SE, don't overthink Summoner 7.0. Just give people what they want. Just do it.

[Eorzean_username]

the smn had a 2 minute rotation, sure. But technically they were just variations.

Sort of, but I feel like this is downplaying that you had different considerations for what to do in order to fill the time between odd-minute and even-minute bursts, since the fillers were trying to set-up and engineer the conditions that you wanted to go into each peak with, and often had to dynamically-adjust to encounter conditions or timings in ways that current SMN has no real equivalents of.

At least to me, filling leading up to DWT-Contagion felt different than filling up to Bahamut; same as filling up to Bahamut felt different than filling up to Phoenix.

Considering how many fewer moving parts EW SMN's design has than previous iterations, I'm sceptical that simply having two variations of the Gem filler would add more mental overhead or complexity than all of the "moving blocks" leading up to DWT vs. Bahamut did in SB (and etc).

If we introduce 3 new filler summons, they will have different characteristics from the 3 we have now. And if, unless they are a copy paste of the current 3 summons, it will be a profoundly different rotation and it will not be just a variation of ruin 4 and tridisaster.

That's the explicit intention, though, and the reason why it's advisable to also combine it with allowing Bahamut and Phoenix to have their ordering freely-swapped, in order to better-arrange your Gems based on a specific encounter's demands.

I think we just differ on how we view "profoundly different" — You're objectively correct in some senses, but I personally feel that the system that EW Summoner now has is neither demanding nor complex enough for it to detrimentally affect the play experience if you're doing 6 different Gem phases vs. 3 different Gem phases per 2 minutes.

moreover, if we consider a hypothetical alexander after the umbral phase (1 minute) and an astral phase (1 minute) alexander would heavily change the timing of these two phases (too long to be so different).

Ideally the designers would (hopefully...) adjust timings and phase-lengths as needed to prevent anything deranged from occurring — this could be as simple as leaving 1 extra GCD of filler space after "odd minutes", which just gets replaced by Alexander's Summon GCD during even minutes (as one example).

Compare for example, Samurai's Ogi Namikiri, which occupies filler slots during even-minute loops but isn't present for odd-minute loops (so other filler just gets shoved into that space, instead).

That is, of course, assuming that SE doesn't scrap the "2-minute Meta" entirely in 7.0 — in which case, it wouldn't really matter if Summoner is just doing its own thing at its own pace. (Compare, for example, Trance Rush style in ShB.)

furthermore I am deeply convinced that smn doesn't need new skins, but a revamp of its gameplay which is currently based exclusively on pressing, almost without thinking, 2 buttons. And adding more summons in sequence won't make his gameplay better, only more glittering.

Well, the first thing to separate-out is that "better gameplay" is a subjective, not objective, evaluation.

You can objectively evaluate gameplay if you begin with a set of premises that you want your game to adhere to, and assess whether a given outcome seems to conform those intended premises.

However, if SE's premises and your premises aren't the same any more, that does not objectively mean that SE's current design is "worse" or "inferior", any more than Animal Crossing can be called objectively-inferior to Monster Hunter. It just means that SE's design is no longer targeting or satisfying your personal preferences — which is, to be clear, perfectly-fine to complain about, especially if you feel like SE has performed a "bait-and-switch" in terms of changing their mind about what sort of gameplay premises that they want to reason from (which, objectively, they clearly have over time).

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That said, I am also of the mind that this debate is largely moot, and akin to yelling after a ship that's already sailed — I am very sceptical that SE will have any appetite for radically-redesigning Summoner gameplay again, especially considering how few things budged for other Jobs that already conformed to SE's newer design standards — such as Gunbreaker, Dancer, Machinist, and the Healers in general — between ShB and EW.

Within that context — which is coloured more by realism, than personally-feeling that EW SMN is anything close to ideal — I'm of the opinion that adding the 3 missing "classic" Summons that should have been present since, frankly, HW, may not solve all of the problems that Summoner has, but it would still be an overall improvement.

And so I'm interested in lobbying aggressively for that as first priority, because once Summoner becomes a "real, grown up, Final Fantasy Summoner" conceptually/aesthetically, it would be hard for SE to take that away in the future — "the box is already opened" sort of situation.

ie: "WOW-Warlock Dot Mage Rhythm Lord" Summoner probably is not coming back. So if "Press A for Primals, Press B for Demis" Summoner is here to stay, then I want to make sure SE at least gets the message and gives Summoner its full and "proper" set of Summons, first and foremost — even if that means cramming them into the current simplistic EW system.

If SE then wants to refine the design more beyond that in the future, that's (non-sarcastically) great — please do.

However, I'm of the opinion that if you try to ask for too much simultaneously from SE, they'll just get confused, and implode, and do something weird that makes nobody happy.

So, starting out with, "Just give us all the Summons" is my preferred "next stopping point", because it's an easy, understandable, hard-to-misinterpret goal that SE has already created the necessary design structure to support and implement.

