Positionals..

True North!

but on a bit more serious note what's the point of Positionals anymore?
Everytime I need to hit a certain Positional I press True North to back it up, from my point of view it's unnecessary risk taking for a bit more damage to make a difference?

SE also removed Positionals from MNK which puzzles me in all honesty since Positionals were kind of the Monks thing, yet True Strike and Twin Snakes do not have positionals anymore.. huh

+ remember when Aeolian Edge had no positional? they just added a Positional Requirement in order to nerf it and Sneak Attack got removed also.

if Positionals would get removed True North would be removed aswell and one more button may bite the dust.. but True North nullifies Positionals anyway so what the point?

I think positionals are bothersome, which is why I don't really play DPS.



But maybe that was their intention? To make me play more tank and healer?


I'm onto you guys... ಠ_ಠ

well magic and ranged dps also have no positionals^^

Old jank mechanic, can't be removed sooner IMO.

Failing that at least improve them to give actual feedback like a noise or vibration to signify you've hit it correctly. As is they add nothing to make the game more fun.

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Originally Posted by RyuuZero

well magic and ranged dps also have no positionals^^

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This. You have options. The bar can be on the floor and some players will still stumble over it.

Honestly, I'm pretty indifferent to positionals. I wouldn't really complain if they got removed in the next expansion, but I'd also be fine if they stayed.

They'd probably have to rethink a lot of jobs if they got rid of positionals. There is a penalty for ranged physical DPS in the damage department. They don't worry about positionals and can do damage anywhere, so they can preposition for certain mechanics. Casters have a bit of a bonus to their damage since they have to be a turret and be clever and time the usage of abilities like Triplecast to move while keeping the uptime.

Removing positionals would pretty much take away half of the "difficulty" of playing a melee DPS. Then it would be about using your gap closers, etc to overcome the boss moving or getting out of the poop. In order to achieve balance, SE would have to put BLM at the top and move all the physical ranged to be almost on par with melee. I guess it could happen.

Personally speaking, I like positionals and would be kind of sad if they were removed.

While I understand a lot of people find it hollow, to me, it is a whole additional aspect to think about when playing as a melee, especially for harder content where meeting DPS checks matter. For those who like to optimize- I think it adds a whole layer of depth that other jobs do not have when choosing when and when not to use True North, when it is or isn't ok to risk that greed on a positional during a fight mechanic, etc. In my mind, it is also probably how Square justifies the sheer amount of damage melee DPS do currently.

Not only that, but I feel like positionals give more depth to tanking as well. Positioning a boss matters (when you can) and is more challenging when you have to move for aoes, complete mechanics, and more while budgeting melee uptime and their positionals.

A fair chunk of recent bosses haven't really followed that ideology (bosses with full circle target circles, bosses teleporting to the center of the arena constantly, etc.), but I personally enjoy bosses where positioning matters a lot more than those that do not.

Back when True North was first added to the game, it felt like a boon to melee. Here's 10 seconds where you can ignore positionals. However, with all these bosses constantly jumping and/or turning a specific direction so often, it feels like a requirement to play the job instead of something designed complement the job.

It doesn't make sense to me that MNK wasn't allowed to keep its positional-heavy gameplay. There are a lot of people who don't like positionals, but there are also a lot of people who do. One of the beauties of FFXIV's job system is choice, so why isn't 1 melee job allowed to be positional-heavy for the players that enjoy that? We should have 1 positional-focused melee job, namely MNK, 2 that have light positional elements, similar to what we have now, and the other 2 have no positionals at all. You can then either remove True North as a role action since not every melee needs it and reintroduce that aspect as specific tools for the ones that do, or just leave it as is and people who play the two without positionals don't need it on their hotbars like how BLM ignores Lucid Dreaming.

I like positionals, it’s an interesting way to keep melee engaging, otherwise you’re just a caster in melee range. Back when monks had them, the difference between good and bad players was large, and something they could take pride in. Now you just stand at rear and true north snap punch. I guess now that there’s no more hitboxes or tanking it’s become irrelevant

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Originally Posted by Picker

I like positionals, it’s an interesting way to keep melee engaging, otherwise you’re just a caster in melee range.t

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Are positionals actually fun, or do we just not know any better because that's the way it's always been?

Every time the question of positionals comes up I always think about Cleric Stance. Cleric Stance was fun. It put an interesting twist on healing and added a level of complexity and skill. I enjoyed it and was proud of my stance dancing skill. Then Stormblood came, along with the announcement that Cleric Stance was going away. "What!?", we all cried. Wouldn't that make healing super boring? Well, no, as it turns out.* Despite how engaged I was with the system at the time, we've now been without for almost six years and I don't miss it in the slightest.

I feel like positionals are a similar situation, and if removed we'd forget about them and move on almost immediately.

(*Healer DPS did become a kind of boring mess later on, but that was for reasons unrelated to Cleric Stance.)

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Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

Are positionals actually fun, or do we just not know any better because that's the way it's always been?

