What's The Point of Elements in Games?

Elements! They're everywhere in games. Suspiciously everywhere, come to think of it. Elemental motifs bleed into character design, locations, battle mechanics, story, and more. But what makes it so appealing to use elements in so many different ways? Let's take a tour of the elements and see how their extreme flexibility can help build a game.

Featuring:
Kingdom Hearts
Golden Sun
Borderlands 2
Persona 3
Xenoblade Chronicles 2
Pokemon Sword and Shield
Final Fantasy XIII
Ring Fit Adventure
Final Fantasy X
Breath of the Wild
Lost Odyssey
Luigi's Mansion
Pikmin
Skies of Arcadia

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[KanaevM]

To stun Thor with lighting in the first SMT and laugh at irony.

[TheRealEvab]

One more thing about elements is that they're almost universally recognizable, at least within games themselves. You will often already intuitively know what fire is going to do to wood vs stone, or what electricity will do to water and metal. It's an entire system that is mostly intuitive, or can at least be learned very quickly, in the cases of more unique elements.

Ring Fit Adventure's use of elements to balance workouts is genius, by the way.

[TheKarishi]

The bit about elemental locations reminds me of a one-off joke in Stargate's TV series, where the team thinks at first they've arrived on an "ice planet" only to find that they're on Earth in Antarctica. It turns out worlds are BIG.

[ordo]

Recently played OMORI and having emotions as the elemental basis definitely was novel to me. The player can play with different strategies in mind to take advantage of whatever emotion. You can have your team's skills play off of one emotion or vary it so you can deal with any. I liked beating my enemies when they were angry so I get more experience after the match, but there is incentive to have them defeated in other emotional states: happy gives more clam (which is money) and likely chance of dropped items, and sad gives you less of everything (but is far easier to deal with since the enemy is weakened).

[pn]

In Megaman Battle Network, while the elements are still used for weaknesses, they’re mostly used for their secondary attributes like status effects and Wood having good combo value

[Sephiel]

The other thing about elemental systems that makes them so universal is that they're instantly understandable across all cultures. Everyone will understand that water is good against fire so you don't have to spend a lot of time explaining things dragging the start of the game down.

[ikagura]

My favourite element is the one of surprise.

[flarecoils]

Pokemons elemental system is amazing to me, not just because of how uniquely every type interacts with one another, but also with how every type interacts with different moves, items and abilities. Having trouble with moves like spore and poison powder? use a grass type. dont want a pokemon with prankster to bother you? can't prank an evil dark type. wanna really boost your electric types power? electric terrain does that and prevents you from falling asleep. theres so much variety and nuance to how every pokemon reacts to a given situation that you can find a use for so many different pokemon.

[kirbyofthestarsfan]

6:56
Funnily enough, of all games that address this, is... Kirby Star Allies
In that game, elements are split in Sizzle, Blizzard, Zap, Splash and Bluster; or fire ice electric water and wind

Electric moves are effective against water opponents just fine, but using water moves on electric bosses will also damage them more, as they'll be hurt by their own electricity

[kitzve]

I love how in Magic the Gathering/Duel Masters elements have no built-in advantage over each other, but the dynamics are still there. There's no rule saying that red monsters deals more damage to green monsters, but the playstyle of nonstop violence will beat out a bunch of tanky creatures a lot of the time. Not to mention that you can essentially make whatever elemental build you want, but will usually be confined to ~2 in order to build a deck that isn't too spread out and difficult to use. neato

[stevethepocket]

_Magicka_ had an interesting system where you have eight elements (fire, water, cold, life, arcane, earth/rock, lightning, and shield) that could be combined in chains of up to four and cast either directionally or on/around the player. Most elements had opposites that could be used to "delete" them from your combo bar but also serve as hard counters to each other as well as cause problems when used in conjunction between co-op partners (don't cross the beams!) Some combos automatically turn into sub-elements that only take up one of the four slots once formed: cold+water for ice, fire+water for steam, and water+arcane for poison (that last one might have been exclusive to the sequel? I don't remember using it). Arcane made for some fun unconventional combos; with most elements it would make a beam of deadly energy, but combined with shield it would plant a bunch of proxy mines.

[Iinneus]

A bunch of people have mentioned similar things, but I really like when elements have these bonus passive effects that change the way you play, leading to more _styled_ play rather than _optimal_ play. For example, in Pokémon, they made Electric-types immune to paralysis. Now, even if Electric isn't the best type for a situation based purely on "are electric-type moves super-effective", you may still get a lot of use out of that passive effect!

Though there's also the more... maybe 'obvious' way to do this? Something like Kingdom Hearts 2's Fire/Ice/Lightning magic! Fire spins around you and activates quickly, great for stunlocking enemies and hitting things up close. Ice is straightforward, shooting ahead of you and knocking enemies back. Lightning instantly strikes down, and tends to draw enemies upwards, helping you launch enemies and juggle them, or just fight already airborne things.

If anything, in systems like that, elemental weaknesses are moreso just a good way to trick the player into learning about bonus effects! In an early stage, you hit an enemy with electricity because they're robotic or made of water, but then you learn "oh this stuns people" and when you're fighting lategame enemies with no weaknesses, you're still using that effect!

[juanrodriguez]

We need a kitchen RPG where the characters are food and they attack with sugar, salt, oil, smoke, meat, sauce, etc, and use kitchen tools such as spoons and spatulas as the weapons.

