On the Removal of Positionals

[ElysiumDragon]

I feel like positionals should stay, but that bosses in casual content need to respect tank positioning a lot more.

[Rydia_Misuto]

10000000% agree with this assessment. Viper feels fantastic as it is, and I genuinely don't understand anyone wanting to remove its positionals when there's not that many of them to begin with and the class has so few buttons there's so little to do /besides/ playing around positionals.

The weaponskill range buff feels good, and I'm glad for that one, given how slidey and delayed the game is overall, but I really do not see anything good about cutting down its positionals. The changes to monk and dragoon doing this have made both classes less interesting and engaging, and it will do the exact same thing for Viper.

[StriderZessei]

My opinion on positionals for a while has just been to remove them....fights just become a lot more fun and less stressful without positionals. P2S is one of my favorite savage fights in the game because the boss has 0 positional requirements, and when a boss has 0 positional requirements you can actually do some cool stuff with boss mechanics.
It's just an archaic system at this point. There are ways to make melee jobs more technical without needing positionals, hell many melee jobs are still very technical even if you ignore their positionals entirely.

This. This right here.
Give us more skill expression by increasing the depth of each Job's specific mechanics, and give us more bosses with interesting mechanics to interact with our Jobs' kits. It's not skill expression to shimmy left or right a little bit, it's just busywork.
Maybe after that we can re-examine the whole 2 minute burst window we're stuck in.

[Galvuu]

This. This right here.
Give us more skill expression by increasing the depth of each Job's specific mechanics, and give us more bosses with interesting mechanics to interact with our Jobs' kits. It's not skill expression to shimmy left or right a little bit, it's just busywork.
Maybe after that we can re-examine the whole 2 minute burst window we're stuck in.

I mean, you might dislike positionals- think that the gameplay pattern they lead to isn't enjoyable, or how it interacts with the kit of a job- but positionals absolutely are a form of skill expression. Any mechanical barrier to execution is. I could see the argument that maybe they should be a defining trait of some- and not all melees.

Anyway, I think you have the association at the end there backwards- jobs are losing some of their unique identity and skill expression because of the 2-min window. This tight constraint around the 2 min burst needs to die so job design can flourish, imho.

[mallleable]

It's weird, the phys ranged role quest solo battle kinda had postionals, and the melee role quest battle did not, and it kina almost makes me think that positionals would better suited on phys ranged dps than they would be on melee dps as hitting the right spot on an enemy seems to be more part of a sniper/marksman fantasy.

[Galvuu]

It's weird, the phys ranged role quest solo battle kinda had postionals, and the melee role quest battle did not, and it kina almost makes me think that positionals would better suited on phys ranged dps than they would be on melee dps as hitting the right spot on an enemy seems to be more part of a sniper/marksman fantasy.

I... actually really like this idea for a new physical ranged job. It would be a very distinct trait compared to the rest, and would synergize well with the physical ranged mobility. Honestly, slapping this on MCH (which somewhat even works with its chess theme) and then upping its damage would be an interesting idea.

[Lyth]

You could add positionals and even charged attacks onto physical ranged. I think that the automatic treatment of physical ranged as obligate inferiors to magical ranged is really strange, especially when jobs like PCT are both mobile and have similar utility while providing much more damage. Perhaps introducing in sniper style 'casts' on a few actions could also be a way of demonstrating equivalence. It doesn't have to be every action, of course, because even magical ranged aren't designed that way nowadays.

That being said, given how controversial some of these things become, physical ranged players should probably have a discussion as a role to see what they want to do in terms of positionals and casts.

[StriderZessei]

I mean, you might dislike positionals- think that the gameplay pattern they lead to isn't enjoyable, or how it interacts with the kit of a job- but positionals absolutely are a form of skill expression. Any mechanical barrier to execution is. I could see the argument that maybe they should be a defining trait of some- and not all melees.

