Can we have any degree of feedback in the game when a positional lands/fails?

[Colt47]

If you were never doing positionals on a job that had six of them, I don't know what to tell you. True North and RoE could never cover them up 100% of the time and MNK was by far the job that lost the most potency by not hitting positionals correctly.

quick edit: "many fights" being full circles? what? the current savage tier only has one fight with a full circle, that being P2S, and sure, Endsinger and Zodiark are both full circle EX fights. but honestly who cares about optimizing extremes lol

Subtlety rogue doesn't work in a game where the bosses do timed positional based attacks themselves. Even if the designers built the fight so that a player with positionals could perfectly time their available skills to make it work, they'd only be able to do that from the start of the fight assuming the player doesn't die. If the player dies, then the timings are all off and you're left with running around frantically, which is why they put true north in there as a way to correct and mitigate that problem. TN however, was not enough to really solve the positional issues that showed up in Stormblood so they simplified things even more. Now positionals are more so a minor punishment for not hitting TN rather than being a critical game flow piece.

I mean, positionals for melee in this game were originally a learning tool to help new players understand that tanks stand in front of the boss and melee position to the sides or behind the boss to avoid getting hit. It wasn't intended that players would have to hardcore juggle between the sides and back of the boss just to make sure they could make a DPS check on a savage tier boss, and I'd hate to be the guy designing a fight where you got to plan for two people having to constantly shift from flank to rear while the boss is doing ring attacks, cone aoes, and sometimes you got arena based things happening like bombs dropping based on player position.

[Xirean]

I liked positionals when bosses didn't constantly turn and move about the arena. I didn't mind forced movement, but I really hate chasing the darn things.

[gotaname1]

I liked positionals when bosses didn't constantly turn and move about the arena. I didn't mind forced movement, but I really hate chasing the darn things.

the best part is the party never adjusts. A lot of bosses, especially in savages that I will now use as an example, always face south after repositioning for mechanics. You'd think everyone would think: oh, if the main tank keeps the boss that way, the boss will move around even less and the melee dps can stay north pretty much the entire fight bar a few mechs for max positional uptime! But no, I have yet to see this mindset. Atleast, on Crystal anyways.

[Skiros]

Prior, we could kinda get a gauge if it hit when either combos stopped functioning if a positional failed, whether that be before when the combo would just not continue, or recently in shadowbringers when raiden thrust wouldnt proc on dragoon if you messed them up.

But now? There's nothing. It's one of the things I know a lot of people have had to turn to third party tools to get any information on, because there's no feedback on positionals in the game, on any of them, at all, whatsoever. With the honestly lackluster in-game explanation for what positionals even are and no visual, audio or ui feedback it now just kinda feels like the positional system is from an entirely different game that Squenix felt obligated to include and put as little effort in whatsoever.

I love positioanls, I really really do, it's the only reason to move around in in fights in this game outside of high end content and it feels like its closer and closer to being removed, which i know would be an "I quit" moment for many of us out there. Positionals are cool and they give a really enjoyable and unique flavour to the melee role, just please do something, anything with the system.

Have unique animations like the universal GCD/oGCD flash that only play if the positionals suceeds. Have an audio clip that plays if you mess up a positional, like a quiet <se.11> <se.12> or <se.16>, have a red aura pop up if you fail a positional, have a "POSITIONAL FAILED!" flytext in red next to the associated damage, a gold icon flash your weaponskill/ability buttons on success, a combo meter ui element that counts successful positionals in a row, hell, a korean-mmo style visual effects vomit of wings and swords I do not care, just something, anything at all.

It genuinely feels like Squenix are making it feel as uncomfortable and archaic of a system as possible so if they decide to remove positionals, less people complain. It's really sad and it's really not a positive direction for the game to be taking.

There is a sound feedback if a positional lands and is a combo action. They should just add it to all positionals. It's very noticeable to me at least.

[Lunarius]

There is a sound feedback if a positional lands and is a combo action. They should just add it to all positionals. It's very noticeable to me at least.

I'm sorry my friend but you are mistaken.

it's placebo, and an oddly persistent rumour to boot.



Just re-tested again just in case 6.1 added something new that they havent in earlier patches on Aeolian Edge, Armour Crush, Snap Punch, Demolish, Gekko and Kasha thus far and there is no audio difference.

tested on overworld dummies too cos I know housing dummies are bugged.

[Skiros]

I'm sorry my friend but you are mistaken.

it's placebo, and an oddly persistent rumour to boot.



