On the Removal of Positionals

[Eudyptes]

People have been hitting almost if not all positionals in the hard content where they're actually challenging to get like Ultimates, P3S, P5S or P11S.

Also, missing positionals hardly means taking huge damage losses, quite the opposite. Whether this should change or not is a different question.

Positionals have never dictated fight design, otherwise all omnidirectional fights would be great yet they're not (e. g. P7S).

I didn't say they dictated fight design, I said it's in the back of their mind (very big difference there). They are not at the fore front of designing encounters, but they do have to be considered since all roles have to be considered. In fact that's exactly why they are reduced as much as they are now, because we simply cannot have today's fights with ARR's positionals. Ultimate raiders also do not hit every positional unless they fight is extremely immobile, I've been raiding for years, there are many fights we just outright ignore positonals during certain parts of the fight just because you wll screw up/risk screwing up a mechanic to hit them and the loss nowadays isn't really a big deal.

That said, my point was never about how big a deal it is to miss them, but rather the fact that missing them for playing the game correctly is bad design. It doesn't matter if it's 1 damage loss or 1000.

[Lyth]

I don't think that fights need to be designed with the intention of perfect execution being possible. Let players work their ingenuity and find solutions to the impossible. That's how you get a skill differential.

I really want to know what's the deal with these endless positional discussions involving people who have no investment in the role. I've never seen a thread where players ask for the option to move around while channeling spells. I think magical ranged players have this mindset that if melee lose their positionals, then they can dismiss melee skill expression the same way that they have done for physical ranged. Perhaps it's time that we flipped this around and start focusing on magical ranged gameplay simplifications.

[Wolf_Heartnet]

Tanks has had their aggro generation insanely buffed so they could concentrate more on DPS. Back in heavensward/ARR it was alot harder to maintain aggro.
Bard/Machinist casting has been removed so they can continue moving and dpsing more easily.
These things happened due to player feedback and the players are now asking for removal of positionals for reason already stated in this thread.

I am in support of removal of positionals particularly for Viper.

[Valence]

Except they've never put positionals on ranged/casters (other than occasional boss mechs) and there are melee with casts and p. Ranged that had casts and casters with very few casts.

Like, sure, you're being technically correct, but I feel the point of what Aco505 is pretty clear.

Positionals have usually been a melee role thing in this game. Arguably tanks dealt with it before with old Raw Intuition and before they could block and dodge from the rear, but the design normalcy is there.

And my point that some things that were taken for granted as the core identity of some roles got extended to others, namely rng procs for example. Therefore, nothing prevents them to extend a positionaless kit to a new melee job someday. I dont really have a horse in this race though.

Which is exactly why they stated they were reducing the sizes of hitboxes this xpac. Which they largely did (save for the EX's, but those don't even require positionals anyway). I think most melee would agree in general that staying in range was a non-issue in SW and ShB. There were still mechanics that would keep you out of melee range of course, but I don't think anyone is really defending the enormous hitboxes they had before.

But one bad design choice doesn't make another bad design choice good.

They have reduced nothing so far. Dungeon bosses hitboxes are still as gigantic as well. I'm still waiting on those promises, but I guess we'll see tomorrow.

[CKNovel]

The big problem with positionals is that SQEX is completely inconsistent with them.

Sometimes you get free positionals with EX1, sometimes they're straight up impossible to hit because of some mechanics. Positionals are also worth 50~60 potency, that's around the potency of an auto attack and they're very rarely in a burst window.
They're not excessively hard to hit, can be cheesed with the many available use of True North.

Viper's Dreadwinder lines well with True North so you can just cheese most of them with no difficulties.
I'd rather see positionals being replaced with something that applies to all content rather than sometimes positionals being just free potency and that has no feedback on its successfull application or not.

Positionnals impact have been dumbed down again and again to be at a point where they were worth 2~3% in EW and that's scenarios where you intentionally misses them all.

[Kalaam]

Either make positionnals have side effects that aren't direct damage (maybe conditions to apply on big adds for example) or have something else giving you a reason to move. Maybe each successive positional in a row gives you a stacking critical chance buff that goes away on your next crit or something.

[Galvuu]

Either make positionnals have side effects that aren't direct damage (maybe conditions to apply on big adds for example) or have something else giving you a reason to move. Maybe each successive positional in a row gives you a stacking critical chance buff that goes away on your next crit or something.

You're skirting close to ARR now- a lot of buffs (like the Heavy Thrust piercing debuff) were only granted if you hit the positional in 2.X.
Eventually, SE decided that was too punishing and moved away from it. I actually think what you're proposing if more punishing than what we have now- or just the same. A stacking crit buff is just damage with a different hat. The small potency gain is fine as a reward for hitting your positionals.

Tanks has had their aggro generation insanely buffed so they could concentrate more on DPS. Back in heavensward/ARR it was alot harder to maintain aggro.
Bard/Machinist casting has been removed so they can continue moving and dpsing more easily.
These things happened due to player feedback and the players are now asking for removal of positionals for reason already stated in this thread.

I am in support of removal of positionals particularly for Viper.

