Summoner and scholar should be split up.

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Originally Posted by Eloah

Also the summons in this game are okay; if you think about it they play similar to the 10 and 13 summons where we have them do "basic" attacks to the enemies before unleashing their "big" attack. Now the one issue I do wish they would resolve is making the summons more versatile. Currently "everyone" says Garuda is the best pet, how dare you use one of the others, but that Ifritis situational and that Titan is just for soloing. I wish they would make it so each pet has something that made them unique, but, allowed them to be similar enough so that I could use any pet I prefer. Hopefully when more pets are released this will be fixed.

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That I can agree on. To me the Summoner's greatest advantage should be the utility of having three to five different arsenals/characters/stances for a variety of situations, but the way summons work here doesn't encourage that. The summons themselves are meh and offer nothing to the team except a little extra dps.

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Originally Posted by Eloah

And lastly, having Egis in this game makes perfect sense within the games lore. If you think about it the Primals are formed by a massive amount of "people" "praying" to the god to summon them, their power and size dependant on the amount of people who summon them and the aether used to give them a physical form. That being said, your summoner is ONE person, who is able to give the aether a physical form. Could SE adjust the size of the Egis, maybe make them a bit bigger, but having the smaller versions makes sense if you think about how the actual Primal is summoned.

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Out of curiousity, how far are you in the Manderville questline?

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Originally Posted by FrejyaAthenes

Out of curiousity, how far are you in the Manderville questline?

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If you are refering to Enkidu, I don't think that counts as an Egi/Primal, that's still debated even within the context of the side story. Plus look at the size of Enkidu compared to Gilgamesh, he is still smaller. And Gilgamesh is huge, gotta think he counts as more then one person for some things, like summoning a "Primal"..

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Originally Posted by FrejyaAthenes

The difference here between the current summoner and the Summoners of old is the importance placed on them. Rydia, Dagger, Eiko and Yuna were all hybrid summoners, but their stories and gameplay still had an emphasis on their summoning abilities. Here the story attempts it, but it falls flat when in gameplay your still just an Arcanist with Fester and uglier familiars. Your skill/worth as a summoner isn't based around the power of your summons or the control you have over them, but your ability to place DoTs and keep them up over the course of battle while your summons just...float and do stuff of no concequence.

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I do agree that the gameplay can fall a bit flat, since Summoners are just Arcanists with Fester. Hopefully this will change with Heavensward, having more abilities sould diversify them a bit more and make them feel a bit more Summon oriented. One change I would like to see is automatic ability swapping, depending on the pet you currently have out. I control my summons, on both Summoner and Scholar, but I use the expanded hotbar, since the pet hotbar is annoying. Anyway, I am only able to use Garuda and Ifrits abilities, not that Titans are needed right now, because each ability is seperate, but they all share specific cool downs. It would be nice if theabilities I use automatically changed depending on the pet I had out. I suppose I could try to macro them, but I see a lot of potential issues there.

One other thing to consider is this is a game with a Job System, and any game with a job system doesn't place an importance on the summons. All of the characters you mentioned are from games where the summons are intrigal to the story as well as the character(s), but those stories don't have jobs in them. Now I know 14's story has the Primals as a focus but they are only a story element not a charcter one. Games like 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, and 13, all have the summons as a character focus too. Now I never played 11, so I can't say anything about it, but I'm guessing summons were more of a side story and not character focused, similar to how it is in 14 right now.

Oh, also, on a tangent, while I understand why you put Eiko on that list, should she really be included? True she was a Summoner race wise, but she was oriented towards White Magic over Summons. But I suppose that could be me nitpicking. 9 is my favorite in the series.

Hopefully, they'll eventually overhaul the summoner class to put more of their "oomph" into the summons you're using, instead of them basically just being an overglorified DOT.

I think earlier, they were thinking of adding more jobs per class, but somewhere it fell flat, and Summoner/Scholar became the only class with a branch.

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Originally Posted by Eloah

If you are refering to Enkidu, I don't think that counts as an Egi/Primal, that's still debated even within the context of the side story. Plus look at the size of Enkidu compared to Gilgamesh, he is still smaller. And Gilgamesh is huge, gotta think he counts as more then one person for some things, like summoning a "Primal".

