Please add a small audio feedback to positional attacks on melee

Sometimes it is hard to know whether you have hit a positional or not because the boss can rapidly change the direction they're facing for mechanics or if the tank is spinning them around. There are also times where you may find yourself riiiight on the edge between a flank and rear positional, and it would be great if there was a small bit of audio feedback letting us know so that if we missed one, we could adjust in the future.

It would be great if there was a setting for this so that it could be disabled if desired.

Thanks!

I'm actually amazed that positional feedback which has been asked for since literally the early days, isn't here yet in 2024.

Are you asking for a volume slider for the feedback? That might be nice. Both the audio and visual feedback for positionals can get drowned out.

I'm not especially looking for audio feedback, but any feedback in the first place.

In particular I'd argue the best thing wold be if you saw a different animation when you fail the positional, akin to how Ninjas get the failure for then Ten Chi Jin or Monks get the failure for Perfect Form. Make it part of the game's normal systems.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

I'm not especially looking for audio feedback, but any feedback in the first place.

In particular I'd argue the best thing wold be if you saw a different animation when you fail the positional, akin to how Ninjas get the failure for then Ten Chi Jin or Monks get the failure for Perfect Form. Make it part of the game's normal systems.

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That's a mighty big ask. You're asking them to make new failure animations for all the positionals in the game. That's roughly 20 skills that would need to be reworked to each have a bunny effect.

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Originally Posted by LynxDubh

That's a mighty big ask. You're asking them to make new failure animations for all the positionals in the game. That's roughly 20 skills that would need to be reworked to each have a bunny effect.

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Sure. They could stop adding 20 new animations each expansion that just end up as solutions in search for a problem. /shrug

But even if not, SQEX is not a 3-man indie studio. Asking for 20 small variations of existing animations (many of which are 2-step, so you can just abort after the first step + add an audio queue on top) is not a big thing for a large company, or should not be if not massively mismanaged and misorganized.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

In particular I'd argue the best thing wold be if you saw a different animation when you fail the positional

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Funny you mention that, because this was how Dragoon worked back in Shadowbringers. So normally, you see True Thrust as the start of the combo, but if you correctly hit the positional before True Thrust, it would proc Raiden Thrust. This was removed in Endwalker and you get Raiden Thrust regardless, which is a shame, I thought this was a very effective way to encourage hitting positionals, clearly, the devs didn't agree.

It could just be the text damage to have a different color. Or a + sign after.

Like, you failed your positional you see 5293, you succeed you see 1402+

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Originally Posted by Sylvain

It could just be the text damage to have a different color. Or a + sign after.

Like, you failed your positional you see 5293, you succeed you see 1402+

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This is more or less what I want the most for this. They already have a (+%x) value show up on the battle log, they should just have an option to show it on the fly text as well.

Do you think people actually have to make popular -redacted- for the devs to actually put them in the game officially for positionals?

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Originally Posted by Azurarok

This is more or less what I want the most for this. They already have a (+%x) value show up on the battle log, they should just have an option to show it on the fly text as well.

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Funny thing last I was told is that this doesn't even work properly on VPR in the log.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

Sure. They could stop adding 20 new animations each expansion that just end up as solutions in search for a problem. /shrug

But even if not, SQEX is not a 3-man indie studio. Asking for 20 small variations of existing animations (many of which are 2-step, so you can just abort after the first step + add an audio queue on top) is not a big thing for a large company, or should not be if not massively mismanaged and misorganized.

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They didn't even make 20 animations for *NEW* abilities for the whole healer role for DT's expac. What makes you think they would devote animation and coding resources for failure animations that you should not be seeing a majority of the time?

Unless they are minor animation tweeks where you lose your flashy effects, and not different failure animations like the two examples you gave, It's absolutely not worth their time. And even still, a new universal failure que would be preferable to reworking everything.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

I'm not especially looking for audio feedback, but any feedback in the first place.

In particular I'd argue the best thing wold be if you saw a different animation when you fail the positional, akin to how Ninjas get the failure for then Ten Chi Jin or Monks get the failure for Perfect Form. Make it part of the game's normal systems.

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I think positive reinforcement works better than punishment.

I too want better feedback on positionals, and I'm not even a fan of them.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

I think positive reinforcement works better than punishment.

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If the feedback is audio based, it has to happen when you fail it, as otherwise it could get annoying really quickly. Another solution would be an option that lets you choose to have the sound when either landing or missing them.

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Originally Posted by Aco505

If the feedback is audio based, it has to happen when you fail it, as otherwise it could get annoying really quickly. Another solution would be an option that lets you choose to have the sound when either landing or missing them.

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Yeah, of course an option would be best but that'd be my reasoning for a failure audio queue, too: You want the normal result to be hitting it, which should not produce a sound.

Also the game is already very strong on negative feedback (failing to avoid an AoE kills you, avoiding it doesn't do anything), so eh, what'd be one more.

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Originally Posted by Aco505

If the feedback is audio based, it has to happen when you fail it, as otherwise it could get annoying really quickly.

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I don't think this is necessarily true. We have visual and audio feedback any time we successfully perform a combo action and I've never really seen anyone complain about them being annoying. I would guess to say it's quite the opposite. Most people probably don't even notice it anymore, or never realized it was a thing in the first place.

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Originally Posted by Sylvain

It could just be the text damage to have a different color. Or a + sign after.

Like, you failed your positional you see 5293, you succeed you see 1402+

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Good idea, I think having the fly text change color if you successfully hit a positional would be least intrusive and also easiest for SE to implement. But for players with color blindness, a battle log message/symbol and optional audio cue might be more helpful.

