Think We'll get the Other Elemental Egi for SMN next Expansion?

[SieyaM]

I would love to get more summons in the mix, but that has been asked for since HW and there has been no indication that they intend to do so. With a summoner rework just being done it is more of a possibility now than before, but if they don't add any in 7.0 then I would say we are going to be summoning Ifrit Garuda and Titan until the game shuts down. Also referring to the above comment, Leviathan and Ramuh are also beast tribe summons, Shiva would be the only exception to this.

[Sigiria]

And yet here we are summoning Phoenix every other minute, we do not need to lore gatekeep the few summons FFXIV's Summoner can draw source material from please. If we can summon him, we can summon her.

It's not like it would break the lore either. Summoning is basically a very weak version of the creation magic, as long as you've got the image of what you want to make happen and enough ether to fuel it you can summon anything. It's not like you'd be summoning the actual Shiva, you'd just be summoning what you imagine Shiva is.

[Ultaniku]

While I love the idea of additional summons I don’t foresee Hydaelyn or Zodiark ever being able to be summoned. I can’t imagine this integral character to our entire storyline up until this point popping in....doing an aoe....and popping out. Other summons? Bring it.

[SeverianLyonesse]

I would love to get more summons in the mix, but that has been asked for since HW and there has been no indication that they intend to do so. With a summoner rework just being done it is more of a possibility now than before, but if they don't add any in 7.0 then I would say we are going to be summoning Ifrit Garuda and Titan until the game shuts down. Also referring to the above comment, Leviathan and Ramuh are also beast tribe summons, Shiva would be the only exception to this.

Ramuh is treated as more of a character than Ifrit/Titan/Garuda, with a tendency toward passivity and negotiation. And on the other end of the spectrum, Leviathan is kind of separate from the main three tribal primals by being represented as this kind of eldritch deep sea entity. The way I see it Ramuh is too close to the core cast and Leviathan is too distant from the main cast for either to really feel well-suited as a "Summon" the way that Ifrit/Titan/Garuda are constantly depicted as repeatable summons in-game. Between how they are characterized and their overall power level, I just think Leviathan/Ramuh outclass the SMN primals and trying to reduce them to summons would detract from how they are depicted in XIV.

I feel this even moreso about Shiva, and I think summoning Shiva in any form as SMN would in all likelihood minimize the Ysayle story arc. I think she deserves to be kept on that pedestal, and the most I would personally ever grant to SMN--and *only* because it is gemstone themed like Emerald/Ruby/Topaz--would be to give SMN a single "Diamond Dust" spell as a soft reference to Ysayle/Shiva. Anything more than that wouldn't feel very respectful to the Heavensward writing.

[aveyond-dreams]

Ramuh is treated as more of a character than Ifrit/Titan/Garuda, with a tendency toward passivity and negotiation.

And yet at the start of the Heavensward job quests we were ready and prepped to summon him and claim his egi. "Too close to the core cast" he literally was shown in a brief cutscene during 2.0 and then didn't have more than a patch to him later on down the line. Please. In any case the power of a primal seems to be largely determined by how much aether they can draw from. Add more crystals = you get incarnations of Ifrit/Titan/Garuda that are on par with the remaining ARR summons.

I feel this even moreso about Shiva, and I think summoning Shiva in any form as SMN would in all likelihood minimize the Ysayle story arc. I think she deserves to be kept on that pedestal, and the most I would personally ever grant to SMN--and *only* because it is gemstone themed like Emerald/Ruby/Topaz--would be to give SMN a single "Diamond Dust" spell as a soft reference to Ysayle/Shiva. Anything more than that wouldn't feel very respectful to the Heavensward writing.

Louisoix was a character who had a much larger impact on the greater plot of FFXIV as a whole compared to Ysayle, and yet I can summon him every other minute. Do not try to and force lore over fun here, no one is about to put up with that after 8 years of being denied the core summons present in nearly all Final Fantasy games. My goodness, if we followed this logic we may as well have never gotten any summons past the 3 original ones because "lore." You cannot tell us in game where we already have Bahamut and Phoenix-as important characters as they are to the foundation of the world-that we cannot have Shiva.

Heavensward writing is half a decade old. Vrtra also doesn't speak in Dragonspeak, is that disrespectful to Heavensward writing too? Or are we just being selective as to what is and isn't in order to arbirtrarily gatekeep other people's fun? Heavensward was 2015, this is 2022. I for one have no intention of letting writing from 7 years ago dictate what can and cannot be added to the game.

