What do you think about the use of Elements in games overall?
Depends on the game, really. Some games have really neat element systems, other games are rather "blah" and they lack creativity and elements either mean nothing and are only there for show, or it's the usual "element is weak against its opposite" thing that's been done a million times over.
And if you think they should work like a Pokemon System with everything having strengths and weaknesses, or if it should be a hierarchal system with Elements getting stronger throughout the game until they merge into a "best element" (Such as if Fire turned to Lava, then to Plasma)?
I'm not all that familiar with Pokemon, but I think I know the general gist behind it -- each monster family is weak against one, and strong against another and it isn't just "opposites are good against each other", IIRC? A system like that tends to work fairly well.
Final Fantasy XI probably had the "best" element system I've ever seen. In it, you had 8 elements:
Fire, Earth, Water, Wind, Ice, Lightning, Light, Dark.
Each in-game day had an element attached to it. Instead of Monday, Tuesday, etc... you had Fireday, Earthday, etc. The order I listed the elements above is the order that they happen in game. It worked like this:
(> means strong against, < means weak against)
Fire > Ice
Fire < Water
Earth > Lightning
Earth < Wind
Water < Lightning
Wind < Ice
And Light and Dark are the only two "old style" elements that opposed each other.
On each element day, that element was 10% more powerful and the element that is weak against that element was 10% less powerful (Ice was 10% weaker on Fireday).
So that's the coolest element system I've seen. They had it ridiculously well-defined, to the point that nearly every single monster and spell in the game had an element attached to it (Silence is a Wind Spell and would rarely work on an Ice Elemental for example IIRC).
Then what do you enjoy the most about creating and joining discussions about things such as Terraria/Other Games/Other Topics? What I mean is what you enjoy the most from discussing with other people? (Sorry if this question is vague, I'll try to reword it if it is)
I suppose I'm just bored a lot of times... I've gotten kind of bored of most games, and I get lots of free time on my hands, and I don't really know anybody RL beyond coworkers who I almost never see outside of work so it gets boring and I don't really have much of anywhere else to talk to people, so... here and Chucklefish forums are the only two real places to talk to peeps at.
Also strange that this hasn't been asked yet, but what got you into Terraria, and then to join TCF in the 1st place?
It's hard to remember exactly how I got into Terraria... IIRC... I saw it on Sale one day on Steam (this was Pre-1.2, it was somewhere in the 1.1 days though I can't remember exactly when I bought it (seems there's no way to find that out on Steam unless you stop playing a game for months). Anyways, I saw it on sale, I never heard of it before, looked at the videos and I rather liked the pixel art style... it was pixel art, but yet not 4-bit pixel art like you'd see on an Atari 2600 like some "Pixel Art" games on Steam can be at times. It, to me, looked like a SNES game, only it looked more complex and I was like "hey I'll try it, it's only like $5."
Well, it took me forever to learn how to do anything, and it was back when we had no map feature, etc. I constantly got lost, the mech bosses are nearly impossible due to the unavailability of weapons in hardmode, pre-mechs (IIRC, just about everything required mech souls in 1.1).
Well, I started looking stuff up on Wiki, and I bounced around in Easymode quite a bit until 1.2 came out then I started actually having fun with hardmode once I found weapons that could actually kill the mechs.
As for how I got onto TCF, well I floated around TO shortly before TCF came to be, and that's how I heard about TCF starting up... as to how I got onto TO, I probably got led there from wiki or I had a question that I couldn't find the answer to on wiki or something, I don't recall exactly.... oh wait.
Yes... I do remember. The thought actually came to me while I was typing that, lol.
Remember
this?
I remember after 1.2 came out, I thought about all the struggles I had as a newbie, not knowing how to do hardly anything in the game, and feeling hopelessly lost and I figured that there surely had to be other people who picked up Terraria, tried it, and went "meh, I can't figure out how to do Anything in this game..." and stopped playing it which is a sad thing indeed, considering how much awesome is packed in that $5-10.
Well, I wanted to write such a guide for wiki, but as I started writing it I figured it was just too large to dump on the wiki, so I did a search for forums and found TO.
I wrote that for TO originally, and then right after I finally "finished" it (without screenshots) the news of TCF hit, and I came over here, and re-published it over here. (And of course,
I wrote the 1.3.0 version after 1.3.0 came out which I think turned out a bit better).
And of course, along with writing the guide I naturally engaged in other conversations, etc. Now it's a daily thing where I get on, check messages, etc.
Dragons are mystical beings. Do they have any natural inclination towards magic? If so, what kind of magics do they favor?
Dragons are... something you find in many different places, and there are many many different kind. My particular kind, they normally do, though my OC is actually incapable of casting magic (long, long story) even though her family is made up of rather powerful mages. And the type of magic? Ever played a d20 system (D&D, Pathfinder, etc)? That kind of arcane magic.
My OC is actually loosely based on d20 silvers with some homebrew thrown in.