How would people feel if they took positional requirements away?

[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.)

[Burningskull]

Since I stopped using melee in EX fights I already for the most part don't worry about positionals. The fights I have the most fun on with a melee are the fights like Engels in The Copied Factory. I'm a huge supporter of removing positionals as I don't feel the accomplish or add anything to the fights. They already give melee band-aids to not have to worry about them. True North and Riddle of Earth. Might as well just remove positionals and have less buttons to worry about.

[Shurrikhan]

Since I stopped using melee in EX fights I already for the most part don't worry about positionals. The fights I have the most fun on with a melee are the fights like Engels in The Copied Factory. I'm a huge supporter of removing positionals as I don't feel the accomplish or add anything to the fights. They already give melee band-aids to not have to worry about them. True North and Riddle of Earth. Might as well just remove positionals and have less buttons to worry about.

"We already have X to make Y easier, so why not just remove Y?"

How is it that we so rarely also consider,

"We already have Y, albeit muddied by X, so why not just remove X?"

[Kohl]

Positional damage bonuses are silly. Honestly they feel like a punishment to melee DPS players; Tanks can (and most often do) turn the target erratically trying to avoid damage, both disrupting melee DPS and sometimes (more rarely) disrupted melee dps rotations. Melee DPS are also the only role punished for fighting anything solo: you're not going to get any of your positional bonus damage because the target will always be facing you (True North helps...); what other jobs have their damage handicapped for doing content solo? A melee DPS is both required to have a team to do their optimal DPS, and (along with all DPS) subject to the longest wait times for that team.

My opinion is that it should be gotten rid of, and that all melee DPS jobs should have more support abilities/utility. Either something that allows them to tank for a minute while the healer raises the tank (I would love an ability that pulls enmity from healers and gives a defensive bonus, for example - Call it: "For the Team" or something), or something that allows them to support the healer more (I accept that this idea is probably too upsetting to the balance, just throwing it out there for conversation).

[Shurrikhan]

Positional damage bonuses are silly. Honestly they feel like a punishment to melee DPS players; Tanks can (and most often do) turn the target erratically trying to avoid damage, both disrupting melee DPS and sometimes (more rarely) disrupted melee dps rotations. Melee DPS are also the only role punished for fighting anything solo: you're not going to get any of your positional bonus damage because the target will always be facing you (True North helps...); what other jobs have their damage handicapped for doing content solo? A melee DPS is both required to have a team to do their optimal DPS, and (along with all DPS) subject to the longest wait times for that team.

My opinion is that it should be gotten rid of, and that all melee DPS jobs should have more support abilities/utility. Either something that allows them to tank for a minute while the healer raises the tank (I would love an ability that pulls enmity from healers and gives a defensive bonus, for example - Call it: "For the Team" or something), or something that allows them to support the healer more (I accept that this idea is probably too upsetting to the balance, just throwing it out there for conversation).

Those are two separate components though, mechanically speaking.

The first is your positioning relative to the mob. The second is the mob's positioning relative to a player.

You have reaction times. You have turning delay. You have maximum turning speeds, even if they're not particularly limiting for mouse-users.

Mobs have no reaction times. They have no turning delay. They have no maximum turning speeds. As such, they turn faster than your screen can ever be accurate to.

The question is then... why weren't parameters put in place to make mobs actually turn in a way that players can intuitively engage with (e.g. are remotely similar to that of players)?

And let's keep in mind also the additional tools tanks and melees had, and the additional obligations they faced, before positionals were increasingly relegated into gimmicks:

• Every Melee had 2 stuns usable to keep the tank from having to dodge an AoE and thus disrupt its positionals. This was part of their gameplay, faced in compromise against maximizing tank mitigation.
  
  
• "DoTs to others, direct damage to focus target (if it has too little HP to maximize DoT damage on)" and focus targeting in general, were often the norm. Far heftier TP limitations, a lack of any PLD AoE damage, and significantly higher mob damage meant that dungeons weren't quite the AoE fests they are now. While the latter also removes positions, this meant that even among a few mobs, tanks usually only had to position against one at a time. If it AoEed, they could step and back without issue. If another AoEed, costing positionals, they could pacify the blow or oGCD stun it, either one at the last moment, to still waste the mob's uptime without wrecking melee positionals.
  
  
• Tank damage was based far more on auto-attacks, which then required that the mob be within 40 degrees to either side of you, rather than 360 autos we have now. (The same was true of blocking and parrying.) This meant that tanks themselves were more aware of their position.
  
  
• Jobs with the most constraints would eventually be tuned into the highest performing jobs when coordinated around and played to their highest level, which seemed the intent. Monk and BLM topped the meters. This meant that there was pay-off for the Monk and BLM for their positioning, and payoff for the team by keeping steady positionals available for their Monk and/or AM-taxi's for their BLM. It was a different day.