[appelofdoom]

I like any game that just goes ''you know what screw it let's do something'' with the elements. Like kingdom of loathing throwing spooky, stench and sleaze in alongside hot and cold or infamous second son using it's more urban setting well by having the elements you get access to be smoke, neon, digital and concrete.

[fionagibson]

My favorite elemental interaction is in SMT games with one specific element. Almighty attacks can’t be blocked. Most of the time they can’t be resisted. Magic reflection doesn’t reflect them. The only counterbalance is that most demons can’t learn them and they can’t ever hit a weakness. It’s an interesting elemental tier system, Almighty above the rest.

[Generalth]

One reason why elements are so ubiquitous is because they actually exist in the real world. Fire, electricity, sound; all of these are real phenomena that work in different ways. They're distinct from each other and from more "physical" attacks like shooting with a bullet or hacking with an axe.

Elemental gameplay is as natural as a day/night cycle.

[clk]

as much as people meme on the game I like the element system of Genshin's being based around reactions, inflicting one element after another to produce a reaction. It adds a level of consciousness to using elements and trying to build a team around producing reactions that maximize damage contextually. So a eula comp totally winds up different from a hu Tao comp, or ayaka comp because all three characters have different methods of dealing damage and therefore, different comps, eula wanting superconduct, Hu Tao wanting vape, and Ayaka wanting freeze.

[mads_in_zero]

14:28 - Worth noting that Nomura is so good at individualizing them that their coats are all different. Even when they're in their hoods up, haven't met this person yet, you can tell them apart. For instance, Luxord has the widest sleeves to allow him to pull his cards from them. Axel conversely has the narrowest sleeves and overall fit.

[Densoro]

I particularly love the historical Chinese element structure (Wu Xing), because the interactions aren't limited to 'tearing down an opposing element, ' but also 'building it up.' This creates a setting where 'killing badly or killing well' are not the only interactions that characters may have. Not that I'm an expert, mind you :P Just an overexcited American.

Rather than having a designated healing magic, you may have to work out on a case-by-case basis what will heal each party member. If your Wood party member is hurting, use Hydro Pump as a healing spell!

Much like elemental personality motifs, these elemental interactions can happen _symbolically_ in conversation, medicine, or even _plot structure:_
You might have a character whose Hot-Blooded attitude is causing problems, so Cold words might knock them down a peg -- or you may have a more Flowery character egg them on, throwing fuel on their proverbial fire.
A character may contract an illness that steals their fire, requiring a hot, bitter medicine to restore their inner flame.

This sense of the elements affecting everyday life would be enhanced with BotW-style elemental reactions in the environment.

On top of this, light and dark are used as _modifiers_ for the five elements. A gleaming light metal like silver has different connotations than cold, dark wrought iron. This builds variations of each element _directly into_ the system.

Because Wu Xing comes from _an actual real-world belief system, _ it concerns itself with every facet of life. We can still have standard magic brawls, but Wu Xing's structure allows you to believe that the elements embody _more than that._

[thebigchungus]

I like how NEO TWEWY handles its element system beyond just hitting an enemy’s weakness, with a pin’s base Psych archetype being affected due to its elemental affinity. For example, Stuck in the Middle is a Psychic Shotgun pin and those tend to typically inflict knockback but since it’s a Gravity variant, Stuck in the Middle draws in enemies instead, making it great for positioning and pulling in enemies into traps and Mashups that require more precision. And this same philosophy also applies to a lot of the pins, with each element having unique effects/passive buffs applied to them
>Darkness pins get Killing Blow (ability that increases damage based off of how low an enemy’s’ HP is) and confusion

>Sound pins get Groove Boost (increases the amount of Groove earned landing combos with the pin's psych) and increased charge speed

>Ice pins get freezing (duh)

>Fire pins get burning, Electric pins get shock, and Poison pins get poison for different variants of DoT

>Time pins get slowdown, making them great for hitting the Beatdrop sweetspot

>Water pins get Take Five (recharges pins at a much faster rate when not using Psychs for a prolonged period)

>Stone pins get entombment

>Kinesis pins can summon debris that hangs around for a short period of time for additional damage if an enemy comes into contact with it, like say a train rolling into a penguin and just deleting it from existence

>Light pins get HP Vampire (which gives you health back)

>Gravity pins gets knockdown, launchers, and pulls

>Burst and Wind pins gets knockback with differing properties

The Mashups also add a lot to this system and it’s really damn neat.

>Gravity Mashup is basically a more powered up version of KH2’s Magnet and is also great for interrupts

>You can not only freeze enemies with the Ice Mashup but also bounce them around on ice spikes for additional damage with moves such as Poltergeist and Massive Hit

>Water Mashup can not only be used for juggling but also for defense since you can bait enemies into running into the water geysers

>Fire Mashup can absolutely BTFO large enemies/rhinos since their constantly moving hitboxes stack up additional damage overtime from the lingering flames, and you can combine this with the Black Hole or knockdown psychs/pins to make sure the enemies stay there to feel the effects

>Time Mashup can also stop almost any enemy/boss in place

>It’s one of the harder Mashups to position but if you utilize it just right, you can bounce around enemies into the cages of an Electric Mashup for knockback, use it for area denial for enemies such as bears, wolves, and birds, stack up damage on large enemies such as mammoths and dinos since their large sizes means more hitboxes spread across the cage, or hold them in place at the edge with status effects or Black Hole/Snare Trap to increase its overall damage on trapped enemies

>Wind Mashup breaks out into 6 tornadoes that knocks away enemies, making it great for crowd control, and can absolutely tear through enemy defenses such as Leo Cantus Armo’s armor