What ever happened to the Roaming primals?

[Kurogaea]

Stuff like this gets thrown to the wayside and we get crap like Lord of Verminion instead.

Final Fantasy 15 has behemoth walking around, so why not 14?

[Nalien]

I'm pretty sure Yoshida mentionned the roaming primals were still planned in a recent interview or live letter.

As far as I'm aware, Free Company Primals was still planned at Heavenswards release. Roaming Primals, I think, may have been dropped. The original concept was to have Primals roam about, and Free Companies could beat them to capture and later summon them, and then they'd roam again. I think that concept may have been dropped, but the concept of allowing Free Companies to capture and summon Primals is still in development hell. No idea how they'd work it instead.

Two main problems with the concept though, one confirmed and one speculative;

Firstly, it needs to make sense given the lore of the game. This is something they need to build up to being a possibility, because right now the lore states that Primals are bad. Given we've gone from Ultima Weapon summoning Primals, to Shiva and Thordan, I'd say they're slowly working their way there... We're at Azys Lla, where Ultima Weapon was originally designed, and Ultima Weapon was designed to harness Primals... Wouldn't be a massive leap for us to find something in Azys Lla that allows us to throw Ifrit at an enemy in a similar fashion.

Secondly, content. There is currently no real content to use these things on in any meaningful way. Insta-clear a FATE? OHKO a Hunt? That would be a waste of such a concept. What we need is something more substantial, like XIs Besieged or Campaign. A truly massive world event in which we can fail, and failure has consequences. Then you've got a scenario where we could be losing a battle with Garlemald, and if we do they take the outpost from us, but then a Free Company rocks in and summons Ifrit to completely change the tide of battle. That's the kind of epic sh*t Primal Summoning should be used for, not creating more Hunt drama...

Of course, the whole thing might just be Yoshidas cute little pet idea, that will never actually make it into the game... It only ever comes up in obscure little interviews that are a pain in the butt to find, and threads like this never get a response.

[Felis]

Secondly, content. There is currently no real content to use these things on in any meaningful way. Insta-clear a FATE?

Alexander Savage, to get an easy clear.

[Kuwagami]

Alexander Savage, to get an easy clear.

Fixed that for you ^^

[Colorful]

Alexander Savage, to get an easy clear.

Doesn't that defeat the purpose of Savage?

[Doki]

My guess is they saw all the butthurt salty tears that happen during regular hunts, and decided that adding a hunt that randomly grants one FC a special summon a bad idea.

[Cidel]

...
Two main problems with the concept though, one confirmed and one speculative;
...

Fairly good points. I'd even add a third problem.

More player drama.

Primal hording, rampant claim botting, third-party tools giving unfair advantages, etc.

You know, the stuff you see in hunts now days, but would probably blown up to larger proportions.

[AeraLure]

What bothers me about that, is that they used it so heavily when they were promoting ARR, to even incorporate it into the benchmark. Feels like they were intentionally false advertising on that front, which is sort of a slap in the face to their playerbase.

I dont think it was intentional. I think they have all these great ideas but are too understaffed and underbudgeted to implement a lot of them. Kind of how it looks to me when seeing what comes out each patch now as compared to things they have talked about or should most certainly do. The oft-mentioned server limitations (they could invest more) and PS3 limitations (they should drop its support imho) play a role too.

[Nalien]

Alexander Savage, to get an easy clear.

I don't think it was ever implied that we'd be able to summon in instances. One of the main features talked about was how the weather would change when a Primal is summoned, so the whole server knows it is free to be claimed again. They always talked about the summoning being a server event, to me that always implied it would only be available in open world content, of which XIV is lacking greatly.

Fairly good points. I'd even add a third problem.

More player drama.

Primal hording, rampant claim botting, third-party tools giving unfair advantages, etc.

Depends. From what I recall, a Free Company would only ever be able to hold one, and they'd lose it after a while if they don't use it. So it isn't like they'd be able to hoard Primals like Housing.

Everything else depends on how exactly they intend to implement the "capture" system. Roaming Primals runs into a similar problem with Hunts, except there would be claiming, so the whole "wait for the server, omfg you didn't wait?! I hope you die" thing would never exist to begin with. Groups would also need to be able to down the Primal, of as-yet untold difficulty, so we'd already be in a situation where this isn't for everyone; My Free Company probably doesn't have the numbers to claim one, for example. You'd just perhaps have groups monopolizing them, but that just takes us back to the content; What are these used for?

XIV needs Campaign. Throw in Campaign and Primal Summoning is an epic addition. Do I care if a specific Free Company is always getting a Primal to use in Campaign? No. Not particularly. Campaign is a server event. I'd care if they were using it solely for their own benefit, but if it is tied entirely to something like Campaign, it can only ever be used for the servers benefit. I'd still like to claim Ifrit and throw him myself one day, but Campaign is a server event, and I'd still be involved in the spectacle of seeing Ifrit roast some Magitek.

Given how many Primals there are, how a Free Company can only have one, how the weather change indicates it has been summoned and is free to be claimed again, and so on... You'd have a situation where one group has Ifrit, they clear out a Garlean outpost for the whole server with Ifrit, and while they're finishing up some other group claims Ifrit. Larger Free Companies might be able to have one group summon and another reclaim, but you can just implement a "Cannot Claim X hours after Summoning" system to clear that up.

[Darkstride]

What bothers me about that, is that they used it so heavily when they were promoting ARR, to even incorporate it into the benchmark. Feels like they were intentionally false advertising on that front, which is sort of a slap in the face to their playerbase.

I think that intentional false advertising is a pretty wild accusation. The benchmark is made to test your system's performance with various degrees of action. Neither the benchmark or SE have made any promises about roaming primals, it's merely been discussed as a potential gameplay addition.