ALTERNATE ELEMENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

Uh, the ancient Chinese weren't game designers dawg. They didn't have Pokemon or what the fuckever in mind during the crafting of this aspect of their culture.

hahahaha

They have a reasoning for the elementals and their interaction, and this system was developed looong ago, I believe even in the BC's. There is a "This element generates another" and a "This element destroys another", so to give an example:

Wood can feed fire and make it stronger, thus "generating" it.

Earth absorbs or makes the water into mud, thus "destroying" it.

Water rusts Metal.

We don't really take it seriously nowadays as we know more through science on the chemical reactions of stuffs, but I suppose that was a good explanation for their time. But yeah, obviously it was not designed with games in mind, so you'd need some explaining to do if you use it.

post=99879
hahahaha

They have a reasoning for the elementals and their interaction, and this system was developed looong ago, I believe even in the BC's. There is a "This element generates another" and a "This element destroys another", so to give an example:

Wood can feed fire and make it stronger, thus "generating" it.

Earth absorbs or makes the water into mud, thus "destroying" it.

Water rusts Metal.

We don't really take it seriously nowadays as we know more through science on the chemical reactions of stuffs, but I suppose that was a good explanation for their time. But yeah, obviously it was not designed with games in mind, so you'd need some explaining to do if you use it.

No, it's Wood insults (does not work well against) Metal and destroys earth, water doesnt destroy metal, it destroys fire. Metal is destroyed by fire.



The arrow points to the element it destroys. You have to remember that you can forge metal with fire, plants aren't as flammable as you think, you pour water on the ground and it goes away, but you still cut plants with metal, and put out fires with water. This is BC China we're talking about, and it makes lots of sense to me.

Their ancient medicines and lots of things are based on this (i think). I personally think it's a more interesting system than the boring 4 greek elements you see in too many games.

But I do know there's also the five types of creatures. Winged, er... Scaled, Shelled, Nonwinged, Beast ... actually my memory isn't serving me quite right here, but it's kind of weird.

post=99873

post=99870
Considering you don't know anything of why that's the case, that's a very culturally ignorant thing to say.

Wood beats Earth? Earth beats water? Sorry, but that's just silly. That's just a case of some designers doing a horrific job of trying to create a paper-rock-scissors system. I mean honestly, everybody bad designer is better than that.

Makes sense to me. Perhaps you're just trying to troll people.


PS:
WIP your forum software has a heart attack when I try to enter kanji.

The stuff in space was the Fifth Ether kind of element. Anyway it's still way overused, that isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's quite a relief when a game has something of it's own element system than the fire earth water wind thing.

I personally use the 6 you'll find on that funny set of triangles in the symbol I was going to use for the game called WeaponSoul (before it became a game engine). Those 6 are colors, might have names, or symbols, or whatever (even though the engine supports an arbitrary amount of elements and types).

For me it's a bit more science fiction as they're actually just generalizations on different things you can do with the laws of physics in an artistic sense.

post=99962

post=99873

post=99870
Considering you don't know anything of why that's the case, that's a very culturally ignorant thing to say.

Wood beats Earth? Earth beats water? Sorry, but that's just silly. That's just a case of some designers doing a horrific job of trying to create a paper-rock-scissors system. I mean honestly, everybody bad designer is better than that.

Makes sense to me. Perhaps you're just trying to troll people.

Nope, maybe I'm just trying to not troll people. If you have an Earth elemental in a game, and you attack it with wooden weapons, is that supposed to be some sort of weakness? "Oh noes, not a wooden staff, wood grows from the ground, so a wooden staff is my bane." I'm right in saying that that doesn't make sense. Using water or a fire extinguisher on a fire makes A LOT of sense. Attacking an Earth elemental with a wooden weapon, and expecting that to be more damaging than any other attack, now that doesn't make sense. Earth beats water? So if you're fighting a water elemental, and you dump a pile of dirt on it, it's supposed to be vanquished? If it were a comic book, and Spiderman through dirt on Hydroman, would that defeat him? Seems more likely that using a freezing ability would auto-kill a water elemental.

It is status quo for RPG-players to be slamming elements of a game for not making sense, even if it's silly and trivial to criticize it, like "Why aren't there more residential buildings in this city, and where do they get their food from?". On the other hand, these elemental weaknesses are really illogical, and people seem to be in favor of it. But if it was in a professional JRPG, the same people would be slamming it.

I mean, people are like "yeah, you might need to explain why it works this way, but I can see how it made sense 3,000 years ago when people didn't really know anything." Well it wasn't that long ago that people still thought bloodletting was a good medical treatment, they were wrong, and again, it wouldn't be logical to put bloodletting in a game as a healing technique that actually works.

MOG you are my favorite person right now due to this thread.

post=99983
Pokemon did have a good element system, but no light element?

Yeah, I always thought that was weird.

How the does paper beat rock by just wrapping around it? fuck that shit

EVERY BATTLE SYSTEM NEEDS THESE ELEMENTS: LKNGKLSNGLS

OTHERWISE IT IS NOT A GOOD ELEMENTAL SYSTEM

THANK YOU GOODNIGHT SIRS

You cannot cut a rock with scissors and you will only destroy the scissors if you tried.