Quote Originally Posted by Kiroh View Post
Actually it has zero basis in lore whatsoever.

The premise of primals isn't that you need a ton of crystals and/or lives to summon them, it's that they're stronger the more of those things they have. We know this because in the main story quest both Ifrit and Titan are summoned by the cries of only 3 of their respective beast tribe members, none of which had any crystals in their possession that we know of. The only lore that exists to justify the egis is the lore they added specifically for summoner quests, in other words AFTER they decided to go the egi route.
What I got from it was they needed crystals/followers/sacrifices. And if what you say is the case, then it just justifies it. You're summoning the essence of a primal without crystals/etc to make it stronger...so...