How would people feel if they took positional requirements away?

[Powercow]

I disagree, I think they would be better off for it.

They wouldn't have to overhaul anything, I genuinely believe if they took positionals away right now that everything would be fine as is. Really thinking about it now as I think of all the mechanics for the melee jobs in my head, if they got rid of positionals, none of the jobs would require any extra mechanics, they would be fine as is in my opinion.

And that's neat, but people who the jobs would prefer to not have about 10-20% of their keypresses removed for no reason.

I never said it was "meaningful" at all. I did say it does keep melee more engaged, but I don't necessarily consider it to be done in a "meaningful" way, I think positionals are pointless and stupid. But if we were to talk about what is or is not "meaningful" we'd just be arguing semantics at that point.

But... you're the only one arguing semantics?

Now this is what I was referring to by people playing it up. Removing positionals is most definitely not "ripping away mechanics" but what you said here:

Yes, yes it is. A Monk needs to move to the side or rear every ~2 GCDs or so. This means that for every other time you have to press a button to activate a weapon skill, you need to press another to move as well. You're asking for that additional press to be removed. That's roughly a third of a monk's buttons during their basic combo removed for absolutely no reason. It would only serve to slow the job down and make it less engaging, and by God does Monk not need any more of that.

That is what ripping away mechanics actually looks like. That is what nullifying a major part of a job's identity and gameplay looks like.

Aetherflow and the Fairy Gauge are less interactive and less of a core part of a Scholar's identity than positionals for monk, both from a lore/aesthetic perspective and a gameplay one.
For lore, nothing about Scholar really pushes it towards Aether outside of general mana and summoning of the fairy, and while fairies are a big part of Scholar's lore and aesthetic the gauge is not -- the fairy itself is. In terms of gameplay, the Aetherflow gauge adds just the tiniest smidgen of choice and the Fairy Gauge adds essentially nothing, as the tether could easily have been a cooldown and nobody would have noticed.
For a Monk, being a martial arts expert who moves around the target to strike at its weak points recalls old Bruce Lee and Kung-Fu films that monk is very much so based off of. Gameplay-wise, well it's about ~20% or so of their button presses, which should indicate plenty how integral to its gameplay it is.

Another thing to keep in mind, is that positionals are not all created equal across all the melee jobs because they are much less present for Sam/Nin as compared to Drg/Mnk. If you were to take away the positional for sam it would mean they could sit behind the boss (which they do most of the time) and wouldn't have to move for their single flank specific weapon skill. That's what I mean by the positional req is "barely there." You could get rid of it and would have an exceptionally tiny effect on current sam gameplay.

Sure, but it would still involve taking away meaningful button presses from the Samurai if you removed the bonus. The job would be objectively simpler and slower as a result.

Take the positional for nin away and the same applies, they wouldn't have to move for their single weapon skill that extends huton and requires you to be on the flank for full potency. Exact same thing applies, you get rid of it and it would once more have barely any impact whatsoever on ninja's gameplay. It's not the same as getting rid of the samurai ki bar or ninjas mudras which once more is what actually "ripping out" mechanics looks like.

The Samurai aesthetic doesn't really involve striking your opponent a bunch of times to get extra strikes in. The style is clearly based of Iaijutsu, what with Midare sheathing the katana and all, so from a lore standpoint no the kenki gauge doesn't add much. From a gameplay standpoint it's a fine mechanic, and Samurai would be worse off for its removal to about the same extent Monk would be with the loss of positionals. For Ninja, the aesthetic idea of striking from behind absolutely fits the fantasy ninja, who is the dual-katana wielding, magic-casting shadow warrior. Striking the weak points of an enemy to gain an advantage completely fits. The reason Ninja doesn't have *more* positionals is simply for gameplay reasons, that is the Mudra system and tight timings on things like Trick Attack mean Ninja already had enough stuff to deal with. And yes, removing Mudras would hurt the ninja aesthetic and gameplay more than losing its positionals, but let's not play this game of "well sure, losing a hand would suck, but is it worse than losing an entire ARM?!"

Positionals are for sam/nin are so minor they are practically meaningless, therefore in my opinion, scrap them and never look back.

If they were practically meaningless, people wouldn't do them nor care about doing them. But given how you do seem to care about the 0.6% DPS difference of hitting every flank positional on Ninja (versus hitting none), it does seem meaningful. Plus, you know, aesthetic and speed, yadda yadda.

Now I *can* agree that getting rid of positionals for mnk/drg would indeed make them a lot easier or "dumbed down" as you wanted to call them. However, the difference between us is I don't think that's a bad thing. I genuinely believe the jobs would still be fun to play and just fine as is even if the positionals were gone and nothing else was added.

Monk is already arguably the easiest job in the game. Removing the positionals would utterly cement that, as Monk's DPS rotation would be easier than any of the tanks'. Now that may be fine for you, but for longtime players of the job we'd prefer our DPS job to actually have more to it than the damn tanks.

Off topic but... Enochian should have been a passive from day 1.

Oh I agree, but I don't play BLM enough to start claiming the job should be changed to suit my tastes. Enochian doesn't keep me away from the job, and the job is just fine IMO, it's just that I have other jobs I like better.

The people who make two posts and leave, maybe. That's not generally true of the regulars though. I somehow doubt that your 500+ posts are all complaints.

No, some of them are making fun of dumb posts, some are memey, some are answering questions for players who want to learn, etc. But yes most do fall under the category of complaints. Hell, this thread and everyone saying positionals would be better off removed falls under that category.