Elements and typing.

[elementalhero76]

So I was thinking if I need a re-balancing of my elemental system for my future games and my writings today at work while i was pushing carts in the gusti8ng stormy weather we had today (gusts up to 40 MPH) and it hit me as I was trying to hear myself whistle (throwing my voice) and others out there (customers, etc.) in the wind. Naturally, physics wise, Wind affects Sound. Yet originally I had wind and sound cancel each other out elementally.

Now this poses a question: Would I rather have wind beat sound based enemies or vice versa, or leave it as is with both neither affecting each other?

Discuss.

Also for reference: sound shatters Ice-based foes.

16 current Elements: Earth, fire, wind, water, ice, lightning, light, spirit, dark, metal, sound, time matter (treat as space, poison- and radiation based) and illusion.

Also should I split matter into many elements such as space, poison and radiation (those that will get me 18 elemental types)?

Edit: after some thought I am thinking of splitting matter into many types and adding new ones:

Toxic, chaos, space, and order, and matter gets renamed to Radio for its original purpose of radiation attacks and damage.

Edit2: I added Shadow and split Spirit into it antithesis and its original.

Yet balancing will be a mess now.

[Archem]

I've always been a fan of doing things one of two ways: Either keep it simple and have a small number of elements with various aspects to each (fire as an element, burn as a status, overheated as a debuff, illuminate as a world ability, and all of it off of one thing) or have a wide variety of regionally-contained elements with lots of overlap (poison, bleeding, radiation all existing but functioning similarly and only appearing in separate regions to keep things interesting without overwhelming a player from too many status effects). Right now, you're trying to have a large pool of different elements with unique characteristics, and this has drawbacks in a few ways. There's the balance nightmare that you mentioned, but there's also the issue of teaching the player all the characteristics of each element (with a good chance that they'll be overwhelmed by possibilities), you'll struggle to keep a fair balance of appearances for each, you can have the issue of making each one unique enough that it deserves a place in the game, there's the problem of having too many skills or items that are themed on one specific thing, and so many other issues.

My take is that you should find the elements you like best and focus on making those as complex as possible, and ditch everything that you don't need. If you can find ways to compress two or more elements into one, do that. Wind and sound can double up, and you open the door for new abilities that take elements of one or both by doing so. If it also means that the player doesn't need to consult a handbook to figure out what works best in a given situation, that's great. If you want to have non-traditional elements, that gives you even more room to experiment. It also makes it easier to balance if you can trim that 18 down to 8.

[Prpl_Mage]

As Archem is getting into, more isn't always better.

You need to stop and ask yourself, what is the point of all these elements? Is the system based around elements having a big role to play? Or is it just to create variety?

Some games have a lot of elements but they are more or less pointless. In Diablo 3 for example, there are 7 elements: fire, frost, lightning, poison, arcane, holy and physical but enemies lack resistances. Players do have resistance, but most gear come with " all resistance bonus" rather than a single element. In the end there is no real point to the elements besides gear that increases fire damage by 10% or something in which case it just becomes a variable for damage.

Several games put wind, lightning and holy in the same element, water and ice as one, earth, poison, gravity as one and so on. Either way, I don't think that more elements is what you need, unless you have a really good plan.