Can we have any degree of feedback in the game when a positional lands/fails?

Prior, we could kinda get a gauge if it hit when either combos stopped functioning if a positional failed, whether that be before when the combo would just not continue, or recently in shadowbringers when raiden thrust wouldnt proc on dragoon if you messed them up.

But now? There's nothing. It's one of the things I know a lot of people have had to turn to third party tools to get any information on, because there's no feedback on positionals in the game, on any of them, at all, whatsoever. With the honestly lackluster in-game explanation for what positionals even are and no visual, audio or ui feedback it now just kinda feels like the positional system is from an entirely different game that Squenix felt obligated to include and put as little effort in whatsoever.

I love positioanls, I really really do, it's the only reason to move around in in fights in this game outside of high end content and it feels like its closer and closer to being removed, which i know would be an "I quit" moment for many of us out there. Positionals are cool and they give a really enjoyable and unique flavour to the melee role, just please do something, anything with the system.

Have unique animations like the universal GCD/oGCD flash that only play if the positionals suceeds. Have an audio clip that plays if you mess up a positional, like a quiet <se.11> <se.12> or <se.16>, have a red aura pop up if you fail a positional, have a "POSITIONAL FAILED!" flytext in red next to the associated damage, a gold icon flash your weaponskill/ability buttons on success, a combo meter ui element that counts successful positionals in a row, hell, a korean-mmo style visual effects vomit of wings and swords I do not care, just something, anything at all.

It genuinely feels like Squenix are making it feel as uncomfortable and archaic of a system as possible so if they decide to remove positionals, less people complain. It's really sad and it's really not a positive direction for the game to be taking.

That is impossible. As certain voldemorts have shown, such implementation is too hard for the devs to make and would most likely force all playstation consoles to spontaneously combust due to hardware restrictions not being able to handle such code. /sarcasm

There are so much QoL missing after all this time. How are we still surviving?

I have zero faith in them after they made Monk of all jobs have less positionals than freaking Dragoon. I won't be surprised if positionals are removed altogether next expansion because it's "too hard" to move a little bit to the side or back of the boss.

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Originally Posted by gotaname1

That is impossible. As certain voldemorts have shown, such implementation is too hard for the devs to make and would most likely force all playstation consoles to spontaneously combust due to hardware restrictions not being able to handle such code. /sarcasm

There are so much QoL missing after all this time. How are we still surviving?

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As someone who plays on a regular Ps4, the ONLY time i have ever any issues, is when doing frontline, since the console needs like 5-10seconds to register all the People clustering in huge teamfights but thats it already.


As for the matter of positionals, they are in my Book, ONLY getting removed so that People who hate Monk, can play Monk as well (to make a Job basically more turbo-casual friendly). It has absolutely nothing to do with any limitation outside of Brain capacity issues of Players who dont even know what True North is.

Also speaking of which, True North should be going to the chopping Block if we ever get a proper Job for positionals. I also think that Dps shouldnt be the only reward of successfully landing them.

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Originally Posted by hfang

I have zero faith in them after they made Monk of all jobs have less positionals than freaking Dragoon. I won't be surprised if positionals are removed altogether next expansion because it's "too hard" to move a little bit to the side or back of the boss.

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People repeatedly bring up "oh but we could remove positionals and then replace/rework them with a more interesting system" but that really hasnt happened in any similar system yet. The removal of monk positionals happened after the blitz system, and the decision to remove appears to be made to appeal to players who would have a passing interest of the job for about a week and then drop it anyway.

I don't want a rework. Nobody I know trusts Squenix to do a good rework, just add the long overdue QoL features and leave the existence of positionals alone. Lumping resource gain or some other personal or raidwide effect on performance of the already existing higher damage positionals would be super cool! Seriously !! But having required movement really differentiates the job from tanks and makes them their own role, which I greatly appreciate, and I dont want to lose, and every mention of rework makes me wary of.