[Ggwppino]

Sort of, but I feel like this is downplaying that you had different considerations for what to do in order to fill the time between odd-minute and even-minute bursts, since the fillers were trying to set-up and engineer the conditions that you wanted to go into each peak with, and often had to dynamically-adjust to encounter conditions or timings in ways that current SMN has no real equivalents of.

At least to me, filling leading up to DWT-Contagion felt different than filling up to Bahamut; same as filling up to Bahamut felt different than filling up to Phoenix.

Considering how many fewer moving parts EW SMN's design has than previous iterations, I'm sceptical that simply having two variations of the Gem filler would add more mental overhead or complexity than all of the "moving blocks" leading up to DWT vs. Bahamut did in SB (and etc).

Exactly! It was up to the player's intelligence to make certain choices. If 3 sequential summons are introduced, this will not happen, but would remain a "push the 2 buttons and go easy".

but I personally feel that the system that EW Summoner now has is neither demanding nor complex enough for it to detrimentally affect the play experience if you're doing 6 different Gem phases vs. 3 different Gem phases per 2 minutes.

True, but nothing would change if I didn't wait another 4 years to have my main class return to having a role-playing sense and unique gameplay.

Ideally the designers would (hopefully...) adjust timings and phase-lengths as needed to prevent anything deranged from occurring — this could be as simple as leaving 1 extra GCD of filler space after "odd minutes", which just gets replaced by Alexander's Summon GCD during even minutes (as one example).

Compare for example, Samurai's Ogi Namikiri, which occupies filler slots during even-minute loops but isn't present for odd-minute loops (so other filler just gets shoved into that space, instead).

That is, of course, assuming that SE doesn't scrap the "2-minute Meta" entirely in 7.0 — in which case, it wouldn't really matter if Summoner is just doing its own thing at its own pace. (Compare, for example, Trance Rush style in ShB.)

You're right, but at this point 6 filler summons and 3 bursts would be too much, unless spam summons or a drastic reduction in summon time but remain spam summons

Well, the first thing to separate-out is that "better gameplay" is a subjective, not objective, evaluation.

I don't like the summoner's non-gameplay. The point is that it's really missing, it's not that it's "objectively" bad. it has nothing actually its own if not visual. From 30 to 86 it remains unchanged by changing the color of the spells and the powers, this, however, is objectively ridiculous.

His concept was supposed to be a caster who had to think carefully about how to use the various summons but in the end it was reduced to objective: use ifrit when the boss does nothing. Making (subjective) titan and garuda boring. This concept (failed) has removed gameplay such as the strategic positioning of the pet, weighted variation during the 2 minutes of rotation based on the needs of the fight, management of the ruin 4 stack, the management of the caster's own challenges (timers, prepositioning, movements, uptime variations), management of the dots and the various CDs.

So, starting out with, "Just give us all the Summons" is my preferred "next stopping point", because it's an easy, understandable, hard-to-misinterpret goal that SE has already created the necessary design structure to support and implement.

Had the concept actually succeeded making it equivalent to what could be done before, there wouldn't be so many people disappointed with SQE's work. Honestly, I'd rather have my main class have gameplay again than having new summons. Or rather, if the gameplay starts to be significantly influenced by the summons, then I wouldn't mind it, but this way (sequential summons to have just the summons for the sake of having them) would annoy me.


Why instead of creating gameplay for the class by adding what is missing and refining what we have, do you want to duplicate the mistake we've been carrying for these long, long, long 2 years?

[Eorzean_username]

10 characters outside HB tags because lol forum coding

If 3 sequential summons are introduced, this will not happen, but would remain a "push the 2 buttons and go easy".

Well, it's not literally "sequential", you're free to mix up the sequence if you choose, and depending on the specific encounter, you're technically "encouraged" to do so.

I also think that the problems with the rotation don't stem from the number of buttons, per se, but rather the lack of decision-making involved with, and circulating around, those buttons.

The unnecessary decision to add a bunch of bloated, "dead" GCDs for Summons also isn't helping, since it vacuums up space that could be devoted to a more varied rotational action-palette.

Another arguable issue is that Summoner has only one "speed" — it's very difficult to extend the rotation once you run out Gems other than by committing parseicide with Ruin 3. This, however, is a bit more subjective, since it could be argued to simply be a "characteristic" or "trade-off" of the rotation (and has a prior precedent in Trance Rush, anyway).

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...But I also think that most of the decision-making with previous iterations of Summoner largely ended up being just bloat, jank, and clutter to most players, and probably quickly went off-the-rails without recovery for most players in most situations, becoming little more than a chaotic whack-a-mole.

It was interesting in a theoretical vacuum, and both potent and satisfying when wielded by the players who could keep a tight, encounter-long grasp on it... but it also probably ended up being little more than disjointed spaghetti for most other players, in actual practice.

