Positionals are there to make the melee job feel artificially engaging. I very much enjoy PvP Monk over PvE Monk as Chakra is built per weaponskill and has no positionals and isn't contingent on knowing when to use a certain skill out of 9 and drops the forms required.

Which I find more fun in it's simplicity.

And in raids at launch I find positionals to be detrimental to learning fights when Tanks don't know what's going on.

Most cases I'm more comfortable with ranged classes for new content because they have the leniency of no positional requirements.

A melee job without positionals would make it unique in a way but somehow I doubt it will be without them if role actions like True North will still be maintained.