Game Design Why is Fire a defensive element and Earth an offensive one?

It just makes no sense to me. Fire is like the staple of destructive and damaging attacks in video games, and Earth is usually the defensive one. It also makes more sense from an IRL perspective. Fire does not defend you or anything. Objects can literally pass through it. It burns you if you touch it. While rocks and stones are hard to destroy. Would you want a house with walls made out of fire or concrete? I mean, assuming the fire couldn't burn you, but still, it is not very "defensive" at all.
Maybe there's some clarification I'm needing here, but it just makes no sense in my opinion.

 

Doesn’t really make sense but it’d be a lot of work to change it for something that really isn’t a huge deal

 

We're not gonna change it

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Like yeah, it doesn't make absolute sense, but a lot of stuff is already built around defense being fire and earth being strength. changing that now would require so much work for something that'll just provide nothing but upset item balance

 

When elements first came out this was a debate I remember hearing about, Salted replied to this thread saying his reasoning and idk it makes enough sense to me

 

I definitely understand this. Thank you for your response!

This makes a lot of sense. Thank you!

 

In this case, couldn't you just swap all references to Earth and Fire? A significant data conversion might be needed, but to make it swapped on the surface would require just pure text changing.
(not saying you should do it, just wondering about the technical difficulty)

 

In the Order of the Grook's quest it does explain what each of the elements mean and why fire is defensive and earth is offensive.

• Teacher: Earth is an element of great power. Versatile and everpresent, nearly as the air.
• Teacher: Thunder provides force... Earth provides sheer power. The difference... Force choose its own path. Power is force, directed

And

• Teacher: Fire is, of course, related to physical fire, magma, etcetera. A burning torch is a source of fire magic, but that is not the only source of it.
• Teacher: Courage, bravery, and defensiveness are also tied to the fire element. Those stalwart and selfless, willing to sacrifice themselves for others.
• Teacher: In addition, water is tied to healing magic, fire is tied to self-healing. Regenerative capacity if you will. Many fire-based artifacts heal the user passively.

Basically earth is strength because it is big strong rock thingy yknow and fire is due to courage and stuff

 

Thank you for the explanation.

 

Fire represents bravery and stuff. It's kind of tied to strong emotions or something and how fires are hard to put out I guess. I strongly prefer Wynncraft's more unique interpretation of what it means to something more generic, and it does in some ways make more sense. Fire represents pure emotional stubbornness and loyalty, and is weak to Water which represents intelligence, kinda like how people can firmly believe dumb stuff if they associate it with people they care about and it ties them to what social groups they're in, and you can stop being this way by trying to think critically and evaluate your beliefs through more rational means, which is the kind of stuff Water represents in Wynncraft.
What does Earth have to do with defense? You can build walls out of earth and stuff, but you can build better walls out of lasers, electric fencing, and titanium, and those aren't very strongly tied with Earth. The associations between Earth and defense are mostly coincidental, whereas having Fire represent defense allows you to construct some sort of relationship between the two things that feels more fundamental which can create the illusion that there's actually something philosophically meaningful about it, which is good.

In practice this does mean that Fire is the element of being a slow low-damage tank that cannot die which isn't the most "fiery" thing but this is not a lore problem.