Now, we're looking at the consequences of short-sighted changes -- a death by a hundred cuts. Positionals as they were in ARR makes about as much sense in ShB as PLDs having no damage AoE would. And more importantly, now there is so little pay-off for the system, the lack of NPC/mob turning mechanics is both shows and rubs more painfully than ever before. It, especially, needs to finally be dealt with.

But the solution to no AoE damage on PLD was not to scrap PLD, or even never to AoE pull when running a PLD. They were instead fit to the new setting, even if not always strictly for the better. Positionals need the same treatment. They need to be rehauled, not removed.

[Kohl]

Those are two separate components though, mechanically speaking.
(snip).

I enjoyed reading you post.

I feel like if there were more balancing to making combat strategic in a way that wasn't just learning mechanics, but knowing your enemy and having a winning plan, that all those subtle positioning things should be developed and improved upon for the sake of the experience of... well... pack hunting. But FFXIV isn't marketed as that kind of game, and it is the grey area of positional becoming more and more silly that has me just not caring for them.

I wouldn't say I really feel strongly about it, them being the weak facet of the game they are now doesn't diminish things for me in any significant way. SE will do what they will do to gain and keep subscribers in an upward trend; so far they haven't done anything to make me consider unsubscribing.

[MPNZ]

Combos+specials+cancels>positionals=always, duh...

[Shurrikhan]

I feel like if there were more balancing to making combat strategic in a way that wasn't just learning mechanics, but knowing your enemy and having a winning plan, that all those subtle positioning things should be developed and improved upon for the sake of the experience of... well... pack hunting. But FFXIV isn't marketed as that kind of game, and it is the grey area of positional becoming more and more silly that has me just not caring for them.

I wouldn't say I really feel strongly about it, them being the weak facet of the game they are now doesn't diminish things for me in any significant way. SE will do what they will do to gain and keep subscribers in an upward trend; so far they haven't done anything to make me consider unsubscribing.

That is likely the case.

Personally, having seen more good things removed over time, or more concepts thrown out because of shoddy iterations, I have a bias towards trying to fix and thereby preserve over removing mechanics and concepts and thereby reducing the user experience. Even I'll agree that some cases of streamlining are for the best, but my history makes me instinctively wary of it. It's just the benefit/curse of experience, so to speak, but it also means I'm not going to be able to speak from the same point of view as newer players or those who weren't as invested in the since-removed nuances of combat when they were still a part of the game.

Much of the early game, especially the parts since removed, feel kind of like a Chekhov's Gun scenario. To simplify your illustration, we had tools that allowed for more strategic, tailored-solution combat, but we saw increasingly less need for those tools. Most could get a glimpse of the gun lying there, but it never seemed to be raised or fired. That left two options. Either the devs (1) fire the gun (make use of the tools), or (2) they ret-con out the gun or dismiss it as a background prop.

Clearly, I'd have preferred the gun be fired, rather than dismissed. I understand, though, that those mechanics couldn't just be left to linger within eye-shot without again being fully used.

Even making use of those mechanics brings on another list of pros and cons, however. Do we give/keep those additional tools and concerns to play around, or do we skip/remove them because they would require coordination? Granted, this an MMO that doesn't especially encourage lasting socialization, and therefore coordination and/or patience within a particular group or general behaviors usually associated with doing content amiably with friends and/or acquaintances. We can also say it doesn't much encourage competency, but that is largely a result of nuances being lost while still leaving things tuned low as if they still existed. (We can't well praise the choice to remove something based on circumstances that came only after it's change, let alone circumstances that are typically seen as negative.) In either case, though, it's a game that perhaps gives reason to reduce what goes into party play while also reducing the output required from it.

I find the advantages to be innately greater than the disadvantage, but a bias may be in play. To me, complexity (where still efficient, intuitive, and cohesive, i.e. not "convolution") might not be beneficial in itself, but does give access to many near-pure benefits. Depending on the exact gameplay loops involved, it gives more for the player to engage with, to look forward to, and to feel that they have achieved. Depending on where those gameplay loops are located, it may also give a more substantial feeling of horizontal progression (where one type of content encourages better mastery of X mechanic and another of Y, etc.) than do extrinsic reward systems. I cannot honestly say that complexity is optional; the more benefits it carries, the more are "locked behind it", and where the reward is disproportionate to the effort required, those efforts (and their gameplay loops, mechanics, concerns, etc.) feel removed from the game's apparent idea of what the game should be. Not everything needs to be super complex, let alone in the same way, but there should be a place, and rewards therein, for the different mechanics of complexity.

That means design challenges, much like adding any new job. Broadly speaking, my preference here is analogous to preferring fewer jobs with greater depth and polish over being spread thin. (The last bit uses loaded language, I know, but I honestly cannot see it any other way.)

[HeulGDarian]

It usually goes like this.
mechanic is introduced
people bitch its too hard or annoying to manage
SE makes it easier to be done less punishing and clearer on how to use it
people say now it barely adds on the experience it is niche and should remove it