Physical vs Magical, implementation in this game.

[djSono]

Okay,

I've been playing this game since around 2013 more or less (Alpha). And throughout the years I noticed a trend of SE having systems in place that have no real way to teach someone how to use their tools. The biggest pain is abilities that can only be used for physical/magical properties. With EW Expansion, Feint and Addle are less of an issue but still suffer the same issues.

Basically in short why do we have things in this game that can do either physical or magical but the game itself lacks any visual representation of said system. Bigger things like Dark Mind from Dark Knight are a huge problem in this game atm, especially in dungeons. There can be almost no use for this ability depending on what you are queuing up for and Dark Missionary while being primarily used on AOE's is bandaged since most AOE's are magical by default.

Am I the only one that finds this to be a sore spot in game development, that the only way we figure out what is truly physical or magical is to use outside game resources or ask someone that has that ability? I could go on and on about DRK, but this post is mostly to talk about Physical v Magical properties in this game.

I hope they can address this in some way with future patches, expansions in this game. Because I think the majority of the player base would be happy to see information like this in game.

[Hasrat]

You don't technically need outside game resources or anything to determine phys/mag, the battle chat log does give... some indication, if you know how to interpret it.....

But yeah, kinda wouldn't be shocked if they eventually drop it altogether, damage is damage.

[Bjorn-Kobito]

This isn't true all of the time, but about 70% of the time your tank busters are going to be physical damage and your party-wide attacks are going to be magical. So, that's a pretty good rule of thumb if you're not checking ACT for the damage type.

[Ferra]

Wouldn't be surprised if damage is just damage in the future. This was before my time in FF14 but I heard that there were elemental resistances ala early WoW but was dropped.

I'm not sure HOW major of a deal it is but there's currently little difference between the damage types as far as I can tell.

[Vahlnir]

Wouldn't be surprised if damage is just damage in the future. This was before my time in FF14 but I heard that there were elemental resistances ala early WoW but was dropped.

I'm not sure HOW major of a deal it is but there's currently little difference between the damage types as far as I can tell.

In 1.0, yeah. They were still present through ARR and HW I believe in the form of materia mostly, but they were never really used for anything, so they removed resistances like this and any materia that applied. Eureka is the only place now that really takes advantage of elemental weaknesses/resistances via the elemental wheel.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Aside from specific fight mechanics (Shinryu's puddles and lightning/fire attacks, for example), elemental damage types only really matter in Eureka and the Masked Carnival. Eureka has a unique elemental wheel to play with it, and the Carnival is all about reading the fight descriptions and coming prepared.

[Azuri]

Did you caster/healer drop suspiciously low after being hit by an attack? It's likely physical. Which continues into a pretty hard rule that any raidwide is magic by default. Otherwise it ends up only tickling tanks/melees or instapopping casters.

[RitsukoSonoda]

Wouldn't be surprised if damage is just damage in the future. This was before my time in FF14 but I heard that there were elemental resistances ala early WoW but was dropped.

I'm not sure HOW major of a deal it is but there's currently little difference between the damage types as far as I can tell.

2.0 still had elemental resistances as a stat. I think your base values without gear were even impacted back then by the patron you chose at character creation. It was so long ago I don't remember. It also had resistances for physical damage types blunt, piercing, slashing. 2.0 also had stat points to allocate the first time you reached a level with any job which they trimmed out of the game later as well. The game started with a fair amount of game mechanics fans of the FF series usually expect of games in the series missing and some that initially survived were trimmed because their impact due to lack of other mechanics was so minimal that they didn't need to be there.

[Lunalepsy]

Wouldn't be surprised if damage is just damage in the future. This was before my time in FF14 but I heard that there were elemental resistances ala early WoW but was dropped.

I'm not sure HOW major of a deal it is but there's currently little difference between the damage types as far as I can tell.

WoW had vague elemental resistances, but it doesn't compare to Ragnarok Online's or FFXI's elemental system. People keep mixing them! Resisting an element is not the same as taking either twice (x2) the damage, half the damage (x 0.5) or zero damage from a specific element. I wish FFXIV would reincorporate such features, but apparently it's too stressful.

[LunarEmerald]

A nice QoL would be to change the damage number color based off whether it's physical or magical.