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I see what you mean. However, whether or not Enkidu can be considered a "Primal" (I feel like after Mogglemog and Shiva the term lost all meaning) but more on the fact that Gilgamesh, ONE person who is not even a mage, let alone one trained in summoning arts, manages to conjure up a being far more powerful and impressive than any single adventurer or even Tristan managed to. It's more than a tad insulting.
As for size, I don't care too much about them being full on Primal-sized. Personally I'd prefer them to be more player-sized depending on who they are (Ifrit could be Au'Ra sized, Titan Roe-sized, Garuda elf-sized, etc...).

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Originally Posted by Eloah

I do agree that the gameplay can fall a bit flat, since Summoners are just Arcanists with Fester. Hopefully this will change with Heavensward, having more abilities sould diversify them a bit more and make them feel a bit more Summon oriented. One change I would like to see is automatic ability swapping, depending on the pet you currently have out. I control my summons, on both Summoner and Scholar, but I use the expanded hotbar, since the pet hotbar is annoying. Anyway, I am only able to use Garuda and Ifrits abilities, not that Titans are needed right now, because each ability is seperate, but they all share specific cool downs. It would be nice if the abilities I use automatically changed depending on the pet I had out. I suppose I could try to macro them, but I see a lot of potential issues there.

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Agreed. I've been saying that summons should be treated as a stance system where having specific summons out grants certain buffs/abilities. Maybe someday.

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Originally Posted by Eloah

One other thing to consider is this is a game with a Job System, and any game with a job system doesn't place an importance on the summons. All of the characters you mentioned are from games where the summons are intrigal to the story as well as the character(s), but those stories don't have jobs in them. Now I know 14's story has the Primals as a focus but they are only a story element not a charcter one. Games like 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, and 13, all have the summons as a character focus too. Now I never played 11, so I can't say anything about it, but I'm guessing summons were more of a side story and not character focused, similar to how it is in 14 right now.

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While that is true, you must admit it's a bit more complex than the earlier "Pick job. You are job." style of those games. Each class/job is a journey with characters and story that helps to flesh out the world of the game. It's not the same as just clicking a job from a list and being on your way.

And finally, if I may speak bluntly can we drop the "because lore" excuses when the game itself goes through great lengths to completely go against its lore, proving that what characters tell us isn't absolute. Everyone thought Midgardsomr was long dead but look what happened. Everyone thought Primals had to be gods but the later trials proved otherwise (hell Odin doesn't even have followers, he's just a parasitic sword). The game itself has shown us that our knowledge of the world is not the end all be all.

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Originally Posted by FrejyaAthenes

And finally, if I may speak bluntly can we drop the "because lore" excuses when the game itself goes through great lengths to completely go against its lore, proving that what characters tell us isn't absolute. Everyone thought Midgardsomr was long dead but look what happened. Everyone thought Primals had to be gods but the later trials proved otherwise (hell Odin doesn't even have followers, he's just a parasitic sword). The game itself has shown us that our knowledge of the world is not the end all be all.

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It's already been stated that gameplay comes first then lore fills in the gaps so Egi was a design choice not lore choice.

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Originally Posted by Eloah

If you are refering to Enkidu, I don't think that counts as an Egi/Primal, that's still debated even within the context of the side story. Plus look at the size of Enkidu compared to Gilgamesh, he is still smaller. And Gilgamesh is huge, gotta think he counts as more then one person for some things, like summoning a "Primal"..

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Actually the only two know requirements to summon a "primal" is prayer and aether. So techincally Enkidu is a summon.

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Originally Posted by Tex_Mex

The main reason that people are so put off by the SMN aesthetic is that the class plays nothing like traditional summoners in Final Fantasy games. They weren't DoT classes, and their summons were nothing like the pets seen in FFXIV today.

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Key thing is Summoner in FF is a burst damage job just like Black Mage. The devs didn't want one job to play exactly like another and BLM was already a burst damage job. They also wanted to add a skill level into the jobs. Lastly they devs can't predict how the game will be played and I very much doubt they didn't expect things Speed Runs but chose not to nerf that style of gameplay. 3.0 will mark changes in the battle systems and I would suspect it would be a reflection of the things the devs have learned from us over the past year and a half.