Positionals

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Originally Posted by Dzian

I personally would like to see the balance changed a bit in terms of the combat : mechanics ratio. By making combat a bigger portion of the equation you can open up a lot of room to add some actual depth and interesting elements to jobs, which in turn would allow them to feel more rewarding to play..

But if hitting a positional for a staggering 2-3 potency per second increase is the most interesting thing about combat then there's obviously some much bigger issues. This is further demonstrated by the fact many of the people who want to keep positionals want to do so for the sole reason that they'd find combat "boring" without them.

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It's not really a case for one or the other, it is mixing boss mechanics whilst trying to get positionals that make it interesting. Solving that puzzle of uptime, positionals and doing mechanics, al whilst doing your rotation. Doing mechanics is easy, that is basically physical ranged play. Doing mechanics and maximising uptime, that is for the casters, however, doing mechanics, keeping uptime AND hitting positionals, that is where melee fall and should stay.

Sure, design more interesting mechanics for bosses, I don't care, I will solve the puzzle of maintaining uptime and doing positionals whilst doing the required mechanic. This is what people enjoy, however, as I have recently been saying, people who don't like this playstyle are trying to take it away from those of us that do. It might only be a small increase, but I don't care. It feels good knowing you have contributed as much as you can, you have worked out the solution to the puzzle.

There should be something for everyone, however, everything cannot cater to one person.

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Originally Posted by Sqwall

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...nd-Suggestions

This has a perfect explanation of why positionals are stupid and a relic of a by gone time in FFXIV. It's also very well put together and a good read, but the bit about postionals being useless is SPOT ON!

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It's not a good opinion just because you agree with it. It's also not a very good opinion in general with regards to positionals from the outset, because if you claim that the game which offers a diagram at the feet of every boss that tells you whether you count as flanking a target or not doesn't accommodate positionals whatsoever, your opinion about the mechanic is immediately suspect.

The game does quite a lot, within reason, to teach players where they should stand in order to efficiently move between positional requirements, and if you're doing it right, you should never have to move very far under normal circumstances. Of course, the game also throws out things specifically to push players outside of that comfort zone. The response to this, then, is that the players should recognize that they will need to find ways to optimize their DPS to handle these mechanics.

What is happening with people like you and that OP is that they don't want to adapt and overcome. They want the game to adapt to their preferences instead, and those preferences are not universally shared or even agreed upon.

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Originally Posted by ReynTime

Positionals are great in slower paced combat.

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I will never stop being amused at seeing people complain about the speed of Monks now. It was all but inevitable that this would be the next thing people would dislike about the job. You got rid of the ramp up, you're going permanently supersonic now, but it's also now too much. I'll be unsurprised to see threads asking to slow the job down and adjust the potencies accordingly.

GL had problems, but I feel that the speed ramp up was an important aspect to the overall job's design. SE could have done far more to fix Monks in general, but changing GL into a trait was basically them throwing red meat to a vocal portion of the playerbase that often starts threads with "I don't really play Monk all that much but here's my 10 point plan to make it more to my preferences." We're seeing that same mindset now directed at positionals, and frankly, given SE's history with Monks overall, removing positionals from the game will not magically solve any problems with the job, or combat design in general.

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Originally Posted by IruruCece

I will never stop being amused at seeing people complain about the speed of Monks now. It was all but inevitable that this would be the next thing people would dislike about the job. You got rid of the ramp up, you're going permanently supersonic now, but it's also now too much. I'll be unsurprised to see threads asking to slow the job down and adjust the potencies accordingly.

GL had problems, but I feel that the speed ramp up was an important aspect to the overall job's design. SE could have done far more to fix Monks in general, but changing GL into a trait was basically them throwing red meat to a vocal portion of the playerbase that often starts threads with "I don't really play Monk all that much but here's my 10 point plan to make it more to my preferences." We're seeing that same mindset now directed at positionals, and frankly, given SE's history with Monks overall, removing positionals from the game will not magically solve any problems with the job, or combat design in general.

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I think the pace thing he and others have referred to is more generalised than just Monk. there's been a great divide for a long time on the pace of combat. A lot of people think combat is generally to fast paced ADHD button spam fest. and would like to see it slowed down especially on jobs that should be generally slower thematically. A Warrior for example should typically be aclass that hits slow and hard with that great big battle axe, not be able to swing it around like its made of paper..

A lot of people think its too slow and needs speeding up with a 1.5 gcd or something along those lines, because its boring having a full second with no buttons to press

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Originally Posted by Sqwall

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...nd-Suggestions

This has a perfect explanation of why positionals are stupid and a relic of a by gone time in FFXIV. It's also very well put together and a good read, but the bit about postionals being useless is SPOT ON!

