Quote Originally Posted by Kirith View Post
Yes, the FFXI SMN sucked in its own way and lacked balance, yet this thread proves how many truly loved the class just because it was made with the objective of being appealing first and functional second. Can you imagine people remembering FFXIV's summoner fondly in over 10 years from now, wishing they could summon their Egis again and step into battle? Of course not, because they're small, ugly, forgettable. (Despite being fairly functional!)
So you'd rather have a gimped class with low functionality barring a specific circumstance (in the case of FFXI, cheesing boss encounters with super high damage/insta-kill moves) over a job that works and is well-designed but is "less pretty". I figured the summoners that endured the ridicule of being /WHM for close to 5 years until XI's devs started throwing scraps at the job would have learned what happens when you throw design and mechanics to the wind.

As far as the design perspective, niche gameplay severely limits your choices in content, specially when the bulk of gameplay is dungeons, raids and instanced battles. You can't have situations where you're stacking DRGs or stacking BLMs, or where you want two wars and sit anyone that likes playing PLD. It was that sort of thing that killed endgame for me in FFXI (between niche design, the existence of gearswaps, and Utsusemi being mandatory in close to everything that was "hard"). FFXI is a textbook example of how to not balance classes in a game, and why you should create parity in performance. The 14 jobs that are not the "ace" jobs are effectively wastes of code and space in-game, and that's not something I wish to see in this game.

You may berate them for taking inspiration from modern MMORPGs, but thanks to that I'm enjoying ARR way more than I did FFXI.