Just re-tested again just in case 6.1 added something new that they havent in earlier patches on Aeolian Edge, Armour Crush, Snap Punch, Demolish, Gekko and Kasha thus far and there is no audio difference.

tested on overworld dummies too cos I know housing dummies are bugged.

What part of "combo action" do you not understand?

MNK has ZERO combo actions. MNK's actions behave like a combo, but they are not technically combos.

If anything if they changed this in 6.1 they would have removed the combo sound effect on positionals given that the game seems to desperately want to lower the skill gap.

[Lunarius]

What part of "combo action" do you not understand?

MNK has ZERO combo actions. MNK's actions behave like a combo, but they are not technically combos.

If anything if they changed this in 6.1 they would have removed the combo sound effect on positionals given that the game seems to desperately want to lower the skill gap.

Just re-tested again just in case 6.1 added something new that they havent in earlier patches on Aeolian Edge, Armour Crush, Snap Punch, Demolish, Gekko and Kasha thus far and there is no audio difference.

ignoring how relevant it is whether or not monk's combo system is a true combo or not, this was already addressed, and whatever placebo sound effect you hear is not present on one of the two 2.0 launch melees.

[Shougun]

Visual feedback could be cool!

Two ideas I'll suggest:

1) When you properly hit a positional the ring will highlight that section of the enemy's target circle (the thing at their feet that tell you which direction is is facing and where their butt is), so if you hit flank it will glow flank some non-intrusive color / effect, but note-able interaction (nice fade in and out glow). Color could match the ring, so it's nice subtle positive feedback - easy to ignore but if you were looking at the ring you could tell it was confirming your correct choice. I don't think a sound should be used unless it is a sound that flows with the skills itself (meaning it might be easy to 'not hear' unless you were looking for it); otherwise, that could be a bit obnoxious lol.

2) Sound effect and two animations, first is a hazy shaky red / error like texture effect glowing on the section you hit (shape of the effect matching the ring section, but growing in size and shrinking back down such that it's fairly obvious) showing that you weren't supposed to hit that side, and then a subtle glow on the proper side (to direct to where it was supposed to be).

Both can be turned on and off, the sound effect being able to turn off individually from the visual error help.

As for the subject all together:

I don't think all melee need positionals, so some melee with ZERO positionals is fine to me, but I think it is a novel enough concept that some people like so it would be a bit sad to have it go all together. Of course if you remove positionals I would assume either A. the job is meant to be straight forward job akin to a WHM vs SCH like situation or B. the job will get some other exciting mechanics to think about. To add which I think not all jobs should be simple, nor all complex, ideally trying not to change the currently assigned jobs from where they are in terms of challenge (don't make a super easy job hard or a super hard job easy all a sudden). Some of that can be helped balanced by skills that are perhaps fun to optimize but by not having them you're only missing like 2-5% damage from the person who messed it up (such that in most content you'd not even care if someone was playing a bit more easily, but in hard content everyone would need to optimize for greater challenge of play). Though I still personally think even at hard play having a few jobs that are a bit easier to play is good, same as having a few jobs that are just harder to play (and not switching that concept around if possible). As for melee jobs that might not use positionals at all for example maybe a Geoknight like area control job has a bit of positional built into node control (area control, creating small spheres of influence and manipulating themselves within them and the enemies- then they've no melee based positionals even if they're generally more melee as they've another thing to think about instead).

[Lunarius]

Visual feedback could be cool!

Two ideas I'll suggest:

1) When you properly hit a positional the ring will highlight that section of the enemy's target circle (the thing at their feet that tell you which direction is is facing and where their butt is), so if you hit flank it will glow flank some non-intrusive color / effect, but note-able interaction (nice fade in and out glow). Color could match the ring, so it's nice subtle positive feedback - easy to ignore but if you were looking at the ring you could tell it was confirming your correct choice. I don't think a sound should be used unless it is a sound that flows with the skills itself (meaning it might be easy to 'not hear' unless you were looking for it); otherwise, that could be a bit obnoxious lol.

2) Sound effect and two animations, first is a hazy shaky red / error like texture effect glowing on the section you hit (shape of the effect matching the ring section, but growing in size and shrinking back down such that it's fairly obvious) showing that you weren't supposed to hit that side, and then a subtle glow on the proper side (to direct to where it was supposed to be).

Both can be turned on and off, the sound effect being able to turn off individually from the visual error help.

I definitely like the gold highlighted pizza slice concept. I'm wary of how it would present itself on wall bosses, or how it would interact with the orange of aoe markers, or arena elements, but it would be a good idea to indicate the correct location for the positionals

[Skiros]

Here's the vid:

https://youtu.be/MRvsPlwdq6Q