Why do the Egis appearance look awful and unimpressive

[Pandastirfry]

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.

Uh...you need to pay attention to the story better, The Amal'ja Had been stealing shipments of crystals and kidnapping people prior to that in order to summon Ifrit, we just happened to be there at the culmination of their efforts, same goes for the Summoning of Titan, they also draw upon the collective belief of all their tempered thralls, not just the one doing the summoning. Only the Ixal had summoned the Primal previous to us showing up, but yet again the stealing of crystal shipments/kid napping of people was a major theme of the quests leading up to the fight. This is spelled out in the main story. in the 1.0 story line it was even pointed out the the Twelve can also be summoned in a similar fashion and was even floated by the Path of the Twelve/Scions of the Seventh Dawn as a possible solution to the whole Meteor Problem. but that it is just as detremental to the aetheric balance of the world as summoning the Primals, and would make us "No better than the Beast Tribes".

The lore for Summoner is that we're not calling upon belief or the power of the crystals. We're not summoning a willing Primal. we're forcibly binding a small amount of the aetheric essence of the Primal. Basically unlike WoW's Warlock or FFXI's Summoner who make contracts or blood pacts with their summons, we are, to use a more accurate term, "enslaving" the primal's essence. One could argue that FFXIV's Summoner is actually more "evil" than WoW's Warlock.

[Kiroh]

Uh...you need to pay attention to the story better, The Amal'ja Had been stealing shipments of crystals and kidnapping people prior to that in order to summon Ifrit, we just happened to be there at the culmination of their efforts, same goes for the Summoning of Titan, they also draw upon the collective belief of all their tempered thralls, not just the one doing the summoning.

During Garuda's story, outside of their respective homelands, with only 3, average beastmen and zero crystals they were summoned full sized and full bodied.

Pay attention to the story before telling other people to pay attention to the story.

[Tharian]

During Garuda's story, outside of their respective homelands, with only 3, average beastmen and zero crystals they were summoned full sized and full bodied.

Pay attention to the story before telling other people to pay attention to the story.

Full sized, full bodied, and severely underpowered. Both Titan and Ifrit got pwned in 2 seconds flat. Garuda (who had substantial amounts of crystals, and a lot more Beastmen supporting her) lasted only a tiny bit of time longer than them.

If those three Primals had all been full powered, and they had been working together instead of poised to fight each other. They might have actually stood a chance against their actual enemy.

[Pandastirfry]

During Garuda's story, outside of their respective homelands, with only 3, average beastmen and zero crystals they were summoned full sized and full bodied.

Pay attention to the story before telling other people to pay attention to the story.

again, like I said, it was said that the Ixal had been stealing crystals and we had been told that the Primals draw upon the collective belief of ALL of their tempered thralls not just the ones actively doing the summoning and at that point Garuda had already been summoned and been wreaking havoc on settlements in Gridania for a few days. We are also told that when summoned in that fashion the Primals are Persistent until they are killed and the Ixal were still stealing crystals to both maintain and increase Garuda's power, so Garuda in that scene was not so much summoned, as just shows up. It is spelled out for you (admitly it was better explained in 1.0 as the Garuada/Ixal part of the Main story is just history repeating itself ).

[Nalien]

During Garuda's story, outside of their respective homelands, with only 3, average beastmen and zero crystals they were summoned full sized and full bodied.

Pay attention to the story before telling other people to pay attention to the story.

I thought that was covered with the Extreme Primals storyline? During the Garuda section of the story, the 3 beastmen of both tribes died summoning their Primal. Up to that point crystals and pray were the only means we knew of Primal summoning, with the Extreme storyline they explained that sacrifices work as well, did they not? Technically speaking, Crystals are just an easy source of Aether, literally just the crystallized form of it, so it's ideal for stocking and transporting for summonings. All creatures contain Aether too, so it stands to reason that sacrificial summonings would work on a similar principle, during that cutscene Garuda even commands them to surrender their Aether to her, so she could become more powerful (after we'd kicked her butt).

Pray is meant to give Primals form, that's something that even goes back to FFXI which actually had a similar lore behind summons. They were legends given form, Ozma was a legend that became forgotten and lost its form. Heck, there's even some FFX in there with the whole Pray thing... If you've done Turn 5, then it's also explained that;

The Allagan found a way to artificially recreate the pray used to sustain Bahamut, which allowed them to keep him captive and harness his power in Dalamud, long after his tribe vanished. That also explains what happened to Bahamut at the End of an Era trailer. Once he was free he was temporarily allowed to go on a rampage, but with no followers left, that didn't last. The ruins of Dalamud were able to maintain parts of him, now scattered across Eorzea. It's no wonder they cut to white there, it would have been pretty gruesome to show Bahamut literally being torn into pieces and spread across Eorzea with the remnants of his prison... The Allagan really were jerks...

So, I'd take it that praying alone can give a Primal form, but from there Aether is required to power them up. Again, the 3 followers during the Garuda cutscene sacrificed their own Aether and died to summon their Primals.

With Summoner we literally take the remnants of their Aether left on us after fighting them and meld it into an Egi. All the lore checks out in my opinion.