So while I feel that EW Summoner is a grotesque and severe overcorrection in the opposite direction, I also think that "classic" Summoner is often over-romanticised. In many details, I don't think that it was really worthy of design awards; its awe and mystique stemmed more from the IKEA Assembly Manuals required to decipher how to use it optimally, rather than any inherent design elegance.

True, but nothing would change if I didn't wait another 4 years to have my main class return to having a role-playing sense and unique gameplay.

I think you're setting yourself up for unrealistic disappointment.

To be clear, I don't think that you're "wrong" for being upset that the playstyle you had come to find your favorite was basically ripped-out, industrially-shredded, and then replaced with a Stepford Pod Person substitute. That's a legitimate complaint, if you feel that way.

I just think that, if we examine many other similar examples, the overall design forensics suggest that "classic Summoner", or anything resembling it, is very likely not coming back in 7.0.

You're right, but at this point 6 filler summons and 3 bursts would be too much, unless spam summons or a drastic reduction in summon time but remain spam summons

There's no need to make 3 bursts.

To be clear, if SE decouples itself from the 2-minute obsession, there's nothing "wrong" with, for example, Summoner having a "third Demi" and a 3-minute cycle (aside from the potential memes regarding encounter timelines and killtimes).

However, assuming that the current design meta remains, the "ultimate Summon" can easily just be tacked-on to the end of the 2-minute burst as a single button or button-series. Or take a Phantom Rush-style approach, and end up cycling-in at odd minutes to replace a "basic" Demi. Or, etc.

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As for 6 filler Summons being "too much", I still don't understand.

Maybe you're imagining cramming in 6 fillers in ~40 seconds?

But I think most suggestions are instead saying to have 3 gems per 60s phase — so the pacing would basically be the same as current EW Summoner, just with alternating Elements between post-Bahamut and post-Phoenix.

Or, alternatively, freely-choosing 3 out of 6 Elements for each filler — but I'm sceptical that this would remain "interesting", vs. just ending up as "Use the 3 that Balance Discord tells you to, and ignore the weaker 3".

Or, third possibility: you can use all 6 Elements freely, and you use 3 per filler-phase. But cycling through all 6 per 2 minutes is required to activate the "Ultimate Summon" finisher. That could add some more interesting long-term planning to encounters; the downside here is that it also adds a significant amount of "empty bloat" GCD binds, unless the system is somehow made a bit more clever in how you select them... or they're at least switched back to OGCDs.

I don't like the summoner's non-gameplay. The point is that it's really missing, it's not that it's "objectively" bad. it has nothing actually its own if not visual.

I feel that's not objective, though, but rather an encyclopedic example of a subjective feeling.

You may dislike it, and you may find it obnoxiously-simplified compared to previous iterations of Summoner — that's fine. However, it's not "non-gameplay" nor "missing gameplay" in an objective sense; it has a clear structure and rotational loop, pass/fail elements, goals to hit within each time interval, and considerations for how to do that.

That these elements are all far more obvious, intuitive, and approachable — even without significant time and practice — compared to previous iterations of the Job does not negate their existence; your disappointment with it, in comparison to previous memories, does not make it objectively incorrect as a design.

I'm not saying this to semantically-torment you, but rather because I don't think that hyperbolic exaggerations are going to help persuade people — especially the developers that actually control these switches — that your concerns should be supported and addressed.

From 30 to 86 it remains unchanged by changing the color of the spells and the powers, this, however, is objectively ridiculous.

But, on the other hand, you will find people complaining that Jobs take too long to reach their full gameplay and are too simple at lower levels, and that being downsynced feels cursed.

Then you have Monk, which basically locks in its full gameplay loop at level 60, except for — err... well, "the colour of its attacks and their potencies".

Or Black Mage, which has long been a spaghetti of relearning the entire functionality constantly throughout the leveling process — something that has also drawn a fair share of complaints.

FFXIV as a game does have arguably-serious issues with its leveling process, but this isn't unique to FFXIV — it's a problem for any MMO where the leveling cap gets too high at the same time that excess chaff gets regularly culled and streamlined. FFXIV does, however, exacerbate it, by being anaphylactically-allergic to any kind of alternative or supplementary advancement systems.

This is a broad-scale issue which perhaps needs to be addressed, but it is not unique to Summoner, nor does it serve as an accurate litmus for whether a Job's top-end rotational design is flawed or not.

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I also think you'll pretty much not be able to win with any change here. You either:

a) Add excessive actions and tools just to have something to learn every X levels, which isn't necessarily sound or elegant design, either.

b) Make Jobs complete early on, but feel like they're not gaining much as they level up later.

c) Make Jobs feel like they're growing powerful and robust as they achieve later levels, but then feel frustrating and barely-functional at lower levels.