There are jobs like BRD where the hot bars and UI aren't even able to handle the role properly and creates an artificial difficulty barrier. By default the feedback that the dots have to be updated is limited to a tiny pair of icons on the bosses health bar. The feedback on Wanderer's minuet is limited to a flashy marker around the ability and a sound queue telling people when the ability is ready to fire at max power, which is easy to mix up with the sound queue for the other ability that uses the energy bar they have. Also going to mention that Empyrian arrow feels like a really shoddy two shot combo and requires a visual warning system via a nice big fat icon to even run properly.

FYI, for anyone who has trouble with empyrian arrow, the easiest thing to do is to take a spare hot bar, blow it up to jumbo size, don't bind keys to it, and just slap it where you can easily see it so when empyrian arrow is triggered you got a nice big warning sign it's up. I have not found any other way to make that ability even remotely sane.

I don't see why they would bother considering positional's will likely be gone in 7.0.

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Originally Posted by Lunarius

I don't want a rework. Nobody I know trusts Squenix to do a good rework, just add the long overdue QoL features and leave the existence of positionals alone.

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which is hilarious, because the people who actually liked Monk in Shadowbringers *loved* Monk exactly because of what it was. the positionals were a selling point and gave the job an identity. Blitz is a mess of a system that forces you to play in an awkward and non intuitive way. Monk mains just cannot win apparently. And tanks are the same. They were simplified to a point where playing pretty much any tank just feels like playing a gimped melee DPS.

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Originally Posted by hfang

which is hilarious, because the people who actually liked Monk in Shadowbringers *loved* Monk exactly because of what it was. the positionals were a selling point and gave the job an identity. Blitz is a mess of a system that forces you to play in an awkward and non intuitive way. Monk mains just cannot win apparently. And tanks are the same. They were simplified to a point where playing pretty much any tank just feels like playing a gimped melee DPS.

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lol what? Between riddle of earth and true north I basically never did positionals in shadowbringers. Positionals are honestly whatever at this point. They were interesting in ARR, but they add little to no value anymore, especially with many fights just being full circles lately. And with Squares general concern over action bloat I'm pretty sure they will want to remove true north come 7.0, so don't expect positionals to be around much longer.

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Originally Posted by Ransu

lol what? Between riddle of earth and true north I basically never did positionals in shadowbringers.

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If you were never doing positionals on a job that had six of them, I don't know what to tell you. True North and RoE could never cover them up 100% of the time and MNK was by far the job that lost the most potency by not hitting positionals correctly.

quick edit: "many fights" being full circles? what? the current savage tier only has one fight with a full circle, that being P2S, and sure, Endsinger and Zodiark are both full circle EX fights. but honestly who cares about optimizing extremes lol

I liked positionals when bosses didn't constantly turn and move about the arena. I didn't mind forced movement, but I really hate chasing the darn things.

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Originally Posted by Xirean

I liked positionals when bosses didn't constantly turn and move about the arena. I didn't mind forced movement, but I really hate chasing the darn things.

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the best part is the party never adjusts. A lot of bosses, especially in savages that I will now use as an example, always face south after repositioning for mechanics. You'd think everyone would think: oh, if the main tank keeps the boss that way, the boss will move around even less and the melee dps can stay north pretty much the entire fight bar a few mechs for max positional uptime! But no, I have yet to see this mindset. Atleast, on Crystal anyways.

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Originally Posted by Lunarius

Prior, we could kinda get a gauge if it hit when either combos stopped functioning if a positional failed, whether that be before when the combo would just not continue, or recently in shadowbringers when raiden thrust wouldnt proc on dragoon if you messed them up.

But now? There's nothing. It's one of the things I know a lot of people have had to turn to third party tools to get any information on, because there's no feedback on positionals in the game, on any of them, at all, whatsoever. With the honestly lackluster in-game explanation for what positionals even are and no visual, audio or ui feedback it now just kinda feels like the positional system is from an entirely different game that Squenix felt obligated to include and put as little effort in whatsoever.

