Too many elements? Too many heroes?

[Feliaria]

View attachment 49789

Aww <3


Hope the plug-in works for you, and I can't wait to try out your game once the demo/the whole thing comes out!

 

[Michael Caiola]

Thanks!


So, I spent last night and most of today overhauling by combat system. Initially, everyone had certain weapons special to them as part of the lore. I ditched that and made it so everyone can use multiple weapons. My Aries hero can use more types than others, I might even make him able to use all types. But not everyone starts with a weapon. I also kept a special God Weapon for each of them to get later in the game.


As for elements and damage types, here's what I've got:


8 elements, paired with their opposites:


Fire --- Ice


Earth --- Air


Water --- Thunder


Time --- Energy


9 damage types:


blunt, pierce, cut, heat, cold, poison, electric, life, death


The elements take center stage and they make use of the damage types. The damage types, instead of being based on a pokemon-like strength and weakness system, will be implemented naturally. Ghosts can't be affected by blunt, pierce, cut, or poison. Skeletons are resistant to piercing but weak against blunt and heat. Fire spirits are immune to blunt, pierce, cut, and fire, but weak against cold. And so on. The elements will behave differently. They'll be more... intrinsic. Some of my enemies and heroes have innate elements. Leo is fire, pisces is water, cancer is energy, gemini is air, etc. Then, certain weapons and skills can be elemental. A fireball would be fire, bubbles would be water, etc. They won't be damage types, but they'll affect game play differently.


With these in place, I can think of a new enemy, weapon, or skill and instead of forcing it to fit my element system, it'll fall neatly into place. And if I set the elements and damage types up as elements and "sub-elements" so to speak, then it'll be an intuitive system the player can easily enjoy.

 

[Lord Semaj]

I would recommend including lore reasons for the element interactions.  Players will intuit that Water counter Fire and when they're wrong it helps to have an explanation.


That said, you can still make Fire Elementals weak to Water.

 

[Michael Caiola]

I would recommend including lore reasons for the element interactions.  Players will intuit that Water counter Fire and when they're wrong it helps to have an explanation.


That said, you can still make Fire Elementals weak to Water.

Fire will still be weak to water. I have a few common sense strengths/weaknesses built in to the elements system, too. I even made a table.

 

[Hoppy]

I have 13 separated into 3 categories of elements with weapons all have 1 or more these elements and armor that can resist, absorb, or reflect these elements.  I recommend you do what I do and write up an element tutorial and explain what they all are.

 

[YoraeRasante]

I disagree about writing up a tutorial... nothing against tutorials, but if they are just walls of text it gets boring.


I suggest making an "intro stage" of sorts where there are some sorts of enemies weak only to one element that uses it's opposite, so the player can figure out about elements through doing instead of just reading.

 

[Lord Semaj]

I totally didn't suggest a tutorial anywhere.  Just a lore reason and given explanation.  Old JRPGs did this in the very story itself, explaining to the player through NPCs and character dialogues what the interactions were.  You had to hunt to find them all and one of the main benefits of NPCs is being able to relay information in small doses about the world.

 

[YoraeRasante]

Not you, Lord Semaj. Hoppy.


But about your idea even though I am using NPCs for important backstory details in my own game, I think the elements, since they are not background but an important gameplay point, should be made at least close to clear through the battle system itself.

 

[HasuHasi]

I have 13 separated into 3 categories of elements with weapons all have 1 or more these elements and armor that can resist, absorb, or reflect these elements.  I recommend you do what I do and write up an element tutorial and explain what they all are.

How did you manage to have a weapon with several elemental damage types? 

 

[YoraeRasante]

Well, Yanfly got the Element Core plugin that lets you add multiple elements to them. So even if this one was not used it is possible with the right plugin.

 

[Diretooth]

I usually have a relatively basic element system that's easy to remember. Fire consumes air, blows away earth/stone, absorbs water, quenches fire. Sometimes, I add Spirit and Void as extra elements that counter each other that are not as effected by the four main elements. Sometimes I go a little more complex with Physical < Magical < Ranged < Physical (In order of 'this beats this') variants. So Fire Physical, Fire Magical, Fire Ranged... and so on. Naturally, this would be more complex, but would add more strategy.
As a side note, did you know the Western Zodiac has elements attributed to them as well?
Aries - Fire, Taurus - Earth, Gemini - Air, Cancer - Water,


Leo - Fire, Virgo - Earth, Libra - Air, Scorpio - Water,


Sagittarius - Fire, Capricorn - Earth, Aquarius - Air, Pisces - Water.


Just a fun tidbit.

 

[Michael Caiola]

I usually have a relatively basic element system that's easy to remember. Fire consumes air, blows away earth/stone, absorbs water, quenches fire. Sometimes, I add Spirit and Void as extra elements that counter each other that are not as effected by the four main elements. Sometimes I go a little more complex with Physical < Magical < Ranged < Physical (In order of 'this beats this') variants. So Fire Physical, Fire Magical, Fire Ranged... and so on. Naturally, this would be more complex, but would add more strategy.
As a side note, did you know the Western Zodiac has elements attributed to them as well?
Aries - Fire, Taurus - Earth, Gemini - Air, Cancer - Water,


Leo - Fire, Virgo - Earth, Libra - Air, Scorpio - Water,


Sagittarius - Fire, Capricorn - Earth, Aquarius - Air, Pisces - Water.


