanics, such as cinematics, or things like lakshimi's charm. Additionally, some bosses may be immune all together to elemental attacks -- (just like in other ff games) just because it breaths does not mean is needs to have a weakness

[Tulzscha]

Eh, I don't think this is a good universal mechanic for an mmo primarily for balance reasons. It works better as a job/boss/area mechanic where it can be better controlled and balanced. Honestly if you're a BLM and an enemy is weak to lightning are you really going to spam Thunder? As a RDM are you going to ignore white mana entirely? If so that wouldn't be very fun and if the system doesn't affect your gameplay what's the point? Should all jobs that use elements be redesigned so they can take advantage of elemental weakness and still be interesting to play? Jobs in this game don't have a spell book full of single use options like other FF games, they have rotations and gauges and resources that all need to function everywhere. If a BLM goes up against a fire-immune enemy it's not like they can just switch to ice and pull the same dps, it breaks the job.

If the entire system boils down to a small chance of minor debuffs on certain enemies then a few jobs will get a very slight passive bonus against them and that's it. Hardly seems worth it.

[ItMe]

First of all gotta say nice signature picture (Neo G red from gotchaforce, i didnt think anyone else knew what that game was)

It is literally my favorite game <3