Why don't more games invent new, unique elements? Why does it always have to be fire/ice/wind/earth/light/dark/etc?

[rusty_shackleford]

spammers are annoying, just copy-pasting old threads to try to get past the approval. It's a good thing I remember everything posted here.

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[WaterMage]

One type of magic that I wish more games had is METAL based magic. Golden Wizards/Cathay Alchemists are quite great in Warhammer.

[OnTilt]

I don't think that some new exotic elements are needed that often. You can get plenty of variations from the basic six, something like this:
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I loved these diagrams in the old DND books. I would ponder them for hours. I think more than anything else hypothetical metaphysics in fantasy is what captivated me.

[Tadeusz]

I loved these diagrams in the old DND books. I would ponder them for hours. I think more than anything else hypothetical metaphysics in fantasy is what captivated me.

That's what got me into Planescape as well

[J1M]

Brandon Sanderson might be a source of other ideas. I only read the Allomancy book, where people can consume metal shavings to fuel meta-human abilities.

[A Chinese opium den]

spammers are annoying, just copy-pasting old threads to try to get past the approval. It's a good thing I remember everything posted here.

Thousands of bots registering to recreate 3 obscure question+poll threads each...

[Irenaeus]

I don't think that some new exotic elements are needed that often. You can get plenty of variations from the basic six, something like this:

LOL I was going to rate Agree only to scroll down and see that I had already rated Agree back in April.

[DecadeRiptide]

spammers are annoying, just copy-pasting old threads to try to get past the approval. It's a good thing I remember everything posted here.

What are the requirements to be approved anyway. I only linked a video or something I think

[J1M]

Darksiders 3 featured four elements for Fury's hollow magic: flame, storm, force, and stasis.

[DecadeRiptide]

I think I made a thread on this a while ago. Only thing that I notice is that Chinese Devs usually use black a lot for things like poison or corruption, where as western Devs use green or purple for poison usually.

It does get boring seing the same element gameplay mechanics over and over. Way overdone.

Witcher 3 was cool that you could apply oils to your sword with creative names. I can't really think of any other games that had element mechanics that kept me interested. In fact most of my favourite games are those that had none.

[ArcaneLurker]

related:
People cry about environmental effects in Larian games but they're some of the very few games where I felt like elemental damage types actually mattered to a significant degree. Being able to completely warp the battlefield was cool and made you feel powerful — or the enemy you're fighting is powerful.
Sure it might have been too easy to flip ground effect elements, but it's better than elements having zero effect on the environment at all.

I can't think of a single strategy RPG game where there is a real gameplay focus on altering the environment to tactically advantage yourself. It's usually just "shoot the chandelier" or "shoot the explosive barrel" or " kick the enemy off the cliff" which has been in games since they were 2D.

The problem with D:OS is that you can win with that one combination almost every time. The gameplay needs to think about the challenges it presents, to force more creativity.

[Havitner]

Have you tried gittin good?

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[Cedric]

I honestly find "invented new elements" kind of tedious. It feels a bit like you made orcs but decided to give them a different name - but they're still orcs.

I'm pretty happy with the big four, light, dark, aether. Or wood/metal if Asian.

[TKVNC]

I honestly find "invented new elements" kind of tedious. It feels a bit like you made orcs but decided to give them a different name - but they're still orcs.

I'm pretty happy with the big four, light, dark, aether. Or wood/metal if Asian.

As far as alternative names, Dragon's Dogma does a really nice job naming things in Middle English.

Other than that, Warhammer Fantasy has a great magic system. Adding things like Celestial magic.

[Tweed]

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Most innovations aren't, it's just renaming. It's hard to come up with genuinely novel ideas that don't suck.

[just]

phyre

[DDC]

I just found some new ones in Chrono Gear: Warden of Time.

"Civilization" and "Hope" are elements. Not ******* making this up.

[rusty_shackleford]

I think adding more layers rather than more elements is probably better.
e.g., a lot of JRPGs seem to consider "wood" an element, I assume this is probably based upon east asian philosophy(?), but in western RPGs this will be filed under 'earth' or 'nature', which is itself a nebulous element now that I think on it

[DemoGraph]

I think adding more layers rather than more elements is probably better.

Yes. But the only game I know that did this wasn't RPG. It wasn't even a game, but a mod.

Thaumcraft mod for Minecraft. It had, IIRC, 6 basic elements (4 elements + order and chaos) and 30+ derivatives. I don't quite remember them, but let's say that life = water + earth, magic = chaos + fire, conflict = order + chaos, etc. All spells, crafts, etc. required their combinations (staff of fireball = get staff, enchant with fire, magic and power elements). And sometimes, e.g. for research, you had to make chains of elements with neighbouring components (magic - chaos - conflict).

Magicka doesn't have layers but it had 6 or 8 basic elements, and all spells are combinations of them and spell form (ray, circle, shield).