Anyone ever got turn off to play certain class just because their aesthetic?

[Greedalox]

Sounds homophobic.

Wat.
/10char

[ChloeGrace]

I dislike most of the armor models in this game, in general.
I get that it's coming from artists with a Japanese background, but do they really need to make everything look like a dress? Even tanks?

The healer stuff is getting completely monotonous. Every patch/xpac: Oh look. Another white robe. Marvelous. /s

[Fyrebrand]

Aesthetics, lore, and tone is the reason my main is a White Mage and not a Scholar. I like feeling like a magical, nature-based healer -- not a physician academic who puts leeches on people.

It's also why I keep an alt character for when I want to try melee or tank classes. I just can't see my main character doing these things.

I actually didn't play BRD for a while because I didn't like the "aesthetic" of it; it was too fruity for me, and I prefer my ranged classes to be woodsy archers.

I like both -- I just wish Bard and Archer were actually separate jobs, not smooshed together into one thing. I really don't get why FFXIV did this. Bard and Archer have always been separate jobs in Final Fantasy, and very different from each other.

[Greedalox]

Snip

Because with the standard 4 man this game never really had room for dedicated support, their utility would have to be so powerful to make it so that the remaining 3 people in the party could make up for a pure support just supporting- but at the same time we also have 8 man groups, and could you imagine how immensely effective they'd be by effecting 7 people instead of 3?

XI had 6 man groups that had up to 4 dps or 3+ BRD and their group sizes never went up. Yes they had alliances but bards didn't influence groups they were out of so that's moot. So simply put, they mashed Bard and Archer together as a means of adding a utility heavy class into the game without having the difficulty of balancing playing with 1 dps or 3 in your party, depending on 4 or 8 man content.

[Fyrebrand]

Because with the standard 4 man this game never really had room for dedicated support, their utility would have to be so powerful to make it so that the remaining 3 people in the party could make up for a pure support just supporting- but at the same time we also have 8 man groups, and could you imagine how immensely effective they'd be by effecting 7 people instead of 3?

Ah, that is an excellent point. Still, I think there could be ways around it -- there could be "chants" that are dedicated to only a single ally at a time, or group-wide buffs that divide their potency according to how many allies are affected. Heck, Bard could have easily just been a unique style of healer. Maybe have some songs that debuff enemies to mitigate damage.

Soloing could get a little weird, as pure damage attacks for a Bard seem dubious. In the old FF games you'd literally shoot musical notes at monsters, and pretend like that was an "attack." Meh, stranger things have happened. In Guild Wars 2, you can have a horn as an off-hand weapon, and summon a flock of birds to peck at your enemies. Or you could do some Skyrim shouts, knocking enemies back or breathing fire at them.

Regardless, I get what you're saying. Making a "true" Bard would come with a lot of hurdles, and it would be a disaster if the balance just wasn't there. The connection with Archers still doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but what's done is done.

[Inosaska]

No thread title has ever screamed the name "Summoner" at me as loudly as this one does.

...Where do I even begin? Apologies in advance for a rather extensive rant...

1. The books

I hate the books SO MUCH, for myriad reasons. Firstly, they're incredibly unwieldy, and that shows in ALL of the "Summoner"'s battle animations. Even the idle stance is painful to look at, and when we're waving those books around to cast spells it looks like someone setting themselves up for the Hammerthrow. It's like I'm pulling spells out of a slab of concrete. They're ugly, uninspiring, and they make that offensive sound when they open and close that just makes me want to rip my hair out.

For background context, I am a long time XI player. XI introduced a class, named Scholar, that also uses books and which I hate with the undying fury of ten thousand stars for various ranty reasons I won't go into here. Imagine my absolute revulsion when Summoner, my favourite class in XI, was announced in XIV and was combined with SCH and its books. I was utterly disgusted.

2. The "Egi"

What the hell are these even supposed to be? People have ranted on this forum about these monstrosities enough times so I won't bore everyone with a retelling, but honestly. They're offensively bad to look at, offensively bad to use in-game, offensively terrible reflections of the Primals they supposedly represent... Urgh. Urgh. And "Egi"? Really? I mean, I know it's probably not intended to sound like "Eggy", but... how can you not read it that way?

