Mechanics Poll: Elemental Healing Spells + Weaken: Element.

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

I say Heal 2x.

Healing/Damage is more basic than Weak/Halve, and so it... lost my thought.  Hm.  Weak/Halve is actually Weak(n)/Halve(n).  It modifies (n), where (n) can be either Healing or Damage.

Or maybe the naming convention is wrong, and it should be Double(n)/Halve(n); as in Double-Damage-or-Healing/Halve-Damage-or-Healing.

It doesn't really matter what you choose, so long as you apply it consistantly and make sure the player understands how it works.

[Vanya]

It's true about your naming convention, but he did use the term 'weak', double. And it seems pretty clear that in FF they mean weak and not double. And at least for me it does not compute that anything that is based on an element that you have a weakness to could under any circumstance heal you. In fact, I chose 1x dmg instead of 2x dmg because I rationalized that something intended to heal would not be as intense as something intended to wound.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

It's true about your naming convention, but he did use the term 'weak', double. And it seems pretty clear that in FF they mean weak and not double. And at least for me it does not compute that anything that is based on an element that you have a weakness to could under any circumstance heal you. In fact, I chose 1x dmg instead of 2x dmg because I rationalized that something intended to heal would not be as intense as something intended to wound.

I used "Weak" mostly because that's the in-game term.  The Damned accused me of coloring the poll with "Lightning Cure" - maintaining the Vanilla naming convention of "Weak" though probably adds more coloring to the poll than using the word "Cure" to clarify its a healing spell by default ever could - especially when I used an odd Element like Lightning and not a soothing one like Wind, which was intentionally avoided because I didn't feel Wind (what I was originally going to use) was neutral enough as an Element to get proper feedback.

I'm actually really surprised at how diverse and split the answers are.  Even with the actual "vote" being basically 50/50, many people on both sides have their own usually unique preferred method over every one of the "basic" options.

For anyone wondering - I'm actually in the same camp as Pickle Girl Fanboy.  I view "Weak" as "Double", and prefer that it consistently always "Doubles" what it does, except in the case of Undead where we need funky shit to occur and Element is used as the trigger.  I actually love the strange interactions like Half+Weak, Weak+Absorb, Weak+Boost, Half+Absorb, etc. etc. and feel turning what people consider "abuse" on its head is a way to bleed tons of design space from a really simple game engine.  I can go into much further detail on that in a manner similar to FDC did if anyone cares, but I'm really tired right now.

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

Absorb/Negate
Weak/Normal/Halve

Weak/Halve doesn't have to be the same as Double/Halve.  It should be up to the modder, really.

Maybe I need to work on my vocabulary for this - maybe we need other words for weak and halve.

Vanilla:
-Absorb and Negate are parallell.  You can be one, the other, or neither; but not both.
*Absorb
*Negate

-Instead of Weak, Halve, and Normal, I'll call them Resist, Affine (as in affinity), and Normal though Affine still isn't the correct word.
-Resist, Affine, and Normal are perpendicular to Absorb, but do not intersect with Negate.  Thus, they can interact with and modify Absorb (and be modified by it), but they can't do anything with Negate.  Negate overrules all others.
*Resist : Reduce damage or healing by (n)%
*Affine : Increase damage or healing by (n)%
*Normal : Do not modify damage or healing at all.

-Resist and Affine cancel each other out and become Normal.  Resist overrules Normal.  Affine overrules Normal.  All three become Normal.

Perhaps vulnerable is better than affine.  It's not exactly it, though.  I need a word that generates the same ideas as vulnerable, but is not intrinsincly positive or negative, though it can be modified as such.  Facilitation and multiplication are similiar ideas.

[Tea]

Sensitive?

[RandMuadDib]

maybe weak -is- the correct word, and halve should be re-labeled resist?

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

The word you choose isn't as important as your understanding of how Negate, Absorb, Weak, Normal, and Halve interact with each other.

[The Damned]

(By Zalera, I am a lazy bastard.)

I seriously put this off for like a couple of weeks. Geez....

I used "Weak" mostly because that's the in-game term.  The Damned accused me of coloring the poll with "Lightning Cure" - maintaining the Vanilla naming convention of "Weak" though probably adds more coloring to the poll than using the word "Cure" to clarify its a healing spell by default ever could - especially when I used an odd Element like Lightning and not a soothing one like Wind, which was intentionally avoided because I didn't feel Wind (what I was originally going to use) was neutral enough as an Element to get proper feedback.

Yeah, sorry about that. I wasn't trying to make it so deliberate on your part, especially since I rather agree with Pickle Girl Fanboy that initial names for how things interact with each other elementally are quite flawed.

So, again, my apologies.

*continues to be amused that he's only person who voted for double damage*