WIP'S PROFILE

Slack is a square peg in a round hole for community use; it excels quite well for office work and that's it. I hope Google's new Hangouts can supplant it.

Discord is probably the most appropriate, but its circle-jerk gaming lingo is embarrassing. Its UX is also all over the map.

IRC is old, solid, and works. But it's barrier-to-entry is aggravatingly high.

One shared thread between the three options: all their clients are garbage. It's a sad state of affairs when mIRC is still such a widely used client. And the other two are built with Electron, which is cool but bloated tech. There is very little reason for Discord/Slack to be as fucking huge as they are. Same goes with the new Twitch app.

The last good piece of chat software was Google Talk.

Basically, all the options are shit.

author=Feldschlacht IV
-Quasar
-Starlight
-Shock Wave
-Acid Rain (Water obviously, yes. But it's also a Poison attack)
-Atomic Ray
-Diffuser
-Mirror Orb
-Flash Rain (Water and Ice, not just Water)
-Raid
-TekLaser

Some of those seem quite non-elemental (Quasar, TekLaser); others I could possibly pick out if I could remember their visuals (Starlight). Poison isn't an element; telegraphing statuses is gonna be difficult regardless. Mixing elements is much trickier, to be sure. I think it's bad design to do in general, but to each their own.

Truth be told, FFVI has some awesome spell effects. But you're chasing the wrong end of them; the ones that you can't discern what they are doing are bad visuals. They did a pretty good job overall, but missed the boat on a few of them. You are trying to account for intentionally bad visual designs later on.

Icons are not as good as telegraphing. Depending on what you want the player to feel, it absolutely can cost the player. If where the game actually tells me what's happening is the icon, that's where my attention will be. If the elemental type is not that big of an impact in battle strategy, I'll ignore the icon.

It was mentioned before, but probably bears repeating: how many spells will actually have disjointed visuals? If you have 100 spells and 10 of them are disjointed, the obvious answer would be to fix the 10.

author=Feldschlacht IV
I agree with the sentiment, but I can just as easily put icons (which for my game, would be two at most) in the attack names so I can make my energy rays look however I want them, right? Like, what if I want a bunch of funny ass energy rays? Creative direction shouldn't suffer if I can properly convey information at the same time.

Granted, I'm not saying I MUST do this and I insist on having weird confusing looking energy rays, but I don't want to get too complex into solving a simple "problem" that may not even be much of a problem.

If you want a bunch of funny ass energy rays that are inconsistent with all the others, it'll be noticed. Don't sacrifice game fluidity to suit creative direction; you're still making a game that needs to be played. Embrace consistent game design and don't swim against it. Just as you are designing rules for the player, you need rules to follow while making it.

Sure, you COULD make a spell that trips a player up. But breaking your own visual design rules only hurts the player and experience.

Again, icons are okay. They are easier to understand than long text, but not as good as a full visual. The visual is what sticks in the player's mind.

Did you even play the previous Zelda game? Their formula was so stale and factory-like it was barely enjoyable.

I'll say that BOTW has been the only open world game I have actually enjoyed. Primarily because it gives you a lot of guidance and that Zelda polish without just ditching you in a game with bad mechanics (Skyrim). The game is what you always envisioned you were playing in previous Zeldas. Not that MacGuffin bullshit they have done for DECADES.

What the fuck is wrong with you guys 2D games should never run below 60 FPS. Even 3D games shouldn't, but a locked 30 is at least acceptable.