Every time the question of positionals comes up I always think about Cleric Stance. Cleric Stance was fun. It put an interesting twist on healing and added a level of complexity and skill. I enjoyed it and was proud of my stance dancing skill. Then Stormblood came, along with the announcement that Cleric Stance was going away. "What!?", we all cried. Wouldn't that make healing super boring? Well, no, as it turns out.* Despite how engaged I was with the system at the time, we've now been without for almost six years and I don't miss it in the slightest.

I feel like positionals are a similar situation, and if removed we'd forget about them and move on almost immediately.

(*Healer DPS did become a kind of boring mess later on, but that was for reasons unrelated to Cleric Stance.)

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Personally I don't really think they add anything to the game or any rotation. They are just kind of there and more than half the time I'm pressing true north to ignore them anyways which is why I said earlier that I'm kind of indifferent on if they stay or go. I personally don't see what people like about them either. Oooo look I stepped 1 inch to the side and then stepped one inch back to the rear of the circle....woo...

I dunno lol. Its all subjective honestly. Like I view stance dancing in a completely different light than I do positionals.

I think they are actually fun, personally at least. I agree that it is an easy and simple way to keep melee engaging and unique from other roles. It is something I constantly and consistently have in mind when playing a melee job, and making sure to hit them have never slipped my mind. I enjoy having to think about that little extra aspect when playing melee.

I also feel its pretty easy to test-drive not having positionals, we already have fights and jobs without them. Melee jobs are built with positionals in mind, and in cases of playing melee jobs on bosses without said positionals- I find the gameplay notably less engaging.

I'm not going to pretend that positionals are some sort of amazing gameplay mechanic- but they are engaging at least to the degree that I would definitely not just forget they exist if they were removed. Removing them without adding something in its place would be, in my mind, another rather drastic and unnecessary simplification of the combat system during a period in which we are already experiencing a series of rather unnecessary and pervasive simplifications of gameplay.

I'm just going to parrot what Alice9 has already said because I share their sentiments: positionals aren't necessarily groundbreaking as a gameplay mechanic, but I personally find them fun and it was a small feature that went a long way in making MNK more unique from the other melees prior to EW. Figuring out when it was best to use old Riddle of Earth and True North in fights like E9S and E11S was a tiny extra layer to optimization I enjoyed, even if it wasn't particularly "complex." While I despised ShB Bootshine, (because of how much potency was frontloaded into it) it was satisfying to have actual visible feedback for hitting a positional via Chakra.

The state of job design right now is in a very delicate position, asking for more things to be removed by the same team of developers that have given us a long history already of removing skills/mechanics from jobs whilst replacing them with nothing will only serve to alienate those that enjoyed that particular thing. It would be, in my opinion, better overall if the game was changed to better accommodate positionals by giving us proper feedback (via old ShB Bootshine crit proc, ShB DRG Raiden thrust, or just having a sound/visual tick play when they're landed, etc) for hitting them instead of outright removing them.

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Originally Posted by VentVanitas

The state of job design right now is in a very delicate position, asking for more things to be removed by the same team of developers that have given us a long history already of removing skills/mechanics from jobs whilst replacing them with nothing will only serve to alienate those that enjoyed that particular thing. It would be, in my opinion, better overall if the game was changed to better accommodate positionals by giving us proper feedback (via old ShB Bootshine crit proc, ShB DRG Raiden thrust, or just having a sound/visual tick play when they're landed, etc) for hitting them instead of outright removing them.

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so giving us something like when we land a combo? because there is a little visual and sound indicator that says you hit the next button in your standard rotation...it is pretty bad though considering you'd have to staring right at your character and turning all other sounds down during a raid...actually why haven't they made that more obvious? nothing incredibly obnoxious, but maybe a semi-loud "ping!" noise that you can hear clearly without, you know...drowning out anything else in a fight.

I wonder if positionals would be more fun if they were not mandatory. So instead of having to change positionals in your normal rotation you can choose which skill to use depending on the situation. So you would either do a 1-2-3 combo or 1-2-4, skill 3 would do more damage from front/back while 4 does more damage from the flank. 3 and 4 both do the same potency so there is no benefit to using one over the other. Leave it up to the boss to force you around the arena and up to the player to use the appropriate skill according to their forced position. This keeps the intended skill check for the role while not making it feel janky by being forced to move even though the enemy is not moving or doing anything to force you to move.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

It doesn't make sense to me that MNK wasn't allowed to keep its positional-heavy gameplay. There are a lot of people who don't like positionals, but there are also a lot of people who do. One of the beauties of FFXIV's job system is choice, so why isn't 1 melee job allowed to be positional-heavy for the players that enjoy that? We should have 1 positional-focused melee job, namely MNK, 2 that have light positional elements, similar to what we have now, and the other 2 have no positionals at all. You can then either remove True North as a role action since not every melee needs it and reintroduce that aspect as specific tools for the ones that do, or just leave it as is and people who play the two without positionals don't need it on their hotbars like how BLM ignores Lucid Dreaming.

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By changing other jobs to have less positionals but keeping MNK as heavily-reliant on positionals, they'd have to provide balance due to the more difficult gameplay. If that's more DPS, then other jobs would probably demand positionals back. When it comes to balance, DPS is king. BLM seems to always be at the top DPS-wise due to the difficult nature of maintaining uptime while doing mechanics. If they got rid of cast times entirely, should BLM still be at the top? Then they'd just be a MCH essentially.