His concept was supposed to be a caster who had to think carefully about how to use the various summons but in the end it was reduced to objective: use ifrit when the boss does nothing. Making (subjective) titan and garuda boring. This concept (failed) has removed gameplay such as the strategic positioning of the pet, weighted variation during the 2 minutes of rotation based on the needs of the fight, management of the ruin 4 stack, the management of the caster's own challenges (timers, prepositioning, movements, uptime variations), management of the dots and the various CDs.

I also subjectively feel that the EW iteration has fallen far short of realising its potential, and that most of your observations about what's been stripped out by the EW design seem to be objectively-correct assessments about the vast amount of nuance and success/fail details that have been eliminated from Summoner.

However, what I think that you're missing is that a lot of this was not "accidental", nor a result of oblivious design incompetence, nor "goals failing to be realised", or etc. — if you look at Jobs such as Paladin 6.3, Gunbreaker, Reaper, ShB Machinist, Dancer, and ShB+ Healers, EW Summoner falls roughly in-line with FFXIV's contemporary design philosophies.

Without actually being inside the designers's internal discussions — and without being able to trust Yoshida's diplomat/salesman PR round-abouts and double-speaks — it's difficult to say exactly what the ultimate objective for Job design is from SE's perspective, but my guess from current observations is that the goal is to make Jobs significantly simpler overall, with far fewer details to keep track of (and fewer periodic effects taxing the server), in order to support a more "arcade-like" gameplay focused on the encounter designs themselves.

In that sense, EW Summoner is likely pretty close to exactly where SE wants it, and I doubt that it will change much in the future — especially given its high playrates (which, regardless of what you personally think the reason is, seems to be interpreted by SE as a green-light endorsement of a given design).

Had the concept actually succeeded making it equivalent to what could be done before, there wouldn't be so many people disappointed with SQE's work.

The problem is that you don't know that "so many" people are "disappointed" with EW Summoner.

You are clearly disappointed. I also can't say that I'm personally thrilled with what the largely hollow-feeling gameplay has ended up as. And self-selecting discussion environments where gameplay-oriented players are drawn to gather seem to have a relatively-high proportion of players that are unimpressed with EW Summoner's rotational details.

The issue, though, is that these are not really reliably-representative surveys of the opinions of the game's entire population as a whole, and I'm not sure how that data could even really be effectively gathered.

Why instead of creating gameplay for the class by adding what is missing and refining what we have, do you want to duplicate the mistake we've been carrying for these long, long, long 2 years?

Well, a few things.

First of all, I spoke in terms of priorities — I don't really trust SE to be able to handle more than a few things at once per Job, so if only one thing can get addressed, I would choose the overly-limited fantasy that keeps regurgitating Red/Yellow/Green for over 10 years, because that's the issue that I've personally been most disappointed by over time.

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Second of all, I suppose that I'm just not that married to FFXIV specifically for seeking "gameplay".

Probably around the time that SE made it blatantly-clear that they're not going to budge on the ShB Healer design-shift, and then when Yoshida took time out of a Live Letter to specifically state that HW/SB gameplay isn't coming back, I guess I made my peace with FFXIV's current design direction, my relationship with the game, and my expectations for the game's design moving forward.

So for me, I just haven't found this to be some sort of excruciating, Dante-going-through-Inferno, "long, long, long 2 years".

It's like... could this be a lot more interesting? Sure, probably — for me, EW Summoner feels like it gets pretty stale, pretty quick. I think that it has "issues".

But is that big a deal, in the wider picture? I guess I just don't think so — XIV still has "enough" going on in encounters and activities to keep me entertained for about as long as it ever did during "subscription-on" windows, and if I feel like I need something more complex or demanding at the "gameplay" level, there's always been better games to seek that in... and there still are.

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And I guess that means that my first concern is with Summoner being visually and conceptually "incomplete" — the "Summoner fantasy" feels like it's getting a lot closer, but still not quite realised-fully yet.

And since SE seems more likely to address that issue if they're presented with a way to do it that doesn't disrupt the preexisting system, I'm inclined to "play ball" with them, and target my suggestions along those lines.

Perhaps I am way too cynical, but I speculate that alternatives — such as proposing a dramatic and complicated new system, which would require them to entirely-rebuild the Job all over again, yet again — seems doomed to never even reach their desks, much less be listened to. The sort of thing that Yoshida would have some kind of round-about diplomatic way of patting us on the head about, then moving on with showing off the next 8.5"x11" MogStation glamour printout of a Hrothgar dressed like Belle Delphine.

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Hence, I guess I'm picking my battles based on what goals seem realistic to me:

• Hyper-complex system that feels like it belongs in an MMO from 10-15 years ago, or at the very least, not FFXIV? Probably mostly a fantasy indulgence. Not likely to happen.

• Just retrofit Water, Lightning, Ice, and maybe some other cool thing like Warring Triad or Alexander onto the current system? Seems plausible.

