Removal of Positionals

[CelestiCer]

Have had heated debates on the Balance Discord with this topic. Personally? I believe it be a Fallacy.

Reasons often stated to support removal

• Positionals are to Easy
• Positionals are Archaic
• True North is Button Bloat
• Positionals stands in the way of my clear
• Muh precious Parse
• Positionals limits better fight designs

Positionals are easy until you want to miss none everywhere, making it a skewed statement. Something being old is not a good reason for removal unless it disrupts achieving clears. You have bigger issues if you think Positionals pose a problem to getting a clear. And True North is only 1 button, its not killing any Melee's hotbars...

Some Parsers find anything RNG extremely annoying. All Guilty of existing as it stands in the way of their precious parses. How Bosses are pulled or seemingly move/face random directions adds RNG. Even aside from rare True North weaving issues, this all seems like an FFlogs problem vs an actual FFXIV problem.

Fight design limitations aren't due to Positionals. Fights are designed regardless of how comfy we can hit positionals. P2S, frequently used example to showcase what Dev's can do without Positionals. Every fight being like P2S or a Wall-boss sounds boring to me. There's also no evidence that positionals excisting stood in the way of any mechanic ever being created ever. Giving up something players find fun? with the empty promise that Square will deliver better fight designs? is very optimistic...


Why hit Positionals? when you can F it up all the time when its removed? - right?


Conclusion

Players find Positionals Fun or making the game less boring. If I wanted to stand still casting with little mobility options? I'd play RDM/ BLM. We have fights/content with positionals and without to enjoy both. Removal would erase every idea regarding uptime positional strats, less skill-expressive for Tanks. Or maybe Tanks enjoy wanting to do less... who knows. Fun is subjective. I would find it more boring without. Though its removal would please a portion of the parsers who find it annoying... For 1 whole minute until they find something else that stands in the way of their parses to complain about, again...and again... and again...

This all seems like something that goes towards " Optimizing away our own Fun ". Trimming away more and more, leaving the game and the jobs with less and less to do until we're left wanting for anything. Something players seem to be exceedingly good at suggesting, mhm...

[Ggwppino]

If you take away the positionals, tanks finally become less useful healers. They took away the task of positioning the boss well due to the huge hitboxes, with the removal of the positionals they also take away the task of directing the boss. Let's hope, it's the right time that someone realizes what a worrying turn the game is taking. They become mini dps with a mini rotation (like new dps works) awesome.

[Mikey_R]

I remember a topic way back around EW launch that had a massive discussion about the removal of Monk positionals. To cut a long story short, people fell into 2 categories. Those that used Monk extensively before did not want positionals removed and those that did not play the job who DID want them removed. I was part of the group that did not want them removed. They added an extra layer to think about which Monk was sorely missing and, in my opinion, still does (I still, to this day, sometimes slip into doing positionals on GCDs that no longer have them).

The interesting thing was, the only reason people stated for not playing Monk was the positionals. However, it would be interesting to see, over a year later, how many of them would choose Monk as a melee DPS to play and how many have said, meh, it isn't for me.

However, this is where the issue lies. People want a job changed for them, it doesn't matter about the people who already main the job. Unfortunately, these are the people who you hear more. You don't go somewhere to praise a job, you go somewhere to vent some frustrations, which is why a lot of the time you see changes that the job mains did not want. This is also why I tend to stay out of discussions regarding jobs I do not know well. Chances are, even if they changed something I hated, I probably still wouldn't go back. I can use Ninja as an example. I have levelled every job to max in every expansion, so i have played Ninja though everything. One of my biggest issues from way back in the day was the Ninjutsu clipping the GCD. As a Monk main, it bugged me to no end. They changed it in ShB, I liked the way they handled there, making them GCDs, however, it didn't make me go back and suddenly use the job again. Which leads to the next point, not every job is for everyone. It doesn't matter if there is a job you hate, there are plenty of others for you to pick from which might better suit your needs.

Now, I don't read the balance except for the occasional job guides, but who used parsing as an excuse? Staying disengaged for longer than necessary can easily lead to 20+ potency loss (~0.1 second of not having your GCD rolling when you can is 20 potency lost to give some context). If it is to do with clearing, they have bigger issues than a missing positional every now and then. So, I suspect these are the poeple finding any excuse as to why they cannot clear as opposed to just playing better. Which means it isn't an issue with the job, it is an issue with the player.

So, with that all said, bring back the positionals on Monk. It currently has less per GCD than Dragoon and that is before you factor in Perfect Balance/Masterful Blitzes. There is no real reason why Monk could not have kept the positionals, being 1 of 5 melee DPS who are heavy on them. And, if positionals were too much during burst, just make it so that Perfect Balance removes the positional requirement. That is the majority of Monk's 2 minute burst right there.

[Ransu]

DRG and old MNK were really the only ones that were a bit of a chore, but even then old MNK riddle of earth had 3 stacks that also ignored positionals + true north so in the end it was kind of whatever. Outside of those two? Meh positionals are whatever. As I said in the kaiten thread, I don't really care if they stay or go, but I don't believe they really add anything to combat. They just kind of exist and outside of select scenarios where you know you're gonna push true north anyways they really add absolutely nothing to the game especially since you can literally just hover on the corner of the circle and step 1 inch to the left or right. Its a big fat meh to me.