Also agree with the sentiment that it should be a positive feedback mechanism that happens on success, rather than negative feedback that happens on failure.

It’d also be nice if target circles could have small marks to clarify exactly where flank and rear positional zones begin and end.

Just underline the damage numbers to indicate you're using the maximized potency on the GCD/Ability.
Could work with GCDs that requires specific buffs as well.

A sound cue isn't bad but what about people who don't play with sound on or are listening to music?

Oh the underline I like.

Another idea would be to flash the quarter of the target circle briefly in a friendly color (green/white/etc) when hitting it correctly, and red if hitting it wrong (as in, flash the correct quarter). That way it'd also intuitively explain where to stand for it without ever having to explicitly tutorialize it.

We already have the ability to turn off our character's animations so I don't see why it would be difficult to have a missed positional default to that state. Our characters are still going thru the motion of the skill but seeing the green rings of Aeolian Edge or just your character jumping and spinning would be really helpful for me. Plus this is something that could happen client side so no one else in the party would get a notification you missed anything in case bullying would be a concern .

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Originally Posted by NobleWinter

We already have the ability to turn off our character's animations so I don't see why it would be difficult to have a missed positional default to that state. Our characters are still going thru the motion of the skill but seeing the green rings of Aeolian Edge or just your character jumping and spinning would be really helpful for me. Plus this is something that could happen client side so no one else in the party would get a notification you missed anything in case bullying would be a concern .

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Yeah I feel for a game that in such a backwards manner does so much clientside, the devs never use it to their advantage much.

To their credit, unlike in a certain Guild Wars 2 which really really really needs it, I can fine-tune spell visuals. But like you said, we can only tune animation complexity, not use it for feedback during combat. Likewise, I wish they'd make abilities that visually produce multiple hits (much of what Viper does or say, DRK Carve&Spit) produce multiple small damage numbers in quick sequence on the client. Purely visual, it's actually a single hit for a single number, but the client shows it as syncing up to the multiple visual impacts you'd expect to produce.

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Originally Posted by Sylvain

It could just be the text damage to have a different color. Or a + sign after.

Like, you failed your positional you see 5293, you succeed you see 1402+

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It's better UI/UX practice to indicate a failed positional rather than a successful positional, because (1) if you only indicate successful positionals you still can't tell the difference between a failed positional and a non-positional and (2) it's much easier to spot an incorrect indicator in a sea of normal stuff than it is to spot the lack of a correct indicator in a sea of correct indicators.

This audio feedback does exist... but so far as I can tell only on samurai

the sound effects on Kasha and Gekko sound weaker when you miss the positional than they do when you hit them correctly, so considering that, it shouldn't be too hard for them to expand the system to the other melee jobs.

I think they are moving toward the idea that removing positionals all together

I think positionals just don't belong in the game to begin with, but it would be nice to have an audio feedback for when you land your positionals. I'm a tank main though so it rarely affects me anyways.

The only dps I'll play a lot in any content at all now is Reaper (as soon as I get around to leveling it to 100), which only has 2 positionals that you don't even worry about because true north covers 75% of their usage. So going from that to the ridiculous amount that exist on Viper is quite the whiplash.

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Originally Posted by AnjouMaaka

I think positionals just don't belong in the game to begin with

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Originally Posted by AnjouMaaka

I'm a tank main though so it rarely affects me anyways.

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Why are those who don't main or play melee DPS jobs much always the ones that want positionals gone?

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Originally Posted by Aco505

Why are those who don't main or play melee DPS jobs much always the ones that want positionals gone?

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You're really nitpicking even though I agreed with the OP about the audio feedback. I play dps enough to at least know what positionals are and how to hit them. My experience with them compared to tanking and healing is why I think they don't belong in the game. Missing your positionals isn't even detrimental anymore, so why are they still in the game? You really don't feel the loss of 20 potency on your damage output. Just doesn't make sense to keep them around.

Audio and visual cues would be great for nudging/teaching people to play the game! At least, for those who want to improve.

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Originally Posted by Rongway

It's better UI/UX practice to indicate a failed positional rather than a successful positional, because (1) if you only indicate successful positionals you still can't tell the difference between a failed positional and a non-positional and (2) it's much easier to spot an incorrect indicator in a sea of normal stuff than it is to spot the lack of a correct indicator in a sea of correct indicators.

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That’s something WoW does really well and ff14 should learn from. It’s really satisfying to see numbers pop up, whether it be white and orange numbers or the giant numbers for crits. Strange ff14 doesn’t have that, even though SE already copied so much from other MMOs.

On a another note, could use an ear shattering ping to when an invulnerable target is hit as well, like that turtle dragon from that lvl 50 dungeon… can’t recall the name.

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Originally Posted by AnjouMaaka

I think positionals just don't belong in the game to begin with,

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MNK and DRG lost a few positionals in DT. I think on DRG it made the rotation a bit smoother since the job was already busy af. On MNK it didn’t feel as good and felt like the class lost a bit of its identity. But maybe that’s because I main it and have the muscle memory down. /shrug

There is already that ping when you hit an invulnerable target, or when mobs are hitting an invulnerable paladin.

From a purely fun standpoint, it'd be cool to have visual/audio feedback when you nail a positional. Even if they just implemented a satisfying sound effect or a meatier/bassier version of the sound we already have, when the positional applies, it'd make the game just feel better to play imo. Been wanting something like this for years.