Summoner pet egi's are a disgrace to the job!

[Exodus-E]

These egi's are boring and they don't even look cool at best. They are weak and the concept of these pets needs to be changed to justify the job. Please square enix revitalize the final fantasy summoner the way its supposed to be.
Using glamour as a cover all fix all isn't going to work its only going to be lame.

/sigh

Another day, another wannabe "summoner" that:

A) hasn't leveled (let alone played) SMN to Lv.70 yet
B) ignores/forgets about the "Trance" concept
C) doesn't know that the whole "Egi" concept (and overall design choice) is backed up by this game/universe's lore
D) doesn't understand that each Final Fantasy game is different, and making them work like pets is the most logical choice within the context of MMOs (just like in FF11)

Look, I understand the need for more "summons" (especially considering we only have had Garuda-Egi / Titan-Egi / Ifrit-Egi around for years now), which is exactly why we're supposedly getting more "Egi glamours" further down the line.
Which makes sense since we're already covered role-wise through the Caster (Summon) / Tank (Summon II) / Melee (Summon III) pets.

Now whether we'll be getting these sooner rather than later, is another matter entirely.

But you complaining about something that's been a foundation for the Summoner job since its introduction (all the way back in ARR/2.0) is just...stupid.
It'd be like complaining about Scholars using fairies (and/or being healers) or Samurai not using heavy armor in this game.

[Eloah]

It'd be like complaining about Scholars using fairies (and/or being healers)

OMG, I love you so much right now. That has always been my argument, it's not like Scholars have ever had fairies in past FF games. Every job in every game is different, and while it may of had some issues at the beginning. Summoner is in a good place.

But please egi glamours and possible grand summon glamours... when.

[AnimaAnimus]

B) doesn't know that the whole "Egi" concept (and overall design choice) is backed up by this game/universe's lore.

Not taking sides here (I hate egi too tho, they are just awful) but....

lore is always a poor argument. The devs literally write the lore and can change it at any time for any reason and they do, often and at a whim. Sometimes either retconning something or just flat out ignoring it.

Whenever someone says "SE cant do <insert random thing here> cause lore!" its facepalm worthy. Lore literally has no meaning, they could make you a dinosaur with an arm coming out of your belly button, a peg leg and two heads and it would still fit the "lore" if they wanted it to. It's time to admit, they do a swing and a miss sometimes.

[EllieShadeflare]

lore is always a poor argument. The devs literally write the lore and can change it at any time for any reason and they do, often and at a whim. Sometimes either retconning something or just flat out ignoring it.

Whenever someone says "SE cant do <insert random thing here> cause lore!" its facepalm worthy. Lore literally has no meaning, they could make you a dinosaur with an arm coming out of your belly button, a peg leg and two heads and it would still fit the "lore" if they wanted it to. It's time to admit, they do a swing and a miss sometimes.

Yes, sure, disregard lore and only focus on gameplay. I'm pretty sure that turned out well when Blizzard decided to turn Thrall into a messiah and left an angry, frothing bigot as a commander just so that there could be another Alliance Vs. Horde conflict, and part of which made one of the most likable and most tolerant characters, Jaina Proudmoore, turn into another angry, frothing bigot, only human. [/s] Or when Warhammer Fantasy was almost entirely scrapped and turned into Age of Sigmar.[/s] Or when it was revealed that Principal Seymour Skinner was really some chucklehead named Armin Tamzarian.[/s]

Okay, only the WoW one was really a MMO one, but you get my point. Continuity matters to many people, and deciding to throw that away will kill off your audience's belief that there's any good will in your creation.

People enjoy the thought and care that the developers and the lore writers put into creating FFXIV. It's what seperates Eorzea from Azeroth (and whereever the hell Blizzard takes those players next), Nirn (the world of Elder Scrolls) and Vana'diel (FFXI) and why people choose those games over others and why people choose FFXIV vs. those games. Because each game has a different setting that people really sink their devotion into.

Deciding to say "Screw the lore! I wanna do it anyway!" is basically jumping the shark, and nobody wants to do THAT. Unless, of course, you have no respect for what you're making.

I'd suggest making SMN's Egis work more like a combination of Demi-Bahamut and the stance dance of BRD, and give Titan something to do that ISN'T just tanking in solo content.

[AnimaAnimus]

snip.

