How would people feel if they took positional requirements away?

[Shurrikhan]

...just do it and be done with it. Combat will still feel the same because you still need to dodge aoe's and get to levers and all the other stuff SE uses to spice up content.

You're acting like there's a development cost to keeping a mechanic that's existed for over 6 years and a development bonus for removing it. There isn't. And a loss being relatively minor compared to what it could be doesn't make it not a loss, let alone necessary.

That's like explaining away having needlessly removed a patient's little finger. It doesn't work that way.

You know what? I'll give you the benefit that you can come up with something sensible, but do try again.

[Riastrad]

You're acting like there's a development cost to keeping a mechanic that's existed for over 6 years and a development bonus for removing it. There isn't. And a loss being relatively minor compared to what it could be doesn't make it not a loss, let alone necessary.

That's like explaining away having needlessly removed a patient's little finger. It doesn't work that way.

You know what? I'll give you the benefit that you can come up with something sensible, but do try again.

Seems you took that personally for some reason. As for coming up with something sensible and unique, we already had that in 1.0. Certain weapon skills had hidden effects if used on enemies at certain times. Example: hitting a skeleton with Concussive Blow would knock off their skull, reducing its accuracy and providing a chance at a drop (I farmed Skull Eyepatches that way to make money in the early days). I feel that is much better way of adding to combat than just simply attacking from the side or from behind. It rewards skilled play and requires timing and luck. As it stands we just get bigger numbers and looking like we can't decide where to attack from.

Again not sure why you took issue with my opinion, but feel free to read my signature. Peace out you strange little person.

[Shurrikhan]

Seems you took that personally for some reason. As for coming up with something sensible and unique, we already had that in 1.0. Certain weapon skills had hidden effects if used on enemies at certain times. Example: hitting a skeleton with Concussive Blow would knock off their skull, reducing its accuracy and providing a chance at a drop (I farmed Skull Eyepatches that way to make money in the early days). I feel that is much better way of adding to combat than just simply attacking from the side or from behind. It rewards skilled play and requires timing and luck. As it stands we just get bigger numbers and looking like we can't decide where to attack from.

I, too, remember the incapacitation system. It obliged particular compositions for particular genera of enemies, but it certainly didn't require skilled play or timing. All the skills that applied limb damage were parts of your normal rotations, on CDs that made their usage perfectly identical in every fight regardless of said limb damage. There were no dependents, be it on timing or preceding weaponskills. You just eventually broke the head, l. arm, r. arm, l. leg, r. leg, l. other, r. other, or outer sub-unit by doing normal combos when bringing the right jobs. The only thing to get close to coordinated play or timing was Battle Regiments, a more or less a generalized version of Combo Chains / Magic Burst, and they never reached a single finished version before being scrapped.

Positionals aren't great, but that incap system, as it was, is certainly no decent replacement for them. Unless vastly improved upon, it would have no gameplay advantage outside of aesthetics, and would be hated for making arbitrary imbalance issues in a given fight. Heck, even the older sub-unit targeting systems (attacking the head, sword hand, leg, etc. of the enemy, available to all attacks) would probably do far more for the game than incap's strategy of just doing your regular combos and having it drop at least 30% off the enemy's damage dealt so long as you're the right class (now job). (And let's face it, anything that wouldn't reduce their damage or defense -- of which mobs already have 0 -- would be skipped entirely now just as much as then. It'd be anti-head, or anti-arm jobs only until that gets even more gimmicky.)