Summoner Suggestions

I'm not entirely sure this is the correct place to post this, if not please guide me to the appropriate location to make this post.

I personally feel that pet classes are slightly frustrating and not very fun. This mostly stems from the fact that pet AI is pretty bad. Summoner is no exception to this. That is just my opinion and I'm sure there will be people who disagree strongly, but I hope even these people will hear me out before moving on.

My suggestion is foremost to remove their pets. Instead I think summoners would be a lot more entertaining and impressive if they summoned their various pets just long enough for them to launch a powerful attack. I imagine that summoning Ifrit and having him launch a single Hellfire and then leaving would look cool and feel more like a traditional summoner. I also think this would allow a greater variety of summons to be used in battles. The individual summons need not strictly be restricted to only launching attacks either, some could perhaps grant the party some form of buff.

I'm not a game designer so I don't know how difficult or unrealistic this change would be or what mechanics should be used to allow summoners to perform these powerful summons. I just think this would make summoners more exciting to play.

What do other people think? Do you love the current pet system and would loathe to part with it? Do you like my idea? Would you make adjustments? I hope that if there is enough interest in this idea that Square may seriously consider it.

Thanks to everyone who bothered to read through all that.

You can edit your posts to avoid the character limit, for future reference. :-)

As for the pets... I, personally, like the idea of having a pet out more so than summoning them only to have them disappear moments later. That could just be me though. While the AI of the pets definitely leaves a lot to be desired, one can avoid relying on it entirely by simply learning to micro manage them. Some have an easier time with this than others though so I can see why people might fully welcome such a change.

All that said... I wonder if implementing your idea on top of the current system would be a good idea. Like... keep ifrit, garuda, and titan as they are while allowing the other primal to finally be available to summoners in the way that you had suggested. All the abilities like such would share the same cool down, but they'd all do different things. Ramuh, for instance, would come out and deliver a giant lightning bolt to the face while Shiva could do a big diamond dust aoe. Others can do various buffs or debuffs or various other forms of damage.

Your idea is pretty close to the "Summon Bahamut" ability so it's not impossible.
I have the same idea actually, removing pets from the game and adding the Demi versions of the Egis instead. Maybe add Ramuh, Leviathan and Shiva too.

How they'll work is you have to rotate through them because of the long cooldown, like how Bard songs work. Some are good for single-target, some are good for AoE, and some have more useful buffs depending on the situation.
It would also be good if they get more than just Enkindle [summon] as a skill, maybe a party buff, and 2 other attacks that have a pretty short CD (like an AoE, a single-target attack, a DoT etc.). For all of this to work better though, it'll only need one DWT phase, or remove DWT entirely and incorporate the effects onto the summoning instead.

But first of all I hope they fix how Demi-Bahamut works, like how he moves around and how clunky Wyrmwave works. Otherwise, it's a step in the right direction for SMN's design.

Because of pet AI's base programming to stick to their master like glue, I kinda wish they would go the MCH turret route and just place them down to leave them to auto-attack. Then, the pet cooldowns are rolled back into the master as different buttons that change depending on what pet is out. Yeah, you lose some of the interactivity with the pet (as they won't follow you anymore), but they wouldn't cost MP (so it's not a problem getting them back after death), and they're more receptive to commands.

This wouldn't help with button bloat, either, but maybe they'll wise up about upgrading Ruin I into Ruin III upon learning Ruin III and leaving Ruin IV for DWT.

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Originally Posted by Xehmnus

As for the pets... I, personally, like the idea of having a pet out more so than summoning them only to have them disappear moments later. That could just be me though. While the AI of the pets definitely leaves a lot to be desired, one can avoid relying on it entirely by simply learning to micro manage them.

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Yeah. I fully recognise that there are players out there who quite like pet classes despite the AI issues. I'm just not sure how many do or if more people would rather see a system like I proposed.

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Originally Posted by Xehmnus

All that said... I wonder if implementing your idea on top of the current system would be a good idea. Like... keep ifrit, garuda, and titan as they are while allowing the other primal to finally be available to summoners in the way that you had suggested. All the abilities like such would share the same cool down, but they'd all do different things. Ramuh, for instance, would come out and deliver a giant lightning bolt to the face while Shiva could do a big diamond dust aoe. Others can do various buffs or debuffs or various other forms of damage.

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I dare say that would be a viable half way mark. Personally I would see two of those Egis change into my idea of short term summons if they were to go that way. My reasoning being that Ifrit and Titan don't see much use. Any hardcore summoners let me know if I'm wrong, but it seems to me Garuda is the only one that sees regular use.

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Originally Posted by dinnertime

Your idea is pretty close to the "Summon Bahamut" ability so it's not impossible.
I have the same idea actually, removing pets from the game and adding the Demi versions of the Egis instead. Maybe add Ramuh, Leviathan and Shiva too.

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This is the lines I'm thinking along. I feel like this way more primals could be included to the summoner's repertoire. Which and what to name them is beyond me, but I hope game designers at Square might mull that over.

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Originally Posted by dinnertime

How they'll work is you have to rotate through them because of the long cooldown, like how Bard songs work. Some are good for single-target, some are good for AoE, and some have more useful buffs depending on the situation.
It would also be good if they get more than just Enkindle [summon] as a skill, maybe a party buff, and 2 other attacks that have a pretty short CD (like an AoE, a single-target attack, a DoT etc.). For all of this to work better though, it'll only need one DWT phase, or remove DWT entirely and incorporate the effects onto the summoning instead.

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Definitely one way to go about it. I was thinking either long CD or building up some kind of resource to perform a summon magic. There are many ways to implement this and I would love to hear many ideas, so that a passing Square employee may, with luck, have a serious think about it.

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Originally Posted by dinnertime

But first of all I hope they fix how Demi-Bahamut works, like how he moves around and how clunky Wyrmwave works.

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I think if they were to make an overhaul of summoner to implement this idea in some way, other features of summoner would need to be remodelled to suit. Personally, as cool as Demi-Bahamut looks, I would have him serve as a single attack summon too. Come in, Gigaflare and leave style of magic.

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Originally Posted by inhaledcorn

Because of pet AI's base programming to stick to their master like glue, I kinda wish they would go the MCH turret route and just place them down to leave them to auto-attack. Then, the pet cooldowns are rolled back into the master as different buttons that change depending on what pet is out. Yeah, you lose some of the interactivity with the pet (as they won't follow you anymore), but they wouldn't cost MP (so it's not a problem getting them back after death), and they're more receptive to commands.

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Whilst a viable solution to some of the AI woes, I worry this might make it too close to the MCH's turrets for comfort. Keep in mind though I'm personally opposed to permanent summons so it may just be my bias leaking in.

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Originally Posted by inhaledcorn

This wouldn't help with button bloat, either, but maybe they'll wise up about upgrading Ruin I into Ruin III upon learning Ruin III and leaving Ruin IV for DWT.

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Another possible solution, but as I've stated above, a significant change to summoner moving from permanent pets to powerful summon magics would probably require an overhaul of summoners other abilities and hopefully might help rectify their button bloat.

Thank you all for your input, thank you for reading my kind of long post and I hope to see many more ideas floating around.