Why do the Egis appearance look awful and unimpressive

[Spellbinder]

Why is it assumed that anyone that wishes to see the appearance of Egis changed/improved wants something the size of a skyscraper?

I'd gladly settle for something the size of a Hyur or a Roegadyn...or even my chocobo.

[MartaDemireux]

I said this in response to her post in another thread and I'll say it again here:

I thought it was proven via lore that SMN essentially molds the current pets out of 3 crystals (the ones that spin around them during summoning). They fuse the crystals together with aetheric and elemental energies. Since they're only using 3 crystals they get a much different looking pet from the primals while still maintaining a similar appearance. The reason the primals look the way they do is because of the tens of thousands of crystals the beast tribes use in their summoning. They would look much different than they do now with even more crystals used. The problem is that the more crystals you use, the more they look like their primal form, the less control over them the user will have.

I could see them adding a stance via job quest when the level cap is raised in order to use more crystals in your summoning. The stance would weaken the user, strengthen the pet, and make the user have less control over the pet for a more primal looking egi, similar to the ones that assist in the EX battles. Perhaps they'd gain actions to coerce their pets to do their bidding by sacrificing their Aetherflow stacks. Normally have no control over the egi, use of 1 stack gains you control for a short period of time, 2 stacks for a bit longer period of time, 3 stacks for even longer period of time. Or perhaps you could directly use just one attack per Aetherflow charge.

[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.

[Riardon]

What I understood from this thread is the very few people pay real attetion to the story and all those texts every npc says. Summoners in this game will never summon full formed primals. The egi's could look better though without being a copy of the full primal ofc. They are supposed to be a weapon but they seem too cute for something dangerous. Maybe future egis will look better who knows.

[NyxNoughtNothing]

Why is it assumed that anyone that wishes to see the appearance of Egis changed/improved wants something the size of a skyscraper?

I'd gladly settle for something the size of a Hyur or a Roegadyn...or even my chocobo.

Seems reasonable to me. Not a towering colossus so much as something that actually looks like it's a bigger threat than a well trained chocobo.

[Amberion]

Well, the devs are damned if they do and damned if they don't. If they had full blown primals, people would bitch that they weren't sticking to lore and that they are totally messing up the whole notion that a tonne of crystals and lives are needed to summon them. And since they decided to go the lore-friendly route, now people bitch that they aren't impressive enough (despite the fact that you're only summoning the ESSENCE of the primal, not the primal itself). There really is no way for them to win.

Shouldn't they have thought of that when they where writing the story? Anyone that has any knowledge of FF series would know that Chocobos and the summons/summoner has become the key features people know of when you ask them about the Final Fantasy Series.

Or heck, the players got special "powah" against primals, they could have easily made a way for summoners to summon a de-powered Primal.

[Nalien]

Or heck, the players got special "powah" against primals, they could have easily made a way for summoners to summon a de-powered Primal.

Like I said earlier, it's the fans fault. FFXIV was hated so much that they literally had to do everything to make ARR a Final Fantasy game in their eyes. That included putting Summoner in for launch.

If Summoner was actually summoning a depowered Primal, then that would have had to rush the story forward so much, the whole "Primals are evil that taint the very land they walk on" plot that has been going for all this time would basically have to be rushed to explain why Summoner can summon them anyway. Taking a portion of the Aether you were exposed to fighting the Primal, and melding that into your own pet Egi allows them to explain Summoner and not rush the plot, while still giving fans Summoner at launch. Currently the whole plot is building up to our Free Companies actually being able to summon Primals fully. Would I have liked that at launch? Hell yes I would, but it would have made the plot even more convoluted than it already is, there would simply have been far too much stuff going on and have made very little sense. What hasn't even been explained yet would have to be in the game by Lv30... Even if you just put it there, most of the Lv31+ plot would just fall apart at that point.

The only issue is how the Egis look, but I've hated how some summons looked in past Final Fantasy games already. I mean, Ixion instead of Ramuh? What the hell FFX. Clearly not a real Lightning Summon, the developers should have fixed that for the HD rerelease.

[Exodus-E]

I mean, Ixion instead of Ramuh? What the hell FFX. Clearly not a real Lightning Summon, the developers should have fixed that for the HD rerelease.

The (most likely) reason for that may be same as to why FFVIII didn't have him as well (instead, we had Quetzacoatl): because the summons on those games could be "trained" and "taught" new stuff, something that would've been redundant/useless for someone as old and wise as Ramuh.
Thus, why they had to replace him with something else.

I'm more concerned as to why we didn't get Leviathan on FFX though, given how big the whole theme of water/sea was in that game (not to mention that it didn't even have any Water-based summon to complete the four-elemental ones)...now THAT's something I would have love to see on the HD re-release.

[Amberion]

Currently the whole plot is building up to our Free Companies actually being able to summon Primals fully.

True, it's just from a FF series perspective, it makes more sense for the Summoner job to summon them then just random people.

And even then they could have made the plot work. If a a summoner summoned a de-powered one, then an FC would be more people = stronger Primal.

But meh, all that is "What If?" arguments since it's really hard for them to rewrite what's already in the game.

[Nalien]

True, it's just from a FF series perspective, it makes more sense for the Summoner job to summon them then just random people.

But it doesn't from a MMO perspective. Summoner is one of the things you think of when you think Final Fantasy and it's really one of the most well know, overpowered, and flashy Jobs in the game. FFXs story revolved around the Job. In a MMO though, all Jobs should be equal. Again, Summoner is already overpowered in these regards even despite the work they put in. Black Mage gets Flare. White Mage gets Holy. Dragoon gets Dragonfire Dive. Summoner? That gets Aerial Blast, Earthen Fury, Inferno, and that's just the "ultimate" moves, as well as a gap which will only become greater when Summoner gets Leviathan, Ramuh, and Shiva -Egi.

I'm more concerned as to why we didn't get Leviathan on FFX though

Wasn't Sin basically Leviathan? I seem to remember it basically being a summon Yu Yevon used to protect himself while he turned himself into a purple balloon. I felt it was a throwback to FFIV; Sin was the ultimate summon in Spira, in IV Leviathan was the King of Summons.