How Would You Do... Summoner?

[Shurrikhan]

"Don't make these changes because a significant part of the job doesn't function properly as it is." What sort of reasoning is that?

The smart kind....

....where you don't end up hosing the Job up with good intentions... because you didn't think things through.

OP here,

Not trying to appear authoritarian or anything, but just to clarify, let me restate the premise for the thread: if you were to have made the Summoner, e.g. before there was a ever an implementation of the XIV 2.0 Summoner, or revised it for 3.0, how would you have done it?

Clunky systems are definitely a concern worth mentioning, but their existence does not preclude later mechanics built upon them, so long as it's feasible that those systems could still be revised.

I'm still working on my own example, which has unfortunately bloated into multiple pages worth of documentation... I'll finish it up and then try to trim it down, or at least break it into several sections of hide-able text.

:: To clarify further for you, Silver:

it is a creative venture thread, not one aimed specifically at pragmatics. Nor am I sealing off input from every person who does not consider themselves a SMN "main". Please do not harass other for using the thread as intended, even if you feel that they have been shortsighted or have skipped crucial details; these things can be a team effort... And in the end, the job doesn't belong to its mains, though I do agree that it should largely favor their opinions as those already invested. But, you have 4 other threads in your recent post history in which to continue letting the world know that you ARE a Summoner MAIN. I'm trying to get us to look at the systems that can best aid attraction to others who have put off the job (often due to these exact issues) with the least cost of attractiveness to those already invested, as in your post #20.

:: This thread is not "the enemy". It does not intend to replace your current implementation of Summoner; rather, it's using the comparison between what was made and what might have been to gather insights into design generally, for instance, that using persistent AI units (e.g. Summoner pets) who must check whether they are in fact summoned, their position, the mob's position, their spell cooldown, and then recheck every instance of position and relative position as they chase a mob because there's no predictive movement nor any elastic or otherwise extended ability range to cover for issue, is probably a bad idea, and that while pet swapping might sound thematically interesting, spending 6 seconds to do so for little to no advantage is not. From these targets we could then move towards actual solutions for either the mechanical systems or ability/spell arsenals of something like Summoner to make it more effective, more deeply interesting, and more broadly attractive.