I, too, yearn for the days where XIV strips every mechanic away from its jobs. Just make them all a one-button, auto-rotation jobs so I can press 1 really hard with no thought or learning curve. (obvious /s)
This is working out so well for the game too, between the healer threads (and the scarcity of healers in a lot of DCs pfs since like two years ago), a lot of reworked/simplified jobs (like BLM and MNK) having abysmal play rates, and so on.
Let's not pretend that these weren't missteps by SE- they love to gut their jobs down to appease the lowest common denominator (which is low in this game), but that doesn't seem to be working too well if they're thinking that they need to revise their strategy (which has been publicly stated multiple times). Especially if the story content goes on the way 7.0 is going. No story and no good job design is sure to be a winning combination.

Fwiw, that's not why BRD/MCH cast bars were removed. The identity of those jobs was, in part, their mobility, which people enjoyed. Stormblood BRD, in particular, was a very busy, high-apm job during it's lengthy burst phase (especially with the dot tick crits procing your bloodletter, you had to be spamming that thing constantly) with a lot of small intricacies to maximize it. I very much doubt it was about "making it easier to maximize damage" since they literally shifted the difficulty from one thing to another; HW and SB BRD were very much comparable in execution (also true for MCH, but BRD was the harder of the two jobs for both expansions).

[Eudyptes]

They have reduced nothing so far. Dungeon bosses hitboxes are still as gigantic as well. I'm still waiting on those promises, but I guess we'll see tomorrow.

I do think they have reduced the hitboxes by a fair amount in dungeons, but keep in mind that they were so big that reducing them by half is still a pretty big hitbox in general. The EX's are just as they were were though.

This is working out so well for the game too, between the healer threads (and the scarcity of healers in a lot of DCs pfs since like two years ago), a lot of reworked/simplified jobs (like BLM and MNK) having abysmal play rates, and so on.
Let's not pretend that these weren't missteps by SE- they love to gut their jobs down to appease the lowest common denominator (which is low in this game), but that doesn't seem to be working too well if they're thinking that they need to revise their strategy (which has been publicly stated multiple times). Especially if the story content goes on the way 7.0 is going. No story and no good job design is sure to be a winning combination.

I feel like the healer strike was proof that what's on these forums and reddit means nothing to the actual player base. In game it's just as it's always been, with tanks typically being the most in need role, healers second, and the occasional rare dps in need for alliance raids. PF seems to be in the same boat in my experience. Besides, other than healers the complaints I hear about typically revolve around homogenization. Giving all melee positionals is just as much homogenization and removing them all. And afaik the only things SE has said about any of it was about that and the 2 min burst window.

The reality is the removal of positionals over the decade has not been causing a mass exodus of players. Most who complain about it even still play that role. Another reality is that if you slapped ARR or HW melees (esp mnk) into EW or DT's fights the role would almost instantly tank in damage. I mean that's literally why they made all the changes they did, because you can't have fights become more and more mobile/mechanic heavy while maintaining balance with the old system. Either they did noticeably inferior damage, or their max would have to be set so high to offset their lows that they would become utterly broken on an omni-positional fight.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against difficultly or class identity at all. In fact I'm a major proponent for it. I just do not think positionals specifically are the answer at all.

[silentwindfr]

positional is a remain of another age.... some people did advocate while the alpha of the 2.0 to have positional for give the melee dps more flavor. even if for some melee dps it was a strange choice, like a monk that instead to fight from the front was acting like a rogue. that why the monk had the positional soo heavy.... mostly because we didn't had rogue and people was wanting one... then the ninja did come and the fact to keep positional was less evident. with each expansion the number of positional did reduce over and over and over. until we have maybe 2 skill that recquire positional.... at this point it a wonder that we still have positional. i feel that positional is something that was kinda needed at the release of the 2.0 with what we had at this time, but now, 10 years later with all the chance of the job.... do it's still have the same purpose. for me the positional it's like when everyone had DoT.why? why not make it part of a kit for a job, that will be it's identity, while other will have them own identity.

for the viper it's fast paced job, that make it maybe a bit tedious to keep positional, for a sam you often use the skill for ignore positional with meikyo and outside this you will have maybe a few full combo with positional.... not that complicate. but for a job that can have super fast action... maybe it's not needed. maybe the identity of the viper and how make it unique it to focus on this fast paced gameplay.

i'm for a more diverse and unique experience for each melee dps, with each them identity. if one is based on positional and the other are based on something else, it will be more unique and allows them to work on new stuff... instead to try to fit everyone with positional for melee dps. that just my personal thought about it....

if tomorrow they remove positional or make it the kit of one job only, or keep the status quo we have right now, either will not bother me. i will still play mostly the same job, because i love them. and i feel that everyone feel the same...we play a job because we enjoy it. sometime they bring change that can be controversial and lucky for us, we have many job available for one character.

[CKNovel]

I feel that at this point, Square Enix is doing everything in its power to remove positionals without actually removing them.
The impact of positionals will be reduced even further, depending on the frequency of this new hitbox it might even gets lowered to <1% if you stay in the boss backside.