Thoughts on regular encounters?

[Milennin]

As an RPG staple, what are your thoughts on regular battle encounters? What are your methods to keep these interesting, without going overboard and making every battle feel like a death match?

Common complaints I see when watching people play RPGs:
-The battles are boring because the enemies don't do anything special.
-The battles are boring because the enemies die too fast.
-The battles are frustrating because the enemies are too powerful.
-The battles are frustrating because the enemies take too long to kill.
-The battles are a waste of time because they aren't rewarding (no drops, low exp).

What is your way of hitting that sweet spot for making regular encounters that are fun to play, allowing players to play around with their characters' powers, but don't drag on for so long that it becomes tedious?

(Note: this is a discussion on designing regular battle encounters; there is no need to point the option to remove these altogether.)

 

[bgillisp]

Well, two of those are a contradiction honestly (battles are boring as they die too fast vs battles are frustrating as they take too long), and honestly you're going to probably get one of those two complaints just by default as one person's too fast = another's frustrating. Though some of that will also depend on the levels of the party at that point in time too, which makes it hard to balance. After all, what do you do if someone grinded to level 20 in a dungeon meant for level 8 and is now complaining the battles are too easy? At that point it's like "What did you honestly expect?".

One idea I implemented in my project starting with the 2nd dungeon (I didn't do it in the first as that is more a tutorial area) is I added a fear level. What that does is once the party hits that average level or higher, they are considered overleveled and the monsters avoid them on the map. Now, if you corner them they will still fight, but instead of chasing you they will run away from you.

That was my solution as otherwise, underleveled parties would get battles are frustrating anyways, and overleveled parties would get battles are boring. Can't do much for underleveled parties though (and I refuse to level scale as I think that takes away the reward of leveling up).

 

[MushroomCake28]

Honestly I build my own battle systems. To keep things fun, I mainly put a lot of time on enemies, not to make them too strong, but to make the battle strategic. I create monster classes, 6 to be specific:

1) Minions: Basically trash mobs. They're there to fill the gaps. They usually just do regular attacks, maybe one other simple skill. They aren't particularly strong or dangerous and can be taken out quite easily.

2) Vipers: As minions, they aren't very strong, don't have too much Hp or high stats. However, they focus on skills to inflict status effects. Stronger viper enemies even have AoE skills that can deal status effects, which would make taken them out fast a priority.

3) Paladin: These are the tank enemies. They have fairly high Hp and Defense. They are hard to take out, but are not particularly dangerous offensively. They are stronger than minions, but usually slower.

4) Warriors: These are offensively dangerous enemies. They have high physical attack have skills to deal high physical damage, elemental physical attacks, etc. You definitely want to watch out for them. They don't have too much defense or health, so if you want to avoid quick damage you'll want to take out first.

5) Mages: They are the offensive mages of the enemies. They cast spells, which can take time to cast (I use a casting time for spells in my ATB battle system), but their magical elemental spells can be devastating, can have an AoE, or even inflict some status effects.

6) Priests: Their main purpose is healing their allies. They have healing spells, but also some offensive spells like mages that they can cast if no enemies require healing.

So by combining some enemies together, the player needs to be strategic when it comes time to decide who to kill first. You usually want to take out the healer first, then, depending on the threat level, take out the warriors or the vipers (if they have AoE status inflicting skills). The mages can wait since their long casting time gives you time to prepare and defend. After taking out the priest, the warrior and the viper, you kill the mage and the paladin, and leave the minions for the end. That's the general model, but it can vary per battle. Now combine that with a semi-tactical battle system, and you have a fun battle system which isn't too hard, but which can be very hard if you don't plan things out and just use "Attack" randomly.

 

[empresskiova]

On boring enemies:
I think giving enemies 3 abilities should help the variety somewhat. Let these powers be enemy unique and/or of the magical variety if its a magic heavy game.

Maybe a spider will climb its web, out of reach of your melee dudes.

Maybe a ghost will possess a party member.

On super weak enemies:
Pump up their health and defenses. Or you can make a pre-battle mercy option. If you are seriously overleveled, the monsters might ask for mercy. Maybe devs can make a good karma bonus (hopefully one that’s difficult to spam).

On powerdull enemies:
Cut a power, get rid of some wierd script that makes an enemy invulnerable for two turns, or maybe just tune down their base attack levels.