Yep a lot of that matters, but what I was saying is that it's lore. Its literally written by the devs and they can change it however they want, when they want and if they are creative enough it will make sense.

Sitting here using lore as an excuse for a job that isn't just bad because you are comparing it to the same job in a different game, but is bad because it is poorly designed, executed and animated is a different level of white knighting.

They could easily make the job better in a myriad of ways that don't compare to past ff titles, but they simply wont because they have no reason to. Even if it will be known as the most meh version of that job in the franchise. The wonderful thing about lore is that its changeable. You can take something that was originally lackluster (like smn and frankly rdm, blm, brd and mcn too) and make it into something great with a little bit of creativity.

But nope, this fixation of the immutability of lore for its own sake is why devs cannot stretch their wings and why games like this can go from tragic (v1) to ok (arr) but never to omg that's great! with some tweaking

[EllieShadeflare]

Yep a lot of that matters, but what I was saying is that it's lore. Its literally written by the devs and they can change it however they want, when they want and if they are creative enough it will make sense.

See, this is the attitude that leads to "Principal and the Pauper" levels of screwups. Instead of building on previous lore or adding to it, outright changing it and destroying it will cause all manner of screwups in the continuity and lore.

Sitting here using lore as an excuse for a job that isn't just bad because you are comparing it to the same job in a different game, but is bad because it is poorly designed, executed and animated is a different level of white knighting.

And yet there are plenty of players who defend this playstyle. At the same time though, there are those who complain. This point is entirely subjective.

They could easily make the job better in a myriad of ways that don't compare to past ff titles, but they simply wont because they have no reason to. Even if it will be known as the most meh version of that job in the franchise. The wonderful thing about lore is that its changeable. You can take something that was originally lackluster (like smn and frankly rdm, blm, brd and mcn too) and make it into something great with a little bit of creativity.

You haven't given ANY suggestions on how to do this beyond, "LORE DOESN'T MATTER WHO GIVES A CRAP DEVS WRITE WHATEVER AND WE SHOULDN'T CARE" like that's actual advice.

In addition, it takes some seriously good writing to outright retcon moves and abilities that we have used before. Not to mention, in the case of Summoner and the removal of Egis, they'd have to rewrite the Arcanist Quests from 1-30 and ALL of the Summoner Quests just to let them keep making sense. If you wanted to summon ACTUAL PRIMALS, then oops. All of 2.0-4.0's quests would have to be entirely rewritten with new context and new situations. Everything primal related would have to be purged.

But nope, this fixation of the immutability of lore for its own sake is why devs cannot stretch their wings and why games like this can go from tragic (v1) to ok (arr) but never to omg that's great! with some tweaking

It's not immutability, it's BASIC CONSIDERATION OF CONTINUITY. Getting rid of the Egis, FULL STOP, will be a terrible idea in the long run. Which is why I made my suggestion of making the Egis a stance dance mechanic, with their combat mechanics being based on Demi Bahamut.

You don't make lore changes based on gameplay changes, you do the opposite, especially if the game you're making is built in a specific setting. Unless, of course, you're rebooting a thing from the ground up, but this has a 90% chance of failing too.

1.0 failed because they focused so hard on the graphics and making FFXI-2, that they forgot to make a game, and forgot that the modern audience is different from the masochists willing to fight for 18 hours against a superboss.

[Karshan]

.

Lore is important. You shouldn't change it without a good reason, there's hard work put in it. I agree with you on that.

BUT to me, gameplay limitation IS one of those good reasons. Lore should not be a prison to gameplay and be used as an excuse to not change something that affects everyone (how a class plays) for the sake of mental comfort of only some who care about lore.

Lore is constructed, it's not an absolute physics law, and I don't like the idea of a construct getting in the way of possibilities of gameplay that would renew / increase the interest for some classes.

In the case of SMN : People say lore allows you only summon egis as an essence and not the primals themselves because you are, as a warrior of light, an anti-primal machine.
But you can be written into a "fighting fire with fire" guy, that learns to harvest this power but to stop uncontrolable summonings by bloodthirsty tribes/people. Kinda like an Ultima Weap but with flesh and bones.

Plus as I said, I didn't ask to get rid of anything, rather have it like : you start with egis and they remain your core. With increase in levels, you become more powerful and come to summon demi primals. They kinda pushed the Bahamut thing (transe, demi, all quests turned towards the Wyrm) but there's also Alexander, Odin, etc... they could use.

