(Extremely Gimped Iconic Summon) that is EGIS

[Ryel]

whaat SCH and SMN too alike?? are we playing the same game?

Actually he's entirely correct.

On paper the differences between SCH and SMN are very minor:

A difference in main stat reliance (INT vs MND), 4 Active job abilities one of which gets limited use (Tri-disaster) and another that is a pet steroid (Spur), and (for now) 3 different "pets" Ifrit/Titan/Gaurda-Egi vs Eos/Selene.

Those factors considered there isn't much setting Scholar and Summoner apart even though by definition they are two very different jobs because they are based out of the same class. Design wise this means that although they perform two very different roles in party they need to be balanced off of each other due to sharing ACN as their base, which is a major issue.

Every other job is distinctly unique from each other because they share nothing unless it's cross class-able, but SMN and SCH are tethered in a way that has so far proved nothing but detrimental to the freedom of growth of the identities and functions of both jobs.

I would argue even using the same weapon type (Grimoire) makes the two Jobs too similar to each other in this case.

PLD is nothing like WAR, just like MNK, DRG, and BRD share nothing with each other.

The differences between SMN and SCH should be like comparing SCH to MNK or DRG, as in they should be nothing alike.

This is something Yoshida himself has admitted and that they plan to address when they revisit the mechanics of the class/job system in 3.0+

[Fyrebrand]

Maybe if Summoners were designed differently, there could have been a way to represent the primals more closely to their true forms. For example, if summoning were more like the older FF games, you might call in a primal to appear, do a quick attack, then vanish -- it would be essentially just a flashy spell animation. But, they decided to make Summoner a pet class, where the representations of the primals were persistent and followed you around. That comes with significant complications and restrictions, not the least of which is the strain on the servers and players' framerates if every player potentially has a huge, full-size monster stomping around behind them. Have fun navigating the markets when there are 50 Ifrits crowding the place and your game chugs along at 5 frames per second.

Egis just work better from a "common sense" perspective, too. Like, there is only one Ifrit, one Titan, and one Garuda. It would not make any sense to ever see more than one of them summoned at a time.

Honestly, these are the compromises that come with taking something that was designed for an offline, single-player game, and trying to adapt it for a persistent online world with unlimited player characters. Sure, in traditional FF games, summoning is some of the flashiest, coolest, most elaborate and powerful stuff in the game, often outshining everything else. It comes with huge monsters and dramatic scenes of mass devastation. But in FFXIV, it is just one of many different classes/jobs and needs to be balanced accordingly.

[Roris]

I get that they wanted to avoid heavy graphical stuff that would cause too much lag especially on the PS3, but they could have easily made a more detailed model that only displays for you on your client and then made every other summon look like the egi version. I guess that was too hard when the game already supports LOD and it's not entirely different in principle, but you never know with SE. The lore is just there to justify a shortcoming, like how people were asking for an option to remove male Miqote face markings during beta and instead of addressing it, they simply wrote some quick lore about it and left it as is.

[Venos]

Aesthetics should take a backseat to lore. That's what he said. That's what you misread.

I didn't misread a thing, my point still stands. Keep it cute.

[AdamFyi]

I think the egis are fine lore-wise, mechanics-wise, and aesthetics-wise. If they were any bigger, I and a bunch of others would be distracted in duties and fights.

I think they should replace all the egi with ladybugs! Ladybugs are the far superior race in this game and they are under represented. >:v

Praise be our lord and savior, Lady Skogs Fru! \o/

[Zaero]

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrage!

Also, how dare SE not give me the option to start an in-game KISS tribute band!
I'm going to unsub, resub, then unsub again just to teach them a lesson.

Yeah! We NEED TO ROCK AND ROLL ALL NITE, AND PARTY EVERY DAY! Kiss or riot!

(for real though, you just made my morning)

[LineageRazor]

To the OP:

You win 1 Internets for your creative acronym, and 1 additional Internets for presenting a new idea involving summoning Beastmen rather than Primals (though, personally, I think this would cause more of an outcry among Summoners than the Egis do).

Unfortunately, you lose at least five Internets for creating a new thread for a topic that has been beaten to death again and again, so you're still in the red!

[Defteros]

SE did announced that not only can you captured but also Summon a full Primal.

WTF when.
how.
why.
are you confusing Pokemon with FFXIV?

[Venos]

Who knew.

Not you, that's for sure. I hope you can do better than that, very weak. Just call me a name or something as if you know and be done with it. If you're going to start a argument please come with some better material.

[Exstal]

You should come up with the correlation between aesthetics and gameplay then relate it back to your very first comment. All egis could be coloured cubes and it wouldn't change how they function at all.

Unless you actually meant lore should take a backseat to gameplay and you weren't referred to the egis. Then you would be correct.