Developers Poor Attitude to Summoner

[Len]

I'm not sure what the OPs intent was, but I don't think its entirely that they hate this iteration.

The intent of this thread was to highlight the fact that often the concerns of Summoners are often met with apathy, or left entirely unaddressed. Here we are in Stormblood with a mighty stack of issues piled high and the only thing that's been relayed to us so far is that they're working to resolve Demi-Bahamut causing visibility issues.

It just doesn't bode well for Summoner that the director of this game, who has enough pull with the battle system designers to keep esuna in the game, approaches Summoner with a sense of disdain.

[DaikiKiyoshi]

To be honest if I was in Yoshida's position, with the amount of back and forth whining that happens, I'd be tempted to ignore requests for certain jobs if not flat out make them worse just to piss people off.

That said I do think that the current state summoner is in is just stupid. At the very least give sustain back.

[Lycieus]

I am increasingly convinced that none of the devs play SMN. I have heard nothing good about 4.x summoner and it's so disappointing! 3.x Summoner was my darling, my favorite job! I did everything as that job and now it's not even fun to play. I expected to have to learn a few new tricks, but they made it so I need to unlearn everything and start over. But hey, Bahamut right?!

Clearly, none of the devs play the game at all. Or any other MMO for that matter. Their balance choices and a slew of other design decisions would never occur if they did.

[Wolf_Gang]

They should just delete the SMN job and give everyone level potions.

I mean this class single handedly destroyed the class/job system. It's clear from it's own inception that the devs don't really know where they want to go with it. Lock the job and start over from scratch.

[loaded-god-complex]

To be honest if I was in Yoshida's position, with the amount of back and forth whining that happens, I'd be tempted to ignore requests for certain jobs if not flat out make them worse just to piss people off.

That's what Yoshida would do if he was a child. But he is a developer for a commercial game in a competitive MMO environment.

[DaikiKiyoshi]

That's what Yoshida would do if he was a child. But he is a developer for a commercial game in a competitive MMO environment.

And? The customer is not always right. There are times when they need to be told "Either do it our way or get lost."

[JunseiKei]

I'm not sure what the OPs intent was, but I don't think its entirely that they hate this iteration. It seems more like they are questioning why certain changes are made and not being made to line up with what a SMN should do and what this version is "promising" or "missing". We should have more summons, yes, since the 3 we've had for 4+ years is kinda insulting. Each summon should be viable, but they are not, Titan being the main issue,and we need a heal for our pet more so than oursleves, so the answer to the Physick question was a little insulting, since it basically said "if you want a DPS who can heal play RDM". There are many people who will go ham over the whole, "It's not a traditional SMN" which doesn't exist. But there are an equal amount of people who love the job, me included, and just want to see the issues it has fixed.

Asking for summons is fine, sure, and I do think summoners being able to heal their own pet should be a thing. Unless, summoners being able to extremely effectively tank things that weren't supposed to be tankable with egis were far too easy.

I wonder if this was a reason why sustain was removed?

The question would have been better if it asked if Physic could have been changed back to Sustain for summoner. Better yet, the question as to why Sustain was removed while Physic was kept to be scaled off of MND would have been a better question yet. It would have allowed the developer to divulge into why a decision was made. Instead, the question asked to be given the same kit as another job. Honestly, it's a case of people asking the wrong thing here.

That isn't what people want. Players want the jobs to be competitive. Right now RDM completely outclasses SMN in every aspect. There is no reason to bring a SMN over a RDM in a raid. For example, healers want it so that they aren't forced in to switching to AST if they wanted to raid or farm because (understandably) lots of groups only wanted AST because AST could do everything WHM could on top of bringing the best utility in the game.

Here's another example. Discord has gotten so popular because it does everything that older chat clients did and more. It outclasses them in every aspect. I haven't even heard of clients like vent or teamspeak mentioned in ages. They could've stepped up their game or get snuffed out. They got snuffed out. Same thing with Netflix and blockbuster. It's the same thing that will happen if SMN doesn't get addressed. RDM is the netflix and SMN is blockbuster that's still trying to keep up. Sadly, it seems like Yoshi P is perfectly okay with SMN getting snuffed out.

RDM brings better DPS along with far greater Utility than SMN ever has. You don't see that as a problem?

Comparing programs to practical applications of a job is like comparing apples to oranges.

What people want doesn't mean it's right; better phrased, what people want doesn't mean it's balanced.

