Monk Positionals 6.0

[ssunny2008]

To be fair, I don't think it's a bad move to try to cater to a large percentage of a player base. Only thing I could draw a tangent to would be League of Legends, that says what changes affect what skill level (These changes are mainly visible in ____ level gameplay). It'd be nice if Square Enix didn't only focus on the iron/bronze/silver, even if it is roughly ~60% or so (I don't know, I don't play anymore)

It´s around 80%... then you´ve like 18% in gold / plat and only ~2% in diamond+.

And they do a good job by "catering" only the upper 2% when we talk about balancing and stuff. If you would start to cater the 80%, the game would go nuts since everything is going to be braindead overpowered. Not saying, that it´s not the case somehow, but stuff like world championships couldn´t be a thing. That´s why any feedback, which should be kept in mind when we talk about gameplay, should come from years long mains and top players, not those who either can´t play their class or jump on the metatrain at any time.

[jerome15]

it's unfortunate, but i feel like they're kind of just testing the waters with these changes. i think they planned them out before even media tour, but figured it would be easier to digest at 2 separate times (twin/true first and then boot/dk later). that or they put conflicting information in the job guide to see how people would react and if there's too much backlash they can easily just go "my bad, the skills at the top are wrong, boot/dk didn't lose positionals," but if there's no much resistance they can go ahead and get rid of the 4. just my thoughts.

[ssunny2008]

it's unfortunate, but i feel like they're kind of just testing the waters with these changes. i think they planned them out before even media tour, but figured it would be easier to digest at 2 separate times (twin/true first and then boot/dk later). that or they put conflicting information in the job guide to see how people would react and if there's too much backlash they can easily just go "my bad, the skills at the top are wrong, boot/dk didn't lose positionals," but if there's no much resistance they can go ahead and get rid of the 4. just my thoughts.

Seriously... removing even 1! positional is too much. There is no need to remove any of them. They just take possibilities to grow, to get better or to optimize the output away from the class. Not to mention the whole fun aspect which comes from being mobile at any time. I would always prefer positionals on any skill (even oGCD´s) instead of a Blitz-mechanic, which is nothing but 123 - burst, 123 - burst from any other class. The rinse and repeat rotations without any positioning and stuff is nothing but boring.

[Xau]

Seriously... removing even 1! positional is too much. There is no need to remove any of them. They just take possibilities to grow, to get better or to optimize the output away from the class. Not to mention the whole fun aspect which comes from being mobile at any time. I would always prefer positionals on any skill (even oGCD´s) instead of a Blitz-mechanic, which is nothing but 123 - burst, 123 - burst from any other class. The rinse and repeat rotations without any positioning and stuff is nothing but boring.

personally i am fine whit them removing 2, albeit i prefer if they remove none, especially since monk now has almost literally zero ogcds outside of mnk selfbuffs, brotherhood and then TFC or enlightment spam under brotherhood , and spaming that will only happen once every 120s
but i guess this happened because yoshida and dev team felt overwhelmed by the job gameplay somehow?

[Yokubo]

It´s around 80%... then you´ve like 18% in gold / plat and only ~2% in diamond+.

And they do a good job by "catering" only the upper 2% when we talk about balancing and stuff. If you would start to cater the 80%, the game would go nuts since everything is going to be braindead overpowered. Not saying, that it´s not the case somehow, but stuff like world championships couldn´t be a thing. That´s why any feedback, which should be kept in mind when we talk about gameplay, should come from years long mains and top players, not those who either can´t play their class or jump on the metatrain at any time.

I mean yes and no. I'd say a large majority of the player base is asking for more Glamour Plates. Just because it doesn't come [only] from the long-time players doesn't mean it's any less of a valid request. However taking your statement and generalizing it to the game verses class changes seems unfair and I see where you're coming from. If a large majority of players aren't able to keep up with positionals, I feel there are better ways to go about it. Base damage increase and just lower the potency payoff from 60 to 40 perhaps. Positionals have done well to keep melee DPS unique from other MMORPGs and even if some players don't like it, Square Enix should recognize that it does well to set them apart from their competitors (Not that their competitors are doing so well at the moment).