Like a classic FF progression where you start with a basic Ifrit and end up with Ark / Bahamut ZERO / Ultima, etc...

What I want to say is : egis alone do NOT feel like final fantasy series summoner, so maybe they can add more demi primals to make it moreso, without getting rid of egis that are an identity of FFXIV summoners. Egis would still be the basics, and specific to FFXIV summoners to give them a unique feel, but would not REPLACE the old, general summoner feel as it has been the case until 4.0

[AnimaAnimus]

snip.

I have no idea what post you are reading, I never mentioned anything about getting rid of egis. But apparently I really touched a nerve.

My statement was purely directed at all the comments defending smn and other various aspects with the use of lore. Because there is some belief that lore is unchangeable and keeping things exactly as they are is the only way things can exist. You are dissecting my post, adding to it things I never stated and misinterpreting what is actually there.

Lore doesn't matter in some instances because it is changeable. If the dev team wants to add something or take something away from the game they can, there are no rules like in the real world that tell them they cannot. With a little bit of creativity anything is changeable. This game in itself is an example of that or ARR would never have been able to be a thing because they used lore as a way to transition an entire busted game to an entirely new one through retcons, rewrites and flat out ignoring a lot. You think they cannot do that with a simple job?

It takes little to no writing to outright remove abilities we have used before, they do that every expansion and sometimes just in regular updates. Heck they even flat out change things all the time with no explanation, tri-bind and the transition from sub job skills to role specific skills comes immediately to mind. They even wrote into the lore that the image of the egi if nothing else could be changed so they could at the very least give them a graphical overhaul without breaking that precious lore.

And no I am not writing up any plans or suggestions because if we have learned anything its that the devs don't care. They do what they wanna do and I am not about to take time out of my day to create a job concept that they will not even look at.

I was not trying to start an argument but if you took any basic fiction course you would maybe understand.

[Delily]

I have no idea what post you are reading, I never mentioned anything about getting rid of egis. But apparently I really touched a nerve.

My statement was purely directed at all the comments defending smn and other various aspects with the use of lore. Because there is some belief that lore is unchangeable and keeping things exactly as they are is the only way things can exist. You are dissecting my post, adding to it things I never stated and misinterpreting what is actually there.

Lore doesn't matter in some instances because it is changeable. If the dev team wants to add something or take something away from the game they can, there are no rules like in the real world that tell them they cannot. With a little bit of creativity anything is changeable. This game in itself is an example of that or ARR would never have been able to be a thing because they used lore as a way to transition an entire busted game to an entirely new one through retcons, rewrites and flat out ignoring a lot. You think they cannot do that with a simple job?

It takes little to no writing to outright remove abilities we have used before, they do that every expansion and sometimes just in regular updates. Heck they even flat out change things all the time with no explanation, tri-bind and the transition from sub job skills to role specific skills comes immediately to mind. They even wrote into the lore that the image of the egi if nothing else could be changed so they could at the very least give them a graphical overhaul without breaking that precious lore.

And no I am not writing up any plans or suggestions because if we have learned anything its that the devs don't care. They do what they wanna do and I am not about to take time out of my day to create a job concept that they will not even look at.

I was not trying to start an argument but if you took any basic fiction course you would maybe understand.

You don't need to give lore updates to skill changes, that would fall under the notion that your character is always learning new ways to use his skills. I'm not aware of any lore related topics that got ignored or retconned in the shift from 1.23 to 2.0, in fact, many of the events in 2.0 draw upon the setup in 1.23. In fact, one of the strengths of this game is they do work hard to create a consistent story. The egi-glamor lore makes sense, because all a summoner is doing is construct an aetheric entity. The egi's resemble the primals because of their aetheric residue in us, but it should be a simple matter for a skilled arcanist to reshape the entity into carbuncle, considering carbuncle is the most basic aetheric entity.

The part of the lore you're referring to isn't just the lore of the summoner, it's literally a key thread woven into the story line. The entire purpose of the WoL is defeat primals and thwart the Ascians' plot to weaken Hydaelyn and cause another Calamnity. Not to mention that primals temper people. It's also mentioned that summoners don't get more pets because our aetheric storage is full. If they were going to redo the lore for the summoner class, they would have to rework, as was said, all the class and job storylines, as well as several parts of the MSQ. They're not going to put that much work in. They created some possibilities with Shiva and Bahamut, but the existing egis are well established an unlikely to change./10character

[EllieShadeflare]

I have no idea what post you are reading, I never mentioned anything about getting rid of egis. But apparently I really touched a nerve.

