ELEMENTAL WEAKNESSES (AND BATTLES THAT MAKE YOU THINK)

Up until now I had spells using EW doing triple damage, which means that there really is no substitute for that spell - it will almost always be the best choice. After reading this topic though, I think I should reduce it to x1.5 or x2. That way, an enemy that happens to be weak to fire might still be hit with water attacks sometimes (just to reapply the Slow debuff) and would allow for some cycling (thus making the battle more interesting) instead of just always using Fire.

Yeah, I think this is the way to go. Especially with added debuffs, it makes things much more interesting. The player is presented with a real choice. The choice of debuffs is the same in every battle, but the choice is weighted differently for different enemies, so that the player has to change things up sometimes.

Another way to make spells different, besides added effects, is to tier them. So fire costs 6 MP and does 40 damage, then later in the game you get blizzard which costs 8 MP and does 50 damage, then later you get aero which costs 10 MP and does 60 damage, then later you get fire2 which costs 12 MP and does 70 damage...

Low
- Elemental coverage becomes very secondary/redundant
- Players can't use resistance to combat a powerful ability

I think this just means your game has too big of a margin of allowable error for the player. That is to say, it's too easy. It's definitely possible to make enemies that will kill you if they do 50% more damage, but won't if they don't... or to make an enemy that is much more likely to kill you if it lasts 50% longer... The same can be said for 25%, or even 10%.

post=209425
Also, not all damage-dealing spellcasters must have access to all elements in the game.

I would take that a step further and say that you should not give any character access to all elements. Doing so will almost always trivialize the choice (the enemy is weak against fire, which element should I use?) thereby defeating the purpose of having elements in the first place. Alternatively you could give a character access to all elements, but make the skills very different like Ice is multi target, Fire is singletarget and Lightning is the most powerful, but requires a turn to charge up first.

post=209448

post=209425
Also, not all damage-dealing spellcasters must have access to all elements in the game.

I would take that a step further and say that you should not give any character access to all elements. Doing so will almost always trivialize the choice (the enemy is weak against fire, which element should I use?) thereby defeating the purpose of having elements in the first place. Alternatively you could give a character access to all elements, but make the skills very different like Ice is multi target, Fire is singletarget and Lightning is the most powerful, but requires a turn to charge up first.

Welcome to Diablocide.

Princess - Incredible, but expensive, single-target Fire
Illinois - Weak hit-all Ice; basic spell was anti-Demon (x1.5 damage to Demons (every major boss))
Collin - Single-target variable damage Volt (could be as weak as Illinois, or as strong as Princess); much cheaper than Princess
Eon Feather - Randomly targeting 2-3 shots of Axis (holy/evil mixed); cost/total damage between Collin's average and Princess

Ta-daaaa. Note that there are no basic attacks and that SP pools are 500 for every character, and that you could instantly switch out any character at no cost.

I've mentioned something like this earlier, I think, but just a plain ol' elemental system - even with characters that have all/many elements - can work out if the costs are high.

Look at Etrian Odyssey. Alchemists (haven't played EO3 and its Zodiacs yet) have very expensive - but quite powerful - elemental magic of all kinds. They're usually OHKO spells when you hit a weakness. Too bad you can only use them 5-10 times each dungeon run, or less if they're an even more expensive hit-all spell!

Gunners have less expensive elemental shots and Troubadors/Oil items can enchant weapons with certain elements, but both are not as powerful as magic, and Oils are very useful against FOEs/bosses but neither cheap nor common.

Good discussion here. I think EWs are fun just because you can make bigger damage numbers appear on screen. But there should be some way to balance the use of EW. Like you could have Mp actually matter. Persona 3 certainly did that... I don't think you could buy Mp restore items. I really like Craze's idea to have elemental items that are scarce.

On the other hand, you shouldn't go too far the other way and have EWs become too confusing. Like how Vagrant Story had tons of different damage types. Too much! If you are using something like Magic Stones from FFIX to assign abilities to characters, then maybe something like auto-scan would be a good choice. Or you could have dinos like in Chrono Trigger that are weak to lightning attacks but store up lightning damage and counter attack; basically what some other people said.

-CM

post=LightningLord2
I think that there are a lot of ways to make the element system interesting, and there should be some kind of other mechanic besides damage multiplier.

I like that concept, however very few games do that.

And I am not refering to obvious things like Saga Frontier where fire lets the target character burning, ices usually freezes enemy and so on... I am talking about first rpg I played: Chrono Trigger.

And seriously, Chrono Trigger, in my opnion, is the j-rpg that most sucessfully made all battles rounded to some degree of fun and interest.

I like how the same spell affects enemies in different ways, not just bosses. One cool example is that orc, troll or whatever in Denadoro mountain where you use fire on it and his wooden hammer burns off. The damage your fire spell deals is not big, but with that you disable its strongest attack and reduces its defense greatly. Next turn you can actually just finish it off with a normall attack or any other spell just as fine.

There was Nizbel too, which you had to use lightning to break its defense, but she stored that lightning to release a full screen attack some turns later and regained defense.

The key factor here is that most of the time, the battle will only last long enough for you to complete the cycle one time and a half, or two at worst case. Meaning: either do a very complex cycle for bosses, or make boss battles shorter - which I do prefer since the good point in Chrono trigger was that you had easier boss battles in favor of harder regular battles against the usual lame bothersome regular battles with extensive and tiresome boss fights.

Another point is that usually we only mention damage to enemies and not to players, or do the player part too simple. Persona has a good point at that though.