Just a fun tidbit.

Not to be sarcastic, but did you read the thread?

 

[Diretooth]

Yes. I may have misunderstood it, given your reaction.

 

[Michael Caiola]

I promise I wasn't trying to be sarcastic. It was an honest question. Because the heroes are separated into trigons based on those elements. It's a major part of the story.

 

[M.I.A.]

I'll chime in on this one too.


I don't think it's necessarily how many is too many as it is how are they all implemented.


For the majority of my projects, I use small algorithms and formulae to make damage output reliable and predictable. In most of these projects, I will include roughly 6 "Elements" (Fire, Light, Ice, Earth, Darkness, & Poison). These are pretty typical to presume what and how they function. Fire Element Vs. Ice-Based monsters.. Light Vs. Undead, Poison Vs. Human/Beast foes.


These may be the only "elements" I disclose openly to the player. I will also have, however, upwards of 20 other "Elements" that I use during development.. or that are so rare in use that I don't feel they really even warrant informing the Player of in a formal setting. I will typically inform the Player in an informal setting. A couple examples of these types of "elements" are as follows:


-Vs. Aquatic (or Vs. Flying, or Vs. Rodent, etc.). Anything specializing in taking down a specific type of enemy may only be referenced in the Skill or Weapon description such as [Vorpal Blade: A wicked knife that deals 2x Damage to Rabbits] or [Atmos Gust: A celestial torrent from up-high that damages only Flying foes]


-Silver/Wooden (or any other specific material). These are more like attributes to me than they are Elements, but I handle them in the database the same as Elements.


[Silver Sword: Forged of pure Silver to take down the howlers of the night!] or [Wooden Staff/Wooden Knife: Vampires beware, this weapon was made to cause you pain].


-Earth-Ground.. this is an Earth Element extension that I add to "Quake" or "Quicksand" type skills. I label it as "Earth" in the skill descriptions, but any foe that is flying or in water is otherwise immune.. while some other Earth Element skills (such as Stone Throw, Geode, or Salt Bath) will still hit those same foes.


Hell, I even have one Element I use for Debug purposes only: "Psycho-Killer". All foes cannot resist this Element. It's applied only to , for my debug mode only.




 





In summary, I will typically have around 20-25 Elements, but only 6 or 7 will be readily presented to the Player as part of the standard knowledge for battle purposes.




 





Hope you find this helpful.





-Mia





 





 





 

 

[YoraeRasante]

I'm currently using 7 elements in my game, Physical, Fire, Water, Wind, Earth, Light and Darkness. Ice and Electric fit Water and Wind respectively.


I was thinking about using 9, 3 different physicals (blunt, cutting and piercing), but... I didn't want to add more weapon types just to add blunt attacks. Currently the only ones that would fit are magic foci and unnarmed.

 

[AMGLime]

Fire vs Ice


Water vs Lightning


Earth vs Wind


Light vs Dark


Those are typically the 8 Elements. Physical I wouldn't classify as an Element, because I've always just seen it as a way of breaking up a Physical and a Magical attack. If they're Physical, they get Physical. If they're Magical, they get an Element. If they're a Hybrid, they get mixed.


In my current game though, the only Elements available to the player is Fire, Lightning, Ice and Light. The other Elements are known, and seen, but aren't used. Dark is especially used by enemies, but is hard to control. The way I've always looked at it, when you design and get your elements, make sure they counter each other, cause Elements require balance and that they make sense. Lust for example, seems weird as an Element cause it's an Emotion. Time I COULD see as an Element if it was limited, so time travel and all that would be like... forgotten, but you could briefly speed up or slow time like Haste and Slow, and for the attacking versions of it you could summon small meteors and stuff. When I imagine Time as an Element, I think Time AND Space, but it's an old element, and most of its forgotten, like Time Travel.

 

[M.I.A.]

Time I COULD see as an Element if it was limited, so time travel and all that would be like... forgotten, but you could briefly speed up or slow time like Haste and Slow, and for the attacking versions of it you could summon small meteors and stuff.

All your points are very valid, but I also wanted to touch on this idea of "Time" as an Element.


I'm opposed to ever listing "Time" as an Element in my database. I can't think of too many Time based Damage skills where Time is specifically needed as an Element. 


What I tend to do, I keep a "Typeless" element for skills that deal Damage but are of nonspecific origin. 


Most traditional Time Magic users will learn things like Gravity or Quake or even Meteor. In those particular cases, I find it best to assign:


-Gravity = Typeless


-Quake = Earth


-Meteor = Earth (if resistible) or Typeless (if non-resistible).


so long as your skill/weapon descriptions make it apparent to the player what they are to expect when using those skills/weapons/etc., it's more or less a matter of how much work you want to put into your database and how much complexity you want in your battle systems. 





-Mia

 

[Marillmau5]

i always thought oblivion had wayyy to many classes, 21 premade classes. so knock yourself out. I would like 100 elements so as long as i can beat the game with  FUN/interesting combinations of elements.

 

[Lord Semaj]

I can see a game with 100 elements.


This Water Elemental mobs is immune to Hydrogen and Oxygen damage but takes extra damage from Sodium.