Subscribe, log in, enjoy cool flashy FF theme-park fantasy that hits iconic notes, move on when it gets worn-out — I think this is the current state of the game (if, indeed, it's ever really been much different), and I guess that I'm trying to make the most of it as-is.

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The problem is, if you just say nothing, and trust SE to handle that themselves?

...You're going to get weird garbage like "Chain Saw" (har har), "Shadowbringer" (lol, I understood that reference!), "Shoha 2" (no comment), etc — so I'm also speculating that it's better to jump ahead and try to cut them off with a barrage of "better than awful" ideas, before they have time to finalise something excessively-insipid.

[Shiroe]

imo don't drastically change Smn.., but add one dot again pls! (& bane to spread).., adding just one dot, that does not line up with primals, makes it more engaging, without changing the new identity of the new Smn
.

just if the dot does lines up too well with primals, it would become a static / boring part of the rotation..

[Ggwppino]

1) Exactly. I would work on this. Ah, yes, I expressed myself badly: When I say "I only press 2 buttons" it meant you press 2 buttons going afk with the brain. Clearly the problem is that there is no reasoning when you press them. That's the problem. However I completely agree. No objection to this.

2) I don't expect the old smn to come back, now the omelette is done. But I would dwell on what we have and how to improve it so as not to get into perpetual afk when we raid. Does it have to be a class that involves choosing your summons strategically? don't boil it down to "throw ifrit during boss scratching". The reasoning should be contrary, it should be that the player thinks: how do I best use my movement? How do I use the special abilities of my summons to face the boss? Furthermore, I would dwell on the pet: either you remove it (I expect it from sqe by now) or you make it an integral part of it, enhancing its characteristics and therefore introducing actual gameplay.

3) 1 minute lasts astral, 1 minute lasts umbral, Alexander would seem. To fix this you need to reduce the time of the astral and umbral somehow. If these 6 summons were in the 40s they would still be too many.

4) I've been playing this summoner for two years and still haven't figured out the gameplay, other than to summon your summons use everything and move on. It's rambling. The smn gameplay has no gameplay.

5) but that's more of a sync problem than anything else. But there is no such thing as a game that makes you level, also because the ff14 msq is by no means short, and it doesn't give you a sense of progression. out of curiosity I leveled it up to a third pg, it was heartbreaking. I wanted to shred my peanuts

6) unfortunately this is the case. They are aware that they have done crap because that's what they want. And there are all the new jobs that prove it. But even here, the dnc is very simple, but it's fun to play because playfully it always puts you in a situation of uncertainty, of attention. Ludically it puts you in the position of being careful with the CDs because they are NOT ONLY 1 minute long.

7) between surveys, comments, etc., the sentiment is not positive. Clearly those who are dissatisfied are those who are noisier. But I bet that whoever used smn as main is satisfied with this class.

8) your priority is to add summons. my priority is to make it fun and not that the fun lies in not falling asleep during the raid. but then I'm not asking for anything exaggerated. I wish they would at least, but at the very least, be consistent with what they announced: a class that needs to use summons strategically. But there's nothing strategic if it's a phys ranged (with no resoures to manage) with 6 seconds of cast on 60 seconds of rotation.

[VentVanitas]

furthermore I am deeply convinced that smn doesn't need new skins, but a revamp of its gameplay which is currently based exclusively on pressing, almost without thinking, 2 buttons. And adding more summons in sequence won't make his gameplay better, only more glittering.

Agreed. For all we know SE could very well add Ramuh/Leviathan/Shiva gems to SMN in 7.0, but what does it actually add to the job? More visual spectacle? What does adding 3 more gems do for the rigid and un-interactive demi summons? Or Aetherflow and Ruin 4 being completely vestigial? Carbuncle... existing? So long as gems remain disconnected from everything, or remains sandwiched between the current functioning demi summons, it quite literally does not matter in terms of any meaningful changes to the job.

I'm not going to give merit to potential if it is never reached, just like with MCH and DRK after their reworks.

[Shiroe]

wait, are current savage & ultimate raiders complaining on Smn? falling asleep during p5s-p12s with Smn?

[Ggwppino]

wait, are current savage & ultimate raiders complaining on Smn? falling asleep during p5s-p12s with Smn?

the first tier smn could do titan-garuda-ifrit all the time and had no problems, literally thinking about nothing.
the last tier smn had issues with buff time and staggered burst window. And there we realized in a glaring way, how stiff as hell the current SMN was. but even here one had to be careful not to fall asleep.
this tier only fun thing is splitting p10s wires using ifrit dash. Visually it's really cool. but again, it's always the same story: use ifrit when you don't have to move. (Honestly with smn i heavent cleared p12s so idk)

but it's his rotation that's boring: doesnt activate the brain -> it's so slow, it has no resources to manage, it doesn't have any cds to keep an eye on, it doesn't plan to position itself well since it's not a caster, it has bahamut and bahamut reskinned, has 13 seconds of spam, 9 seconds of spam, 15 seconds of spam and another 15 seconds of spam without thinking nothing, only spam. Also Gmail block the smn lol

[Eorzean_username]

3) 1 minute lasts astral, 1 minute lasts umbral, Alexander would seem. To fix this you need to reduce the time of the astral and umbral somehow.