I love positioanls, I really really do, it's the only reason to move around in in fights in this game outside of high end content and it feels like its closer and closer to being removed, which i know would be an "I quit" moment for many of us out there. Positionals are cool and they give a really enjoyable and unique flavour to the melee role, just please do something, anything with the system.

Have unique animations like the universal GCD/oGCD flash that only play if the positionals suceeds. Have an audio clip that plays if you mess up a positional, like a quiet <se.11> <se.12> or <se.16>, have a red aura pop up if you fail a positional, have a "POSITIONAL FAILED!" flytext in red next to the associated damage, a gold icon flash your weaponskill/ability buttons on success, a combo meter ui element that counts successful positionals in a row, hell, a korean-mmo style visual effects vomit of wings and swords I do not care, just something, anything at all.

It genuinely feels like Squenix are making it feel as uncomfortable and archaic of a system as possible so if they decide to remove positionals, less people complain. It's really sad and it's really not a positive direction for the game to be taking.

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There is a sound feedback if a positional lands and is a combo action. They should just add it to all positionals. It's very noticeable to me at least.

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Originally Posted by Skiros

There is a sound feedback if a positional lands and is a combo action. They should just add it to all positionals. It's very noticeable to me at least.

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I'm sorry my friend but you are mistaken.

it's placebo, and an oddly persistent rumour to boot.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...10/unknown.png

Just re-tested again just in case 6.1 added something new that they havent in earlier patches on Aeolian Edge, Armour Crush, Snap Punch, Demolish, Gekko and Kasha thus far and there is no audio difference.

tested on overworld dummies too cos I know housing dummies are bugged.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by hfang

If you were never doing positionals on a job that had six of them, I don't know what to tell you. True North and RoE could never cover them up 100% of the time and MNK was by far the job that lost the most potency by not hitting positionals correctly.

quick edit: "many fights" being full circles? what? the current savage tier only has one fight with a full circle, that being P2S, and sure, Endsinger and Zodiark are both full circle EX fights. but honestly who cares about optimizing extremes lol

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Subtlety rogue doesn't work in a game where the bosses do timed positional based attacks themselves. Even if the designers built the fight so that a player with positionals could perfectly time their available skills to make it work, they'd only be able to do that from the start of the fight assuming the player doesn't die. If the player dies, then the timings are all off and you're left with running around frantically, which is why they put true north in there as a way to correct and mitigate that problem. TN however, was not enough to really solve the positional issues that showed up in Stormblood so they simplified things even more. Now positionals are more so a minor punishment for not hitting TN rather than being a critical game flow piece.

I mean, positionals for melee in this game were originally a learning tool to help new players understand that tanks stand in front of the boss and melee position to the sides or behind the boss to avoid getting hit. It wasn't intended that players would have to hardcore juggle between the sides and back of the boss just to make sure they could make a DPS check on a savage tier boss, and I'd hate to be the guy designing a fight where you got to plan for two people having to constantly shift from flank to rear while the boss is doing ring attacks, cone aoes, and sometimes you got arena based things happening like bombs dropping based on player position.

Visual feedback could be cool!

Two ideas I'll suggest:

1) When you properly hit a positional the ring will highlight that section of the enemy's target circle (the thing at their feet that tell you which direction is is facing and where their butt is), so if you hit flank it will glow flank some non-intrusive color / effect, but note-able interaction (nice fade in and out glow). Color could match the ring, so it's nice subtle positive feedback - easy to ignore but if you were looking at the ring you could tell it was confirming your correct choice. I don't think a sound should be used unless it is a sound that flows with the skills itself (meaning it might be easy to 'not hear' unless you were looking for it); otherwise, that could be a bit obnoxious lol.

2) Sound effect and two animations, first is a hazy shaky red / error like texture effect glowing on the section you hit (shape of the effect matching the ring section, but growing in size and shrinking back down such that it's fairly obvious) showing that you weren't supposed to hit that side, and then a subtle glow on the proper side (to direct to where it was supposed to be).

Both can be turned on and off, the sound effect being able to turn off individually from the visual error help.

