All in all I rather they don't delay it any further because they have to have quests or get ALL the animations done.
For not-yet introduced Egis, there of course should be Austerity quests. But for the existing ones ...
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Well to be fair the amount of dev time that actually went into the art side of the Egi is quite small. An artist working solely on the Egi could have got the original three modelled and textured with in a week. The animations and VFX for all three would then have probably taken another week, especially since the Egi's animation sets are recycled. The only thing that actually would take a lot of dev time is the Egi programming.
However all this is already in place as they are just glamours. So the only programming to do is the glamour mechanic itself. So implementing Austerity battles for each new Egi should not be a problem. I doubt we will have Austerity battles for the Carbuncles though, if any glamours are going to be "freebies" it will be these.
If they did lock it behind a hard or EX battle, like you suggested earlier I'd rather it not be a drop, but rather a quest with "Duty finder X trial" as part of it.
Though yeah, I'd probably be changing up my Egi every time I get bored. Which is often.
There's no way we'd get Belias, KOTR, Phoenix, Alexander or Bahamut. Odin is a good chance though. If they do include ALL the other primals (and I hope they do) and implemented restrictions I think (and hope) it'd go:
Melee EGIs: Ifrit, Ravana, Odin, Shiva(?)
Tank EGIs: Titan, Bismarck
Caster EGIs: Garuda, Leviathan, Shiva(?)
I only included Belias, KOTR, Phoenix, Alexander, Bahamut and Odin in the list as they are Primals and therefore have potential to be included. Since the glamours are only cosmetic and nothing more, having Egi glamours of these Primals is more justifiable (as long as SE write the lore of the glamour system to reflect that).
As Odin is an Elder Primal just like Bahamut and Belias, he is no more likely to get an Egi than the others. However the only time we have seen Belias is in Egi form (Ifrit re-skin) during the SMN quest line. Therefore his Egi already exists in the data and could be used as an Ifrit re-colour with just a name change. Which may sound kinda cheap, but I think re-colours of the existing Egi would be cool.
Although it may feel like the Carbuncles are more responsive, they are in fact no more responsive than their Egi counterparts. Both the caster (Garuda/E.Carby) and tank type (Titan/T.Carby) utilize the exact same A.I coding as each other. There is no difference in their performance.
Can't wait for the part where a large vocal group of SMN's get on the forums to talk about how lame the animations for the new Egi's attacks are.
"Ramuh's auto attack is not even flashy! He's supposed to summon giant lightning bolts across the screen! What the hell, SE?! 2/10 would not buy…"
I'd like to hope that Leviathan will have dynamic, fluid movements. Butttt I think he'll just be coiled up and floating there. :/ The big hope I have with the pet glamour system is that it leaves a window open for Square to eventually revamp the egis altogether and maybe give us proper summons.