Quote Originally Posted by Physic View Post
some of this actually was in this game before, dunno about now. But you used to take more dmg from your back, attacking monsters from the rear increased crits i think. Positional combat seems to have gotten downplayed.
I seriously hope they are working on this aspect of the game: positional combat and strategies, adding a greater bonus/penalty for good or bad positions in combat. We have all these new possibilities and technologies, yet, the development team is using few of them and things look like every other MMORPGs from 10 years ago (FFXIV is too similar to FFXI in many aspects regarding the combat rules/environment -- in other word OUTDATED).

People have been complaining about lack of strategies in combat and that's why they want more define roles. Sure, more define roles could help a bit, but combat will remain the same boring activity: stand anywhere near the monster, press a few buttons to manage aggro and deal damages, wait for the monster to die. What will make a difference in combat is tactics and strategies! For that, we need a real incentive in positioning around the monster (real visible change when attacking from the side, from the back or the front). These incentives can be weaker defences for the monster on certain sides, unlock devastating attacks from the monster on certain sides (from the back, a monster with a big tail could whip us with it dealing knockback), have monster no necessarily FACE us when fighting but try to attack us from the side or behind, have the monsters try to use different parts of their body to attack (a tailed monster turning around to fight with it's tail instead of it's claws --- for more than 2 seconds. Right now it would be a 2 seconds special attack, with no change to the dynamic of the fight). That would make combat much more interesting. A monster with high defence in the back that turn around to attack you from the back, now that requires a minimum change in strategy to keep dealing maximum damages, for example.