As for the subject all together:

I don't think all melee need positionals, so some melee with ZERO positionals is fine to me, but I think it is a novel enough concept that some people like so it would be a bit sad to have it go all together. Of course if you remove positionals I would assume either A. the job is meant to be straight forward job akin to a WHM vs SCH like situation or B. the job will get some other exciting mechanics to think about. To add which I think not all jobs should be simple, nor all complex, ideally trying not to change the currently assigned jobs from where they are in terms of challenge (don't make a super easy job hard or a super hard job easy all a sudden). Some of that can be helped balanced by skills that are perhaps fun to optimize but by not having them you're only missing like 2-5% damage from the person who messed it up (such that in most content you'd not even care if someone was playing a bit more easily, but in hard content everyone would need to optimize for greater challenge of play). Though I still personally think even at hard play having a few jobs that are a bit easier to play is good, same as having a few jobs that are just harder to play (and not switching that concept around if possible). As for melee jobs that might not use positionals at all for example maybe a Geoknight like area control job has a bit of positional built into node control (area control, creating small spheres of influence and manipulating themselves within them and the enemies- then they've no melee based positionals even if they're generally more melee as they've another thing to think about instead).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lunarius

I'm sorry my friend but you are mistaken.

it's placebo, and an oddly persistent rumour to boot.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...10/unknown.png

Just re-tested again just in case 6.1 added something new that they havent in earlier patches on Aeolian Edge, Armour Crush, Snap Punch, Demolish, Gekko and Kasha thus far and there is no audio difference.

tested on overworld dummies too cos I know housing dummies are bugged.

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What part of "combo action" do you not understand?

MNK has ZERO combo actions. MNK's actions behave like a combo, but they are not technically combos.

If anything if they changed this in 6.1 they would have removed the combo sound effect on positionals given that the game seems to desperately want to lower the skill gap.

Here's the vid:

https://youtu.be/MRvsPlwdq6Q

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Originally Posted by Skiros

Here's the vid:

https://youtu.be/MRvsPlwdq6Q

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Why the age restriction? I can't watch it without logging into a youtube account. Is your character that spicy?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Skiros

What part of "combo action" do you not understand?

MNK has ZERO combo actions. MNK's actions behave like a combo, but they are not technically combos.

If anything if they changed this in 6.1 they would have removed the combo sound effect on positionals given that the game seems to desperately want to lower the skill gap.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lunarius

Just re-tested again just in case 6.1 added something new that they havent in earlier patches on Aeolian Edge, Armour Crush, Snap Punch, Demolish, Gekko and Kasha thus far and there is no audio difference.

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ignoring how relevant it is whether or not monk's combo system is a true combo or not, this was already addressed, and whatever placebo sound effect you hear is not present on one of the two 2.0 launch melees.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Skiros

Here's the vid:

https://youtu.be/MRvsPlwdq6Q

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While I can't accurately test Chaos Thrust with isolated audio (I'd need a FATE to delevel and too many noises would come froma fate. I could maybe try in bozja but im mistrustful of in-instance dummies), as I havent been that low level on dragoon for a while:

https://streamable.com/4n704b

it's not present on any of the actions at 90

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shougun

Visual feedback could be cool!

Two ideas I'll suggest:

1) When you properly hit a positional the ring will highlight that section of the enemy's target circle (the thing at their feet that tell you which direction is is facing and where their butt is), so if you hit flank it will glow flank some non-intrusive color / effect, but note-able interaction (nice fade in and out glow). Color could match the ring, so it's nice subtle positive feedback - easy to ignore but if you were looking at the ring you could tell it was confirming your correct choice. I don't think a sound should be used unless it is a sound that flows with the skills itself (meaning it might be easy to 'not hear' unless you were looking for it); otherwise, that could be a bit obnoxious lol.

2) Sound effect and two animations, first is a hazy shaky red / error like texture effect glowing on the section you hit (shape of the effect matching the ring section, but growing in size and shrinking back down such that it's fairly obvious) showing that you weren't supposed to hit that side, and then a subtle glow on the proper side (to direct to where it was supposed to be).

