Please don't defile BST

[Dyvid]

None of which were DoT mages that summoned a Popoto, Spicy Popoto, or some weird Green Goblin thing. But instead summoned actual Eidolons (While then using standard White and Black magic when summons weren't needed)
.

Last time I checked Rydia could cast Poison and Virus. Summoners could cast Chocobo, Golem, Cait Sith, Goblin, and yes even Fairy. Tear it all away and you get a simple truth, Summoner calls forth monster to aid them in battle. How they do it has varied from game to game.

You can use the same argument that Yoshida himself used and claim that these are "True Summoners" just like how Squall/Seifer use the "True Gunblade" because theirs is the most iconic.

Yoshi-P approved of FFXIV SMN so does that make them "True Summoners?" No because there is no true Job, because the father of Final Fantasy, Hironobu Sakaguchi, made it a point to make each game different from the last and just retain iconic features.

Anyway, this is a dead horse at this point because everyone has different idea on how every job is suppose to be and its different from what it actually is in FFXIV.

[Madisonlee]

Last time I checked Rydia could cast Poison and Virus. Summoners could cast Chocobo, Golem, Cait Sith, Goblin, and yes even Fairy. Tear it all away and you get a simple truth, Summoner calls forth monster to aid them in battle. How they do it has varied from game to game.

Yoshi-P approved of FFXIV SMN so does that make them "True Summoners?" No because there is no true Job, because the father of Final Fantasy, Hironobu Sakaguchi, made it a point to make each game different from the last and just retain iconic features.

On your poison and virus comment: Wait, were you just arguing about how the DoTs are fine like Eloah was? I think we all need to be clearer with each other haha because I have no issue with the DoTs, they just poorly implemented the Summons and thus SMN doesn't retain its "Iconic Features" to me.

[Dyvid]

On your poison and virus comment: Wait, were you just arguing about how the DoTs are fine like Eloah was? I think we all need to be clearer with each other haha because I have no issue with the DoTs, they just poorly implemented the Summons and thus SMN doesn't retain its "Iconic Features" to me.

K, but it's hard to tell what you mean if you don't just say it. You said earlier you don't play FFXIV, just visit every couple of years to see what change. Well 4.0 has brought a lot of huge changes to Egi more weight and usefulness in combat, and pets in general account for about 30% of SMN damage. They now buff and debuff to increase the damage potential of the party. I"m not sure why you don't play FFXIV, but I doubt it's simple because Egi doesn't look cosmetically good. Personally i would rather have a job that plays good and is fun rather than something that looks good and is garbage to play.

[Eloah]

On your poison and virus comment: Wait, were you just arguing about how the DoTs are fine like Eloah was? I think we all need to be clearer with each other haha because I have no issue with the DoTs, they just poorly implemented the Summons and thus SMN doesn't retain its "Iconic Features" to me.

My apologies if it seemed like I was anti-DoT, lol. No, it's as exactly as you said the main issue, though there are others, is how the Egi feels alongside the SMN. If I gave the impression otherwise, again sorry. Though honestly with all this back and forth I think we are all confusing ourselves. Sorry this thread turned ugly.

And I'm sure you're aware than in the context of Final Fantasy, specifically, XIV, Eikon specifically refers to the ancient Allag name for beings that we have yet to find out much about. Then the word was adopted by the Garleans to be used to denote the meaning of "False God" and used to reference Primals (Which are different to what Allagans were calling Eikons).

Of course, this requires use of contextual inference, a skill you've proven to not have.

What next, facetiously calling potatoes fruit because in the French language they're known as pomme de terre which literally translates into "Apple of the Earth" and so potatoes = apples omegalul!?



Then go buy an English 101 book and read up on context before insinuating things about word choices and being facetious in light of your apparent difficulty in understanding simple concepts like words having different or slightly altered meanings depending on how they're used.



"People" aren't.

YOU are.

No-one else in this entire thread has had an issue with terminology used, only you.

Wherein you like to repeat "There is no TRUE Summoner" ad infinitum. Whenever anyone compares XIV's Summoner and declares it not a "True Summoner".

True Summoner, as in, one that is accurate and in accordance to the fact that of previous iterations and depictions of Summoners, a vast majority of them summoned powerful entities that had potent effects and many Summoners relied upon these summons for a majority of their offensive capability.

I cannot recall a single iteration of a Summoner outside of XIV where their summons were felt as though they were a secondary aspect of the job. Even in XI when people fell back onto their sub-job skills, suggests that for the Summoner job itself, it was very much focused on the Summon hence why sub-job skills were utilized outside of them rather than more Summoner skills that weren't summons.

So, unless it can be proven that there is significant basis for a Summoner job to have functionality like SMN in XIV where their summons are Egi's (Also, functionally no different to pre-job when you're just an Arcanist with Carbuncles) and take what often feels like a secondary role within the job as well as not even taking a form that is even close to resembling the Primal/Eidolon/Avatar (Whatever you want to call it based on which particular game you're referencing), it's quite possible to say that XIV's Summoner is NOT a True Summoner, as it is incongruous to all prior forms of the job, to which we even have very iconic characters that embody the job outside of iterations of the game where characters had flexibility in what jobs they could use that could be used as a reference guide for creating the job (Much like how Gunbreaker is being created around Squall/Seifer)



In the case of other jobs within XIV, many of them are based on multiple jobs found within the Final Fantasy series, taking inspiration from multiple sources but each having distinct aspects that you can tie back to their respective roots. Such as Astrologian taking parts of Astrologians and Time Mages.

