Would this compromise for positionals work?

[IruruCece]

But yeah, this is my last post on these forums

I engaged you reasonably, and you decided the thread was a "trap." Unsub, while you're at it.

[Demiplume]

Hey! First post on this forum ~:

Theres many types of positionals:
- Healers being in range of everyone
- Cone attacks to hit most enemies behind target
- Not standing beside tank on big pulls
- Making big pull face away from party
- Be far away when casting long spells
- Not be too close to others when floor aoes are cast on allies
- Boss mechanics
- Strategy for said boss mechanics

Id say on this that the game system engagement is based on positionals and group performance.

Now if I get you, we are talking the "flank and rear" system..
as I was a monk 100% main that didnt complete ShB yet, for me it was for pushing myself to perform. The potency bonus doesnt even need to be big, right now I think its 60 potency bonus on the 2 monk positionals (and they nerfed bootshine by more than 250 potency).

If they kept all 6 positionals, but only gave 20~30 potency bonus for hitting each positionals, id argue the complainers should be playing something else. They also could have made blitz be positional based instead of skill based, that or either make blitz cooldown reduce by 1 second everytimes you hit the correct positional on a monster.

I feel that the game hars been way too streamlined, this games been acclaimed RPGmmo by many, and yet all glimpse of individuality of all classes seem to be eroding away. Theres so many ways I can think of to make monk cool and fun to play, but they resorted ( and I hope only temporarily ) to making it feel like any other melee class.

[Mikey_R]

But I'm glad my trap worked. As I suspected, even when I spelled it out in my first post, they can't help but demand having positionals be the Ego boost THEY need. Who cares about other people's opinions right? I main (insert class here) despite having the ability to play every class on one character.

Except, without a proper tangible reward, there is no point. Monk doesn't need more defence, RoE does that just fine and is by far the best one to the point where you could argue it is complete overkill. Just compare it to any other melee defensive and you can see the difference.

Movement speed, while it would be nice, it isn't necessarily something to go out of your way for to hit a positional, especially now with Thunderclap and SSS giving a movement speed increase for the disengage.

If you were to decrease cooldowns, that then just messes with job balance and timings. Everything is designed around the 60/120 second burst windows, by allowing cooldowns to come sooner, you start misaligning everything. A good example of the effect this can have was demonstrated when AST Spear used to reduce the cooldown of oGCDs, one of the most common complaints was the fact it made everything misalign and even made some rotations now flow as they should.

However, why is it that positionals get shafted on for being busy work and just to stroke someone's ego, when doing a proper rotation does the same? If you don't do a proper rotation on any job, you lose damage, it is as simple as that, so why is it that, when a job has more positionals, that is designed to increase damage, it suddenly gets labelled as bad? It isn't even like every melee has a massive overabundance of positionals, it was just Monk, there are now 4 melees that have far fewer.

If I was to say, I hate combos, they should just be one button spam, you would be in your right mind to tell me to play something else, however, if SE then decided every job should be one button spam, you would again be in your right mind to fight back against it. It is the same case here. If you did not like positionals, you had other options. Now, if you want a positional heavy job, well, you are out of luck as there isn't one.

Everything is designed around damage, how you do the damage is different for every job, why should there not be one that relied heavily on positionals.

[Satarn]

And this is what I was trying to prove with this topic. If it was about positionals and positionals ONLY, having a speed boost would be very nice for monk and still lead to some big brain plays without costing dps, but letting skill still shine.

"Ah-hah! You don't see this worthless "reward" that I've offered you as valuable - clearly you only care about increasing your parse and looking down on other people! This is the proof, I was right all along! Ahahahah!"

Like, first of all, not a good look that you would make a thread specifically to "trap" people.
Second - it proves nothing, you've clearly made the thread with a conclusion already in mind and anything that could be said would "prove you right" due to your confirmation bias.
Third - if you and other anti-positional people only care about fun and not "the parse" then why was it such a problem that you did a bit less damage when not performing positionals? This is the proof - clearly you only care about increasing your parse and not feeling inferior to people who can be assed to do positionals!

[Arkavien]

Third - if you and other anti-positional people only care about fun and not "the parse" then why was it such a problem that you did a bit less damage when not performing positionals? This is the proof - clearly you only care about increasing your parse and not feeling inferior to people who can be assed to do positionals!

EXACTLY! Such a hypocrite.

