Why are summoners so neglected?

[Jerbob]

... they went through the bother of giving it an exclusive vanity element. A feature that IMO they shouldn't have wasted time doing but whatever.

I agree, they should have spent that time designing something significantly better and meaningful than a rather badly implemented "compromise".

It's true that SMN has varied a lot throughout the series, but in XIV it's undeniable that the primary focus of the job is on DoT-related mechanics that are unrelated to the summoning. There's nothing wrong with that as a job concept, but it's clear that there's a group of people that expected quite a bit more than that. I don't see why that is so surprising or unforgivable, and why people are so vehemently in opposition to it? Correct me if I am wrong but as far as I can see, no-one is advocating for the existing SMN to be removed - just for something new to be created.

...the FFX-iteration of the SMN job would not work with XIV's battle system...

This seems to be a really common thing to say, but I'm not quite sure why it's so widely accepted. Is there any evidence for this kind of thinking? Genuine question. Yeah the pet management system in XIV is pretty awful and unresponsive currently, but that's a problem with the implementation, not the theory.

[Shougun]

The ffX could easily work, you know what it would be? A Druid. The ffX one replaces the members, obviously we can't replace all members. But we could easily replace one- yourself.

The size would need to be tweaked though lol (not 20 peoples worth), but FFX is just a shape shifter really - you vanish and the summon is controlled by you. And having one entity to balance in an mmorpg is entirely do able. Or in WoW instead of replacing yourself entirely there are valid builds (usually) that give a lot of your DPS potential to your pet (a lot). But I was just making a more literal example of FFX. Either way you can make it happen, with a self vanish version you could make 100% of your damage summon damage though..

Most of the people I see anti summoner change use examples that could easily work with a little imagination. Although of course entirely changing a job some people do like would be a very volatile experience lol. So perhaps massive entire class reconstruction isn't the best thing to do, but just saying a lot of times I see no is in very narrow interpretations where slight modifications would make it be fine. Like lore, the lore doesn't say they can't be bigger or less potato like - it just says summoning the primal itself is bad for the planet and yourself - this leaves A LOT of working room.

[FeliAiko]

This seems to be a really common thing to say, but I'm not quite sure why it's so widely accepted. Is there any evidence for this kind of thinking? Genuine question. Yeah the pet management system in XIV is pretty awful and unresponsive currently, but that's a problem with the implementation, not the theory.

Because XIV's system is not a slow, turned based affair, where you have lots of time to sit and think of your next action. FFXI's battle system was closer to that style, so it's not surprising why the SMNs from that game are closer to the FFX iteration.

[Jerbob]

Because XIV's system is not a slow, turned based affair, where you have lots of time to sit and think of your next action. FFXI's battle system was closer to that style, so it's not surprising why the SMNs from that game are closer to the FFX iteration.

I get that - certainly a completely unaltered, direct import of FFX or XI's Summoner into XIV isn't something that would work. But why not the general concept of the pet focus? Why not a job where the pet "does the work" and the character supports it? In all the instances where XIV's SMN is casting Bio, Ruin, etc etc, could this hypothetical job not be interacting with or commanding the pet? Surely there's nothing in XIV that prohibits that.

[Aldotsk]

I personally like it back in FF11 where you can actually summon Ifrit/Diabolos/Shiva/Fenrir to aid you in battle, but as we all know - this is not possible in FF14 since primals are just massively big and they'd have to use partial version of it known as Egis.

I mean, why can't we have Leviathan or Ramuh Egis? Or Shiva Egis? The only solution we had was Carbuncle color change (and they still didn't give me brown Carbuncle or white or even darker blue)

[Nerisu]

snip

The current system prohibits it. They need to do something about the command delay first if they want to add more pet interactions otherwise it will be a complete clunky mess. Just imagine how infuriating it will be if, let's say, Deathflare is a pet command and the egi misses the trance timer because it's not finished casting its auto-attack. Right now you can't even command Garuda-egi to use both Aerial Slash and Enkindle in the same oGCD window. Again, I'm not against more pet interactions but I don't see it happening unless they fix the delay.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Are you going to be commanding the pet to move to dodge mechanics as well as moving yourself? Theyd have to make pets not immune to most attacks anymore if they were the brunt of a summoners dps. That too i think is why.

[Cidel]

Are summoners neglected in a conventional, gameplay sense? Of course not. Have summoners been patronized with an ever-moving goalpost for new egis? Oh heck yes.

Look, conceptually there really isn't anything wrong with Summoners in XIV as a feasible job. It has an avatar/primal/eidolon/munchkin it "summons," even if it's the lowest-hanging fruit to meet the minimum requirement of being considered a "Summoner;" but that's apparently enough to consider it so. I've accepted what they've done with it here, DoT mage with a "living" DoT turret and all.

However, it would come to the surprise of no one if this iteration of Summoner in the Final Fantasy series becomes one of if not the most ridiculed addition; there's even that nice little size chart picture of the series' Summoners and their avatars floating around somewhere that show XIV's is a small little thing at the end. But you know what? that's where they've taken it this time for the sake of "balance" in the game. Asking for XI's aesthetics at this point is all but a lost cause.

But I do get behind the complaint that they've taken way too long to implement any new actual egi (glamour). From being told we're getting new (gameplay) egis before Heavensward turning into glamours of new egis over the old ones so balance is not upsetted which so far only has Carbuncles implemented after this long. It would be a nice surprise to see new actual egis slipped into a patch before Stormblood, but I learned not to hold my breath over it; in all likeliness we probably won't see an egi of Leviathan, Ramuh and Shiva til some odd patch in SB (fingers crossed that I'm wrong though).

As to Yoshida's comment about maybe regretting adding Summoner to the game because people are asking for more eidolons (glamour); that's on them. I mean, how do you expect to have just 3 primals from the basic elemental wheel whilst the remaining (series iconic) 3 are mysteriously absent and expect nobody to ask (especially after previously getting people's hopes up)? Oh, right. lore.

[Blackcanary]

They should of just copied FFXI Summoner and improved on it so it would fit FFXIV. Instead of giving us a poor mans version of a Warlock from WOW which is what we got.

[Shougun]

They should of just copied FFXI Summoner and improved on it so it would fit FFXIV. Instead of giving us a poor mans version of a Warlock from WOW which is what we got.

Significantly poor man's, I imagine people would be more pleased if we had that version with FF graphics - although depending on spec (also most probably have no idea how many similarities there are, including the whole raising and healing options, also specs makes it hard to compare sometimes). Unfortunately depending on patch you might see Warlock narrowed to a specific pet more often, at the moment I'd say they have more variety out, and in total, than FFXIV. Though the variety out is because Warlocks have more pets out at one time, some on cooldowns and buried into mechanics..

I think Warlock is a more interesting class than summoner and has more fearsome (even /much/ larger) summons, but summoner in it's current form is entirely functional and there are some people who do enjoy playing them as is (I personally worry about big shifts in their design because of this, but I do believe that SE is both missing some harvesting of nostalgia for summoners in their series as well as their competition is offering "bigger" and "better" pets within very similar designs).

So I think that's fairly accurate. Although I imagine part of my feeling is that WoW in general is more snappy feeling so handling pets (and probably skills in general, less Hallowed Ground/won't listen failure) in general automatically feels better, then the fact you get many pets of very varying looks that all have their own uses (definitely specific pets see more action than others though). FF is far more sexier in general tho