On HP tanks:
Make %-based abilities or items or even cull the HP a bit. It’s fine to have enemies with more HP than others, just to break up the monotony of battling.

Bad Rewards:
It’s hard to balance XP gains, but you can lower the XP curve needed to level up. The dev can also include other ways to earn free XP, for example with side quests, to help balance this.

 

[SOC]

I actually value them, just not when there's too many in rapid succession. I see them as a mental break from being constantly challenged and engaged, sometimes just spamming attack or your go-to spells/skills to quickly dispatch them without too much challenge or thought is needed throughout a game. It also becomes a safe testing ground for you to try out new things, and even helps in story/world building as your actors are killing lots of things, rather than just a few bosses. It helps the player feel like they are growing in their skills as a player, but also that the characters are growing along with you and acts as an artificial time sink so you're spending more time with each character.

There's just a lot of nuanced good from these and I think they're severely under-valued and under-appreciated. When I think of dungeon crawling in some ruins, I don't just think of the boss, I think of what all manner of creatures and monsters are also in there that I have to deal with. It adds atmosphere.

 

[gstv87]

Having played Pokemon, and being a kind of practical guy who wants to make the most of the time he has (when I decide to do so), I find *regular encounters* to be a nuisance.
"So, you're two steps away from getting to the point you were supposed to go to? here, have another battle.... And, you'll be subject to the same rules as with main battles: enemies will match your current skill level, you'll be forced to use whatever extra items you have for just-in-case scenarios, and if you leave the battle, you'll lose experience..... how about that?"

it's like they punish you for being able to win those battles quickly, and prevent you from actually playing the story, which is the main purpose of the game.

 

[Soryuju]

I don’t think the sample complaints in the first post are actually an issue unless just one or two of them happen consistently in a game. I believe that rather than trying to aim for a single ideal encounter length/difficulty, developers should work to create a difficulty spectrum. You can start with a target - say, encounters should last for 3 rounds on average - but then break away from that target and deliberately mix in some more and less difficult troops. It goes without saying that the variation can’t be too extreme, but that will largely come down to your playtesting.

There are a number of reasons for this. One is the issue of player interest mentioned above - if a player dislikes your target length/difficulty, you’ll be able to switch up the rhythm of your encounters regularly to keep them engaged. The player who likes quick and easy battles can escape from the tougher encounters (or avoid them outright, depending on your system), and they’ll find the less difficult ones satisfying and refreshing. The player looking for a challenge can anticipate those big fights and strategize to win the easier ones while conserving as many of their combat resources as possible.

The very act of changing your combat rhythm regularly also helps keep players engaged. The occasional appearance of a weak troop the player can burn down in a single round is often welcome - it’s basically gifting a small amount of free rewards to the player, it’s unlikely to tax their resources, and it makes them feel powerful to smash through a fight unscathed. The sudden appearance of a tough troop, on the other hand, can create tension and excitement for the player - do they have the resources to handle it? Are their characters built well enough and at the right level to survive? Should they fail, they may be frustrated, but you’ve also reminded them that your game world is a dangerous place which demands their best. And it will make them want to succeed that much more, to get revenge and claim the fat chunk of loot they know is probably waiting for them. There’s huge satisfaction in victory after you’ve been cruising for a while and the odds suddenly turn against you.

Lastly, having a handful of longer and/or more difficult encounters peppered in allows the developer to gradually push the player and encourage them to develop their skills in combat, rather than risk them just running into a wall when a new area introduces stronger foes. Players may run from random difficult troops at first, which is fine, but if you tune your difficulty appropriately, they should be feeling up to the challenge (and hungry for rewards) near the time they reach the end of the current area. Then if the regular encounters in the next area are roughly as difficult as the tough encounters in the area before, the player knows the deal and is less likely to be caught flat-footed.

So basically, if your game brings together all the kinds of frustrating encounters in the first post, it will actually eliminate a lot of the frustration in them. The challenge is just striking the correct ratio.

 

[Wavelength]

I think that the key to creating interesting "standard" encounters lies in introducing a lot of variance in both situation and outcome, keeping that variance well within the control of the player (meaning avoid heavy RNG influence). You want it to feel like any given battle could be a flawless stomp, a handy win, a Pyrrhic victory where you barely squeaked by, or a defeat (even if most will inevitably be one of the first two).

