Archive:Elements

This proposal has been accepted

The development team has discussed the contents of this article and has decided that it should be implemented as described. But the implementation is not finished yet. You can help to bring the features described here into the game.

We decided that there are 8 elements in the mana world.

• Fire
• Water (Ice)
• Earth
• Air (Lightning)
• Light
• Darkness
• Time
• Space

Each element has:

• A playable race associated with it
• Weapons that inflict damage with the property of the element
• A magic discipline associated to it
• Creatures that have the property of the element

Elemental Effect

Elemental-based skills / items / weapons effect (damage, cure, etc) targets based on elemental alignment. Depending on the target's elemental alignment, the effect can be increased or reduced.

Each element has an opposing element. It deals 200% damage to the opposing element and 50% damage to itself:

• Fire and Water
• Earth and Air
• Darkness and Light
• Time and Space

According to the backstory, 4 of these elements were used to create "the Guardian of Death" Fire, Earth, Darkness, Time) and the other 4 elements (Water, Air, Light, Space) were used to create "the Guardian of Life". That separates the elements into two groups of life aligned elements and death aligned elemets.

Elements deal 150% damage to elements of the other alignment other than the opposing element and 75% damage to the elements of the same alignment other than itself.

Comments

I sort of don't understand why we're listing "Ice" and "Lightning" here, unless it's simply to remind us where they will apply. I just don't want the Tritan to become associated with ice, nor the Sparron with lightning. For air I wanted to use an Air/Aero/Wind-scheme, which seems underused in most adventure/rpgs. With the water spells.. try to think of the difference between Marle and Frog in 'Chrono Trigger' .. I would prefer if we _mostly_ stuck to Frog's type of water-magic. I want a Geyser spell! - Dabe 18:16, 18 September 2006 (CEST)

That part about Life and Death being constructed of opposite elements was sort of a device for the human/demon struggle. The idea was that humans believed themselves to be retainers to the fictional element of 'Life', whereas the demons believe themselves to be retainers to 'Death'. I had not imagined much in the means of it effecting gameplay. We should talk about this at some point, because it raises the question "Why bother?" .. It seems much more effective and interesting to leave the conflict at a question of, "Who is the retainer to the element of 'Mana' ..?" This would be more fun, because both races would be arguing over which was the true retainer to an element that only exists in their imaginations. Perhaps we should reserve ourselves to getting the cycle of Life and Death agreed upon, both story and gameplay-wise. - Dabe 18:16, 18 September 2006 (CEST)

Time and Space break the convention as "elements" and are exceedingly difficult to implement magic-wise. In "Secret of the Mana", the 8 elements included Luna (Metal) and Wood instead. I thus submit a counter-proposal as follows: File:ElementWheel.png

• 8 Elements: Metal, Fire, Light, Air, Wood, Water, Dark, and Earth (in that order)
• Each element thus has 2 neighboring elements, prehaps with moderate resistance and/or easier to learn spells
• Each element thus has a opposing element which it contradicts (and thus weak against)

--ArcRiley 16:41, 7 December 2006 (CET)

In Secret of Mana Luna did not represent metal but moonlight and Dryad represented life and nature and not wood. So that SoM argument doesn't count. --Crush00:43, 8 December 2006 (CET)

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elemental_spirits_%28Seiken_Densetsu%29 , also metal and wood are found in traditional (real life) elemental wheels from various cultures, are easily seen as opposites of each other, fit well on the wheel, and make for good races & magic --ArcRiley 10:07, 11 December 2006 (CET)

A lot of you already know this, but I'm seriously opposed to the idea of using time and space as elements. It just makes no sense whatsoever. Yes, there WILL be people who want haste/slow/stop/quicken spells, but those can easily be used with the current elements. Fast as the wind, anyone? Use water/earth to slow your opponent. That sort of thing. It wouldn't be hard to implement at all. I also agree with Dabe: water and ice, although quite similar, and composed of the same elements, are altogether different. Water is, water. Ice is a darker, harder, and grittier form of water. -- Pauan 06:17, 3 January 2007 (CET)