New Summoner looks really nice, but...

[dezzmont]

Again the media tour people have all essentially suggest “if it looks simple and straight forward, it is” we all said this will happen when they reduced MCH IN 5.0 and guess what they added to it when the foundation was set? 1 gcd

I hate to break it to you, but new MCH is kinda a hit. Us nerds on the forums may feel its shallow but most of the playerbase doesn't care as long as the rotation go fwoosh. A good flow to the rotation is going to always be more valued than depth. They aren't opposed concepts, but acting like MCH is this huge failure of a job sorta misses the reality of how that rework landed.

Does it even feel like summoner? Most of the gameplay it’s just they are their for 2 seconds and leave while you use their aspected attacks.

It feels a lot more like a summoner than old SMN, which while mechanically made the egis important, didn't visually sell them at all. Summoners in FF history often would 'learn' spells from their summons, and thus it was sorta weird that summoner had no elemental attacks. I think mechanically old SMN's flow through a rotation to build up almost a 'personal limit break' fit summoner about as well as you could in an MMO, but in terms of visual design and impact it was a complete failure in that regard outside of the demi summons, which also still had problems.

Reworking it so that your summon unleashes a big attack and gives you a personal buff and granting you new magic is very authentic to summoner. Kinda reminds me of the FF6 summons which were mostly charge up super-spells that also taught you magic.

I think the community is too drunk on the visuals to see how shallow this looks

The number one reason why SMN was a huge pain point of a job was that its visuals were just plain awful. It needed to be one of the flashier jobs, but it ended up being comically understated.

This wasn't some trivial thing, a lot of people like to think of mechanics as the 'real' or 'deep' part of the job, while animations are 'fake' or 'shallow' but in reality your visual design is a huge part of any sort of game element's actual impact on people and they need to be synergistic with the mechanics.

Obviously depth being preserved is a goal, but it is not going to be the primary goal compared to ensuring the job doesn't become a negative experience for the more broad casual playerbase that actually ensures your MMO can survive. Complex and niche jobs can exist, but FF's summoner definitely needs to be able to pass muster to a casual MMO player who is also a hardcore FF fan, and old summoner just didn't.

[Tulzscha]

A good flow to the rotation is going to always be more valued than depth.

That's your opinion. And that of many, sure, but not everyone. Not every single job in the game needs to be super simple and straightforward either, there's plenty of room for a couple jobs with more depth. ShB SMN isn't even that difficult tbh.

Obviously depth being preserved is a goal, but it is not going to be the primary goal compared to ensuring the job doesn't become a negative experience for the more broad casual playerbase that actually ensures your MMO can survive.

FFXIV is thriving. I'll admit ShB SMN could use some cleaning up (ghosting in particular) but making it mindless is a bit much, we already have RDM for that. ;P

[dezzmont]

That's your opinion.

No, that is almost certainly the developmental goal of jobs because they almost certainly are running data analysis of players (especially new players) and looking at stuff like quit rates and the like.

On top of this, while you may think you value mechanical mastery and depth over aethestetics and a good job flow, ultimately are you going to chase mechanical mastery on a job that doesn't play well and isn't actually exciting to master? Judging by the popularity of MNK and SCH, despite being fairly strong jobs that reward you a lot MECHANICALLY for mastering them, I would say even 'superusers' demand a certain minimum amount of flash and fun.

FFXIV is thriving. I'll admit ShB SMN could use some cleaning up (ghosting in particular) but making it mindless is a bit much, we already have RDM for that. ;P

Yes, it is thriving, and that is sort of a big thing at the moment. The free trial was an absurd success and I strongly suspect it gave them a lot of data on which jobs are A: really popular with new players and B: which ones are popular AND get people to quit.

MNK, MCH, and SMN (And I would say also DRG, DRK, WHM, BLM, and RDM) are all jobs that kinda really need to be great for the new player experience, flashy, and fufill their fantasies of these iconic jobs from the series.

While I think SMN's rotation is very fun and good, the thematic identity of it as a DOT double-weave class sorta... entirely clashes with how Summoners are portrayed in 99% of all FF media as essentially hurling super-spells.

If it was say... Time Mage or something I suspect the job would be far less of a pain point and people would be fine with it being a niche demanding job for the meganerds, but part of SMN's eternal problem is that it is a very fun and well designed class that is way too complex for an identity that is going to heavily resonate with casual players, and is really bad at representing its identity.

[Tulzscha]

No, that is almost certainly the developmental goal of jobs because they almost certainly are running data analysis of players (especially new players) and looking at stuff like quit rates and the like.

On top of this, while you may think you value mechanical mastery and depth over aethestetics and a good job flow, ultimately are you going to chase mechanical mastery on a job that doesn't play well and isn't actually exciting to master? Judging by the popularity of MNK and SCH, despite being fairly strong jobs that reward you a lot MECHANICALLY for mastering them, I would say even 'superusers' demand a certain minimum amount of flash and fun.

Of course all of these things matter just to different degrees for different people. It's all a balancing act where different aspects of design have more or less weight depending on the person. Mechanics I do value over flow to an extent (I did put up with SMN for this long after all, oh the good old days of pet macros and Contagion lol) but I also value thematics very highly. Scholar may be mechanically satisfying but I don't like faeries or really anything the job is about so I don't play it even though it was a free lvl 80 for leveling SMN.

