Positionals

[Equitable_Remedy]

I enjoy having a few positionals when playing melee ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I find them to add some fun and a little distinction from other tab-target-style MMOs.

I'd like them to stay, and I'd enjoy melee less were they gone.

[Aravell]

The forums really can turn into a clown show at any moment, huh?

It just so suddenly went from a clash of preferences to "If you like positionals, you're pathetic and you also probably cheat".

[VentVanitas]

don't worry guys, SE will totally give jobs more complexity in the place of positionals if they remove them. just ignore that they've literally never done that for any removed system from jobs.

[SDaemon]

don't worry guys, SE will totally give jobs more complexity in the place of positionals if they remove them. just ignore that they've literally never done that for any removed system from jobs.

True, its far more likely they'll just continue to trivialize and devalue positionals into oblivion rather than improve on them or remove them outright.

[rawker]

Odd. I never used any 3rd party apps to play the game yet i am in favor of retaining positionals. Then all of a sudden, I am part of the cheaters.

[Boblawblah]

idk, I'm bad enough that if I'm in a good position to do ..positionals (hah!) I'll do it, but if I'm going to have to wait on another ability while I move into position, I don't bother.

[HikariKurosawa]

If positionals were removed the difficulty could be tuned better and re-allocated to more meaningful parts of the game. Nobody called people who use addons to pretend they are better than others because they can be at flank or rear more optimally while their rotation happens perfectly with one button spam pathetic though. Sounds like an insecurity issue due to being that demographic.

Also, not once did I say kaiten was difficult to use. It has an obnoxious animation and was button bloat.

[rawker]

I don't see how positionals hinder any form of improvement to melee gameplay. If anything, it serves as a reward more than a necessity.

[CelestiCer]

I don't see how positionals hinder any form of improvement to melee gameplay. If anything, it serves as a reward more than a necessity.

It doesn't. Players just have a obsession to Optimize their own Fun away. Gotta optimize...

- Button Bloat, remove Job features
- Weaving issues, less APM
- Easier Movement, less Casts on new SMN
- Every shape slowly becomes a Circle AoE
- Positional Removal, True North can be deleted
- Remove margin for errors left-right-and-center
- Optimize Job balance, Screw your Fun
- Combo Compression and Auto Combo do it
- Remove Dots, its Archaic
- 2 min meta, everything lines up
- Gigantic Hitboxes, easier melee uptime
- Party buff radius increase, now you can't miss your Buffs
- Remove DPS variance, who cares about your random big numbers
- Streamline / Homogenize / Better / Cleaner
- More Optimal / Optimize / Optimize / Optimize

Reaching a point where I don't even understand what the end goal of it all was... so all Jobs can feel the same? We look at our skills, buffs, resources, they all seem to be so similar cause that's " Fun? ".

What's next, removal of Ranged Tax right? cause we don't have Melee Tax worth mentioning even with Positionals it's literal joke btw. My Iaijutsu is now Mc'Donalds Wifi reach coupled with SuperBowl stadium hitboxes, I can't freaking Miss. Rotation literally plays itself out and players want it even dumber... and then define that as " Fun "...

What is the argument... that we can't have both better Job-Gameplay, Positionals included, engaging content that isn't just copy pasted Dungeons / Fates / Mobs etc? and when that is given to us? then perhaps players consider something like Positional removal after Square gives us something back first... I don't see what hinders this. Development time? Square is hurting for money? I don't know. I had a lot more Fun before all these simplifications and streamlining. A lot less with more of it now and for some reason its not enough to some. We gotta dumb it down further mhm

[Sjol]

It doesn't. Players just have a obsession to Optimize their own Fun away. Gotta optimize...

- Button Bloat, remove Job features
- Weaving issues, less APM
- Easier Movement, less Casts on new SMN
- Every shape slowly becomes a Circle AoE
- Positional Removal, True North can be deleted
- Remove margin for errors left-right-and-center
- Optimize Job balance, Screw your Fun
- Combo Compression and Auto Combo do it
- Remove Dots, its Archaic
- 2 min meta, everything lines up
- Gigantic Hitboxes, easier melee uptime
- Party buff radius increase, now you can't miss your Buffs
- Remove DPS variance, who cares about your random big numbers

There are reasons for a lot of these. Nuanced reasons, even that aren't really getting addressed.

Button bloat has to do with human ergonomics and the limits of what fits on a keyboard. MMO mice are not a solution for everyone. Nor are controllers. I have ready access to 16 buttons with a single modifier, leaving 32 for the keyboard, plus another 2+2 for the mouse, for a total of 36. Beyond that I'm hunting for the thing with a mouse. Thirty-six buttons ought to be enough for any job, but there are plenty that require more than that.

Here are some baseline numbers:

Tanks (7 role + 4 general)
PLD: 27 job, 38 total.

Melee DPS (6 role + 4 general)
NIN: 26 job, 36 total.

Ranged Magical (5 role + 4 general)
BLM: 26 job, 35 total.

I would love to see a hard cap of 32 buttons needed for any job just for the human ergonomics. If you can't create meaningful jobs with 32 buttons, I don't know what they're doing. PvP manages to do it with under 12, and BLU hard-limits you to 24 job buttons.

Moreover, I think that what the jobs need is more uniqueness and less reliance on role-abilities and standards. That fact that all tanks get the same 9 abilities causes way more feeling of homogeneity than anything else.

And lastly, as an aside, I think the main argument against DOTs is that SE's implementation of them is broken. Higher Cast SPD should make them tick faster or do more damage or something, but they don't. I like DOTs, but the implementation needs work.