[Valence]

My personal taste on positionals is that I find them to be a chore and abhorrent. They don't give me any rewarding feeling when I get them right, especially since there is so little feedback with them, but they sure as hell give me anxiety all the time and make me feel like hell when I miss them, making me lose sight of what I actually enjoy, which is the mechanics of my job and its rotation and doing it properly. I'd play melee a lot more if it wasn't for them being in the way, but again, that's a me problem/taste.

I was way fonder of smaller hitboxes on bosses with actual tank positioning skill, and I also actually liked tanks getting crits when being hit in the back though. Enemy positionals were dope for the simple reason that they brought something absolutely unique to tanks and positioning. Player positionals though, I hate them, and I can't help it. Maybe if we had better UI tools to actually see in which quadrant we stand during a fight, and an UI notice every time we get a positional correctly (or incorrectly), I'd be already a bit more amenable with them, but UI has unfortunately never been this game's forte.

Edit: I'll always be cautious about asking for the removal of any part of the battle system though, seeing how the whole system has been utterly butchered in ShB with the removal of so many things that have never been replaced with anything else at all.

[ZiraZ]

I'll just say it again, people that like gigantic boss hitboxes and/or want positionals removed have basically zero taste, hate fun and they're are as bad as the people that use the combo plugin because it's just a matter of time until they hit you with the "positionals don't even matter anyways" argument which is basically the same as the "combos don't matter" argument, then they go and install the combo plugin under the same breath.
If you don't like having to deal with positionals then you can simple play the other 6 dps that don't have to do them, people need to stop trying to change this last remnant of fun only available in 5 jobs, some could argue 4.
STOP ASKING FOR REMOVALS
at this rate we're all gonna end up as physical range with infinite range, same exact dps, zero raidbuffs, and a moba sized action list.
SE DOESN'T add things in return after they remove something, there is no benefit removing anything, there will be no payoff or new mechanics, just an empty kaiten flavored void.

[VentVanitas]

Monk should have kept all of its positionals. There's no reason why it shouldn't have, there's no problem having only one job in the entire game with that playstyle for the people who enjoyed it.

People against positionals don't even goddamn play Monk anyway.

[Ransu]

I'll just say it again, people that like gigantic boss hitboxes and/or want positionals removed have basically zero taste.

I'll give you the hitbox thing because it actually matters in terms of fight mechanics and figuring out ways to maintain uptime optimally, but the take on positionals is pretty dumb. Realistically positionals add nothing to the game. Sitting at the corner of the circle and moving 1 inch left or right is not skillful, its not fun and its completely pointless considering whenever there is a mechanic that disrupts the ability to do that we have true north to compensate it making the entire design pointless. If true north didn't exist you would have a point, but as it stands positionals are meaningless and add nothing to the combat which is why I really don't care if they stay or go. They don't add or take away any kind of difficulty, so if they stay then whatever. If they go, nothing changes other than the fact a spot on my hotbar opens up.

I personally just don't get why people like them. It just doesn't make any sense to me. Do people not sit at the corner and intentionally make things harder by going all the way to the flank/rear instead of using the edges of the positinals? That's the only thing I can think of because, again, positionals do nothing for combat.

Monk should have kept all of its positionals. There's no reason why it shouldn't have, there's no problem having only one job in the entire game with that playstyle for the people who enjoyed it.

People against positionals don't even goddamn play Monk anyway.

I level up mnk alongside my sam every expansion. I've never felt that positionals make mnk unique. I want mnk to have more things to do like near the end of the ShB expansion where the opener was fun as hell over worrying about pointless positionals. Make mnk faster and give me more things to press(more oGCD's) and more CD's to manage. That is way more interesting than stepping 1 inch to the left or the right in a game where the boss is static 90% of the time and the other 10% true north is always available.

[UkcsAlias]

Realistically positionals add nothing to the game.

They add a system that for well coordinated teams can matter quite a lot on their output and therefor measure of skill. Its not just the melee dps to work with this here, but a combination. Sure, for most players its just anoying to have such systems, but for the very skilled, its these systems that do matter.

The real problem is that there arent enough positionals, and that due to latency a lot of the positional stuff is unreliable. If the game would properly register actions at 60fps and show players that same feedback, these positionals could become a much better system. So it might not only be the angle of attacking, for a ranged dps it could be distance of attacking. They could even have made certain bosses have a vulnerability angle.

Skill is generaly measured by being able to do more tasks more efficiently in a game (this even includes shooters where more tasks means position on the battlefield, and efficiency is accuracy). Removing positionals would be a very bad thing.

[Ransu]

Coordinated for what exactly? I could slightly agree if true north didn't exist, but what coordination is required outside of the tank always holding the boss north, which isn't difficult given bosses tend to be pretty static as its generally mechanics that force players to move around. Hell, even when bosses do move, they reset themselves after the mechanic fires off and warp back to the middle lol.

I just don't really see the benefit of them. They're not difficult to maintain and they don't really add anything imo. If they stay, they stay, if they don't then they don't and nothing really changes if they go.