But of all the barriers to remove to allow for other, more interesting means of skill expression, positionals absolutely are the ones that should go. Ninja isn't more fun or interesting now that their opener has you lead with a flank positional instead of a rear attack, and shimmying left and right doesn't make Viper less boring.

I'm saying that removing them could allow room to make content more fun without the fun-loss factor of, "aw man, I missed my rear attack evading this big AOE."

Anyway, I think you have the association at the end there backwards- jobs are losing some of their unique identity and skill expression because of the 2-min window. This tight constraint around the 2 min burst needs to die so job design can flourish, imho.

I agree; this was the point I was making, but I can see I wasn't clear.

[W00by]

I really dislike the assertion that positionals are just "shimmying left and right" as you do a rotation. On training dummies and certain dungeon bosses, that can be the case, but it isn't the case all the time. I don't find Viper boring because I'm not just shimmying left and right -- I'm precisely positioning in tight safe spots that give me access to positionals, or moving quickly around the boss during mechanically intensive phases, or conserving resources like True North, Uncoiled Fury, Reawaken, and Slither to be able to hit as many as possible. For me, it feels so cool to finish a fight like DT EX2 or Arcadion M2 hitting as many positionals as I could. It makes me feel like a quick and nimble melee DPS, which is part of the fantasy. You may not play melees this way, but to equate my job to "just shimmying left and right" and describe something that I enjoy as something that must be removed because you don't find it interesting is painful. There is, of course, the caster argument that casting is "boring" when the fight isn't making you move, which I think is just as unfounded as saying positionals are "boring" because some fights don't make you do them, but mentioning casters in this thread seems to get me attacked ad hominem, so I won't.

Instead, I'd like to address the claim that the removal of positionals would allow for more interesting means of skill expression. Discounting the fact that I personally find positionals fun -- what do you actually think Square Enix would do to give melees more skill expression? Has Square Enix ever removed something from this game and then replaced it with something more interesting? Was Kaiten's removal replaced by interesting Kenki management? No, it was gutted and Kenki became the Shinten-dispensal-bar. Was Energy Drain's removal replaced by interesting Aetherflow management? No, they shamefully re-added it because they didn't have any other ideas. They never replace things with something equal and opposite or better when people complain, they just remove the ability in the name of consistency. So, when positionals get removed and melee DPS stay exactly the same without positionals, we will have strictly lost something with nothing to gain. At least in the ARR-DT design philosophy, anyway.

Speaking of consistency, I often see people say that mechanics can be made more interesting and engaging if you remove positionals. But if positionals are removed, how will they challenge melee that are looking for a challenge? The only real way they can do it is with more complex mechanical design which will scare off new players OR making melee uptime ITSELF prohibitively difficult, which will lower the skill floor of the game tremendously and make things like Party Finder and normal modes even more difficult in an expansion where mechanic difficulty is controversial (somehow). In my opinion, the positional paradigm is much better because the ceiling is entirely optional and the floor is easily accessible. The removal of positionals will make the game easier for the most hardcore players and harder for the most casual ones, which would be a baffling move on the dev's part and benefit literally no one. Or, I mean, they could just remove positionals and then keep designing fights exactly the same, which is likely too and similarly unbeneficial.

I think it's telling that many of positionals' biggest detractors (including big time streamers like Xenosys Vex) brazenly admit to just not doing them because they don't like them. And, if you can clear all content while brazenly ignoring them (which, clearly, you can)... why does it matter if they're there? You're not forced to play melee, and even if you are, there are melee with easy access to positionals like RPR (see my prior thread), and even if you don't want to play RPR, you can still ignore them on other jobs and do just fine. Unless you're at the highest level, you just don't have to do them, just like casuals don't have to do the Balance-sponsored opener if they don't want to. They don't need to go and they benefit everyone by staying.

[Ardeth]

I've always hated positionals. They keep making them matter less and less. Most melee ignore them in regular content. I wouldn't be heartbroken if they removed them. They add absolutely nothing to my gameplay.