Should they remove positionals at this point?

[Kaonis]

You named what's ALREADY IN THE GAME, something positionals are supposed to work in conjunction with. I am asking for a replacement in lieu of positional removal.

Melee already have the things I mentioned plus their job specific quirks. I fail to see how taking away something like positionals will be anything more then convenience and allow the player to focus on the more skill based systems in place rather then one that can be interrupted because of fight design, and again loss of DPS at no fault of the player.

Also, positionals don't work in conjunction with those aforementioned systems. They are their own thing. Using a CD at a mobs flank or a mobs rear has no bearing on a CD or oGCD. So again, I fail to see how those are "working in conjunction with positionals".

Guess what, genius. The current bosses from ARR through SB are pretty damn stationary too, EX trials, Savage fights, 24 man bosses, most of them anyway.

They are stationary except when they're not. Got it. Doesn't change the fact there are fights where the design of the fight makes positionals impossible to pull off for some amount of time and again lowering the player performance at no fault of the player.

This whole bosses movement kills my DPS and my puppies are way, WAY overblown.

Hyperbole and strawman. There's nothing here that resembles an argument.

Feel free to go enjoy them. God forbid XIV being its own thing for once.

Ignoring other games and trying to develop in a vacuum is, in part, what caused 1.0 to flop in the first place. The game already has a ton of things that make it its own. Removing one bad design decision won't kill that.

Besides, the devs are clearly edging away from positionals. We'll probably see it almost entirely removed if not completely removed come 7.0.

[mosaicex]

...

Whatever I guess. I'm done having this discourse.
But mark my words.
If they somehow remove positionals the playerbase will definitely come up with new excuse to justify their poor plays, that much I can guarantee.
Remove positionals today and they will ask for removal of CDs next (and some people already did, actually), slippery slope and all that.
Something will never change, whether it's ARR, HW, or SB.

[Fyce]

They only rebalance it because the average player is so abysmal that unless you literally press the buttons from them, you won't get any decent performance that SE expects you to do.

Without "the average player" you seem to hate so much, this game wouldn't exist.
It's logical to appeal to your playerbase.

Whatever I guess. I'm done having this discourse.
But mark my words.
If they somehow remove positionals the playerbase will definitely come up with new excuse to justify their poor plays, that much I can guarantee.
Remove positionals today and they will ask for removal of CDs next (and some people already did, actually), slippery slope and all that.
Something will never change, whether it's ARR, HW, or SB.

Is it so hard to accept that some people simply don't like the mechanic?
It's not to "justify being bad", nor asking for a removal of CDs. You are using outliers as a generality here.
Some people don't like the mechanic. And not having a single melee DPS job without positionals is disappointing. That's all.

Not everything revolves around being good or bad. There is no slippery slope of any kind. Just a legitimate request not to see an already dying mechanic being kept for no reason to the point of not having a single alternative.

[Shurrikhan]

Is it so hard to accept that some people simply don't like the mechanic?
It's not to "justify being bad", nor asking for a removal of CDs. You are using outliers as a generality here.
Some people don't like the mechanic. And not having a single melee DPS job without positionals is disappointing. That's all.

Not everything revolves around being good or bad. There is no slippery slope or any kind. Just a legitimate request not to see an already dying mechanic being kept for no reason to the point of not having a single alternative.

But there's nothing objective about it being a dying mechanic. I and other players like it, at most just wanting some fixes to visual/actual discrepancies. I'd be fine also with seeing the bonuses be something other than pure skill-gap forming damage, maybe providing future safety or mobility for risks or forced movement taken with positionals. But I like moving around my enemies. It's fun.

That's not to say I'd be opposed to an alternative, so long as it provides me with the same need to think ahead a bit. But I don't want it to see it removed just because some people have difficulty with it. I'm sure some people have difficulty with stutter-casting or oGCD weaving as well, and would like to see those people less negatively affected by their latency, but I certainly don't want to see those aspects of gameplay outright removed.

[Fyce]

But there's nothing objective about it being a dying mechanic. I and other players like it, at most just wanting some fixes to visual/actual discrepancies. I'd be fine also with seeing the bonuses be something other than pure skill-gap forming damage, maybe providing future safety or mobility for risks or forced movement taken with positionals. But I like moving around my enemies. It's fun.

That's not to say I'd be opposed to an alternative, so long as it provides me with the same need to think ahead a bit. But I don't want it to see it removed just because some people have difficulty with it. I'm sure some people have difficulty with stutter-casting or oGCD weaving as well, and would like to see those people less negatively affected by their latency, but I certainly don't want to see those aspects of gameplay outright removed.