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Pretty much the whole post can be summed up with: "I don't like it because I get punished if I don't get it right, please change it to make it easier" with a lot of overdramatic phrasing. Extremely awkward, unnatural, bizarre, dangerous, punishing and so on. Everything that has even the slightest risk attached is listed as a complaint.

Every complaint listed is part of the of the job's design to offer a challenge for players who want to go beyond playing the basic rotation and mechanics safely. It offers the chance to optimise, to solve the puzzle of how to keep uptime, hit positionals, keep everything aligned, make the correct decision if something gets interrupted etc.
If someone doesn't enjoy that, don't play melee. If keeping a dot up without overwriting it too much or sticking to an optimised loop is seen as a good reason to dislike a class it's perhaps time to simply play something different.
The fact that ranged attacks interrupt combos while having low potency is one of the very few things I agree on as a complaint. But decision making? Keeping buffs aligned? Having to stay in melee range as a melee?

If all of these "complaints" were taken care of you'd basically have a physical ranged with occasionally melee range requirement hitting a training dummy.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

I think the pace thing he and others have referred to is more generalised than just Monk. there's been a great divide for a long time on the pace of combat. A lot of people think combat is generally to fast paced ADHD button spam fest. and would like to see it slowed down especially on jobs that should be generally slower thematically. A Warrior for example should typically be aclass that hits slow and hard with that great big battle axe, not be able to swing it around like its made of paper..

A lot of people think its too slow and needs speeding up with a 1.5 gcd or something along those lines, because its boring having a full second with no buttons to press

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Speaking as a monk... I resemble this comment. 1.5 seconds is SO LONG to wait to press a button!! Gimme that 1 second GCD!

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Originally Posted by IruruCece

I will never stop being amused at seeing people complain about the speed of Monks now.

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Funfact, double true monk before was even faster.

And yeah, the game is really slow in combat. It might be the slowest MMORPG i played over the years. Even MNK is super slow. All the game does is to put the player under pressure with some nonamed off-gcd´s, that´s it. Everyone who thinks "it´s too fast", should play action MMORPG´s or stuff like WoW / SWTOR and l2p there.

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Originally Posted by ssunny2008

Funfact, double true monk before was even faster.

And yeah, the game is really slow in combat. It might be the slowest MMORPG i played over the years. Even MNK is super slow. All the game does is to put the player under pressure with some nonamed off-gcd´s, that´s it. Everyone who thinks "it´s too fast", should play action MMORPG´s or stuff like WoW / SWTOR and l2p there.

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Quite a few of the action mmorpgs are actually slower than xiv in terms of the button spam or actions per minute. Even if the overall pace is faster because players have more to do than just mash the keyboard doing the same dull rotation over and over.. that appears to one of the reasons people think xiv is to quick. Because it feels like mindless button spam with no depth or impact.

You can to some extent validate that by the devs deliberately crippling the macro system to block skill queues because players would quite literally macro entire rotations because of how static they are.

That is false. Even in Heavensward, the upper end of the APM scale was around 50 actions per minute. Warcraft doubles that, which is hardly surprising given that the baseline GCD is about a second faster and there's less clunk in action execution.

FFXIV also likes giving jobs very fixed but flowery rotations and puts them in very scripted, choreographed fights, such that you'll often find yourself at the exact same point in your rotation without fail (and without any real decision-making) at any given timestamp. Warcraft opts for a more barebones but proc-based approach, so the gameplay ends up being more reactive but more forgiving. I don't think that either approach is more 'skilled', but you will always have players on both ends of the spectrum. Some people like to brag about how their job has 15 combos and a 147 step rotation that they can plan out in a spreadsheet in advance and can perform in a semi-comatose state. Others like resource-based, proc-based, adrenaline-pumping, reactionary, fast decision-making, high APM gameplay. Ideally, games should offer both.

I don't like positionals. I don't feel that they are an interesting and rewarding mechanic. Which is why I usually level melee DPS last... if ever. Felt that way since 2.0.

Why not interesting? Because it's an extremely basic and monotonous mechanic that only make a fight interesting until you memorize it with its True North windows. There's very little adaptation to have after a point, as you quickly give up when partying with a beyblade tank. There's also a point to be made in terms of boss design where taking positionals in consideration was a bottleneck to the game designers' creativity. The introduction of True North and the mutiple patches to make positional less of a concern allowed for more creative boss mechanics. That and the introduction of the "full circle" bosses.