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Originally Posted by dspguy

By changing other jobs to have less positionals but keeping MNK as heavily-reliant on positionals, they'd have to provide balance due to the more difficult gameplay. If that's more DPS, then other jobs would probably demand positionals back. When it comes to balance, DPS is king. BLM seems to always be at the top DPS-wise due to the difficult nature of maintaining uptime while doing mechanics. If they got rid of cast times entirely, should BLM still be at the top? Then they'd just be a MCH essentially.

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So what? You have some jobs that are harder to play and have higher highs but lower lows. Others are easier and are more consistent across the community. That's literally the ABCs of class systems.

Positionals don't add any kind of difficulty to a job... Either way, the person you quoted has a point. The devs want every job to be accessible.

I think positionals are fine as is, your job no longer falls apart from not hitting them (Raiden Thrust for example) so I think it's fine to have them.

honestly i just like moving around the boss it,yeah its kinda minor but it makes melee DPS different to other DPS.

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Originally Posted by Ransu

Positionals don't add any kind of difficulty to a job... Either way, the person you quoted has a point. The devs want every job to be accessible.

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The thing about accessibility is I feel the design team has a major problem in looking at a candle and seeing a house fire. Nearly every inch of content in this game is clearable doing the absolute barest of minimums each job is capable of and asks very little of the player in terms of mechanics. Players don't need to hit positionals to clear their daily roulettes, alliance raids, or even EX fights really. It feels like the design team as well as the community continues to treat optimal play as the bar to entry when almost every fight in the game can be cleared by just mashing Dragon Kick, and I'm not even talking about the Dragon Kick combo--literally only hitting Dragon Kick.

Savage and above, on the other hand, is meant to be challenging, and even there, optimal play isn't entirely required. It can be moreso at launch, but tomestone gear can make that difference very quickly. And even in the Savage environment, why do we need to force training wheels onto every job for players trying to go mountain biking, especially in a game where you can change jobs. If MNK's positionals became too hard for you, then you could swap to a job that doesn't have positionals--even a melee job if we wen't off the example I gave earlier of 1 heavy positionals melee, 2 light positionals melee, and 2 no positionals melee. The entire point of having a job system is choice, but what's even the point if everything has to be the same in the name of accessibility?

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Originally Posted by undull1

Failing that at least improve them to give actual feedback like a noise or vibration to signify you've hit it correctly.

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It sound different when you land a positional correctly, the attack sound is a bit louder. There is technology to change the color of the combat text when you land a positional attack too.

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Originally Posted by Arohk

It sound different when you land a positional correctly, the attack sound is a bit louder.

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Is there proof of that? I just tested it and properly comboed positional attacks sound exactly the same to me, whether you hit or miss the correct position. And also look exactly the same by the way.

I'm guessing they wanted to reward melee DPS with better damage output for positionals back then, to justify their value over physical ranged DPS...? True North was probably given to melee because of bosses like Cloud of Darkness(one of the earliest) that has no varying positions to determine if bonus damage is applicable.

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Originally Posted by Katashi90

I'm guessing they wanted to reward melee DPS with better damage output for positionals back then, to justify their value over physical ranged DPS...? True North was probably given to melee because of bosses like Cloud of Darkness(one of the earliest) that has no varying positions to determine if bonus damage is applicable.

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All attacks against the Cloud of Darkness and any other large boss that sits off the side of the arena always trigger positionals regardless of where you stand because you cannot reach their flank or rear. Additionally, there are also enemies that aren't off the stage that still don't require positionals to be awarded that extra damage. If you look at the image below, the hitbox of the enemy tells you whether or not positionals are needed. The left example does require positionals and gives you more information about where you need to be to earn them. The right example does not require positionals and they will always trigger even if you attack from the front.

https://i.imgur.com/ndXvBjo.png

positionals are not hard...what little skill expression melee jobs like monk, samurai and dragoon had are just being erased to all be "hurp durp i hit boss with stick". For god's sake Reaper loses their positionals when they enshroud...WHY WHY WHY. thats the damage window, thats when positionals couldve made reaper shine like the dps god its designed to feel like...

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

All attacks against the Cloud of Darkness and any other large boss that sits off the side of the arena always trigger positionals regardless of where you stand because you cannot reach their flank or rear. Additionally, there are also enemies that aren't off the stage that still don't require positionals to be awarded that extra damage. If you look at the image below, the hitbox of the enemy tells you whether or not positionals are needed. The left example does require positionals and gives you more information about where you need to be to earn them. The right example does not require positionals and they will always trigger even if you attack from the front.

https://i.imgur.com/ndXvBjo.png

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This is a great explanation and a good showing of how easy positionals actually are. people just overcomplicate things to the point they go complain. then all the skill expression jobs have gets gutted like fish.

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Originally Posted by Eisi

Is there proof of that? I just tested it and properly comboed positional attacks sound exactly the same to me, whether you hit or miss the correct position. And also look exactly the same by the way.

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It is a very subtle difference , but you can hear it.