I'm One Of The Filthiests Of Casuals And Even I Can See How Dumbdown FF14 Has Become!

[Renathras]

I want to say first off...I'm sorry about your past experience. Some people are a bit unhinged and do things they shouldn't. I don't know - nor want to know - the details, but your actions are completely understandable.

Your post also seems to be well written and thought out, so while I don't agree with your positions, I can respect you as a person and the sincerity your post seems to me to express.

I ask you...do you play Summoner because you enjoy its aesthetics, the sound of its abilities, the style of how it plays, the utility it provides...

Yes.

In 2014 I started the game with CNJ. I got to level 50 on WHM a bit after the next patch (2.4?) because I distinctly remember when the floodgates of NIN were opened, riding a "7 NIN lf healer" FATE train all over Northern Thanalan to get my last several levels to 50 before going back to finish the MSQ...

Partly due to the cross-class system and partly due to curiosity, I ended ARR with four Jobs at level 50: WHM, SCH/SMN, and PLD. SCH because doing Castrum and Praetorium, I saw Sacred Soil and read the buff tooltip and the idea of shielding my allies sounded really cool so I wanted to level it (bonus points, I already had the CNJ levels for the SCH unlock), and SMN since I was leveling ACN anyway and needed some THM levels for Swiftcast. (PLD was my ever-present desire to be able to switch between roles if needed, and having played one in WoW for both healing and tanking, and already having the CNJ and some GLD levels; leveling back then took awhile, so that kinda mattered to me.)

I've played SMN nearly from the start, and instantly loved ACN. I thought being able to use Titan to tank in the world (and dungeon trash if tanks dropped) while being the pocket healer myself with Sustain and Physic, was a pretty sweet deal. I also liked Ruin 2 giving me movement whenever I needed it. I've never been a fan of DoTs, though, in any class, in any game. So I more put up with them than enjoyed them. I liked ARR SMN, even if I probably sucked at it, which mattered a lot less because...well...everyone did back then.

But even in ARR, I started calling it by a different name: Green Caller.

<color> Caller is a seldom used title in FF games, but it's basically like how Red Mage is a mix of low-to-mid level Black Mage and White Mage. In this case, a mix of <color> Mage and Summoner. It's not a true summoner. It's more like if a RDM learned 2-3 weak but utilitarian Summon spells. I never really FELT like it was a Summoner, as it felt far more like a WoW Warlock with the pet and DoT focus. Green Magic is the magic of debuffing and, occasionally, buffing. Poison, Bio, stuff like that, is Green Magic. And so a Green Caller would be a DoT mage with egis, so to speak.

And I wasn't alone in thinking this.

When HW's SMN was teased, I remember everyone getting excited. "Building up to using Bahamut's attack?! That at least KIND of feels like what a Summoner is supposed to be; long cast time into big attack via their summoned eidolon." Granted, there was no eidolon in this case, but at least people felt it was KIND of moving in the right direction, and the general consensus seemed to be, "Well, this still isn't actually a Summoner, but at least we can feel a little bit like one and maybe this is the best they can do with this engine?". I remember then when SB was coming around how Demi-Bahamut blew people's minds. "FINALLY!", they cried, "We get an ACTUAL Summoner!"

Like, it's hard to explain to someone who wasn't there just how big a deal that was to the Summoner community, and the wider playerbase at large. People were picking up SMN in advance of SB because they wanted to be able to plop their very own Bahamut on the battlefield, too!

No one really seemed to ever feel that pre-SB SMN was a Summoner. I know "no one" is probably hyperbole and there will be some people who will say they did, but the vast majority seemed not to. It wasn't until the 1 per minute Demi-Bahamut that people really felt like the Job was what it was actually supposed to be...but that was behind a lot of buildup (back in those days, you had to enter DWT twice and expend the Aether to generate Dreadwyrm Aether and...I don't even remember all the details, but it was as cumbersome and unintuitive as it sounds; people put up with it because Bahamut was so cool) and you really only got to be a "Summoner" for a brief part of your playtime. People kinda put up with it.