Why not rewarding? The DPS increase is quite small, the feedback is almost non-existant (except for Bootshine's crit), SE has been trying their hardest to make that mechanic almost completly unrelevant. To me, it's definitly more punishing than rewarding in the sense that it has bigger "feel bad" moments when you fail than "feel good" ones when you succeed. The punishing aspect for failing is also the reason why it has become so trivial: SE don't want to "punish" underperforming players, but also has to keep the best players in check so the difference isn't too big. Besides, hitting your positionals is the expected outcome, the norm. Which is also why it doesn't feel rewarding or exceptional at all.

So, without a feeling of being rewarded for doing a bland mechanic, while also seeing SE trying their best to erase the difference of hitting them or not over the years, I don't think I'll ever like that mechanic.

That being said, do I want positionals to go away? Nah. At least not on MNK and DRG, they'd lose too much mechanical gameplay at this point. NIN and SAM are meh in terms of positionals, but they might as well keep it. Besides, some people had their fun for years with those jobs and their positionals. It'd be harsh to take that away from them.
However, I'll say that it'd be pretty great that at least 1 melee DPS out of the 5 total with Endwalker doesn't have positional. I don't think 1 out of 5 is a big request. I'm pretty sure that SE can come up with another interesting and rewarding melee mechanic instead of copy/pasting the same one on all of their melee DPS jobs (because that's also a lazy thing to do).

Or at the very, very least, if SE wants to go with positionals yet again, make them interact with the job in an interesting, meaningful and rewarding way. Not a +10 potency or +5 gauge crap.

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Originally Posted by Fyce

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Well said opinion, but the thing is, i could take all your written stuff and put it in another point of view.

The biggest issue is the static rotation and like 0 tolerance to play around a lot of mechanics. Away from "how poor" a lot of mechanics have become, if 1 guy fails, it´s mostly a wipe. There are a lot of missed opportunities for different classes to keep the ball rolling or just no time for those smart over 9000 reactions.

Positionals on that side bring atleast something to do, to take care about in such static fights. Some ppl seems to like "staying still and playing 123", but tbh... gameplay-wise it´s just straight up boring. It might work in other games, but the mechanics there are not so obvious, those games are not that forgivable with just 1 rezz for the whole fight and not 100 rezzes / LB3. You don´t even have a 100% rotation, you´ve priorities, a faster GCD and even DD´s are able to tank a boss for a while with defensives and aggro ping pong etc... Healers have take care about mana, because any boss hits harder. Tanks have to swap or kite multiple times and need to manage the adds and multiple debuffs, etc... Those games are way more innovative than FF14.

Let´s say we would get ride of positionals for whatever reason. What do we get? Mudra? How innovative is it in the end, when you use combination X at the pull, combination Y when you´ve to leave the boss for 2s? It´s unique, but not deep or anything else. It´s part of your rotation and you may adjust with it to any boss mechanics. Otherwise 99,9% of all NIN´s stuck behind the boss and playing 123.
A job gauge? Press button X in your rotation when it´s filled?
You do nothing else than learning and playing down your rotation. Even phys. range with a bunch of proccs are like "1,2,1,2,1,2 oh procc,3, 1,2,1,2". Healers might be the only one with "a real impact" in kind of gameplay, because a good healer will always take care about other mistakes, maybe even use rescue.

That said, you can´t really bring something "deep" a lot of ppl talk about. In the end, it´s just pressing a button at moment X, thx to the given rotation. Positionals might have the same effect once you got used to them, but you still do more and might adjust to tank missplays.
Imagine the game would be build up more on skills like "rescue" and with multiple add-mechanics with kiting or "DPS-tanks", casts you´ve to interupt, more debuffs, more damage on the tanks, more mana issues and so on. But no... it gets even less, so all players do simple "spread & stack" mechanics and perform their rotation without the need or even the chance to adapt in some way.


And tbh... the reason, why positionals have such a low impact in potency or other stuff, is the casualization. SE wants pretty much everyone to clear everything but ultimate / the last tier fight. This means we´ve ONLY 4 fights every ~2 years a lot of players will never beat and in case of ultimate it´s a lot about "no time" instead of "no skill".
The current potencies allow the players to play 99,9% of all content in the game completely braindead. The additional potencies are just there, to give some extra % in damage to improve for those who want. Making them more rewarding would last in more cries from the casuals than the crying about the whole existence of positionals right now.

I can just speak for myself, but i can repeat it again and again... positionals are fine and way deeper than any other "class-mechanics" in this static rotation game. If someone really feels rewarded, because he played the rotation well or pressed button X because a job gauge or whatever got filled, maybe even because he did more damage thx to a class buff or better gear, then i don´t know... I would call a big GG! to someone who saved a run with his decision-making and given class tools, but not to someone who fulfilled his job in learning a rotation at a dummy after watching several class / bossguides.