Are positionals a outdated thing?

[Iyrnthota]

Hmm... well from what I have experienced from the game I disagree with that statement. Regardless of positionals the devs have always have to have melees (or melee uptime if you want to be fancy) in mind wether they are tanks or melee dps.

If the devs feel like a boss has a lot of movement / mechanics that deny positionals they have chosen to disable positionals anyway. The choice is always there. Some people just want it to be a permanent thing.

As a tank i would be more annoyed if they started designing more bosses that yeets itself across the field every 2 seconds. As a dps I can just go play ranged if it's that annoying. And a boss that yeets itself every 2 seconds does not necessarily mean that it has good design.

the bottom line i am trying to get at is... it's not positionals that limit boss design. it would "arguably" be the existence of melees. If your game has melees then you have to have consider them in boss encounters. There is a reason as to why in some games being ranged is "OP".

I wouldn't say I personally have enough experience to comment intelligently on it, but I can see his point of view.
There two sides of the coin, as I understand it.
The boss encounter is designed in such a way that melee's can make decent use of their positionals, in which case they are restricted in encounter design.
That or they ignore them entirely, in which case, why have positionals in the first place.

[Schan]

I wouldn't say I personally have enough experience to comment intelligently on it, but I can see his point of view.
There two sides of the coin, as I understand it.
The boss encounter is designed in such a way that melee's can make decent use of their positionals, in which case they are restricted in encounter design.
That or they ignore them entirely, in which case, why have positionals in the first place.

I think I understand what you are saying but I have a few questions and a what if:
Why is there this dicotomy of "if fight have positionals then it's limiting the design"?

I'm not a dev and I can't speak for them but we don't know where in the development process considerations for positionals come in but:

What if they design the fight they want, tune it for difficulty (which i would argue is the biggest limiter for fight designs) and at the end they test out for positionals. If positionals are doable they keep the positionals ring. IF they struggle to do positionals then they just ask the devs to implement the no positionals ring on that boss and call it day.

Why do things have to be one or the other?

I'm personally quite happy with the middle ground that we have. some fights have positionals, some fights have no positionals. Everyone wins sometimes instead of some winning all the time.

[Iyrnthota]

I think I understand what you are saying but I have a few questions and a what if:
Why is there this dicotomy of "if fight have positionals then it's limiting the design"?

I'm not a dev and I can't speak for them but we don't know where in the development process considerations for positionals come in but:

What if they design the fight they want, tune it for difficulty (which i would argue is the biggest limiter for fight designs) and at the end they test out for positionals. If positionals are doable they keep the positionals ring. IF they struggle to do positionals then they just ask the devs to implement the no positionals ring on that boss and call it day.

Why do things have to be one or the other?

I'm personally quite happy with the middle ground that we have. some fights have positionals, some fights have no positionals. Everyone wins sometimes instead of some winning all the time.

I think, strictly speaking, if you want a fight to have positionals then it is limiting what you can do with the design.

Of course there's a lot of different opinions on that.
Some people prefer it, some not.

Maybe there are even some Devs that really enjoy the challenge of designing a fight with these restrictions in mind, whereas there might be other Devs that prefer they didn't have to take them into account.

Part of walking the middle ground though is that you're going to get questions, comments, and complaints from either side of the line.

For fights with them, you'll have people who will enjoy it and praise it as much as people who are annoyed about having to deal with them.
Similarly for fights without them, you'll get people who are pleased they don't have to take them into account, and others who are upset that the functionality has essentially been discarded for an entire fight.