Then came ShB, and a lot of things changed. We only needed to DWT once. But then we got Bahamut right away. Then half a minute of filler. Then we got Firebird Trance...but...it...was also Phoenix. A second summon - Yay! \o/ - but...also it worked completely different. Trances refreshed Tri-Disaster, which was reworked into a quick application of our DoTs. But in the 2 minute rotation (SMN was 2 min meta before it was cool/hated?), we had to start with DoTs, throw out DWT, get a bunch of instant cast Ruins, load spots with Egi-Assaults to get 4 Ruin IVs, pop out Bahamut, use Enkindle early so we could get a second before he left, hit as many attacks - which required 4x of the Ruin IVs to be ready - and weave in every oGCD we had access to since Bahamut would Wyrmwave with each (yes, EVEN ADDLE), but also NOT MOVE AN INCH otherwise Baha would try to follow us, canceling his cast...but then we got filler for half a minute after refreshing DoTs...but then FBT. FBT was weird, since it just changed our attack into a 1-2 combo. Which we did 8 (I think?) times. No oGCD weaving, no making Ruin 3 instant cast. It begged the question "Why doesn't Bahamut work this way with DWT, this is so much nicer?" Then a full minute (40 seconds, whatever) of filler, the one time in our 2 min rotation we had to hardcast our DoTs, then refresh once more with Tri-Disaster - and you WERE using those Egi Assaults for movement and to generate 4x more Ruin IVs, right? And not overcapping the ones you got right before going into FBT...you DID use all those before the FBT transition...riiiight? - before starting the whole thing over again.

But at that point, it was ridiculously cumbersome and...dated. As I think the Devs have said, the reason for the DoTs originally was because in ARR they hadn't worked out what Jobs were going to do, so they were a stopgap, not nuanced game design. And by ShB, it showed. You could split the rotation into parts by expansion. DWT was HW, Bahamut was SB, filler was ARR, FBT was ShB, and filler x2 was ARR...again. And the cadence and feeling was all over the place. DWT allowed full freedom of movement, but filler didn't outside of Egi Assaults and Ruin IV (granted, you did have a lot of those). Baha you didn't want to move at all if you could avoid it, and ALL the oGCDs went here that you could cram. The whole kit was all kinds of disjointed mechanics that didn't really relate to each other. "Why does using Egi Assault give me Ruin IV in the first place? Why does Bahamut rely on Ruin IVs? Why does Phoenix NOT?"

It was like a Frakenstein monster where both arms were ARR, the torso and part of a leg was SB, the other leg was HW, and the head was ShB. It was held together largely by duct tape, hope, and wishes, not congruent game design. The tooltips were an absolute disaster, and the rotation was something I don't think literally anyone every worked out on their own. Hours reading guides that were developed over weeks of theory crafting capped by days of personal time with training dummies were needed to really get the Job, and while it was passable to do decently with a bit less, it was still all over the place. There was nothing holding the Job together, and it didn't really make sense until you were deep into it. It reminded me of the prevalent saying shared with the class by my quantum mechanics professor in college, "If you think you understand Quantum Mechanics; you don't.", referencing the counter-intuitive nature of it and how it somewhat require willful suspension of disbelief to really contemplate how practical macro examples of it in the real world would really work.

Then came the EW Media tour.

I remember watching Larryzur's video on it and how absolutely excited he was as he exclaimed (as another SMN player since either ARR or 1.0) that he felt like a Summoner for the first time and he loved the Job and how it flowed, made sense, was united in theme, and had a coherent rotation - for once. Mr Happy, likewise, made similar comments working through the Media Tour build of the Job. People saw the visuals and were enthralled. We FINALLY get to ACTUALLY summon Ifrit, Garuda, and Titan - for real, not deformed chicken nuggets and the like! (I was, in fact, a fan of chicken nugget, but I agreed with the overall sentiment, and we really already lost what made Titan great going into ShB where the Devs got tired of trying to keep SMN pets alive with damage reductions so they weren't dying to raidwides and just made the invincible at that point, which also robbed us of Tank Titan anyway...RIP, nuggy buddy...)

When I first started leveling in EW launch day, I picked SCH, and I dabbled with SMN in Thavnair as I went. The tooltips were a bit much to go into at level 80 (instead of starting at Level 1 and building up as a brand new ACN would now), but as I started piecing together what was what, I realized how...intuitive it was. It just WORKED. It flowed. There was no jank, no weird things to track, no vestigial abilities from two MMOs ago that somehow were still in the Job. It was...fun. Titan's movement, Ifrit's BLM-lite cast times. Then you get the full Primals and their Astral Flows at 90 and OH MY GOD was it FUN to play.

For the first time since running Crystal Tower at level 50, I actually ENJOYED SMN, not merely tolerated it. The Job I'd taken as my DPS for the better part of a decade was no longer an abysmal chore, it was ENJOYABLE. It actually delivered on the promise of the Job's class fantasy. It had some neat stuff on the side mechanically, but it always had those (Devotion party buff, Raise), but now it was also FUN. No annoying DoTs, no weird "eidolon at home" egis. It was a SUMMONER and it was FUN to play.

...though I did have to /petsize all small.

So, lots of words to answer your question with an emphatic: Yes!

