Current Events > Is six elements too many?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I did a pretty thorough comparison of lots of different element systems for a game I'm making, and I decided the best would be six elements, where each has two weaknesses:

Red beats orange and yellow
Orange beats yellow and green
Yellow beats green and blue
Green beats blue and purple
Blue beats purple and red
Purple beats red and orange

This gives the designer the opportunity to choose enemies of different elements in order to give the player anything from a clear best option (red and orange enemies? Use purple) to a choice between two (red and yellow? You can go with red or purple) to having a pure risk/reward choice (red and green? Orange, yellow, blue and purple give you the risk and the reward, while red, green and none don't). It also allows the player's choice to be influenced by additional effects (fire causes burns, thunder paralyzes, etc).

But there's a problem in that unless I can find a really really great selection of six elements, the player is going to have a hard time remembering what beats what (Skies of Arcadia, anyone? That had six elements with two weaknesses apiece and I had to keep checking the manual).

The runner up was pretty much the same system with only five, but it has no strategy whatsoever if you have multipe enemy elements. There's always a clear choice.

What does CE think? Is six elements too many?
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persona 5 had like 8 of them, pokemon games have even more than that, etc

dont think it will be a big deal
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Does pokemon have a closed loop though?

I mean there's an eight-element loop and then there are two four-element loops.
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DevsBro posted...

Does pokemon have a closed loop though?

I mean there's an eight-element loop and then there are two four-element loops.

6 is fine. Magic: the Gathering does 5 with each element having 2 allies and 2 enemies

B friends with RU opposes WG
R friends with BG opposes UW
U friends with WB opposes RG
W friends with UG opposes BR
G friends with RW opposes BU

for 6 you can maybe do something like 2 friends, 2 enemies, and 1 neutral
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As long as it's consistent and somewhat intuitive, you're fine.
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i really like the idea of it being based on color and not anything better-defined like 'fire' or something like that. red can mean a few things - obviously fire - but it could do double duty as slash damage. or bleed damage.
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Final Fantasy regularly has more.
Fire/Ice/Lightning
Wind/Earth/Water
Dark/Holy

Persona 3 had nine.
Three physical damage types (Slashing/Piercing/Bludgeoning)
Fire/Ice/Lightning/Wind
Dark/Holy

Persona 5 has ten.
Two physical damage types (normal/gun, only one enemy is weak to normal though)
Fire/Ice/Lightning/Wind
Psychic/Nuclear/Dark/Holy
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Six is fine. Sounds good to me.

Technically, one of Skies' elements had only one weakness and one resistance, and the Dreamcast version's manual had several of the match-ups wrong.
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hollow_shrine posted...

Persona 3 had nine.
Three physical damage types (Slashing/Piercing/Bludgeoning)
Fire/Ice/Lightning/Wind
Dark/Holy

Persona 5 has ten.
Two physical damage types (normal/gun, only one enemy is weak to normal though)
Fire/Ice/Lightning/Wind
Psychic/Nuclear/Dark/Holy

There's also Allmighty.
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Rock paper scissors lizard Spock?
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LordFarquad1312 posted...

hollow_shrine posted...

Persona 3 had nine.
Three physical damage types (Slashing/Piercing/Bludgeoning)
Fire/Ice/Lightning/Wind
Dark/Holy

Persona 5 has ten.
Two physical damage types (normal/gun, only one enemy is weak to normal though)
Fire/Ice/Lightning/Wind
Psychic/Nuclear/Dark/Holy

There's also Allmighty.

u mean divine
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MoistenedYouth posted...

u mean divine

No, he's right. It's Almighty. Divine = Holy (Hama/Bless/Expel).

I debated including it because it's mostly just treated as non-elemental damage, but in both P3 and P5 there are enemies that resist almighty. And we know that because those enemies resist damage from all out attacks. So it is actually it's own distinct element. I believe there are enemies that resist almighty in SMTIV as well.
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