With Summoner this is not the case. Summoner and Arcanist are aberrations of design, neither having any relevance to any of the previous iterations of the jobs. Arcanist in Tactics A2 and Bravely Default being a class that is focused around Dark spells such as Drain, Gravity, Dark as well as unique dark spells (Like Corpse, Exterminate, Twilight etc)

While in XIV both are relegated to being this weird wannabe BLM that uses a few Black Magic spells (Like Bio) and has a pretty weak minion to slap things for a small portion of their overall damage output without any other job influencing their design that at least I can tell (Possibly Scholar because they use a book?). Even SMN's job gauge has nothing at all to do with summoning at least until we got Demi-Bahamut.

Okay you know what at this point you are just being a rude. You can disagree with me, which is fine, but I have not insulted you at all, where you suddenly feel the need to degrade me and insult my intelligence, is beyond me. I'm done responding to you. At least the others had the self decency to keep things civil, opposite view points or not.

Oh and eikon is a real word, it's where our term icon originates from, that's why I called Eikon a proper noun. Now I'm done, enjoy your False Summoner.

Anyway, this is a dead horse at this point because everyone has different idea on how every job is suppose to be and its different from what it actually is in FFXIV.

I couldn't agree more.

[Kalise]

You can disagree with me, which is fine, but I have not insulted you at all

Except when you started to be facetious...

At least the others had the self decency to keep things civil, opposite view points or not.

Probably helps you haven't gone on a tirade with them about the English lexicon, or rather, they didn't care to call you up on the fact that you're missing contextual cues as to terminology that is being used with reference to specific meanings.

Oh and eikon is a real word, it's where our term icon originates from, that's why I called Eikon a proper noun.

I know.

I know the etymology of the word icon coming from the archaic eikon.

However, as you've now passed over on three separate occasions, within the context of Final Fantasy, and specifically within the XIV game which were on the forums of and are discussing, Eikon has a very specific meaning one that is wholly unrelated to its traditional meaning within the English language.

Much like how speaking about a "True Summoner" is reference to how accurately it portrays the themes that have become the icon of the job within the franchise.

In this context, "True" and "Iconic" have the same meaning, with the iconic portrayal of the job being the basis of comparison to see whether a particular future iteration holds up to this.

With of course, each incarnation, adding a slightly larger deviation to this concept of a "True" version of said job due to affording these deviations to be then further deviated from to create a new more differentiated variant that can still be called "True" or "Accurate"

An example of this would be Blue Mage.

Blue Mage is notably portrayed by learning its magick. However, the details surrounding how it is learned vary between games. Be it from being hit by the attack, seeing the attack being used, using an item obtained by enemies, using a particular skill on enemies or even by eating enemies.

In XIV, BLU learns their skills, this is done by seeing an enemy use the skill and then defeating them or by using a particular item. This is distinctly different to many previous iterations, however, it is still within a reasonable limit in order to call the class a "True Blue Mage" as it is not straying too far from the iconic portrayal of Blue Mage that it feels different. (Despite my feelings about how trash Limited Jobs are, BLU does feel like an accurate representation of Blue Mage)

This is not the case with Summoner. SMN in XIV is quite drastically different to the iconic portrayal of Summoner, even if you include in acceptable deviations such as XI where some builds could maintain a permanent Avatar. The fact remains that even in XI, the SMN class was majorly focused on the summon for offensive prowess, even in games where you had a Summoner with black magic to back up, Summons where your most potent offensive skills until you scaled into the later game and could make most things hit for the damage cap anyway.

Perhaps, now you might finally understand the point I'm getting across, instead of arguing about word usage despite the fact that you seem quite oblivious to the basic tenet of language that is context.

So, this will be my last post in response to any argument you put forth regarding word usage. It is fine if you want to argue a case where deviations within the portrayal of Summoner can encompass what we have for current SMN, so long as it's nothing to do with a particular word choice that you feel like taking out of context and super analysing for no reason.

My standpoint is as thus on the matter with SMN:

I don't feel like XIV's "Summoner" (Or Arcanist for that matter) are particularly faithful renditions of the job within the franchise.

I feel that [they] deviate too far from how they are usually depicted and that they have done so, not because of any particular desire to recreate the job in a unique way, but merely to push this idea of having a class that transitions into 2 different jobs and wanted to justify Scholar being able to summon a fairy (Thus needing to link it, in some way, back to "Summoner" because they would get lynched if they implemented a job that wasn't in any way linked to "Summoner" that had the ability to summon entities)

This is completely outside of my feelings about the gameplay of the class. I feel that in isolation, SMN's gameplay is fine. As I said previously, it functions exactly like a class from WoW that I enjoyed. What irks me is that this class doesn't feel like "Summoner" and had they named the class literally anything else (Within reason, like calling it something clearly absurd like "Knight" would be irksome) I'd be fine with it.

Heck, they literally could have called it Geomancer. Give WHM Water instead of Stone. Make the class use Stone instead of Ruin, Venom Squall instead of Bio, Tanglevine instead of Miasma, Quicksand or Sandstorm instead of Shadowflare, Magma Elemental instead of Ifrit-Egi, Earth Elemental instead of Titan-Egi and Plant Elemental instead of Garuda-Egi.

I would have accepted that. A bit of a deviation from previous Geomancers due to having pets, but nothing too out there, they're still all Earth/Plant related. Of course, the SB AST quests not withstanding...