I certainly don't think there's anything wrong with the fire/water/earth/air elements, but I think that less general elements leads to a more rewarding contest. (Just my personal opinion, and what I feel the discussion has led to, and not based on previous 4e contests).

If you read the earlier pages of this thread you can see there has been quite lengthy discussion on this, which brought us to the current selection of elements. If you want to change them I think it would be good if you read through the thread and responded to the posts that are opposed to such general elements, and why you disagree with the arguments in those posts, along with what you feel is your incentive for entering the contest.

For me part of the point is to not be able to take a previous game idea and put some elements in, as there will likely be little real connection between the different games. I'm more curious to see how people have managed to come up with a unique game idea based on the elements, that might not commonly play big parts in a game, at least not together. Comparing how I have interpreted and incorporated the elements to what others have come up with would be interesting and fun. With earth/fire/water/air I could come up with 10 different games right now.

Again, just my opinion, and I will probably enter no matter what elements are chosen. =)

Personally I feel the original elements are too much of the same (the same with Pirates, Ninja's, etc.). However, the set of the last official contest was too specific.

Personally I'd like to see some elements that are not too restrictive, but fall in completely different categories. For example `winter' and `physics' have not much to do with each other, while they are also not very restrictive. You can probably come up with hundreds of ideas with such reasonably general but non-relating elements.

Quote: Original post by Trapper Zoid
For theme ideas, we could pick a phrase or nursery rhyme as the big theme and take the elements from that:
Sticks and Stones: sticks, stones, bones, words
Hey Diddle Diddle: cat, fiddle, cow, moon, dog, dish, spoon
Old King Cole: king, pipe, bowl, fiddlers

A song or story would work too.

Ooo.. That sparked my interest. Nobody else really liked it?

Quote: If you read the earlier pages of this thread you can see there has been quite lengthy discussion on this, which brought us to the current selection of elements. If you want to change them I think it would be good if you read through the thread and responded to the posts that are opposed to such general elements, and why you disagree with the arguments in those posts, along with what you feel is your incentive for entering the contest.

In case that was directed at me, yes I've been following the thread since the start. My reasons are just similar to what's already been said.

The earth/fire/water/air combo is both general and I think its common spawn of ideas has been done to death: said elements being four magic/attack types with one being weak/strong against the other, or platformers with said elements as level themes with fireball dodging, air-gust travel etc.

Certainly, one could come up more creative ideas if one wanted with the earth/fire/water/air combo, but surely we'd expect to see entries which use the elements in 'expected' ways.
Having new element sets(which are also less general but not too much so, as discussed) would be more exciting, wondering how people use them.


It's hard to come up with great element sets, but I'm satisfied with the sets up for voting at the UFEC site so far. I haven't given much thought on how I would apply those to a game yet, but I'd be glad to try if I found the time to work on an entry. I was just surprised to suddenly see such support for the original elements.

I'm mildly in favour of a reboot of the elements because I think it would help spark interest in the contest. It's a return of Four Elements Classic, the elements work together and are easy enough to come up with ideas, so it shouldn't be a stumbling point for prospective entrants. The main drawback is that the elements are very widely used, so it's plausible that many people already have design ideas or even game demos they can commandeer.

There is a danger that common elements will be used in standard, general ways, but that can be dealt with in the judging. My main concern over the element choice is that if they are too exotic then it will lead to designs "shoehorning" elements in as a necessity - for example, you play a platformer as an accountant collecting crystals and avoiding evil exploding pony monsters.

I guess it depends on the focus of the contest. If the focus is on clever game design, then it's fair to make the elements challenging. But that will come at the cost of implementation, so the judging needs to expect prototypes and focus on the game idea aspects. If the focus is more on completing a fully polished game, then the design stage can't be too overwhelming as the competitors need to start implementing quite quickly.

I do think that the original elements are a bit too simple, but my main reason for supporting them is fear of being constrained by elements that are too hard to work into a game without taking a big hit on how much I'd enjoy working on the game. If I'm going to be working one project for six months, I want to be working on something I'm pretty passionate and motivated to work on. I don't think it's too important that the elements be challenging to incorporate into a game. The first four 4E contests were pretty easy to come up with game ideas for, yet they were (in my opinion) the best 4E contests. I think once you start trying to make it difficult to put the elements together, even if only mildly difficult, you begin to hurt how openly creative the contestants can be.

A lot of you are afraid that making the element set too easy to work with would allow the contestants to slack off, but based on what I've seen posted here, I don't think any of us would do that. This contest is a community event that we're taking part in mostly for the fun sake of showing each other what we're cable of doing and having fun doing it. I'm pretty sure we're all going to put in our best effort with how much time we're willing to dedicate to this, and I think we're all going to try to be pretty creative. Even with a basic element set, I think we'd see some pretty good output.

I would prefer something different from the classic elements, but I feel more comfortable using them than some of the elements I've seen on the site. That's just my opinion, and I'm only one voice among many, but I know some other people are interested in the original elements too.

As a suggestion, maybe we could make the elements genres? Most games have one or two main genres, but we could make the elements four separate genres and try to incorporate them into one game. Also, an element that I don't remember seeing on the list that I think would be cool is cosmos.