Let me give an example of why some sort of "ultimate Summon" isn't necessarily going to derange anything.

As an example, let's just assume the following:

• Ruin 4 is removed for being vestigial chaff

• The "ultimate Summon" is Warring Triad, a 4-GCD sequence of Sephirot → Sophia → Zurvan → Apocalypse (all 3 at once; FF6 Crusader Magicite reference, because SE loves nostalgia-trips)

• Summoning the Warring Triad requires 1 Astral and 1 Umbral "thingie" (we'll call them Bonbons)

• Bahamut grants Astral when it ends, Phoenix grants Umbral when it ends

So, 2 GCDs of that 4-GCD sequence would already "naturally" be occupied by Ruin 3 fillers that you'd just skip at 2 minutes (assuming 2-minute meta remains in 7.0, and you're holding your Bonbons for the 2-minute buffs).

For the other 2 GCDs, you can drop 2 of your Gem fillers. Alternatively, you can intentionally do all your Gem fillers, in situations where you want to drift into delayed party buffs.

Or, if SE actually puts the actual Summon casts back onto OGCDs, you'd free up your 4 GCD slots per 60s right there.

The point is just that adding a 3rd "non-Gem" Summon does not inherently create rotational alignment issues; that's entirely about how you design it, and what other changes are made in parallel.

If these 6 summons were in the 40s they would still be too many.

Well, but, I don't think(?) anyone is suggesting a 6-Gem-per-60s rotation.

Rather, 6 Gems total (one for each Element/classic FF Summon), and 3 of those Gems used per 60s.

4) I've been playing this summoner for two years and still haven't figured out the gameplay, other than to summon your summons use everything and move on. It's rambling. The smn gameplay has no gameplay.

I think what you're feeling is the sharp contrast between prior iterations of Summoner and the current EW Summoner; if you were able to confidently control and handle prior iterations of Summoner, then it's not surprising that the current version feels empty.

However, it literally does have gameplay — and more than Healers can claim in a lot of situations these days, or a lot of external games in general.

If you feel that the gameplay is a "betrayal" / "bait-and-switch" of what you'd been led to expect from previous years of the game, that's a fair complaint.

If you think that the gameplay is underwhelming or shallow for your tastes, that's also a legitimate complaint.

If you think that the rotation's gameplay outcomes are too poorly-differentiated between the effects of thought/planning, and just smacking everything that lights up until you run out of things to smack, that's another legitimate complaint.

But, EW Summoner is nowhere near being an auto-battler. It still requires active player interaction and some amount of awareness about action cooldowns, party alignment, action sequencing, resource utilisation (to what extent that Gems are), GCD maximisation, positioning considerations, etc.

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To be honest, EW Summoner's greatest "crime" is probably that it replaced a Job which was previously nearly a diametric-opposite in design philosophy — if EW Summoner's gameplay had been introduced as an entirely new Job, I think that it would probably be receiving significantly less vitriol/ridicule from experienced preexisting players.

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That said, I do think it's true that the EW Summoner gameplay is not especially-sophisticated (especially in contrast to prior iterations).

Likewise, I think that one could argue that Summoner's gameplay mostly involves fundamental / core FFXIV concepts shared by all Jobs, and that it does not build especially-much detail or complexity unique to itself on top of those basic gameplay principles.

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I'm just trying to say that if you come at developers — especially very literal developers like SE's FFXIV team — with a statement like, "EW Summoner has no gameplay", they will probably just blink at you a few times, say, "Yes it does," and then shrug their shoulders in confusion and move on.

I think that's one of the dangers of these sorts of hyperbolic assessments that tend to catch on and spread like memetic wildfire.

If you instead specify what you specifically feel is lacking in the gameplay...

...well, there's still like a 60% chance that they'll blink and shrug, but at least you're getting closer to the possibility of seeing something actioned.

It also, likewise, can help to persuade players who don't currently see any issues, which things like, "Your Job is braindead", and etc, will almost-universally fail to do.

5) but that's more of a sync problem than anything else. But there is no such thing as a game that makes you level, also because the ff14 msq is by no means short, and it doesn't give you a sense of progression. out of curiosity I leveled it up to a third pg, it was heartbreaking. I wanted to shred my peanuts

Yeah, I don't disagree that XIV leveling progression feels unsatisfying or even perplexing for many Jobs. I just think that Summoner's situation in regards to this is merely a symptom of a wider problem.