It is objectively being toned down every patch where balance changes happen for melee DPS. That's an objective fact. If dying is too strong of a word for your liking, then at least recognize that it's definitly not as strong of a mechanic as before and has been constantly pulled back to be made less and less impactful.

And I get that some people like it. What I ask is for these people to understand that some don't, and that the melee DPS role completly left that part of the playerbase out.

[Shurrikhan]

It is objectively being toned down every patch where balance changes happen for melee DPS. That's an objective fact.

True, but it's also devoid of context. The Monk changes were given literally as "band-aid" changes to be replaced with 5.0. The Dragoon positional changes before that were in line with the stated goal -- reduced skill-gap. Neither shows a sole aim to phase out the mechanic, else we wouldn't have certain jobs still just as, if not more, affected by frustrating positioning than they were in Heavensward.

More importantly, though, think about how much patch content this expansion has been made to fix unintended consequences of some other change. The ability of melee to manage their positionals were hit incredibly hard with the SB changes. Compensation should have been due at the start of SB, but, unsurprisingly, they've not noticed the effects of losing flexibly timed non-positional skills until

Each melee initially had far more skills that had no positional requirements. On Monk and Ninja, especially, one could slip in an extra cross-class skill into the rotation at faint TP inefficiency or negligible DPS cos or faintly delay one of their DoTs for until a spin would occur, utterly removing the positional risk. I would actually posit that positionals were easier to manage in Heavensward than even now, after all the buffs diminishing them, just due to that. Its just that we had actual near-constant access to means to ignore positionals rather than a 90-second cooldown and each positional being worth less.

The reductions we have now are necessary just to reach the same performance over a positionally frustrating piece of content that we had before. Note that the one job that has seen no reductions to its positional costs (60 potency per missed positional in terms of Shinten, higher if in terms of Guren or Seigan or an effective Gyoten), is also the one with the most control over its timings of position-less skills. Everyone else lost their control, and was compensated. Samurai retains that control, and was not compensated.

And historically, the trend of positionals is far from uniform. The positional bonus attached to Demolish was originally nonexistant, and then irregularly small making the skill most "okay", after Fracture, later-ID, and ToD, to use from the wrong position. In ARR, Ninja scarcely even had positionals. The portion of dictated positions, i.e. the prevalence of position-dependent gameplay, has only increased over time.

[CorbinDallas]

What I ask is for these people to understand that some don't, and that the melee DPS role completly left that part of the playerbase out.

So just because some people don't like it, they should remove it?

[Kallera]

So just because some people don't like it, they should remove it?

The story of the Official Forums. Just because people can beat content with it, doesn’t necessarily mean it is worth having.

[Nedkel]

Without "the average player" you seem to hate so much, this game wouldn't exist.
It's logical to appeal to your playerbase.

Is it so hard to accept that some people simply don't like the mechanic?
It's not to "justify being bad", nor asking for a removal of CDs. You are using outliers as a generality here.
Some people don't like the mechanic. And not having a single melee DPS job without positionals is disappointing. That's all.

Not everything revolves around being good or bad. There is no slippery slope of any kind. Just a legitimate request not to see an already dying mechanic being kept for no reason to the point of not having a single alternative.

Those "some people" could play the jobs that doesnt require to play around positionals, there are 12 of them if they are willing to play any class.
There is already an option for them, jobs with positionals are absolutely fine and balanced, why change the thing for a small minority of players? What will this change for better in this game but making it more boring and less unique?
Removing this mechanic from the melee dps equals to the balance havoc, do you want to break balance for 4 melee jobs just for appealing to the players who does not even bother to read the skill description?
If they dont like it, they dont have to, there are jobs for them if they dont mind.
Its like complaining about tanks that have to take the beating.
Please change the tanks because i want to play them, but taking damage is annoying i dont want that!

At this point i doubt any new, newbie or casual player actually complains about this stuff, its just people that are super lazy (so lazy they cant even push themselves to try out different job) and struggle to adapt. Dont adapt the game to the players who doesnt want to adapt to the rules in it, this kind of practice has never gone well for any mmorpg. There are "average" players who could adapt and do well, there is no need to change anything. If anyone has problem to press few buttons and move left analog stick, then im sad to say this but this game is not for him, sorry candy crush awaits.

[Crushnight]

What if they added a buff to each positional action where you can get the next positional potency of a positional action regardless where you hit the boss but it only gets applied if you hit the positional with the 1st positional action.
For overworld it should work like potd/HoH stuff no flank or rear positions on basic mobs. Boss fates A and S ranks should still have positionals