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What happened to elemental weapons?
Explorium
Member Posts: 395
Like title says...what happened to them?
No longer do I get swords that emit fire or ice or acid...no longer are enemies weak to different elemental types. Closest I can think of is WoW, where fire elementals are strong against fire...but they don't do it well at all. Because water/ice magic still does the same damage to them as any other mob. And I never saw different elemental weapons. EVE is only MMO that has weaknesses/strength, but it isn't land combat based like I personally prefer...kudos to it, though.
In Asheron's Call, I would have a sword that emit acid, Olthoi (a giant insect race), were really weak to it...but other mobs were strong or just neutral to it. I would also have piercing or bludgeoning weapons...some monsters were weak to piercing, others were strong against it. Or other weapons like water or fire...things like that.
These days you don't get nearly the variety as you did in AC,...my first MMO, and one of the reasons I played so much was the huge variety of weapons and how monsters were weak to different elements or damage types.
What happened to those days? Why don't MMOs actually have monsters that are weak AND strong against different elements? Why do I never get that awesome sword that emits acid or fire?
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Comments
You know the dumbing down in MMOs that people are constantly complaining about here? This is part of that.
As it turns out, having your progression gimped because you made a set of Ice Armor or specc'd into Ice Magic turns out to not be a big seller. Especially when your character is more or less locked into a specific type of elemental magic.
In a grouping required mmorpg, it's not a progression blocker, but then grouping required mmorpg don't sell well either.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I think the problem with elements and damages types is that it creates a rock paper scissors senario. Once you know the strengths and weaknesses of the element the most effective and most obvious tactic is to use the element the monster is weak against, like pokemon. It tends to distill down to just using rock whenever your opponent uses scissors.
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This is something I was thinking about while writing/reading the Simple Game Stats thread that I made recently, but I didn't get around to mentioning it. The elemental rock-paper-scissors wheel is not terribly interesting and I do not miss it at all in the games where it doesn't show up.
What is this elemental rock-paper-scissors you guys are talking about? not every mob in that game was a elemental and you just knew right away what its week against.
EVERY mob in that game had a weekness and it took you finding out what that weekness was, and let me list the different possiblitys.
you had Acid, Fire, Ice, Lightning, Bludge, Pierce, Slash. say you were a mace user, you had to know what mace to bring to the fight. You didnt just go get your Epic Mace from some stupid instance and use it on every mob from now till the end of time.
you had multiple maces with different elements on them and there was a never ending search for a better mace to use. The game also had Random loot drops somthing else that has been dumbed down i the WoW days off MMO's.
I am currently playing Asheron's Call with 2 RL friends, and we are loving it. Brings back memories of the good old days again, and the game is still fun as hell.
love you
Actually it makes MMORPGs deeper to not have Acid Mages with Acid Swords that constantly grind against one singular species of enemy all day (the ones weak to acid.)
In a game where every player had access to a broad spread of elements and you tactically chose the best one for the situation, this style of gameplay works. But let's not examples of shallow games of the past and pretend they were deeper than they were (other aspects of AC were deep, sure. But not this particular aspect.)
(I guess lizardbones already summed up this point nicely in post #3)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Acid mages and Ice spec???? lol some of you guys comenting obviously never played Asherons Call. First off there is no classes in that game.
2nd there is no Ice spec or Acid mage if you have War Magic you get ALL of the attack spells, wich means you dont fight the same creatures every time because your a " Acid Mage LOL " you shoot Acid at the creatures vulned to it and when you fight somthing that is week against fire you shoot fire at them.
yes i understand its hard to get this because people are to use to the dumbed down games of today where you get your best magic spell or best weapon and use that same spell and same weapon for ever.
You obviously have no clue what you're talking about but presenting arrogantly which is almost cute.
You could pick and choose your damage or element type in AC, not really sure how you could have played it and never realized this? Probably because you didn't.
War Magic allowed for all damage spell types from all four elements and all three physical damage types. A melee skill was only limited by one damage type, for example swords could only use piercing/slashing and not bludgeoning damage. All melee weapons came in the four respective elemental varities, however.
I really don't see how eliminating a complex strength/weakness system based on resistance types makes the game more complex, but given the amount of misinformation in your response that's not shocking.
Last I checked, it's not arrogant to calmly explain the realities facing certain styles of game design.
And even though AC worked that way, it doesn't change the fact that people did grind endlessly against certain elementally-weak mobs. Which is exactly what a good game design avoids.
AC had some strong points, but varied/interesting gameplay and strong combat weren't really some of them.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
There was nothing to specialize with; nothing to spec with towards to make you go a certain path, or rely on a certain elemental to dictate you were grinding a certain mob based on the spec. People hunted where the XP was high, not where they were specced. Every mage had access to every elemental spell, with the same strength, you just had to correctly choose which bolt to use against what mob.
The only thing with Asheron's Call you had to watch for was the elemental weapons, and it still didn't make or break you experience. And most people had a weapon for most of the popular mob types; bludge, pierce, fire, etc. But everyone had all debuff spells in all element schools, thus there was no, "Okay, I'm an Acid mage, let's go grind XXX mobs" it was, "OK, I'm a mage hunting XXX mobs. I should use this spell set instead of this spell set, as they are weak to one set and strong to another."
That completely changes the context of your reply. Did you play AC? And for the record, the character customization in terms of character advancement was top notch, you can hardly get close to that kind of character flexibility anywhere else, so I'd disagree and say it had quite the varied/interesting gameplay.
They still exist but probably in niche games.
