By pity Square Enix, redesign Garuda-Egi

[Tilgung]

LOL! I found this:

And completely irrelevant. Summoner in XIV never claimed to be the Summoners from the rest of the series. Summoners from the rest of the series meaning: White Mages/Black Mages with worthless espers/eidolons/aeons/summons/guardian forces tacked on for story purposes.

VII: Knights of the Round is the only viable Summon.

VII: GFs exist for junction. Outclassed by everything else.

XII: You use the very first one you obtain once to open a door.

XIII: Vanille Death Trick for early Trapezohedrons.

III, V and Tactics are the only outliers where summoning is the primary focus of the summoner character, but summoners aren't considered good jobs in any of those games.

[RyuRoots]

And completely irrelevant. Summoner in XIV never claimed to be the Summoners from the rest of the series. Summoners from the rest of the series meaning: White Mages/Black Mages with worthless espers/eidolons/aeons/summons/guardian forces tacked on for story purposes.

VII: Knights of the Round is the only viable Summon.

VII: GFs exist for junction. Outclassed by everything else.

XII: You use the very first one you obtain once to open a door.

XIII: Vanille Death Trick for early Trapezohedrons.

III, V and Tactics are the only outliers where summoning is the primary focus of the summoner character, but summoners aren't considered good jobs in any of those games.

This is so bafflingly wrong. There are many great summons in FFVII, most of which don't take multiple minutes of cast time. The ONLY context in which Knights of the Round is the "only viable" one is the Weapon superbosses. GFs do exist mostly for junctioning, but many are very useful in battle. I like how you ignored FFX and FFIV and entirely since it's a big deal both narratively and gameplay-wise for Yuna and Rydia.

[Tilgung]

This is so bafflingly wrong. There are many great summons in FFVII, most of which don't take multiple minutes of cast time. The ONLY context in which Knights of the Round is the "only viable" one is the Weapon superbosses. GFs do exist mostly for junctioning, but many are very useful in battle. I like how you ignored FFX and FFIV and entirely since it's a big deal both narratively and gameplay-wise for Yuna and Rydia.

I already addressed story purposes. I like how you ignored that.

-Yuna does as much damage with Holy as Aeons tend to do. Not to mention the advantage of having the other characters around. And frankly, given how the game is set up, she can hit for 99,999 damage with normal attacks if you take the time to develop your characters like that.
-Rydia's Black magic is as strong and less MP/ATB intensive than her summons.
-Summon materia makes your characters weaker, and barely outdamage physical attacks early on. Magic + All materia combinations puts out similar AoE damage without as hard of a hit to your characters HP AND are available much earlier than the summons. You can sorta make a case for the Bahamut materias, but they're one shot burst damage. The only reason Knight's of the Round is viable is because it does more damage than Omnislash, allowing Mimic shenanigans to happen.
-If you know how to Junction, actually using GFs becomes a waste of time. Aura -> Limit Spam is vastly superior to any summon in the game. And it's entirely possible to do this before Disc One ends.

[Warlyx]

dont forget FFXV summons LOL

[Akira_Tenshi]

They all look rubbish. They spoke of a glamour system for egi's but I doubt it will ever happen.

[Tilgung]

The early game Death Trick involves using an eidolon to knock an Adamantoise down, debuffing the crap out of it and then spamming Death and hope for RNGesus to be with you.

Death can only be used if Vanille is the party leader. Only the party leader can summon. As such, Hecatoncheir is definitely used in the Death Trick.

[Dyvid]

The reality of design is simple. Egi's can't block the view of other players and they can't demean the original primals. Shrinking Garuda down does make her look laughable and not threatening. Having them the size of FFXI Avatar would block players view and might miss damage markers and such.

Having said that Garuda's Egi does need work. I would love to see players re-imagining of the Egi's using the two guidelines that I posted above.

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

Oh god. That's just obnoxiously huge. I wouldn't want a summoner around at all in a raid.

"Why didn't you move out of that AoE?"

"I didn't even see it because the summoner's giant-ass robot was humping my leg."

Forget raids, I wouldn't want to deal with them in ANY content, open world or instanced. I guess it'd be a good job to afk in housing... and do absolutely nothing else.

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

FFX and FFIV.

The summons in 7 were viable, but they weren't better than using regular magic to more quickly and efficiently take down enemies. Many of the summons in 7, 8, and especially 10 are hardly better than just spamming heavy thrust in this game. 10's summons, while important from a narrative perspective, were significantly more annoying to deal with outside of the special "summon" battles Yuna had.