The FF devs probably do value flow greatly over depth just looking at how the game has evolved over time but that shouldn't mean every job has to be shallow for the sake of flow, especially with so many jobs in the game. It's not like you can't have both in one job either, it's just difficult to design well. As for which jobs should be allowed more depth I'd say any job that starts at a low lvl is a good candidate so it has more time to grow and isn't as immediately overwhelming.

MNK, MCH, and SMN (And I would say also DRG, DRK, WHM, BLM, and RDM) are all jobs that kinda really need to be great for the new player experience, flashy, and fufill their fantasies of these iconic jobs from the series.

While I think SMN's rotation is very fun and good, the thematic identity of it as a DOT double-weave class sorta... entirely clashes with how Summoners are portrayed in 99% of all FF media as essentially hurling super-spells.

If it was say... Time Mage or something I suspect the job would be far less of a pain point and people would be fine with it being a niche demanding job for the meganerds, but part of SMN's eternal problem is that it is a very fun and well designed class that is way too complex for an identity that is going to heavily resonate with casual players, and is really bad at representing its identity.

I mean yeah SMN originally was basically FF's version of WoW's Warlock, it was designed more around the idea of being a dot job and the Summoner name was just slapped on. Not at all the traditional FF Summoner identity, but when a job's identity consists solely of 5 minute animations of summoned creatures blowing everything up in ultra dramatic fashion that's not exactly mmo material. Then over time it became more of an actual Summoner which is great but for a long time it's had two identities and they're finally cutting it back down to one, the correct one. Which is also great though I'll miss my dots (just leveled a Bard to get my dot fix lol).

I'm all for SMN changing as I highly value thematics but these specific changes, well... they just look boring. Tons of instant spells, very few ogcds, nothing to really manage or think about from the looks of it. Even the summons are instant and take no effort to use. All spectacle and little to no substance. Things that are not mutually exclusive.

Depth doesn't have to be intimidating or punishing or super difficult, it just means more effort is required to get from 80% to 100% mastery, something new and casual players don't need to worry about. Where that line is drawn and how steep it is can vary but a flat line is never good.

I don't really buy in to certain jobs needing to be beginner friendly either as beginners will start at lvl 1 and have plenty of time to practice and learn. And low lvl EW SMN in particular looks so much better, it has the theme and base mechanics right away and builds up over time it just doesn't build up enough by max lvl which is all I'm worried about, and the Aetherflow package sticks out like a sore thumb.

[Nishira]

It looks fun, fast and flashy. It’s a huge contrast, for me at least, with the more slow, methodical gameplay it has now from what I’ve experienced of it thus far. Personally I love the current flow and I don’t mind jobs being a bit calmer on the eyes. I’ll try it and hopefully still enjoy it but I’ll miss it as it is now, I do know that.

[Sequora]

You can always play another job. I would suggest actually trying the job before you judge it. I agree that the rotation looks less complex than it has in the past, but that’s because part of what made SMN so complex was managing DoTs and trying to get a clunky pet to work.

Neither of those things was all that interesting in my opinion.

I think the complexity is going to come from knowing when to use which primal summon.

Summoner is one of the most iconic jobs in the series and turning it into a WoW warlock clone felt really bad to a lot of people.

Maybe we’ll get a green mage or saboteur down the road.

[rewd]

Reworking it so that your summon unleashes a big attack and gives you a personal buff and granting you new magic is very authentic to summoner. Kinda reminds me of the FF6 summons which were mostly charge up super-spells that also taught you magic.

You had to contradict yourself to prove your wrong point. No, it's not authentic to Summoner. It's very telling that you are using a Final Fantasy game with no summoner in it (!) as an argument to talk about what's authentic to the job.

[zcrash970]

I’m at a absolute loss here as I enjoyed the complexity of 5.0 SMN even it was trivialized from 4.0. But here are my major concerns

SMN in 6.0 has bar none the shortest list of skills outclassing the Maven of mediocrity MCH. Which concerns me as MCH has the better progression kit since it’s 50 base is more or less unchanged for 30(40) levels and I doubt SMN can embrace this as this is the best outcome tbh. Yes it doesn’t evolve for expansions on end for new players but the alternative is playing something incredibly half baked and bland like the runner up of dunces DNC with a worse progression kit but a better complete one.

Does it even feel like summoner? Most of the gameplay it’s just they are their for 2 seconds and leave while you use their aspected attacks. I think the community is too drunk on the visuals to see how shallow this looks and so far all the media tour patrons are literally trying their best not to gloss over how easy and afk it looks. Which may give RDM a run for its money.

Also the future, I’m aware MNK got a adjustment too but I’m starting to think reworks are something I don’t want anymore if it just dumbs down the job with thunderous applause so long as it’s visually pretty. Is this the future you want? Which job is next BLM with homing ley lines?

Yoshi p actually made a joke about an ability to have ley lines move to you on one of the interviews. Mr. Happy's I think.

But you cover my concerns about smn exactly. I want a fun and engaging class to play, not a visual vomit show. DoT classes and summoning classes are my two favorite types of gameplay. I really loved the fact that SMN covered both of them but I can live with either or as long as it is not brain dead easy

[Roda]

Oh gross, I just noticed we won't be having any aoe until haukke manor. >.<

[MagiusNecros]

Yoshi p actually made a joke about an ability to have ley lines move to you on one of the interviews. Mr. Happy's I think.

Would be a bad change since Ley Lines as is has 2 functions. Reduced cast time for more deeps and as a movement option. You can nothing personal kid to a party member and back to Ley Lines and it feels great.