Both can be turned on and off, the sound effect being able to turn off individually from the visual error help.

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I definitely like the gold highlighted pizza slice concept. I'm wary of how it would present itself on wall bosses, or how it would interact with the orange of aoe markers, or arena elements, but it would be a good idea to indicate the correct location for the positionals

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Skiros

Here's the vid:

https://youtu.be/MRvsPlwdq6Q

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Whatever you're hearing its in your head. There is no distinct sound effect for landing a positional correctly.

Oh my god you guys are deaf

That sounds like a great idea, though I wouldn't expect it for a while. The devs have a list of priorities and a lot of them demand indefinite attention more or less that they can't afford to set aside for any length of time. So something like this will inevitably be pushed behind something else with a lot more people asking for it, probably more than once, unless it is easy and cheap for them to implement and test. I wouldn't get your hopes up, but I know I'd certainly enjoy it. It'd be nice to see more than just a number increase for positionals.

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Originally Posted by Skiros

Oh my god you guys are deaf

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No, you're just hearing things that are not there.

I enjoy positionals as well on certain jobs like Monk where it feels right, but I dislike them for the same of having them like on Samurai.

Couple of things I'd go with here:
1) Adjust the ring under mobs to have a clear "Side" like they have with the open back. Maybe 1 solid line for sides, 2 lines + arrow for front, and a clear divide.
2) Simple visual cue to show "you did it". Something like the character model flashing or sparks (like a firework) from the player. Only visible to that player.

I personally really like them on samurai, so I cant really comment on that but

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Originally Posted by kaynide

1) Adjust the ring under mobs to have a clear "Side" like they have with the open back. Maybe 1 solid line for sides, 2 lines + arrow for front, and a clear divide.

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This would be really good. Having a definitive indication of how big the flank positional is feels like a must for the game, and it'd really clear things up, as people are required to go to communities, where inaccurate diagrams like this float around

https://media.discordapp.net/attachm...2.45.11_pm.png

Having it actively be the circle itself feels like a natural progression based on the side-of-hitbox arrows that were added recently.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kaynide

2) Simple visual cue to show "you did it". Something like the character model flashing or sparks (like a firework) from the player. Only visible to that player.

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Yeah I'd personally really like this, because any personal failure sound effect that sounds too similar to normal game audio could be mistaken for combo failures instead of positional failures. Either reinforce the positive, or look at what people currently do, where they use a third party tool to play a tts voice or loud custom sound (distinct from normal game audio) to alert them of their failure, and try to make it as distinct as that.

However I'm not 100% sure about it being personal, if we're going all in with mentor/sprout systems so that there's transparency if something goes wrong, a minor gold glow/spark upon successful execution would be minor with 1-3 missed positionals, but would be really obvious to notice isn't happening if it never happens, which could invite help and support and advice to better perform at the job.

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Originally Posted by Ransu

Whatever you're hearing its in your head. There is no distinct sound effect for landing a positional correctly.

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I have been able to hear differences in game for a long while. Perhaps its most noticeable on mnk and nin.
edit: a missed positional sounds dull like hitting a sandbag, a hit positional sounds like a good hard slap

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lunarius

However I'm not 100% sure about it being personal, if we're going all in with mentor/sprout systems so that there's transparency if something goes wrong, a minor gold glow/spark upon successful execution would be minor with 1-3 missed positionals, but would be really obvious to notice isn't happening if it never happens, which could invite help and support and advice to better perform at the job.

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Honestly, as soon as the game went to Stormblood the special effects for attacks are where I can barely see the mob as it is with them on. I don't know how I'd notice this unless we're talking like a training session or some such. I'd also not want to hear other people's effects or confuse them with my own (as if we were standing on top of each other)

Easy solution there would be to have thees effects specifically on-off-able, but then that opens a door for differentiating between various effects (like I want to turn off all others' effects, but I would like to see when other healers are shielding the tank without looking at the tank bar). Not quite a pandora's box, but it does mean we're starting to add exceptions on what others' effects we are seeing.