Even Carbuncle, who I love, has moments when it looks pretty shoddy in XIV. Don't get me wrong, I've been a massive fan of Carbuncle through multiple iterations, but that idle pose it does where it sticks its backside up in the air, and shakes and twitches like it has chronic mercury poisoning? I'm not sure why anyone thought that was a good idea.

3. The Quests

The Mithra in the job quests really loves to uncover "hidden ancient summoning techniques" that have LITERALLY NO CONNECTION TO SUMMONING WHATSOEVER. Every time I received another poorly thought out DoT-based ability I wanted to smash my face against my keyboard. FESTER? Really? The only thing I was remotely excited about was Spur - and that was a weaker version of an ability I got from my class more than ten levels ago! Enkindle? Wow, that certainly looks exactly like something that should be on the pet toolbar and not our job capstone. Love a bit of Tri-Bind as well - look, it even seems to have colours associated with our Primal Egis! It MUST be summoning. This makes me so angry.

4. The Lore

The ENTIRETY of "Summoner" lore from the job quests is SE making excuses for why the job is so utterly awful. Here's a summon for you! By the way, it's literally terrible because something something Hydaelyn something Aether something. Also it's kinda basically identical to the associated Carbuncle because something Arcanima something Gemstones something Primal Essence. Remember those Arcanist spells that are unrelated to summoning? Yeah, keep using those because your Egi can't be your primary tool, as something Crystals something something Devours Life Force something Impossible. Hey, how'd you like to crack open a fresh bottle of Bahamut aether and spray that out of every orifice for some direct damage? That's much easier than summoning a new "Egi" because something something Limited Aetheric Capacity something Ritual something something, and it's not dangerous like that evil sort of summoning because something Cartineau something! It's also still definitely summoning, and NOT a direct damage spell, because it's got the name "Bahamut" in it! How completely riveting all this lore is, right?

A class in a game has NEVER been such a complete disappointment to me as "Summoner" in this game. I really want to like it! I've tried so hard to enjoy it, to look past its innumerable flaws, to embrace the patchy and ill-conceived lore, but I just can't. It's bad to the core. Even though I KNOW this, even though I've done this dance a thousand times, I sometimes still swap over to "Summoner" and give it a try - see if it's magically got less awful in the few months since the last time I was naive enough to believe. And it's always still an absolute mess, every single time.

...sadly, after all that, I then had the misfortune to try Archer as a replacement for "Summoner". It really has a baffling lack of identity. Is it a bard? Is it an archer? A spellcaster? A physical damage job? Nope! It's not really any of those things! Oops. The bows all look like abstract sculptures from an art museum, and I've never seen so many flashy colours spew out of an arrow before. Maybe I'm playing the wrong game if I want simpler animations.

I'm really hoping one of the new jobs in the expansion is something that I can enjoy. Aesthetics (both visual and lore-based) are really important for me. Maybe RDM will turn out to be something special?

On the positive side, I do quite like a lot of WHM's aesthetics. The casting animations are sometimes a bit... weird (what is going on with my feet when I'm casting Cure and Stone, exactly?) and over the top (the floating is great, but is the staff spinning at the end of Aero III really necessary?) but on the whole, it's good. I really like a lot of the canes, as well - especially the Alkalurops.

This is basically the same post I was going to make about the class. I do hope one day they revisit it and completely start from scratch.

[Gumbercules]

its a bard-cher! A caster bard-cher! with flava for days!

[gumas]

As for the colorful arrow, i kinda like it though, at least its better to look at than.. Normal arrow color which is bland and probably cant see well lol

[Yasuhiro]

snip

The Egi's and "lore" killed it for me too.
Final Fantasy XIV reinvents jobs sure but floating jelly babies are not what I think of when I think summoner, they should have been like stands or how they're summoned in Dissidia Duodecium when you play as Yuna, might be hard to pull off but it's better than an auto attacking candy that just barely looks like what its supposed to be.

[gumas]

i got put off by summoner because of that too, i know SE probably think people running around with primal summon (full size) will look awkward

so at the very least i though the summon is going to be something like "powerful but long cast time and long cooldown" spell so we can summon full primal like titan or garuda but as glorious attack spell or such

not expecting a pokemon trainer class though lol