Why are there no positionals in PvP?

This is more of an abstract question, part of a bigger picture
Recently I have been getting into pvp, and yes, it's very fun yadda yadda, [insert politically correct opinion about pvp suitable for a youtube video]

however one thing I can't help but notice is how simplistic pvp action kits are when compared to pve.
When I go into a pvp match I barely have to look at my hotbar, I can get away with spamming one ability for a while, letting abilities sit on cooldown and not losing any efficiency because of that

let's take for example my main class, black mage.
1. fire and blizzard 1 are instant casts that are spammable pokes, they refresh enochian with each cast, making keeping up the enochian 15s timer a breeze
2. it is not necessary to upkeep a thunder DoT on your targets 100% of the time, because of the way thunder works, you simply cannot reapply thunder once you have the thunder nuke
3. you are not supposed to burn your thundercloud proc when the thunder debuff is about to expire, you are not supposed to use swiftcast as soon as it's off cooldown
4. polyglot takes 15 seconds to build up, meaning not only do you get a ton of xenoglossy but you cannot lose any for losing enochian

Which begs the question: in PvE, are we not fighting our own skill kit above anything else? there are so many hoops and obstacles you have to jump through in pve to do it correctly, it feels like artificial difficulty.
A lot of "job identity quirks" like positionals and having to upkeep DoTs as bard do not exist in pvp, which makes me really wonder if those things are just artificially planted to make the PvE experience worse for the sake of making it worse.

Netcode is way too bad for positionals to work well.

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however one thing I can't help but notice is how simplistic pvp action kits are when compared to pve.
When I go into a pvp match I barely have to look at my hotbar, I can get away with spamming one ability for a while, letting abilities sit on cooldown and not losing any efficiency because of that

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You can't get away with that in high-end PvP. That being said there's no Feast season right now.

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Which begs the question: in PvE, are we not fighting our own skill kit above anything else? there are so many hoops and obstacles you have to jump through in pve to do it correctly, it feels like artificial difficulty.
A lot of "job identity quirks" like positionals and having to upkeep DoTs as bard do not exist in pvp, which makes me really wonder if those things are just artificially planted to make the PvE experience worse for the sake of making it worse.

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The gameplay loop is to maximize your DPS by harmonizing your rotation with the encounter. Doing the rotation optimally is the fun for a lot of people.

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Originally Posted by Skiros

Netcode is way too bad for positionals to work well.



You can't get away with that in high-end PvP. That being said there's no Feast season right now.



The gameplay loop is to maximize your DPS by harmonizing your rotation with the encounter. Doing the rotation optimally is the fun for a lot of people.

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is high end pvp about upkeeping constant dps rather than using your burst correctly?

Back then, you had your normal abilites in pvp and it was incredibly unbalanced.

WHM was sort of unkillable because they could blow out everything and then just bene themself while running away.
And stun everybody with holy while they were on it.
Its still very hard to kill one if one whm gets targeted down and another heals them (just had that yesterday where another whm and me stalled 10+ people on the other whm for so long that our entire team could come to help).

Bards could dot multiple targets, without an reliable way to remove them, it was super strong. While also being able to kite melees into infinity because they could just always run away from them and come back when the melees were retreating themself.

It was a mess.

Also good luck hitting positionals in PVP, where targeting the right target is the hardest part in itself. God the targeting in pvp is horrible, no matter what targeting options i take, i always have to tilt my camera down for it to not target somebody in narnia, out of my range instead of the people right in front of me.
I'd rather make them change that first.

You're more able to concentrate on rotations in PVE, PVP has like, depending on the mode, at least 24+ people on screen sometimes, dont think you'll manage to do your rotation in any meaningful way before either you or the enemy dies.

Because other players would just.....move. Keeping positionals in PVP would effectively be a nerf to melee players for no good reason.

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

Because other players would just.....move. Keeping positionals in PVP would effectively be a nerf to melee players for no good reason.

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I was about to say this but you beat me to it. Positionals would be nearly impossible to hit in pvp, making them pointless to have.

Unfair advantage for lalafells

No collision detection. Railroad combat with only set in stone way to play. Slow server tick rate. And many other issues in general.

In pvp you want to catch people off guard, being predictable is the last thing you want to do.

Melees needs their positionals? I’ll just spin like beyblade and they’ll likely miss all of those.
That SGE wants to Repose you so they can pointblank shot you with their Pneuma? Yeah let’s bait them, mark them, and gang them.
That NIN has an ‘opener’? Yeah let them exhaust their big guns then we’ll mow them down once they’re out of kits.

When positionals did exist in pvp, they gave melee a thing that nullifies positional requirements, before pve had true north.

Objective based pvp works better than deathmatch here because it mitigates the issues with tab target combat and server response time, shifts things more into strategy.

Rather than positionals, i think it would be far better to design some PvP Skills more on visible/placeable Telegraphs for this Game. Not only would this make balancing Jobs for PvP alot easier, it would also push PvP Gameplay towards Skillbased Combat, rather than keeping it Powerbased.

Tbh the way pvp was in heavensward was way more fun imo.

Trying to make use of positionals in PvP would pretty much require increasing CC by a huge margin cause with how delayed everything is and how awful the netcode is for PvP it would be very hard to land them at the moment :p

Melee jobs are already hard to play (Thanks Homlgang) in modes like Fields of Glory or Onsal Hakair where you are always fighting in between both alliances at the same time unlike range jobs which are the easy/god mode.

PVP isn't that bad actually its so simple and easy to play because SE wanted FFXIV to be the "PVE" game, every job have their stuff and counters but things like Healers being able to walk between 4 players and survive its kinda annoying.

Also delete Homlgang its the only skill that makes people to don't play melee/tank classes.

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Originally Posted by Jin-

No collision detection. Railroad combat with only set in stone way to play. Slow server tick rate. And many other issues in general.

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Collision detection is irrelevant. Most good mmo pvp systems don't have it.

The real problem is the terrible servers as you also pointed out. If you've ever done dungeons, you'll see that it often looks like players are standing in the middle of enemy attacks before sliding their way to freedom after the attack goes off, having not taken any damage.

Because the server hasn't yet updated you client for where the person is. Same where sometimes you die to a boss mechanic but your body is laying outside of where the attack went off. The tickrate and lag is so bad on the server that you can't tell where people actually are. Which means positionals on players is just not a thing that'll work. It doesn't even work on npcs if your tank is pulling them away from you. It looks like you are close enough to poke the enemy but none of your attacks will go off because the server doesn't think you are close enough.

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Originally Posted by Bissonnettzi

Tbh the way pvp was in heavensward was way more fun imo.

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I miss being dressed up as a snowman while playing Ninja in shatter. Nothing was funnier than watching someone crap their pants when they get trick attack'd by frosty the snowman. xD