Yes, I play SMN because I enjoy its aesthetics, the sound of its abilities (Titan's rock hand/the ground slamming on the enemy when my character slams his book shut...ooooh, I can FEEL that! AND I LOVE IT!!!), I love how intuitive and slick and smooth it plays, and I very much do like the utility it provides; nothing's worse than being a DPS in a 4 man dungeon, seeing the healer go down, everyone's dying slowly, we're going to wipe (because leveling dungeon so not everyone is a god), and there's literally nothing I can do but push my buttons harder and hope for the best (this is, specifically, why I never play a DPS that isn't RDM or SMN anymore other than just leveling Jobs grudgingly for quests/story and achievements; because I can't stand not being able to do SOMETHING).

or do you play it for a minuscle amount of considerations I have mentioned and mostly because its easy, because you know you will do top dps with a minimum of skill in comparison to other jobs that take at least 2x the effort to be comparable to in damage/utility? If your answer is the latter, then you will drop Summoner in the drop of a hat when another Job pops up that is the new "easy mode".

I'm not a competitive person. I don't care about doing "top dps" and don't run parsers. This is probably why I main healer and also tanks; I like supporting others, not rubbing their noses on my big numbers. I care about a Job FEELING good to play, being intuitive and understandable to work out, that brings something to the team, and that is fun. That's why I like it. But I also like the aesthetics, the rotation actually being logical and sensible (unlike many other Jobs in the game). I believe if you pretty much have to resort to theorycrafter Discords to figure out the optimal or near optimal way to play a Job, the Job is badly designed.

PERSONALLY, I think hard/complex Jobs are fine and should exist. Because I recognize some people like those, and I want them to exist so those people can be happy with them.

...but I also think the other end of the spectrum should be served as well. In the same 6.0 that they added SMN as a "omg this actually makes sense" Job, they made RDM, which had been pretty fun to play, into kind of a weird optimization fiasco. I think unintentionally, but it just got...weird somehow. Trying to go triple melee into a burst is just offputting, and yet another spell on the end of the combo - I get what they were going for, but making both the Manafication and Resolution change in the same expansion was kind of meh, and cutting the BL/WH Mana costs had the downside of making Enchnated Reprise from a Ruin 2-like tool into something to remove from your bars, removing a bit of fun from the Job in the process. In the end, I still like it overall, but it's like they tinkered with perfection and made it worse and less fun somehow. They made SMN easier, but bumped RDM up to the medium tier.

.

I don't regard you with negativity. I believe we can be mature people who understand each other, may still disagree, but can do so respectfully.

I very much wish old SMN's playstyle was still in the game - it's one reason I REALLY hope (though doubt, but still hope) that the Caster they're adding is Green Mage and a complex DoT mage akin to old SMN - because I do know some people liked it.

But I very much ALSO like new SMN and am glad it is in the game, though I honestly feel they could have added it as a new Job or taken the old SMN and made a second Job out of it (since all the work was already done).

I think people that hate new SMN should recognize that other people do genuinely like it. Not because they want to top dps, not because they're lazy, not because they weren't really SMN players before, not because they're braindead, etc etc insertotherinsults. But because it's a well put together and well designed Job and people genuinely enjoy it.

As a playerbase, people have become really disjointed on this stuff, but everyone should really take a step back and realize "Sometimes other people like things that I do not, not for negative reasons I should insult them over, but because they just have different preferences". If we could set aside the insults, I think we could have far more meaningful discussions. We could also end up with more Jobs that more people enjoy and live/play together in some level of harmony, too. There's no reason for everyone to be at odds or in a zero-sum world.

[RokkuEkkusu]

The statistics of SMN are complicated.

On top of being known for its really low barrier of entry, it's also the only 2-for-1 job in the game with SCH, so it ends up being widely leveled/boosted due to the perceived 'value'. Other 'Easy' jobs see this as well to a lesser extent, as when many players are looking to pick up a single job in a category, they will often pick the easiest one.

It's also popular in raids because in a high-end environment it's tended to be extremely performant in damage, survivability, mobility and party utility. With the lowest skillgap, you can get high value out of the job with very little effort, compared to say week 1 progging on BLM.

Notice though, none of these things are really tied to how 'fun' or 'loved' the job is. I know a lot of people who run SMN during Ultimate and week 1 savage prog, and none of them actually identify as a 'SMN main' even though its the job they play the most, which is pretty telling.

The Devs really doubled down on SMN's reputation as the caster with Mobility since the beginning of Endwalker. Lots on instant spells with a few casts here and there. But pretty much very similar to a physical ranged for the most part.

[TheRealMadruck]

Snip

Believe me I say that I read your entire post and want to thank you for your considerate reply. Be well!

[Jeeqbit]

I don't like the direction they took Summoner what so ever. I enjoyed Summoner being a "dot" job as it made it unique amoung all the other casters in comparison to what we have today.

