Summoner Memories

[Amberion]

As far as the design perspective, niche gameplay severely limits your choices in content, specially when the bulk of gameplay is dungeons, raids and instanced battles. You can't have situations where you're stacking DRGs or stacking BLMs, or where you want two wars and sit anyone that likes playing PLD. It was that sort of thing that killed endgame for me in FFXI (between niche design, the existence of gearswaps, and Utsusemi being mandatory in close to everything that was "hard"). FFXI is a textbook example of how to not balance classes in a game, and why you should create parity in performance. The 14 jobs that are not the "ace" jobs are effectively wastes of code and space in-game, and that's not something I wish to see in this game.

In a game that you are meant to level more then 1 class, it would make sense that they have strengths and weaknesses. But right now in this game, they can pretty much remove all classes and just make 1 generic tank/healer/dps.

S-E needs to make an incentive to people that makes them want to level up more classes.

[Valcro]

Why can't FFXIV primals be the real primals that we fight? I want the real thing damn it, not some Digimon crap.

It seems the only reason is so people can summon them in town... so we're all stuck on tiny mode because someone somewhere thought it'd be cool to be able to cast offensive spells and summons in town but they didn't want them to clog up entire screens around markets and such so they made them small. Pretty sure the luxury of running around with a summon in town and the ability to battle in areas where no battles are located was not worth losing the respectable size of summons that were in FFXI. So now it's all like, monster goes rawwwwr and SMN sends in Minime and the monster is like, "awwwwwr you so cute, I want to take you home as a pet!" Yeah. I can only imagine how much impact would have been lost in FFXI if Fenrir were the size of these summons.

SMN summons Fenrir!
Everyone: oh yeah someone's ass is about to be kicked!!!!
Mini Fenrir appears!
Mini Fenrir: awooooooo!
Everyone: what the fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

[Battlewrench]

Good stuff


Only pic I had on this pc with it, but I want my yag head back!!!!!! XIV yag head(don't care if yag's aren't in the game) make it happen SE.

[Babydoll]

This thread makes me sad ; ; I really miss Summoner and what it was I miss feeling accomplished in what I did. I remember back in oct 2003..when FFXI first came out I was told I had to level WHM first in order to be able to defeat the primes as 60 WHM...so I went ahead and leveled it..took me a few weeks cuz I played almost 24-7 lol. That feeling when making my prime group (consisted mostly of JP players haha) and actually earning all my avatars...was amazing.

I remember leveling up SMN from lv1 with all the avatars in like December 03 in the dunes...haha people were freaking out at my pets.

Now it is just as someone in this thread said - some kind of arch mage job. The job is fun sure, but it is not summoner. Not at all.

[Engineer]

It's the way it is because the traditional FF Summoner does not fit in an MMO and still be balanced. It works in single player games fine, but not here.

It's truly balanced now in ffxi.

In XIV that gameplay style can exist.

The AI wouldn't be an issue if they didn't give us dots because we would be able to micro manage the pets and control every pet attack.

I would prefer that the pet held all the DD while micro managing all its attacks. Also it would be nice if were able to control what abilities the pet does when initiating SIC via Gambit System, and the abilities that we don't want it to do , the summoner can initiate it manually.

I mean, there's nothing to it and could simply be done in XIV

[Duelle]

In a game that you are meant to level more then 1 class, it would make sense that they have strengths and weaknesses. But right now in this game, they can pretty much remove all classes and just make 1 generic tank/healer/dps.

S-E needs to make an incentive to people that makes them want to level up more classes.

No they don't. You ignore that some people relate to certain jobs more than others. I happen to like the fact that I am capable of tanking all content as a PLD (and want nothing more than to see my WAR brethren get the same opportunities after whatever fix 2.1 will give them).

If I have no interest in the related class, I should not be required to level it to cap and gear it. Getting CNJ15 as someone who absolutely hates healing was bad enough, and the issues I have with MRD's gameplay made that part of leveling incredibly dull. I have no real interest in LNC and PGL, ARC is something I toy with on my legacy character and when I feel like it I may give THM and more thorough look. The fact this game respects your choice to focus on one class while still giving you the option of leveling alt classes/jobs is immense and a huge plus to the game.

[BalthierLove]

Agreed. I'm curious to see the direction they'll take Leviathan-Egi and Ramuh-Egi once those enter the game. Not to mention Shiva-egi. By pacing their introductions of the primals the devs are also giving themselves plenty of time and room to maneuver as the game ages.

Well, according to Yoshi-P, this is the design for Ramuh-Egi:


Me myself, am interested in Shiva-Egi.

[Maza]

I couldn't wait to get a carby in ffxiv.. then found out how easy it was... then saw the summons you get later and just stopped playing it : ( Making summoner and earning summons in xi was pretty much the whole game for me for a while. At least carby is still cool : )

[Engineer]

Well, according to Yoshi-P, this is the design for Ramuh-Egi:


Me myself, am interested in Shiva-Egi.

I really dislike how the Ramuh-Egi looks, it's very baby with big clothes on.

Shiva egi will probably look like this.



I'm most excited about leviathan egi in which I hope looks like this.



But it will most likely look like this. /sigh