It is quite common in RPGs for attack spells (and/or sometimes other attacks) to have different elements. For example, in Final Fantasy games, you have Fire, Blizzard, and Thunder spells that deal damage; Lords of Xulima has the same 3 elements, as well.

There are some games where the elements are symmetric; you have, for each element, a collection of spells which are identical except for the element. For example, in Final Fantasy 2, 4, and 5, Fire/Blizzard/Thunder are identical except for the element, and in 4 and 5 that can be said for higher tiers, as well as for the elemental summons in 4 (not 5).

However, there are other games where the elements are not symmetric. For example, in FF1 Blizzard is 2nd level and twice as powerful as Fire and Thunder, which are 2nd level each; FF3 and FF6 have some differences, though maybe not this drastic (and in FF6, which doesn't have spell levels, the more powerful element costs slightly more). Dragon Quest games give different elements different targeting capabilities; I can cite Earthbound as another game that takes this approach (fire hits a row, ice hits a single enemy hard, for example). Or you could even look into cases like Lords of Xulima, where not only is there no elemental symmetry, but each element has an entirely different special property (fire does damage over time, for example, while I think lightning might stun or something).

So, do you like elemental symmetry, or do you prefer the elemental spells to be different?

I like how Skyrim does it- every elemental spell has the same base stats as the equivalent spell for other elements, and has a secondary effect- fire has a lingering DoT, Cold saps stamina, and Lightning saps magicka.

What I don't like is how half the enemies in Skyrim resist cold damage, and the other half are immune to it.

cant you just make a topic for your future game made by gog forum surveys?

Different. More of a challenge balancing what to use

Can't you just *stop* spamming in the threads I create?

One of the worst patch decisions I remember encountering was in Diablo 2, sometime around the time the expansion came out.

Pre-expansion, the sorceress' three elements each had a completely different "mastery". Fire increased damage. Cold reduced enemy resistance (effectively increasing damage, but other uses to it), and lightning reduced your mana cost of lightning spells so you could spam them more. This jived well, with Fire spells having a moderate spread of damage, cold spells having a narrow, slightly lower, spread of damage, and lightning having a huge spread of damage, often going from 1 until the highest max damage. Their masteries complemented them well.

Then the expansion came, and lightning mastery as was was eliminated and made a clone of Fire's boring increased damage. There are a lot of issues with the core systems of Diablo 2 (in spit of this, it's a great game), but its elemental differences/asymmetry are definitely in the "pro" column, though it was better before that patch. (Other bad design decisions made cold the dominant one eventually, both from individual spell design [cold spells tend to have good spread to clear screens while also having freezing effects for crowd control], and because enemies eventually basically become immune to everything, except cold mastery's resistance reduction has a built in immunity-break.)

D&D/Pathfinder, roughly:
* Fire covers greater area to hit more targets or is lower spell level for same damage, but is more often an encountered resistance or to cause collateral effects.
* Lightning is often more precise to target for the same damage as fire, but either fewer targets, or less chance for collateral damage or friendly fire.
* Cold is often higher spell level and less resisted for the same damage. It is often combined with physical damage ("part cold part physical" so it hits still even a little against things that resist cold. Often cone-shaped, sometimes lingers round to round.
* Acid is usually less damage and less resisted, and also has the added benefit of usually being "real" conjured acid so it ignores spell resistance/immunity (e.g., vs golems). Also deals full damage to objects (where as the above are halved or less). Sometimes deals constitution damage instead of hit point damage, and/or lingers round to round.
* Sonic is usually less damage, equivalent to acid, but is resisted by physical resistance (fortitude/constitution) rather than reflex resistance and often includes a secondary status effect of deafness.
* Force is usually the less damage and/or a higher spell level than others. It often auto-hits or doesn't allow a saving throw, and it has a special benefit of almost never being resisted, and can also target incorporeal entities (like ghosts, or things on adjacent planes). This is "pure magic" and is often not considered an element to swap in and out for many effects or is omitted in certain introduced symmetries.