[Shurrikhan]

I find it highly suspect that people actually "enjoy" the positional game play. They enjoy the extra damage given. That's about it.

Let me put it this way. I'm going to do the same max damage regardless of whether positionals exist. Their existence can only chance a potency nerf for me. And yet I'd still prefer positionals.

That is because, yes, I do enjoy moving around the boss, especially when conal/quarter AoEs or the like potentially require me to shake up that order or pre-plan TN usage. Obviously, Monk better capitalizes on those situations than the likes of Dragoon, but all non-DRG melee have ways to change the timing of their positionals around mechanics, and I find that fun to manage.


The only positional changes I'd like to see are (A) for DRG's Wyrmwind Thrust to go on the GCD and Chaos Thrust be made 6 seconds longer (also as to be more worth using for low-target DoT-spread) and the order of Fang and Claw and Whirling Thrust to be interchangeable and (B) for Monk to, after getting back positionals on all skills, to get a leniency mechanic such as every 3rd successful positional hit causing your next would-be missed positional to deal full damage regardless, stacking up to 3 times, such that every rotational GCD has a positional and every positional rewards you, but not every positional need be made successfully.

[Kolsykol]

Yeah, I hear you. However, one is far more tedious than the other. I do them, but I abhor them. IMO, it also limits the design they can do on rads, because they have to take into account how much uptime TN has for maximum output. I find it highly suspect that people actually "enjoy" the positional game play. They enjoy the extra damage given. That's about it.

People want auto-combos too, I think this is just concern trolling people just want things to be easier because they're lazy and don't want to put any effort into learning anything they just want to login and spam a couple of buttons without any thought and win.
The fact that so many don't even seem to understand how positionals actually works/ worked in practice and why they added actual depth and enjoyment proves that.

[HappyHubris]

People want auto-combos too, I think this is just concern trolling people just want things to be easier because they're lazy and don't want to put any effort into learning anything they just want to login and spam a couple of buttons without any thought and win.
The fact that so many don't even seem to understand how positionals actually works/ worked in practice and why they added actual depth and enjoyment proves that.

Eh, combos take up a ton of UI space and restrict what else can be done with the class. If a class's difficulty comes from poor UI accommodation instead of deep resource systems and priority systems, I consider that janky masochism not challenging design.

[Theox]

Defense is useless, if you took damage you're still getting healed so there's no point, movement speed is too situational and even then if you would suddenly need it there would be a scholar who'll give it to you, so meh.

Simple explanation: hitting your positionals and getting good numbers makes brain chemicals go brrrr and that's why we play games. Damage reduction or movement speed instead of more damage dealt feels like a substitute, like a ride to McDonald's that turns out to be a dentist appointment when you were a kid, for example.

[MilkieTea]

I'm a pretty casual player in that I don't really do anything beyond extremes, and I loved positionals on MNK. I started out as a MNK and I guess this is how I'd explain it:

It's a combination of feeling satisfied that you're doing things "correctly" and getting the proper feedback from it. Think about it like fighting in a boxing ring - using the correct kind of kick from the side of your opponent where it matters most, is going to "do more damage" to your opponent. That kick isn't going to make you faster, or make you take less damage. It's going to damage your opponent more and you'll potentially end the fight faster, with more serotonin from defeating your opponent in a timely manner, and have the knowledge that you mastered your chosen fighting style enough so that you could do almost every kick from the perfect angle, or punch on the perfect spot.

Now, however, it feels as though I've had the rug pulled out from under me. I now have a slightly different fighting style to work with, one that utilizes the same "methodology" as my previous fighting style, but is more reminiscent of my friends fighting style. No less valid, of course, but much less enjoyable for me. My kicks won't do less damage, obviously, but now my fighting style isn't about hitting the opponent from the correct angle, or punching in the perfect spot. It's just about hitting the opponent, just like my friend. Punching and kicking from the correct spot doesn't matter any more - but it did to me. I can still punch and kick from the angles I used to, but it doesn't feel as impactful, there's no positive feedback from doing so. The fighting style wouldn't have benefitted from speeding me up, or making me take less damage, because that didn't really matter. If I took too much damage, I always had someone there to give me a water bottle and bandage me up so I could keep going, they're not going to leave. And If I needed a quick speed boost, all I needed to do was run fast for a few seconds and then return to my opponent.

It's a lot less satisfying, now, to punch and kick at my opponent, because I can't focus on punching and kicking in the correct spots all the time any more... I just punch and kick.