Skill and action mechanics, while not appropriate in all RPGs, often go a long way towards making combat feel engaging and creating thousands of different situations without any direct designer input. Players are much less likely to do the exact same things twice (even in two battles against the same troop with the same setup) when they're running around a battlefield, dodging projectiles and weaving between allies to pepper in combos, than when they're selecting actions from a menu. And if players aren't going through the same motions each time, they won't experience the ennui that makes them feel "this battle dragged on for too long" or "nothing interesting happened and they died too fast". That's why ABS's tend to have long legs. It's important, however, that the systems don't become a "slugfest" system of land hits, take hits, maybe use an item, land hits, take hits, until someone dies. The best ABS's give you a lot of opportunities to change the flow of battle with your moves and your split-second decision making.

Outside of skill/action mechanics, there are still a lot of ways to accomplish this variance. Mechanics that allow battlers to compound their advantages (in a way that feels fair), combined with reasonably high attack-versus-HP ratios, tend to be good here. Persona tends to be really good about this, for example, with the "1 More!" system allowing battlers who exploit enemy Weakpoints or land Crits to gain additional actions, even to the point where one battler can wipe an entire enemy party in one turn if played well (and standard enemies might be able to KO a single character in one turn if you play it poorly). As the designer, you may want to create enough different relationships of advantages and disadvantages that a single team composition of characters can't exploit advantages against every single troop in the game - meaning that any given composition will be able to stomp some troops, but will have a tougher time against others that were theoretically the same power level.

Varying the situations/"input" of a battle can change things up a lot, too. I think this is why some RPGs have "pre-emptive attacks" and "surprise attacks", but you can go a lot further than that. You can have resources required to use skills that are randomly distributed at the beginning of combat (and maybe there are even more resources placed around the battlefield that you can pick up). You can start characters in random places (in a tactical system), or even force the player to use randomized teams of characters for some or all battles.

Also important (though independent of combat design) is pacing - throwing the player into too many (or too few) encounters can create several of the problems you've mentioned, even if the combat system itself is stellar. Visual Encounters are a great way to handle this, because VE's give the player the opportunity to avoid most battles they don't want to play (while still retaining the sense of "danger" that comes from failing to avoid a VE) and to start battles almost on-demand when they feel like fighting.

 

[Tai_MT]

I'm going to apologize in advance for this, but I haven't read anyone's posts except this original one here that I'm quoting. Mostly for the sake of brevity and because I'd like to respond to this original post as it's essentially asking for advice and alternate ways to do things.

As an RPG staple, what are your thoughts on regular battle encounters? What are your methods to keep these interesting, without going overboard and making every battle feel like a death match?

My thoughts about regular battle encounters is that if I'm spamming my best skills or just the "Attack" command, I'm bored. It's going to be your story that holds me to your game since your combat system offers very little.

To that end, I've adopted a very simple rule across all of my combat. Whether it will be effective or not... I have no idea. But, I'm going to give it a try. What's the rule? "If this enemy is new to you, you'll spend at least 4 moves to kill it.". That means, one hit from each party member. Minimum. Players who have spent those initial turns killing the new enemy make take 3 the next time. Then, maybe two the next time. Until, finally, they know how to beat it quickly and efficiently. Does that mean everything will go "according to plan"? No. The player still does occasionally get lucky and one-shot the new creature by using what they're supposed to. Or, by virtue of simply having equipped themselves properly (it is less about how high your stats are and more about which pieces of equipment you use to be effective).

But, there's lots of stuff that go into that.
1. Stats are important, every single point is meaningful, but...
2. Percentage rate decreases in damage types can make your stats pointless. If an enemy is resistant to Slashing, you'll likely only be doing half damage, even with the Infinity +1 Sword. Even worse if Infinity +1 Sword is Holy as well... and the enemy is resistant to that element too.
3. Going further than even elements, there are damage types. If you hit a magical enemy with magic, they are likely to simply have a lot of Magic Defense, so your damage goes down anyway. There exists a Skill for every damage type. Strength, Speed, Magic. These exist to exploit these high stats and to exploit the possible low defenses to these stats. Using Magic on a Strength character would result in them taking more damage from two sources... the low Magic Defense... And the low resistance to Magic Elements.
4. States are very important. Initial states won't do a lot of damage, but as they gain power over time (through leveling up in a Tier system), they can kill enemies quickly, or put those enemies within range of easy kills in short order. Of note: Poison Level 4 lasts for 20 turns and drains 20% of Max Health each tick. This can kill in 5 turns... Or, it can do a lot of damage to an enemy you don't have any ability to harm in any other way due to party composition.
5. Enemies can hit you back for exploiting their obvious weaknesses, which may force a player to not exploit those obvious weaknesses and to search for an alternative.
6. Everything listed here? It also applies in reverse and can be used against the player. Combat is deadly and decisive as a result. Enemies are designed to kill a character in roughly 4-6 hits themselves. This forces players to be efficient with each turn, and with the way they play. It can also provide surprises to the player.

