When people hear you can be a "summoner" in FFXIV, they expect it to be like the summoner class in other Final Fantasy games. They expect to call in a 30 foot demi-god that fills the area with a flashy cinematic and nukes the entire zone with 99999 damage to all enemies. Summons, as they existed in offline FF games, have no place whatsoever in an MMORPG, however.

I can empathize with feeling underwhelmed by the less-than-amazing "egi" creatures, but you can't have twenty full-size Ifrits stomping around in front of the market boards. Heck, I've heard complaints about the number of tiny little carbuncles running around.

I suppose they could have gone a different route and simply not made summoner a pet-centric class. But, then you just have another offensive caster, with brief spell animations that look vaguely like monster shapes. I doubt anyone would be happy with that either.