I keep hearing the argument that SMN is outclassed by RDM. If you want to actually get someone's attention to the matter, it's best to state the hows. So, how does RDM outclass SMN? The main reason, rather, the only reason I've been hearing, is RDM is easier to play. Okay; RDM has a low skill ceiling. SAM also has a low skill ceiling and deal ridiculous damage, but I've mostly only see MNKs complain about it because they feel they didn't get enough. For some reason, NIN and DRG aren't threatened by SAM. Why? Surely, this is the same situation? Some would say the utility separates them. At the same time, nothing is stopping groups from bringing one melee and two (or even three) casters. Heck, nothing is stopping people from bringing all melee, too.

RDM deals more damage? Maybe, maybe not. Unfortunately, our "only source" for DPS numbers is FFLogs, which is riddled with number bloating. You'll never gain any accurate numbers for what each job can do on its own. At the same time, people claim dummy parses mean nothing.

My take on the situation has been this thus far:
- RDM can raise pretty much whenever. Yeah, it can, but if you have to raise more than what your healers can handle, chances are, you're going to hit enrage, making this "utility" ultimately useless. Its not a RDM's job to raise unless there's a chance you can still clear and both healers are dead. This is just as true with SMN.
- RDM has better utility (?). I guess Embolden (120s) is a good utility? Devotion (90s), Contagion (akin to 2.0-3.x Foe Requiem)(60s), and Radiant Shield (60s) are also utilities and pretty attractive. BLM brings infinite MP and is a great MP battery for that reason while SMN and RDM both are pretty selfish in the MP department.
- RDM can can heal and it's a pretty good amount. This makes me think people expect a DPS to actually stop DPSing and do the healer's job. Under no circumstances should this ever become a necessity in actual group content. This is a means for solo content and the same reason healers have DPS skills. Unless you want them to be forced into parties to heal only and leech EXP (please no), even in open world content. If SE removed Vercure, I'd say good riddance.
- RDM has more mobility than SMN. No, not really. Once a SMN's DoTs are up, they can move around unless they need to use a casted Ruin III/IV. Ruin and Ruin II have the same potency, so it's not like they have a DPS loss then. RDM does need to sit and cast every other spell, otherwise they suffer a loss. While RDM has more mobility than BLM for sure, combined with Tri-Disaster, Ruin II and the nature of DoTs and pet, they have greater mobility than RDM for quite a bit. (Yes, I'm aware Ruin Mastery effects Ruin and Ruin III, however, it is still only a 15% chance- same as my freecure procs on WHM.)

[Tsukino]

The main problem here is that everything everyone talks about here is lost in translation. Not just from English to Japanese and back, though that is part of it, but more because the questions that get asked are not what people are actually getting at.

I don't think there are very many Summoner players out there at all who care about Physick - in fact I think a lot would agree that we want to be good damage dealers and not healers or jacks of all trades like Red Mage. Unfortunately, because we share some utility with them, and they're two of only three magical damage jobs, of course Physick and Vercure come up in the discussion of the larger issues of SMN being competitive with RDM and other jobs. More unofortunately, the only question that seems to have been taken from that and over to being asked in the Live Letter is "can Physick use INT like Vercure does?" Something that doesn't solve the problem, hardly anyone wants, and of course Yoshida doesn't agree with because Summoner isn't about curing people.

It doesn't look like there's some big consipiracy or lack of care for the job, it's just that the concerns raised by people here are not being conveyed properly to the development team or to the man in charge.

[Catwho]

The question would have been better if it asked if Physic could have been changed back to Sustain for summoner.

That'd solve all the problems at once, wouldn't it? Physick on SMN is so weak as to be useless. Sustain was removed because of ability bloat. Replace SMN's Physick with Sustain at level 30 when the job is unlocked. Boom, SMN's useless heal is removed, replaced with very useful pet regen, and no ability bloat. (Sorry SCH, but at least the fairies default to self curing in a pinch.)

[JunseiKei]

It doesn't look like there's some big consipiracy or lack of care for the job, it's just that the concerns raised by people here are not being conveyed properly to the development team or to the man in charge.

That is probably a huge culprit of the situation. I do recall a question at a Live Letter to something along the lines of "can we wear other races' underwear?" The person was asking about the hempen set that changes according to what race wears it and making it available to every race instead. I think it got translated to the underwear that is stuck on the model when you remove all clothing as Yoshida mentioned that this layer is layer 0 and cannot be changed easily because it has skin. Something like that. For what the person was asking, the answer he gave really made no sense.

Unless he was trying to say that the hempen set was tailored to each individual model and would need to go in and make a separate set for each one. Either way, the question and/or answer conveyed was confusing and probably made no sense for anyone who has no clue how things like clothing is made on these games.