Common complaints I see when watching people play RPGs:
-The battles are boring because the enemies don't do anything special.
-The battles are boring because the enemies die too fast.
-The battles are frustrating because the enemies are too powerful.
-The battles are frustrating because the enemies take too long to kill.
-The battles are a waste of time because they aren't rewarding (no drops, low exp).

Most of these all go together. Some might argue that they're contradictory, but I assure you that they're not.
1. If enemies don't do anything special and offer nothing new to combat, the player is spamming their best means of winning and sweeping the floor with little effort. It's boring to just hammer a single key all the time and not use your brain.
2. Battles being boring because enemies die too quickly is also part of that problem. If they don't stick around long enough to do whatever special ability they may have... Then they just as well not even have it. They need a little longevity.
3. If enemies deal so much damage that each fight feels like you're fighting just to stay alive... this is boring because it stresses you out so constantly that it ensures "burn out". Many game devs have this problem of making an enemy very powerful... But, they do nothing special, and they also die quickly. Most bosses in the last 20 years fall into this issue. They're quick and easy to kill, but they do massive damage to you in order to provide "threat" to the player and make them feel like they've "accomplished" something when they've won. It rarely works.
4. Enemies that take too long to kill tie into 1-3 quite quickly and easily. If the player knows how to kill the enemy, they should simply be able to do so. If I know to beat your enemy by casting Float on my team to avoid their Earthquake Skill, and all it takes to beat them is to whack them in the face to die afterwards... I shouldn't have to waste more than a few hits to do that. If I'm repeating the "attack cycle" more than 3 times and the battle has become "automatic", it has disengaged me and my brain. It has become boring. I know how to win, I just have to perform these couple actions like a machine, without thought, and wait to win. Combat should invite player thought, not invite players turning off their brain. At least, if you seek to entertain through combat alone.
5. It is only common to see "no drops" and "low xp" from devs who don't understand gameplay design very well. The "no drops" is typically an attempt at "realism". "Look, a boar wouldn't drop money! It might drop a tusk, but not money! It's also not going to drop swords or potions or anything!". Which leads to the very boring, "I'm looting enemies that hunt me and getting nothing for it". I find that these systems work a lot better if they drop an "alternative" currency that is analogous to "Reputation". Something you can spend a bit of in town to use to solve problems, get cheaper prices, or whatever. The "low XP" problem typically comes from devs who just want to keep players from grinding, because they don't know how to balance combat around anything except the stats of the characters and equipment... And they're trying desperately to keep their game exactly as difficult as they wanted it. This also results in a lot of "boring combat" as it becomes pointless to engage with anything except enemies that give you good loot or enemies that give you large chunks of XP. Typically, these behaviors result in a lot of players fighting enemies far beyond their skill levels in order to reap massive rewards quickly. Or... they min/max. Which... can be tedious.

What is your way of hitting that sweet spot for making regular encounters that are fun to play, allowing players to play around with their characters' powers, but don't drag on for so long that it becomes tedious?

(Note: this is a discussion on designing regular battle encounters; there is no need to point the option to remove these altogether.)

By and large, a player will enjoy fighting your monster 1 to 5 times. After that, they've got a level of "mastery" over it that it ceases engagement in their minds. It becomes "boring". So, they key is to make those first few encounters fun (usually in the 1 to 3 range) and engaging, and then unimportant afterwards. Easily skipped through, so the player can move to the next section if they so choose without getting bogged down.

I think that's the sweet spot you should aim for. "The first time the player encounters this monster, they shouldn't know how it works, it should stick around to show them how it works, and they should try things to figure out how to beat it. After they've figured all that out, it should be killed very quickly and without much effort to move things along". This has the added benefit of making your player seek out new encounters (if you've done them well, anyway) in order to see what you throw at them next. What new challenge there might be. What the enemies might teach you as a player. That excitement of, "ohh, It's a new monster, I wonder what this one does?".