I do understand that this potentially creates room for a new DoT job to replace it. SE was just torn between it summoning things and it being about DoTs so they had to choose one, and the choice was obvious. It's a summoner and needs to summon things.

I think they should either create a new job that fills the role that Summoner once did, or they can put that focus into Bard which is still a DoT job.

It took aspects of previous Summoners in past games and mixed into a job that used spells that were historically key to past FF games. Miasma, Bio...these Dot spells have been a cornerstone to FF history. Yet they are gone with only SCH or healers in general having a Job variation of them. I believe that SE could have kept some aspects of what made Summoner unique while including the newer aspects they added. I.E., they could have kept the dots, Ifrit Phase could have had its dot that it had from the original design, then Garuda had Miasma and Titan had Bio(alot of fantasy games have earth type spells/abilities tied to poison/disease type spells). But these are merely my thoughts.

I didn't really know that about all the poison spells.

I ask you...do you play Summoner because you enjoy its aesthetics, the sound of its abilities, the style of how it plays, the utility it provides...or do you play it for a minuscle amount of considerations I have mentioned and mostly because its easy

A combination of it being a real summoner rather than using egis and it being easy. The way it was before put me off in both areas, especially with the abundance of alternatives.

The new summons made me want to try it. I had it up early because of Scholar's instant queues and to do the role quests, and actually playing it clicked with me to a point I was just switching to it for any DPS purposes.

Now if what I was seeing when I was doing that rotation were these little baby summons I might not have stuck with it.

I don't main the DPS role, so if it were just really complicated to play, there are other jobs that are not so they might become easier picks for tasks like farming FATEs or helping people clear normal duties.

[Mikey_R]

I don't think I have seen anyone really discuss something that I have recently been thinking about and that is the weird way in which casters are viewed in terms of progression.

Why is it that casters are the only role that has a sort of progression when...progressing? You start as RDM then swap to SMN/BLM to clear. Now, don't take this as RDM has mass res etc. I am saying, why do casters have this when no other role does? Why is there not a progression melee, or a progression healer etc?

However, we also have to consider, was the caster role even designed to be like this, or is this just the playerbase making it (I suspect the latter)? I suspect it is more of a player made hierarchy than an intentionally designed one, so how would players feel if RDM's res capabilities were diminished (and DPS adjusted) so that it fit more in line with SMN? Would this mean more people play the job that want for the clear? Would people be upset that, because of the more limited res options, it will make progression harder? Would that even be an issue?

I would make a bold claim that limiting RDM's res potential would see an uptick in the number of players clearing fights with it and it would better reflect (though not perfectly) the number of people using RDM as a favourite job as you don't lose anything from using it.

[Teno]

People love summoner because it's that typical FF job with rich history and badass spells/summons. It's the most faithful to the series it's ever been, which both summons that are fancy looking spells, and actual summons in the form of Bahamut/Phoenix.
Besides, considering how mindless the casual content is, spamming fancy skills with a bare gameplay is enough for most. In harder content that means a more chill experience that focuses on the encounter, which is the crux of this game anyway (ie, gameplay is absent).

But dig deeper and people will have a very different opinion.

[AmiableApkallu]

Bottomline, FF14 needs a harder to play Summoner.

So, I keep thinking back on this description of Reaper (emphasis mine):

Reaper can be played fluidly as a priority system or rigidly with planned burst windows allowing the job to have a low barrier of entry but have a very high skill expression ceiling.

My two cents, that bolded part should apply to every job in the game. It's okay if there's an "easy" way to play a job. It's okay if, say, 10% effort gets you 90% damage potential. If someone wants to choose a job based on its aesthetic and fantasy, they should be able to do so without worrying that they'll have to study twelve different guides in order to barely scrape by.

On the flip side, having chosen a job based on its aesthetic or fantasy, if someone wants to become an expert — if they want to eek out a bit more damage in a fight — the job should provide them the room and opportunity to do so.

[Atelier-Bagur]

I take full blame for derailing this thread into a Summoner complaint one

[Equitable_Remedy]

Not to be too inflammatory but I'm going to say it anyway, there are a lot of people who really don't care about the success or longevity of this game and care more about being able to laude over others their skill and proficiency. They want a game that routinely washes out or alienates players with intentionally difficult and obscure mechanics and rotations so that they can say how much better they are than them for having learned them.

This is 100% correct - I just didn't want to say it so directly

[Ririta]

I do understand that this potentially creates room for a new DoT job to replace it. SE was just torn between it summoning things and it being about DoTs so they had to choose one, and the choice was obvious. It's a summoner and needs to summon things.

I think they should either create a new job that fills the role that Summoner once did, or they can put that focus into Bard which is still a DoT job.

Meh... speaking as an ex-summoner fan, a knock-off would never tickle my brainrot like the og summoner because it was never just the DOTs.