With that aside, I can understand some feedback from (how to put...) the lesser veteraned players being a good indicator of where the learning curve is, but the curve itself shouldn't be tangled to that all players feel immediately mastering a class before it's even max level....

[Andy_T93]

That´s a vague statement. Of course noone knows what´s going to happen. But in fact the most ppl who showed up at any time have been in casuals. And casuals in final look like the following:

- They do play any class, but don´t put much efford into them. They swap as they want and mostly prefer QoL classes over real gameplay. Which last in the masses of DNC or healer / RDM in content like bodzja since they know they´re going to die and can rezz easily.
- They don´t play the endgame (savage content)... the only content where positionals on MNK need to be played.
- They do play EX content, but even there they don´t perform really well.
- They have no clue about good / bad or balancing, since they just don´t care and want to be insane.

Maybe they´ll like the new MNK, they´ll atleast try it, for sure. But i´m convinced that they´ll never main or try to master it. They play the game for other reasons than "having a mainclass and compete in the endgame". It´s more about "pewpew, glam and social features". That´s why any gaming company should give much about feedback from casuals when we talk about gameplay.

Yeah and like it or not the people who you (quite condescendingly) describe make up the vast majority of the player base and paying subs, if you were a game dev would you make changes to keep the top 10% of hardcore players happy or the other 90% casuals as you call them. Ever thing maybe you are the problem and this isn't the game for you

[Neoyoshi]

The job is busy pre-endwalker, and I agree that it would be quite busy if monk kept all six positionals moving forward into Endwalker.

My issue is the lack of communication from SE about this. Were we not told that only Twin Snakes and True Strike would lose positional requirements? What we have as a result is twice the amount of positional loss than originally communicated.

And I get that things could have changed between the media tour and now, but I don't buy the 'we didn't know monk would end up needing this much reduction in positional requirements' when they had a working template at the time of the media tour.

Oh... oh dear. D:

Hmmmm, well I guess we'll find out tomorrow.

[Yokubo]

Yeah and like it or not the people who you (quite condescendingly) describe make up the vast majority of the player base and paying subs, if you were a game dev would you make changes to keep the top 10% of hardcore players happy or the other 90% casuals as you call them. Ever thing maybe you are the problem and this isn't the game for you

Well Square Enix has done well keeping the game new player friendly and the community itself has done quite well to maintain that reputation. I can understand that for the casual players, the game isn't fun if you have people barking at you that you aren't "playing your class properly". In most content you can get by painstakingly if a member is doing severely less than they should (For worst case scenario).

It would be nice to know that Square Enix does have its eye on the other players though trying to make sure that they can enjoy themselves too. And frankly, it seems to me that at this point they've sorta taken sides with the casuals trying to make Monk more freely enjoyable to the casual players without worrying that they're once again "playing their class properly". Like the players who aren't landing positionals aren't the ones complaining that they don't do enough DPS, so why bother fixing the potency to cater to them if it isn't an issue to them?

[wereotter]

Yeah and like it or not the people who you (quite condescendingly) describe make up the vast majority of the player base and paying subs, if you were a game dev would you make changes to keep the top 10% of hardcore players happy or the other 90% casuals as you call them. Ever thing maybe you are the problem and this isn't the game for you

Based on this game?

They do both. They created ultimate raids to keep the top 10% of players happy (based off what percentage of players have actually cleared them) AND they add in content for casual players. It's not a zero sum game, they can do both. They can have complex and busy jobs to appeal to players who enjoy that AND they can have simpler jobs to satisfy those players. And have already shown they can reward players with a higher damage ceiling for playing a complex job well. The problem comes when they remove what some players enjoy so that there's nothing for them.

Not every job is ever going to appeal to every player, nor should they. The variety of jobs and being able to play them all on the same character is exactly why they should have jobs made to appeal to all sorts of players. Even if one job (or race or piece of content) only appeals to 10% of players, that's not a reason to remove it or change it so entirely as to no longer appeal to its audience only to hook the audience you already have.

[Acece]

Pour one out for the jobs losing even more of what made them unique.