That's what I think the sweet spot is.

 

[Idiot]

I think one of the most important things to do to avoid these issues is to PLAYTEST, PLAYTEST, PLAYTEST! Playtest with many many different kinda of people - people here on the forums, on other forums, ask your family, your little brother, the moms on recipe blogs, anyone you can get on every sort of 'level' of video game experience. Get their feedback, ask direct questions - was X battle easy or hard? Was it fun? If yes, why was it fun? If not, what can I do to make it fun? You can theorize every kind of battle formula you can imagine, but the only way to figure out if it actually works is to get feedback from people outside of your head, ya know?

 

[TheoAllen]

Enemies are the same:
There're so many factors that contribute to these. Most of time, I found the foe encounters feels the same, they didn't give an unique feeling when encountering them. And what they do only spam same attack despite being different graphics. And we do the same to defeat them by using our best attack. That is some of many reasons why the game battles are boring.

Encounter rate:
Another factor is the encounter rate. This include both random encounter and visible encounter, though with visible encounter you may have a chance to avoid (unless you don't for some reasons). Players having walk for a few steps, haven't much enjoy your map scenery, then presented a battle that you're going to do the same of using best attack and seeing the foes using the same attack all over again. Personally I will be thinking "what am I even doing at this point?"

Battle length (too long):
Battle length also contributes just as you said. However, the factor could be either both how many turns and how much time "wasted" per turn. If you have a lot of party member, say 4 or even 5, then you're going to give input to those characters. Then you thought to balance the encounter, you need to put an equal number of as the party member. 4 vs 4, great. The more participant you put in a battle, the more time required per turn, and maybe more turns to finish the battle as well, depends on how you balance that, and what turn order you're using. More battle members participating the battle and you're implementing a turn system where you need to wait to input a turn, let it be CTB or ATB, it will be annoyingly long. Combined with both of my previous paragraphs, great you will be having an annoying battle.

Battle length (too fast/short):
On the flip side, about the battle end too fast. Personally I think the battle end too fast is when the enemies didn't get a chance to do something on you. You encountered a battle, the first turn is your turn, and you casted AoE spell that kills all of the enemies. You barely sweat and get a scratch. That is what I called battle end too fast. This scaled with the threat given by the enemies. If within a few turn, you will be seeing a particular battle will be giving you disadvantage if it stays longer, you want it to end fast, you don't feel like it feel too fast. The keyword here is "do something on you".

---------
Talk about how to deal with these, that depends on the design of the game itself. But I will be talking about how I personally deal with these.

The uniqueness in my opinion is a key to make an enemy encounter interesting. It doesn't have to be having an ultra annoying pattern, but at least you could tell what is this enemy doing. For example, a scorpion encounter will have a chance to inflict poison on each of their normal attack, and occasionally send a poison wave that chance to inflict poison to entire party. That is their quirk.

There're other enemies that do different things as well. Put some buffers, put some debuffers, put some attackers, put some healers, put some other things. Just don't put a stat stick and normal attack all times, that is just not unique. If we as a player could do different things, why the enemies can not? All of these various type of enemies, then I rolled the troop member using some RNG so that there are no fixed troop. Sometimes rolling the members could create an interesting troop combination. A combination of buffers and attackers, or a combination of debuffers and attacker, or maybe healers with attackers. This different combination creates a different approach of each encounter on which enemy to deal with first.

In my opinion, each encounter should give you enough threat that you feel threatened (if the battle last longer), but you could actually get out from that thread fairly easy. That will create a more interesting regular encounter. Regular encounters are cheap, but it won't feel cheap.

 

[jonthefox]

in my experience, some important things are:

-different enemies pose different kinds of threats. some hit hard, some can take a lot of punishment, some do different status effect, some have element strengths or weaknesses, that kind of stuff.

-the more that enemy characteristics match their aesthetic, the better. their traits and where you find them should be reasonable / plausible. if i go into a cave without any water and encounter a bunch of fish enemies, it's going to feel strange, in a bad way. if i encounter spiders and they turn out to be randomly weak to lightning but strong against fire, i'm going to feel like the dev just slapped things together without thinking instead of basing it off a rich and immersive world and lore.

-battles force me to use my skills thoughtfully and strategically. skills should be clear and simple in what they do, but enemy characteristics should provide situations of varying utility for them. also, skills should have various synergies with each other that are effective based on enemy characteristics.