I must apologize. Immensely. Don't take my absence as me just running off because I just wanted to be toxic, my absence was due to the fact I had a lot of things on my plate at the time. I apologize for assuming your post was on that subject, mostly due to the others wanting a complete removal.

My statement was purely directed at all the comments defending smn and other various aspects with the use of lore. Because there is some belief that lore is unchangeable and keeping things exactly as they are is the only way things can exist. You are dissecting my post, adding to it things I never stated and misinterpreting what is actually there.

Regarding the egi removal, yes. That wasn't there. However, for your lore argument, there has to be a degree of foundation to the lore, or else you have none at all. This is what caused Principal and the Pauper to fail as hard as it did, and ruined the Simpsons for everyone. This is also part of the reason that FC Primal Summoning was canned, because as the lore had written it, there is no feasible nor moral way for Free Companies to have access to Primals.

Lore doesn't matter in some instances because it is changeable. If the dev team wants to add something or take something away from the game they can, there are no rules like in the real world that tell them they cannot. With a little bit of creativity anything is changeable. This game in itself is an example of that or ARR would never have been able to be a thing because they used lore as a way to transition an entire busted game to an entirely new one through retcons, rewrites and flat out ignoring a lot. You think they cannot do that with a simple job?

Not much HAS actually changed between ARR and 1.x, believe it or not. We're still in Eorzea, and most of the classes and their jobs are still the same as they were from the original product. Except Thaumaturge. Thaumaturge stopped being a Light and Dark themed Healer and became a DPS in 1.20, with the addition of BLM to further solidify that theme in 1.21. The only change other than Thaumaturge's change of focus was a bit of "advancing the storyline" rather than outright retconning of anything. Hell, the Thaumaturgy bit could be easily explained as the 1.0 THM teacher being a Void Mage (which we know as true because of Halitali Hard and the Postmoogle Quests), and our 2.0 THM teachers trying to teach "real" Thaumaturgy.

But... as I explain in the next post...

It takes little to no writing to outright remove abilities we have used before, they do that every expansion and sometimes just in regular updates. Heck they even flat out change things all the time with no explanation, tri-bind and the transition from sub job skills to role specific skills comes immediately to mind. They even wrote into the lore that the image of the egi if nothing else could be changed so they could at the very least give them a graphical overhaul without breaking that precious lore.

This is a rewrite of your previous post. Also, this point's validity depends on the ability in question. Something like Apocatastasis, Protect, Sleep, Blood for Blood, Raging Strikes, Esuna, Low Blow and similarly generic abilities? Probably would fit your point.

However, take away Dragoon's Jump abilities and Blood of the Dragon, and what are you left with? You're pretty much stuck with a Lancer... that kiiiiinda looks like a Dragoon and has its name. But it's not Dragoon. Even taking away just Blood of the Dragon would remove a lot of the class's established identity, and would require a retcon of 51-70's DRG questline in order to accommodate. Removing the cards and their symbolism from Astrologian? Oh look you just retconned all of the 30-50 questline.

Modifying the Egi's mechanics into something less obstructive wouldn't retcon much. But outright removing Egis as some others have suggested would require an entire retcon of the SMN questline.

And no I am not writing up any plans or suggestions because if we have learned anything its that the devs don't care. They do what they wanna do and I am not about to take time out of my day to create a job concept that they will not even look at.

And yet players have clamored for a buff to Black Mage in damage, mobility and in their procs for Firestarter and Thundercloud, and we got it. Now, we're [Black Mage] in the best place we've ever been since Heavensward or A Realm Reborn, really. Hell, even the idea of summoning Bahamut or being allowed to summon Carbuncles was thrown around... and here we are with Demi-Bahamut and the beginning of Egi Glamour.

We know the devs listen.

I was not trying to start an argument but if you took any basic fiction course you would maybe understand.

If you had any experience in a fandom, you'd understand the kinds of betrayal people would feel if the absolute fundamentals of their class lore/mechanics was tampered with.

Seriously, ask some Bards who've Barded since 2.x about their gameplay experience in Heavensward.

With that said, if you're this willing to throw away lore for "better" ideas or implementations, I'd be scared to let you near something beyond a one-shot story.