Can you tell monster elements by sight?

[Valatar]

PSO was often... a little obnoxious about knowing which element to use against a given monster. The robots were a bit of a dead giveaway, and most of the stuff in the ruins were dark-aligned, but other than those generalities it was up to the player to memorize just what attacks to use against which critters.

So, I'm kind of hoping that there's some kind of consistency in PSU's monsters to let someone know what attacks they should whip out when fighting. Are there visual clues of any kind?

[Nani-chan]

yes, the elemental symbol by the name of the monster that you have targeted/are attacking.

[Shadow_Wing]

Yes, the symbol right next to their name in your targeting window.

[Realmz]

a little info box appears in the upper right corner with the mob name, level, element and any buff/debuffs

[Dj_SkyEpic]

Actually Their physical appearance is not usually the same as their element. There may be hences of their physical feature such as small splashes of elemental colors though, but not all of the creatures have such design.

[Flunky]

The trick is just getting to quickly recognize the icon's corresponding elements. For some reason I always had trouble connecting the light symbol with the light element...

[Realmz]

On 2006-10-24 21:49, Flunky wrote:
The trick is just getting to quickly recognize the icon's corresponding elements. For some reason I always had trouble connecting the light symbol with the light element...



i always get ice and dark confused...

[Flunky]

I could tell ice and dark for enemies, but always had trouble when looking at my weapon elements, for some reason. Whenever I'd synth a dark or ice weapon I had to put it in my palette to check the element, heh.

[Valatar]

Hmm. Well, good on them for showing icons this time around, but I would've still preferred a more intuitive way to see the monsters' weaknesses. Like, say, the earth element things being burrowers or made of stone, the fire element things breathing fire, etc.

[Xbob]

On 2006-10-24 22:06, Valatar wrote:
Hmm. Well, good on them for showing icons this time around, but I would've still preferred a more intuitive way to see the monsters' weaknesses. Like, say, the earth element things being burrowers or made of stone, the fire element things breathing fire, etc.



Intuitive? You mean mediocre and obvious?

[Kyuu]

Not sure what you mean by PSO being hard to figure out. The little info box about whatever enemy you're targetting would always list the enemy's type (native, a. beast, machine, or dark).

It's the same in PSU pretty much, except it's just an icon next to the enemy's name. I'm not really sure how much more obvious you can get. It's a picture that tells you precisely what element the creature is.

Also, there are some hints in enemies' attacks and designs. For example, dark enemies are generally pretty easy to recognize. Most of them share a similar design to the ruins enemies from PSO (i.e. the Dimenian-like enemies, the small rappy-ish things that are pretty obvious). Also, if an enemy is flinging barta around, that's a pretty good clue his element might be ice. Same for if it throws foie-like attacks, etc.

[Valatar]

On 2006-10-24 22:07, Xbob wrote:
Intuitive? You mean mediocre and obvious?


Nnoooo, I mean intuitive. As in, makes sense. I consider it much more mediocre to be running around in rooms full of robots that are weak to electricity, only to run into robots that are weak to ice, with no indication that they're different. Slapping an element symbol into the HUD is much less impressive to me than the fire-element robots having bright red circuits glowing between their armor plates.

[tetsuo_3035]

i like the whole find out for yourself thing

[Kyuu]

On 2006-10-24 22:17, Valatar wrote:

Nnoooo, I mean intuitive. As in, makes sense. I consider it much more mediocre to be running around in rooms full of robots that are weak to electricity, only to run into robots that are weak to ice, with no indication that they're different. Slapping an element symbol into the HUD is much less impressive to me than the fire-element robots having bright red circuits glowing between their armor plates.
It's also sort of limiting in terms of design, since you're basically adding a rule that all enemies designated as belong to one element must share some kind of common feature.

[Getintothegame]

On 2006-10-24 21:46, Dj_SkyEpic wrote:
Actually Their physical appearance is not usually the same as their element. There may be hences of their physical feature such as small splashes of elemental colors though, but not all of the creatures have such design.



That's actually kind of nice. I believe that gives a slight challenge of being completely aware of what you're going against.

[Xbob]

On 2006-10-24 22:17, Valatar wrote:

On 2006-10-24 22:07, Xbob wrote:
Intuitive? You mean mediocre and obvious?


Nnoooo, I mean intuitive. As in, makes sense. I consider it much more mediocre to be running around in rooms full of robots that are weak to electricity, only to run into robots that are weak to ice, with no indication that they're different. Slapping an element symbol into the HUD is much less impressive to me than the fire-element robots having bright red circuits glowing between their armor plates.



Why would they have bright red circuits...? What kind of robots would those be?

[Realmz]

On 2006-10-24 22:26, Xbob wrote:

On 2006-10-24 22:17, Valatar wrote:

On 2006-10-24 22:07, Xbob wrote:
Intuitive? You mean mediocre and obvious?


Nnoooo, I mean intuitive. As in, makes sense. I consider it much more mediocre to be running around in rooms full of robots that are weak to electricity, only to run into robots that are weak to ice, with no indication that they're different. Slapping an element symbol into the HUD is much less impressive to me than the fire-element robots having bright red circuits glowing between their armor plates.



Why would they have bright red circuits...? What kind of robots would those be?



the ones on the new Strawberry Kool-aid power core

[Xbob]

On 2006-10-24 22:30, Realmz wrote:

Why would they have bright red circuits...? What kind of robots would those be?



the ones on the new Strawberry Kool-aid power core

[/quote]

Ah I see. What I thought was he meant they stored magic fire in their bellies, when obviously their bodies would contain fuel of some sort with the ignition source being near their heads or wherever they fired from, unless they were taking advantage of techniques, in which cause they'd do a fruity dance before shooting.

But Kool-Aid? That's awesome.