Summon size have you down? why not have it your way?

[Hoshikogi]

You are advocating for a complete re-design of the class after launch. That simply won't happen for a wide range of reasons, mainly that people have been playing the existing class and have existing gear tuned to the existing class. You cannot wipe out every summoner's progress in order to replace the class with something else. Not to mention the time and resources necessary for that kind of re-design would destroy the 'new minor version every 3 months' plan they are trying to hold to.

It is simply not feasible.

Rapid, progressive class/job/profession changes have occurred throughout MMO history; this game and their original (FFXI) is no exception. If the developers feel that their original designs are terribly flawed or too many players find issues with them, change can and usually will occur.

Also gear in this game is very generic; thus, if they do make changes to the class, gear would have little impact and even if it did, SE would make sure to modify at least the job gear to match the necessities of that particular job. Even if you craft your own accessories and meld them, there's a good chance that each piece will contain near maximized Crit/Det/spell speed/accuracy (I craft and meld many HQ-i70 accessories often for myself and friends/LS/FC so I can verify this information).

[Hoshikogi]

But let us not forget the intent of this post. It's purpose was not for a progressive change of the functionality of summons, but simply asking for a feature in the settings that allow the viewer a choice of displaying the summons as they are (compact), slightly larger scale (to match Tristan's Egi size), or to hide summons all together on screen. Remember that change can occur, but only at reasonable steps at a time.

[MangoSea]

Love the idea OP. It seems a fair way for those of us from FFXI to get a small taste of what we used to have. I understand that SE will never re-design the Egi's. It would cost time, money, and resources that they can get away without spending at all. I support your idea, and you have earned a like from me

[Hoshikogi]

Love the idea OP. It seems a fair way for those of us from FFXI to get a small taste of what we used to have. I understand that SE will never re-design the Egi's. It would cost time, money, and resources that they can get away without spending at all. I support your idea, and you have earned a like from me

As Yoshi-P showed us back in 1.0, the resizing of NPC's is as easy as using a built-in scaling device within the graphic engine's tools. And since they have a better understanding of 2.0's relatively new engine inner-workings (since they hand crafted it themselves this time), such a task should be even more simple than before.

[ZethRyl]

TLDR; the thing that is keeping me from leveling a summoner isn't the size, it's that they are one solid colour. I don't know if this has been mentioned at all but if they could at least give them a little bit of a colour variance it would be a huge plus for me; as they are right now it just looks like someone used an auto-fill on all of them. I know they said they didn't want to change the appearance but seriously, am I the only one bugged by this? If so I will stop talking.

[ZethRyl]

Hmm. I may get flame bombed for this... But a thought occurred to me. What if, when you summoned your egi, YOU became the summon and your PC went on passive and followed the summon around? That could potentially solve the size and immersion problem, right? Summons could be on a cool down system so that the spells you have as a player wouldn't be wasted. That could also be linked with the unique Limit Break comment I read in here that could be used while that summon was active, but would use the party's Limit Break and end the summon. I know this is almost 100% unlikely, but I thought it would be a nice idea.

[Pentacus]

Hmm. I may get flame bombed for this... But a thought occurred to me. What if, when you summoned your egi, YOU became the summon and your PC went on passive and followed the summon around? That could potentially solve the size and immersion problem, right? Summons could be on a cool down system so that the spells you have as a player wouldn't be wasted. That could also be linked with the unique Limit Break comment I read in here that could be used while that summon was active, but would use the party's Limit Break and end the summon. I know this is almost 100% unlikely, but I thought it would be a nice idea.

that would be a nice idea actually. if the summoner became a healing pet like eos/selene (for abilities, they could get Physick, Sustain, Rouse, and Spur), but focused only on you, whilst you gained abilities based on what summon you currently are (and the regular abilities for when you're just the summoner), then it would be a VERY interesting class to play (especially since you'd have to make sure your "pet" stayed alive, you can be resummoned, "You" can't :P). of course then people would cry about how SMN's can fill any role they want and demand summoners get nerfed because of that (which is a stupid argument since they can just go and level the class they want, or hell, even SMN)

[Yukagama]

I agree, the "summoner" in FFXIV is a total disgrace compared to what summoners have always been in the FF franchise. I'm surprised they would do such a sloppy and lazy job with one of their more iconic classes.

What Summoner SHOULD have been if they were true to the FF brand:

-Epic pet appearance
-Combat is more about the pet than the summoner
-Their own identity including limit breaks and playstyle. It's ok to diverge a little bit from being a pure dps class. Buffs can contribute to dps in a meaningful way as well.

that's how it should had been but oh well.

[pandabearcat]

Well just like before, noone can really agree on their vision for the summoner.

But I had a question, is this supposed to be visible to everyone, or just the summoner?

Just visible to the summoner seems okay, but I don't want to have to yell at (or be yelled at) if someone doesn't like my huge summon or something.

[Hoshikogi]

Well just like before, noone can really agree on their vision for the summoner.

But I had a question, is this supposed to be visible to everyone, or just the summoner?

Just visible to the summoner seems okay, but I don't want to have to yell at (or be yelled at) if someone doesn't like my huge summon or something.

I assume you are referring to option 3: ability to hide all summons on screen. If a summoner is in you're party with their Egi out, each person within and outside the party would have the choice on how the Egi summon appears (or doesn't appear) on their own individual screen. The summoner may choose to display their summon on their screen at full scale (the same way that a BLM or WHM would probably choose to "Show All" for magic spells); whereas, you and other party members could choose to hide the summon so that it does not appear at all on your screen.

For better illustration, ill provide an example:
Three players form a party for a difficult fate Boss: 1) Summoner, 2) White Mage, and 3) Bard.

1. The summoner decides to choose option "Full Scale" for their Egi (Their reasoning: to better view the placement of their summon as well as the desire for the aesthetic appeal of the largest setting for their Summoned Egi)

2. The White Mage chooses the option "Compact" for all Egi (Their reasoning: to reduce the space in which the summon occupies their view of surrounding monster, but still present in order to click the summon for healing if needed (Titan-Egi is tanking)

3. The Bard chooses the option "Hidden" for all Egi (Their reasoning: there's various key monsters (i.e. Healers/strong AoE) that need to be dispatched quickly and the use of direct targeting is most desirable over cycle targeting. Hiding the Egi makes this task easier.)