I remember one time in the MMO that I'm playing, my elementalist was fighting against some bears and wolves in a snow covered map. I was stumped on why my character was dealing so little damage until I realized that she was using an ice based weapon from when she was in another map. A quick trip back to town to get the correct element weapon solved the issue.
In the same game, I remember a raid where there were bosses that were either weak to physical attacks or magic attacks but not both. These bosses were located down 2 seperate paths from a fork in the road and the group had to decide how to split the party.
There was also one time limited quest boss (easier version than the same raid boss) that I defeated recently who has strong protection against all things physical and most things magic. Her only weakness was against Lightning based attacks. However, she was surrounded by guards who deal a great amount of physical damage, which made it hard for magic users to survive. Some people recommended using Invisibility to pick off the guards except that there was also an enemy magic user who can see the invisible.
It's one of those things that i've sadly failed to notice until now, and I agree it's one of many things that are dumbed down in mmo's.
Any good rpg as far as im concerned should implement some sort of strengths and weakness to various mobs, and even the player. Even if it somehow seems unbalanced, which I don't think it is, players should gain an advantage for proper preperation they've made before tackling a dungeon/boss.
It's something I definently love about the Monster Hunter series to say the least.
Yesterday I had an experience that explains my problems with elemental weaknesses in MMORPGs.
I was playing Arkham Horror, a co-op board game. The players are working together to prevent the city from being destroyed. In the game, each player has a unique ability and a few skills, items, weapons, and spellbooks. Each player also has 3 pairs of stats with the option to gradually sacrifice some of one stat to boost the other. Players can trade items and spells but only when they are in the same location.
Some of the monsters in the game have Physical Immunity or Physical Resistance which negates or halves your bonus from physical weapons. There's also Magical Immunity and Magical Resistance which work the same way but for magical weapons and spells. Naturally, it's reckless to go into combat with one of these monsters wielding the wrong kind of weapon just as it is reckless to use only fire-based attacks against a fire-resistant enemy in Asheron's Call.
However, here's where Arkham Horror differs from AC. In Arkham Horror, time is of the essence. On almost every turn, a gate opens up and/or more monsters appear. It's very important to seal gates and defeat monsters quickly because not only do the monsters wander around blocking movement and attacking people, there are also really bad things that happen as the number of monsters and number of open gates gets too high. You can't waste a single turn. Ideally, you would like to have a great physical weapon before you fight an MR enemy and a great magical weapon/spell before you fight a PR enemy. If time permitted, you could get these from encounters or from other players. But this is a dangerous thing to do if you care about winning the game.
Since you can't let enemies linger for several turns, you may end up sending someone with no physical weapons to fight a MR monster simply because they're the only person who can get to it. You also sometimes get thrown into combat with a random monster during an encounter. Items and spells are too scarce to give each player all the tools they need. Time is too scarce to send each player to the monster they're suited to fight. The urgency and the scarcity make the immunities meaningful and interesting.
Where does this happen in an MMORPG? If switching from fire spells to acid spells is as quick and easy as moving a different button onto your hotbar, you can just do that when you reach a fire-resistant enemy. If skeletons are resistant to piercing and all you have is a spear, you can just fight in an area with no skeletons. The nature of the game gives you the freedom to fight whatever you want. There's no excuse for fighting creatures that aren't weak to your type of damage.
Weak argument. Because now people just grind any mob because it doesn't matter because they can just spam one speel all day long
Top MMOs: Asheron's Call, Shadowbane, EVE Online, Planetside
Played: Pretty much everything at one point or another
You could be 'gimped' if you didn't bother to consider what you were doing beforehand sure. But let's face it having to think and group in an mmo is so passe, when appealing to the lowest common denominator will always ensure you get the most subs.
Personally i'm looking forward to the days when mmos are simply one avatar and one auto-attack with no chatbox whatsoever. To hell with content I say.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
Exactly.
While to a degree it's part of the strategy of Arkham to try to acquire weapon types to offset your weakness, the system overall is far too random. Basically it takes pleasure in smacking players headfirst into the brickwall of monsters they're unable to deal with. While thematic, it's not as fun as a system as it could be if things were a little less random.
The game has to be dynamic enough to remain interesting for multiple playthroughs, but Arkham definitely borders on the "too random" side of things where at times you feel unable to influence the outcome. Still, I find that my groups beat the game ~90% of the time despite all these random factors.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Very few games nowdays let you advance faster by grinding against one mob than by questing or running dungeons (where, by their nature, you face many mob types.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Eh? You might have read my post a little quickly... I don't think we're in agreement.
I was saying that the physical/magical system in Arkham is good and fun because of the game's randomness, and that the elemental system in an MMO is bad and boring by contrast because of the utter predictability. The fact that you have complete control over what kind of enemies you're going to fight in an MMO means that I don't want to see an elemental weakness system.
No, those were the elements I was agreeing with (it's basically what my first post in this thread stated.)
My critique of Arkham was more that it takes it a few steps too far sometimes. When your Physical-heavy character wastes 2 turns not getting a Magic weapon (because shops are randomized) then gets randomly ambushed by a Phys-Immune monster, that's too random -- the player explicitly went out of their way to try to strategically address a deficiency then was randomly killed or injured by the game.
Whereas if either the shops or the ambushes were less random, player decisions would matter more. Certainly the game might need it's difficulty tweaked up a little at that point, but it would cause player decisions to be a little more impactful and interesting.
Maybe you don't agree with that extra critique though. Some players like straightforward games of chance.
But either way, we agree that when you have total control over what you fight an elemental weakness system isn't gonna work so well.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
This.
It'd be great to have a game where bronze and steel do roughly the same damage, but steel works on the fae and bronze works on demons or something.