Future Primals and potential implementation into lore.

[ObsidianFire]

I'm using Human as a way to say Hur, Elezen, Mi'quote, Rogadyn, Lalafel, Au Ra and Garlean. Shinryu and the other eikons I've mentioned demonstrate that there's no real need to have "Beast Tribe"-like societies be the only societies to summon eikons. I see "Beast Tribes" as nothing more then the game telling you that they're a group that will have daily quests and a faction system tied to them. For all the Ananta are a "Beast Tribe" their quests are more about the Ala Mhigan Resistance coming into it's own then anything to do with the Ananta (which some people did not like).

That pretty much opens up to door for any group of people with the drive and aether to summon anything. Which I think is good. The "beast tribes are the only ones who summon primals" premise has gotten very stale and predictable (same pattern for three expansions). I'd love to see an expansion where a set of "Beast Tribes" are still there but it's everyone else but them is doing the eikon summoning.

[LineageRazor]

That pretty much opens up to door for any group of people with the drive and aether to summon anything. Which I think is good. The "beast tribes are the only ones who summon primals" premise has gotten very stale and predictable (same pattern for three expansions). I'd love to see an expansion where a set of "Beast Tribes" are still there but it's everyone else but them is doing the eikon summoning.

To be fair, as you mentioned we already have at least three Primals (Thordan and his Ward, Shinryu, and Phoenix) who have been explicitly summoned by humans rather than Beast Tribes, and arguably others qualify as well (Odin sort of self-summons but uses humans to do it, Sophia came from a cosmopolitan society that was probably at least partly composed of humans given that all three of her Demiurges are humans, Enkidu was summoned by Gilgamesh who's... maybe human?). Beast tribes have several reasons that they are the usual culprit, but probably the three biggest: they tend to be more religious than humans, their technology levels tend to be lower which makes them feel that their gods are the only ones who can protect them, and they do not regularly execute their Tempered which means there's generally a core group in each tribe eager to summon again.

It makes sense that Beast Tribes should more often be Summoning than humans would, but I agree that shoehorning in new tribes of Beastmen just to have a source for a new Primal is getting a bit stale. Still, as long as there's player demand for more Primals to battle, in general it makes more sense to introduce new tribes (or utilize existing tribes that do not yet have a Primal, like the Amal'ja) rather than to have humans do it.

[ChaoticCrimson]

To be fair, as you mentioned we already have at least three Primals (Thordan and his Ward, Shinryu, and Phoenix) who have been explicitly summoned by humans rather than Beast Tribes

To add to that, don't forget about Shiva too! Not to mention the Ascians have been known to tempting other people into attempting a primal summoning, like when they tried to convince Wilred and his group at Little Ala Mhigo to do it until the WoL intervened. The precedence for people outside of beast tribes to perform a summoning has been around for quite some time.

[Eloah]

or utilize existing tribes that do not yet have a Primal, like the Amal'ja

I think you mean Mamool ja, the Amalj'aa have Ifrit as their Primal.

[LineageRazor]

I think you mean Mamool ja, the Amalj'aa have Ifrit as their Primal.

Yes, meant Mamool Ja, thank you for the correction! Also, can't believe I forgot about Shiva, probably the most prominent of the human-summoned Primals...

[Enkidoh]

The "beast tribes are the only ones who summon primals" premise has gotten very stale and predictable (same pattern for three expansions).

The thing is, it was pretty much stated since even back in 1.0 that the beast tribes were not the only ones capable of summoning Primals - Ifrit outright told you that in 1.0 to the point of making the player and their Path Companion swear to him that they will never summon "another" themselves - and in ARR's original main scenario there was that whole thing with the Ascians stirring up trouble with Ala Mhigan refugees and telling them how to summon a Primal-version of Rhalgr (needless to say, luckily we got there first and stopped them before they could do so).

So it's pretty clear that from the beginning it was shown and ultimately proven that any sentient race has the potential to summon a Primal, as that gets to the crux of what a Primal really is - they're a thoughtform, an idea or image given a will and a physical form of it's own through enormous quantities of aether and equally enormous amounts of prayer and devotion.

Either way, it's well and truly clear now that any race with a strong enough desire can summon, it's just that the Ascians were favouring the beastmen over the other races to do so until recently, probably because the beastmen were putdown and mostly shunned by the citystates as monsters, and thus more easily manipulated and willing to unleash a mind-warping, aether-consuming monster on Hydaelyn. Weak minds and all that.