That said, I really don't see how it can be solved in the current design state, given all of the developers' self-imposed straightjacketing.

There's just not enough "components" of most Jobs to spread out over 90 (presumably, soon to be 100) levels.

Your options at this point are:

• Add alternative advancement systems beyond raw leveling, to give more granularity to player development. (99.9% not happening with current management's attitudes about complexity / differentiation)

• Compress the leveling process to cap out sooner. (This won't help with MSQ length, but at least you won't "feel" like you're leveling up with long stretches of no difference)

• Add more and more Traits that make minor upgrades to Potency or add minor functionality. (Feels underwhelming and spammy)

• Complete the rotational structure earlier, and then keep upgrading Potency / Visual upgrades, without changing the rotation. (Feels obvious and gimmicky)

I personally feel that the FFXIV leveling experience has been in a downward spiral since Stormblood, when the removal of Cross-Class severely-undermined the previous unique appeal of spending extra time leveling various other classes to "build up" your toolset.

Additionally, the fact that FFXIV has become terminally-allergic to allowing any serious purpose for most types of utility or support skills has also resulted in even less design space for offering players new tools as they level up, and further-constrained the amount of creativity and breadth that can go into any given Job's overall "kit".

6) unfortunately this is the case. They are aware that they have done crap because that's what they want. And there are all the new jobs that prove it. But even here, the dnc is very simple, but it's fun to play because playfully it always puts you in a situation of uncertainty, of attention. Ludically it puts you in the position of being careful with the CDs because they are NOT ONLY 1 minute long.

No arguments here.

Despite their noticeably-simpler designs, I personally feel that Dancer, Reaper, and even ShB Machinist are all significantly more engaging than EW Summoner over prolonged usage.

I think it fundamentally comes down to the potential for both errors and decision-making — because EW Summoner basically gets everything "for free", without needing to "build" towards anything, it has something of an "assembly line" feeling... just mechanistically doing what you're fed by the system.

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Honestly, the fact that your reward for bursting is unlocking filler remains perplexing to me — in all previous iterations of Summoner, the Demis were something you "built towards", giving a sense of being a mage conducting elaborate rituals and building up towards taking control of some fearsome and powerful entity which you then had to "wrangle" to keep proper control over.

EW Summoner now just pops out Bahamut at-will immediately on-demand, and it feels a bit conceptually-underwhelming... also kind of "backwards" that you call down one of the FF series's iconic super-powerful god-things in order to unlock the ability to summon the series's iconic weaker "filler" god-things.

To be honest, the Gem Summons design kind of reminds me of those parasite things that fall off the Cloverfield Monster — weird afterthought leftovers after the main event passes through.

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I think another problem is, ironically, how "distinct" the developers attempted to make the Gem phases, which has given Summoner a shallow and disjointed overall experience.

What I mean by that is: Each Gem has to have its own very specific "personality" — Ifrit is Hardcasts and Melee; Titan is OGCD Heaven; Garuda is Hypercharge + HW Shadow Flare.

By designing it this way, it means that there's no room to add any overall, unifying gameplay structure to Summoner — instead, you just cycle constantly between a series of (relatively-underwhelming) "mini-Jobs" that are hypothetically supposed to add up to a single whole Job.

But what happens is that you instead end up with a Job that has attention-span problems — every time that you start to settle into a certain style, you use up your charges and get whipped off into the next one, so there's no time nor space to actually settle into any kind of depth, nor to develop an over-arching sense of Job gameplay identity.

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By way of example, imagine if the Gem Summons worked like Living Shadow/Queen Automaton — you Summon a Primal, it casts its "ult", and then it stomps in to attack your target for 10 seconds... and maybe also empowers a single button or two (such as the Astral Flow and Akh Morn keys).

For the rest of the duration, however, you'd now have design space to construct a parallel, broader filler system of other "Summoner" (rather than "Primal") tools to still manage, which could remain consistent throughout the Summoning cycles.

That would have helped to give a more cohesive identity to the Job's overall rotational experience.

7) between surveys, comments, etc., the sentiment is not positive. Clearly those who are dissatisfied are those who are noisier. But I bet that whoever used smn as main is satisfied with this class.

Yeah, but the surveys and comments are not very comprehensive due to issues of self-selection, response bias, lack of true canvassing, etc. It seems to mostly be dissatisfied players interviewing themselves and each other for feedback.

That said, in case I'm giving the wrong impression, there's also no concrete evidence that the mythical "majority" enjoys EW Summoner — I'm instead trying to emphasise the lack of clear understanding either way.

(Along with my severe scepticism that such high play rates stem solely from people who dislike the Job intensely, but keep playing it anyway because it's supposedly "too powerful to resist", or etc.)

Though to be clear, hypothetically "not being the literal majority" does not inherently make your concerns invalid or wrong — I think there's enough examples throughout human history to support that assertion without further elaboration.

