SMN's Egi Appearances ~ one final, humble request

[Mogi]

Id love to see SMN look cooler but the way the class is right now i feel like we can't do much with em anyway i mean they pull monsters and what not i loved the class when i first played it but now it's the last class i use. 1 the SMN's look like glow sticks or junk 2 lack of anything to do with them iv had new players ask were i got the cool glowing pet :P idk i feel like it was a cool idea but SE had no clue what to do with it.

[Tsukino]

Final Fantasy summoners works because it's a single player game. In a MMORPG, it,s a different thing. You just can't summon a pet once every so often to do a big AoE attack then it leaves the field. Summoners in the Final Fantasy world aren't known to have consistency either on how they operate.

For example, take Rydia from FFIV and compare her to Eiko/Garnet from FFIX. All of them can summon but Eiko/Garnet are healers and Rydia is a master of black magic.

People asking for a "Final Fantasy summoner" should actually look at the history of summoners in the Final Fantasy world before asking such a thing.

It's not a matter of specific mechanics but one of emphasis. Right now "summoner" is a mage that uses DoT spells and also have a pet that helps out a bit. It should be the other way around and the emphasis should be on the summon.

[jlewiss]

The only function these threads really serve at this point is a reminder that generally speaking the community base is not happy about the state of egi's.
So either the community needs to move on and let the topic die or the devs need to give in and do something about the egis.

[ArmorKing]

As for the limited amount of aether, maybe Aetherflow stacks can be worked into the formula. More stacks = more Egi power? This would give the SMN an option on the fly - do they want to spend stacks on Bane and Fester, or spend them to power up the Egi for a short time?

As for the limit break animations... AFAIK they're already in the game. I realize this is the cheap way of giving SMN that feel of true avatar power, but it works.

My other idea for SMN LBs is the simple approach. The old cameo approach - Odin shows up (or whoever), does his thing, and vanishes. A different primal per LB level, regardless of Egi summoned.

I'm fine with either approach.

[NinjaTaru72]

The size it *ok* though I would love a 5-10% increase. But yeah. To me titan looks the best. Ifrit is... Well he's ifrit. And garuda.... Needs to be sexier. Lol. And if not that, atleast give her a better design.

As to the person who said the fairy for sch being bigger.... No. They are perfect, and we'll designed. And can't wait for the little haukke manor minion to summon with my fairy.

[Parz3val]

snip

The Ifrit model is alright imo also, however I really think putting it on all fours would sell it in a huge way (at least for me).

As I mentioned previously & updated the OP with, the Egi loses its reptilian appeal when they cause it to float.

There are plenty of floaters to draw from for the future, Levi/Ramuh Egi's & more.

I'm not nitpicking either, that's just a preference of mine, if they were to update the models at all - I think that would make for an amazing touch.

As it is, it doesn't remind me of Ifrit very much because of the floating nature.

As before too, I loved the idea of grounding Titan also...

Not to straight rip WoW ever, but this' a solid reference-image for an idea(obvi needs to be modeled more after Titan, but body-type/shape sort of stands) below.



Unfortunately, I think even these dated WoW graphics look a bit better than the current Titan Egi model :/ (no disrespect to the designers).

The idea here mostly is you can keep with the lore's aetheric design & still provide plenty of detail where ours currently lack some.


...

[Parz3val]

Even better, though not fat enough & too demon-like (ignore the scale in this image, obviously the creature is too large for an Egi, looking more at details/grounding/shape):



credit: Darksiders 2

[Nayto]

Graphical limitations.

Imagine frontlines with a full SMN party...

Boom, your laptop exploded.

[Dwill]

It's not a matter of specific mechanics but one of emphasis. Right now "summoner" is a mage that uses DoT spells and also have a pet that helps out a bit. It should be the other way around and the emphasis should be on the summon.

Summoners in the Final Fantasy universe are either black mages with summons(pets) or white mages with summons(pets). Square Enix decided to go with the black mage approach. Now that's all fine but here's the kicker, we already have black mages casting the typical black magic spells. So Square Enix decided to go alongside the already existing template of DoTs with pets (which already existed before WoW, I think this need to be stated again). Inherently speaking, that's not a bad thing because poison black magic already exists in the Final Fantasy universe. Plenty of people also like that play style and would hate seeing it removed.

On the other point, you can't put too much emphasis on the summons themselves because then, it makes the summon itself too powerful and the summoner becomes too reliant on it, thus creating balance issues for both PvE and PvP. Front loading too much potency in pets is not a good thing balance wise. It also would require a pretty hefty redesign of the class itself to in that direction and considering that out pets are already 25%of our damage, you really can't give them a lot more to keep them balanced.

So from Square Enix's side, they can either do an hefty overhaul of the class and make some people happy (that's assuming that they do a good job with it, they could entirely screw things up badly as well and make it worse for everyone) and some people upset. Or they could change nothing and keep things as is for now and make some people happy and some people upset. It's not hard to guess what's easier for Square Enix in this matter.

[Ghastly]

Who said we wanted their gameplay changed?
I would ask people to stop making the subject what it is not

Give us glamour for egis so they don't look like blow up toys