 

[ShadowHawkDragon]

I'm currently theory crafting an idea that's a bit out of the box where 'regular encounters' are designed to be avoided.

What I mean is that encounters would be 'visual' and roam each 'room' in fixed patterns. The idea is to observe their pattern and slip past. But if caught by them they can still be fought for a potentially tough fight (not boss-worthy but still strong) that would be hard if fought one after the other.

To give a small example, one such room would have 2-3 tough battles going back and forth. If you just tried to walk through you would get caught by at least 2. But there's a switch which triggers spikes that would block their path opening a gap to walk through (assuming you trapped them all). The 'puzzle' would be getting all enemies to be in the right places to trap them, but you 'could' trap one or two then fight the rest.

Its still preliminary and I have no idea if such gameplay would remain fun for 10+ hours. But its a different way to think about how regular encounters are, well, encountered; which can alter how they are designed and balanced in battle. Just fuel for thought.

 

[jonthefox]

@ShadowHawkDragon i think that's actually a brilliant idea!

 

[Soryuju]

@ShadowHawkDragon

Are you using a traditional level/EXP system in your game, or have you adjusted your progression systems to account for players avoiding most battles? If players are aiming to avoid the fights, then it seems like they’d be at a relatively low level when they get to bosses which they can’t avoid. And if they don’t avoid the regular fights (or just aren’t good at maneuvering), then they’d often be fighting bosses when they’re at a higher level than the players who successfully dodged most of the enemies along the way. Indirectly rewarding players’ mistakes by making bosses easier doesn’t seem like something you’d want. What was your solution to this?

That is a neat idea, though! Could go well with a game that employs puzzles and stealth mechanics, or to emphasize how the protagonists of an underdog story are really fighting against the odds.

 

[trouble time]

@ShadowHawkDragon i have actually done this before. I never actually released the game (i didnt like the story). To solve the issues @Soryuju brought up, i also had most dungeoms have mid bosses and for certain encounters to very difficult to avoid by placing 2 enemies with a difficult movement patterns next to each other, but one of them didnt respawn to make it a lot easiee if you decided to backtrack for items. As for the characters being overleveled for bosses, i'd actually say thats okay, if they wanted to sneak past their already punished lightly vecause they didnt want to fight, but they ge EXP which socgens the blow, you just need to make sure the boss is challenging enough that she can accomodate a reasonable level range.

Also @jonthefox what would make a spider in particular weak against fire but not electricity. I dont think that logically follows very well unless its like, made 9f rocks or wood or something. This also reminds me of the wide open plains in Trails of Cold Steel filled with flying fish that shoot lightning.

 

[ShadowHawkDragon]

@trouble time sounds like a reasonable solution as long as its apparent which ones don't re-spawn. I'm currently thinking of giving bonus exp/gold at the end of the 'room' which decreases with each successful battle (meant as a reward for avoiding fights). So you'll still be at the 'minimum required' level if you avoid all the fights but you'll only be 'overleveled' if you went out of the way to fight...

From this I'd definitely say that progression is a important part of balancing any 'encounter system'. Most complaints such as 'battles are too easy' and 'battles are too hard' could easily be blamed on poor progression control.

 

[jonthefox]

@trouble time you misread my meaning

 

[trouble time]

@trouble time you misread my meaning

Okay so what did you mean. The reason i said weak to fire and strong to electricity is cause i tjought you were saying it being weak to electricity didnt make sense while its strong to fire.

Are you saying it should be weak to both fire and lightning, which makes sense to me, as most flesh would be weak to both. Did you mean that it should be weak to fire but not lightning? Personally that doesnt make sense to me. Or did you mean it should be weak to neither (which is what my game currently does, im not currently using elemental attacks.)

@ShadowHawkDragon the non-respawning ones were colored differently. They were red.

 

[jonthefox]

@trouble time i meant that it shouldn't be assigned strengths and weaknesses randomly. the pet peeve i was referring to is when devs just slap on elemental strengths and weaknesses without any context, and it just becomes a pure guessing game. if i encounter spiders and they have random elemental strengths and weaknesses, it feels bad to me. What feels good is when the strengths and weaknesses fit with the type of creature...say, the spider was tinted blue and called a "frostbite spider," now it would make sense if it was strong to ice and weak to fire.