I'm just saying that "if" it seems like the actual broader playerbase is "happy enough" with EW Summoner, then it may also mean that SE simply isn't inclined to bend to concerns about it.

8) your priority is to add summons. my priority is to make it fun and not that the fun lies in not falling asleep during the raid. but then I'm not asking for anything exaggerated. I wish they would at least, but at the very least, be consistent with what they announced: a class that needs to use summons strategically. But there's nothing strategic if it's a phys ranged (with no resoures to manage) with 6 seconds of cast on 60 seconds of rotation.

And just to be clear: that's fine — I don't see anything wrong with you wanting to express your own, different, priorities.

You are a player also; you're a paying customer also; you've (presumably) invested a lot of time and energy and thought into learning previous iterations of this Job... etc.

Your concerns are valid, and there's nothing wrong with providing that feedback to the developers.

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I've personally reached a point where I'm kind of "done" with stressing about the finer details of XIV, and perhaps even reached a sort of "Batman villain" kind-of: "Well, it seems that no one is going to win this fight anyway, so let's at least try to burn the world down in an entertaining, rather than banal, fashion".

But in case I come across wrong sometimes, I don't honestly think that it's a problem if you want to fight for something that you think is a "better" outcome.

And if by some strange miracle you manage to actually get SE to bend and reverse-course on Job designs in 7.0, I'd be completely fine with that — more power to you; that would be lobbying / feedback / democracy(??) at work.

So, please don't misunderstand my personal burnout and cynicism as trying to invalidate or dismiss that you've genuinely lost something that you used to enjoy.

[Ggwppino]

Let me give an example of why some sort of "ultimate Summon" isn't necessarily going to derange anything.

As an example, let's just assume the following: snip

uhm yeah, actually makes sense. It wouldn't be a bad thing if the summons would still "overflow" due to a hypothetical burst delay. Having the "overflow", the player is also led to think about which resources to use and not just to spam.

Well, but, I don't think(?) anyone is suggesting a 6-Gem-per-60s rotation.

Rather, 6 Gems total (one for each Element/classic FF Summon), and 3 of those Gems used per 60s.

if you had to put some summons within 40 seconds, it would not be bad, but 6 would be too many, it would really be a spam of summons. Using 3 summons out of the 6 available should be justified by the work, but the way it's set up is the bahamut/phoenix that creates the gems (yeah, wtf). (Clearly that's something that could be changed)

I think what you're feeling is the sharp contrast between prior iterations of Summoner and the current EW Summoner; if you were able to confidently control and handle prior iterations of Summoner, then it's not surprising that the current version feels empty.

uhmm yes, but not really.
Of course I compare the old smn with what is now. After spending years of my life with these iterations I'd be lying if that weren't the case. But leaving out the obvious comparison, it is just an empty class without its own effective identity. Role-speaking the role is based both on appearance, effects, lore etc, but also on the way to fight. The smn doesn't have its own way. It doesn't have a feature of its own in its "gameplay": button spam I refuse to consider as such.
I think that in general it is not a good class on the play side. It doesn't come close to other dps. And this characteristic also greatly (negatively) influences the progress of this class. However, it is a class that must gain 90 levels, soon 100. It cannot remain in this state.

Of course I'm also a realist and I don't think they're going to want to do anything about it. I understand. Would it make more sense to make it an unlockable class at 70 as an arcanist (ergo level the sch first) or should it be completely separate from the sch and take away the tataru mini lore, at least it's not introducing an unplayable class in ARR.

No arguments here.

Despite their noticeably-simpler designs, I personally feel that Dancer, Reaper, and even ShB Machinist are all significantly more engaging than EW Summoner over prolonged usage.

the thing that annoys me, my personal, is just this.
I already don't like that you emptied and lobotomized my class, but you made it even worse (playfully speaking) than all the other new classes. yoship woke up, pissed off hearing all the complaints from people who couldn't play this class, and made it the emptiest class ever.

Yeah, but the surveys and comments are not very comprehensive due to issues of self-selection, response bias, lack of true canvassing, etc. It seems to mostly be dissatisfied players interviewing themselves and each other for feedback.

nothing to add, you're right. I am well aware that however, as you look at it, we have no real data to draw on.

I've personally reached a point where I'm kind of "done" with stressing about the finer details of XIV, and perhaps even reached a sort of "Batman villain" kind-of: "Well, it seems that no one is going to win this fight anyway, so let's at least try to burn the world down in an entertaining, rather than banal, fashion".

I understand your reasoning: so much does this job suck, at this point it's better at least to have new summons.
But I just can't get it down. I personally wouldn't get to see my main class in the state it is for much longer

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However I really appreciate how you want to understand your point of view by giving examples and more. I appreciate it. For my basic English I struggle to write a complete sentence lol