I don't like it when patches to already released games make changes like this.

In fact, I generally don't like balance patches except under these circumstances:
* Something is essentially useless (in which case make it better; don't make other things worse).
* Some enemy is unfairly powerful, to the point where the game becomes unfun.
* If there is a very serious balance issue that ruins the game even for casual players, but be careful to make sure that anything weakened is still useful.

If any further changes are made, they should be saved for a sequel or remake. I never understood the logic with giving golems immunity to most spells, and I don't think I've encountered that mechanic in any non-D&D game I've played.

(If I were making an RPG with Golems, I would probably not give them such near-blanket immunity, and I would make them playable with an unconventional growth system (something like SaGa 2 robots, but more able to get magic, perhaps).)

I'd like them to be very different. Referring to different non-damage spells from those schools first, then the status effects they can cause, maybe the way in which they deal damage as well... There should also be a difference in the amount of direct damage, sure, but that's the... boring part.

In that book series I started and gave up on, I was separating magic into fire, water, earth, air, spirit, light and dark, but that really meant manipulating temperature, liquids, solids, gases, raw magical energy and each living being's connection to it and the world, the creation of living parts and their destruction, respectively. So "fire" wouldn't actually create fire out of nothing, but could raise the temperature enough to make just about anything burn, but at the same time could also mean cold. And light could harm, for example by creating tumors, and dark could heal, by removing them or, more commonly, removing infections.

It's worth noting that the games I mention don't have elemental schools of magic, so the only spells with an element are the damage spells. Hence, there is no looking at different non-damage spells from those schools. FF4, for example, just has White, Black, Summon, and Ninjutsu (which interestingly breaks elemental symmetry in 2D versions). FF2 has you leveling up individual spells; the only meaningful grouping is Black versus White, and White doesn't have any elemental damage spells (the Holy element doesn't yet exist).

(Also, I could mention the SaGa 3 remake as another game with elemental symmetry; SaGa 1 and 2 also have elemental symmetry (aside from original SaGa 2 hot having any ability that protects from just Thunder, so immunity to it is less common, and in remake SaGa 2 it doesn't appear on any enemies). On the other hand, later SaGa games have different elemental schools of magic and don't have elemental symmetry.)

I like Grandia 2 and 3's approach. Different spells have different applications. There are AOE spells, Line spells, single target spells of different elements, and most of them function differently. Earth Spells can't hit flying targets, Fire spells tend to blast in a straight line or splash point, Air spells are generally cone shaped, etc. And combining elements for other spells gives even better effects. Ultimately, I prefer them to be a bit different because otherwise, it's just different damage colors (or flavors, whatever description you choose) and it gets boring when you're swapping water ball for fire ball for earth ball. Great! Brown Damage!! whoo...

I prefer the asymmetric approach, otherwise it makes the game more boring, all spells are technically identical, only the "label" is different.

I feel like there, at the end of the day needs to be a hard limit. Because otherwise you end up with a complicated chart like Pokemon where there are 18 elements because the developers are lazy hacks who couldn't figure out how to balance a game and have been dealing with the consequences since.

As for the finer minuta of it all, the game that introduced me formally to RPGs; Exile doesn't feature magical symmetry or even that strongly on elements. Instead, spells are divvied into two schools: Mage and Priest. And it isn't that one took an oath to harm none; in fact the priest has some of the most powerful spells in the book such as Wall of Blades or Divine Thud.

Elemental symmetry is not bad, but for sure it's boring.
I like as much diversification as possible, and honestly I'm not a huge fan of "element as damage" either; if I was to design a magic system, an elementalist wouldn't be a damage dealer (well, maybe only with fire) but rather a terraformer.
Earth could change the height of a tile or make objects fall, water could create puddles or slow people with frost, air could push things around and fire... uhm... can't see much use aside for destruction tbh. :P