[SeverianLyonesse]

And yet at the start of the Heavensward job quests we were ready and prepped to summon him and claim his egi. "Too close to the core cast" he literally was shown in a brief cutscene during 2.0 and then didn't have more than a patch to him later on down the line. Please. In any case the power of a primal seems to be largely determined by how much aether they can draw from. Add more crystals = you get incarnations of Ifrit/Titan/Garuda that are on par with the remaining ARR summons.

I still think he and Shiva (and to some extent Leviathan) received considerably different treatment in the story than Ifrit, Titan and Garuda. I don't disagree that SMN's power level can certainly creep to accommodate them. But it is still a weird prospect because Ifrit/Titan/Garuda are very much primal strawmen that were practically written to just be summoned. Shiva/Ramuh really weren't written with that flavor in mind and would kind of lay open SMN's identity, even moreso than Bahamut/Phoenix. It's moving from summoning manifestations of bestial "folk figures" to what feel like actual people--and yeah Phoenix doesn't quite align with that, but it also doesn't completely break it because a) the primal is not an actual character but the memory of an actual character and b) it's only loosely tied in form/identity to Louisoix in a way that still makes it feel more bestial than human.

I'm not saying we *couldn't* take SMN in a direction that has Shiva/Ramuh/Leviathan. I just think it's not a particularly strong direction to take the job. Especially since I consider the Ifrit/Titan/Garuda trio to be a very elegantly balanced set of summons and has much stronger design sensibility than a job that just checked off nostalgia like every other summoner. I would rather we get fewer summons that were deliberately chosen to fit in against the Ifrit/Titan/Garuda trio, try to prevent Summoner from becoming an elemental generalist, than just include all the elements just 'cuz.

Also I have never liked Shiva as a summon. In any FF. So I do admit to some personal interest in preserving the one time where Shiva was actually fleshed out into a well-written character and not reduced to a misgendered, vaguely racist, and often kind of misogynist object to be summoned. She wasn't even been allowed to be a single individual in both FFXIII and XV, instead being reduced to some sort of harem fantasy.

Vrtra also doesn't speak in Dragonspeak, is that disrespectful to Heavensward writing too?

Vrtra also loves humans in a way none of the HW dragons did. In fact you could argue that the entirety of Thavnair was crafted to be a direct counterpart to and commentary on HW as a whole. That Vrtra doesn't use dragonspeak isn't a wasted subversion because it is used for generally greater storytelling purposes than trite job actions.

[Fhaerron]

It's best to ask this question again in a year and a half.



Remember that at long last the original story is done. So maybe some we see some nice new original things (for once), maybe also things that could be used for SMN.

[Vahlnir]

Louisoix was a character who had a much larger impact on the greater plot of FFXIV as a whole compared to Ysayle, and yet I can summon him every other minute. Do not try to and force lore over fun here, no one is about to put up with that after 8 years of being denied the core summons present in nearly all Final Fantasy games. My goodness, if we followed this logic we may as well have never gotten any summons past the 3 original ones because "lore." You cannot tell us in game where we already have Bahamut and Phoenix-as important characters as they are to the foundation of the world-that we cannot have Shiva.

Yep. "Because lore" is usually just a shallow excuse for not adding something to the game. They could make Shiva and Ramuh work just fine if they really wanted to. They are both primals at their core.

[Exodus-E]

Like... Light represents stagnation, while Darkness represents rapid acceleration in the world of FFXIV. So, by summoning three Egi in a row that correspond with either element.... You know what? I'm too dumb and hyper right now, so let me do it this way:

Fire, Lightning, Ice = Summoning Zodiark

Wind, Earth, Water = Summoning Hydalyn

Uhh... So what do you guys think about all of this?

For the record, that "elemental wheel" showcased the aspects in their natural (read: default) states.
Wind/Fire/Lightning are active in their natural states, while Earth/Ice/Water are passive in their natural states.
But really, depending on the circumstances (including external manipulation) any aspect can be found and/or used in either state (see: Umbral Winds or Umbral Static for weather examples).

Anyways, and on topic...I've been waiting for nearly 7 YEARS for them to add new Egis (and now "gemstone" summons), and I think it's waaay past time they (finally) did something about them.

The earlier, the better. Like, during the course of Endwalker earlier (i.e. 6.x).

And preferably through a (revamped) Egi glamour system based on their new "gemstone" forms.
Better yet: also including the Rite(s)/Catastrophe(s) of the remaining elements.

[NorthernLadMSP]

Hopefully. I want Shiva, Ramuh and Levi.