Idea: Add summmoner primals as skills

[SenorPatty]

And if you ask the thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of SMN players how they feel about SMN I'm sure they'll say it's awesome.

You "make SMN an actual SMN" people never stop. Are never pleased. SMN is GREAT right now and if you don't like it don't play it.

You are right about people enjoying the gameplay aspect of the SMN overall. But if you ask them about the aesthetics and/concept of the SMN, you'll get mixed results, mostly leaning into dislike. Its a sentiment I find people express a lot whenever the SMN discussion pops up. I've seen a lot of responses that pretty much share this vein "its a great job but it feels like it plays like X class. Look at our egis. Ifrit became the new Garuda. Titan still does not see light of day unless your leveling it and/or a situation arises that bringing it out is better than nothing. Eikons keep coming out in future patches but we still are stuck with our basic three. Our egi glamour consists of differently colored carbuncles. Very cute but not diverse.

The core components of the job are enjoyable, even moreso now in SB and a lot of people enjoy it. If it was labeled a different job, people would still enjoy it. However the same people who enjoy it also wish that the SMN job had more recognizable identity in its gameplay and thus why every now and then, you see a thread about "I wish SMN was more...SMN".

Again, I can't help but stress this: We don't hate how it plays. We just wish it had more SMN...factors. Maybe sometimes we go the wrong way about expressing how we want it but we don't actually hate the current job.

[Magic-Mal]

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SMN is SMN. It doesn't need a new name. Changing SMN to fit your memories of SMN from totally different games will make the wonderful job we have no into something completely different. You have to understand the difference between. "Making SMN more SMN" and "Making SMN more SMN that I remember" FFXIV isnt FFXI, FFX, or FFIX, it's FFXIV.

FFXIV has it's own SMN and people just won't accept it. How can you not hate how it plays but want to completely change how it plays to make it "better", at the same time?

SMN's direction is fine. We have Bahamut. He pew pews and bang bangs maybe later we'll get more like him. Maybe not. But that's the direction SE wants to go and people love it. Or else SMN would've got flipped like 4.0 BRD. Now after 4.1, SMN is even BETTER.

[SenorPatty]

SMN is SMN.

From what I gather here, you're fine with its gameplay but its also clear you don't care about its identity. We do. If we didn't, we wouldn't be complaining as much as we are now.

I find it ironic that you find that its great just the way it is, despite still glossing over what I mentioned before about egis: Titan is still not seeing light of day and Ifrit is now the one with more gametime. This just reinforces my belief of what I stated in the first paragraph.

I don't share the opinion that FF14's SMN should play out like a carbon copy of some past game. I do share the opinion that it should expand on its current gameplay. Trancing Baha and now summoning him is great. But it could go further. It could have trancing Ramuh, Shiva, Levia. It could get our first egi trio share more or less equal game time at capped lvls.

Overall from what Ive seen from fellow SMNs, we want the SMN aesthetics to be very present in our gameplay. That's the main core of our argument.

[Kemiko]

I don't play SMN because the egi's are ugly and people were pissed I i used Ifrit in 2.0 and pissex if I use Garuda in 4.0. I'd like it more if the Egi's were actual summons and you had more aesthetic variation. Aesthetic is all I want. I'm not hoping for more summon stuff like more summon skills. I know we won't get it and talk about elemental damage is sad. They made sure it was pointless with 2.0 so things like CNJ and THM wouldn't be decimated against certain primals or over world areas.

As far as identity... I played ffxiv 1.0. SMN is the 1.0 THM with a laughable pet. I'll never see it as SMN as long as it's a poison mage with insulting things they try to call summons.

[Culfinrandir]

Why not just have a single 'summon' ability where a random Primal appears (you have no control over who) that does auto-attacks & with the ability for a signature attack, like Enkindle? They would last for a set length of time before vanishing & being ready to be resummoned, a bit like how AST cards work. Additional features could be added that allow the player to 'influence' who is likely to be summoned but it would still be random. Most importantly, the stats of the Primal & their attacks would be identical across all summons so there'd be no "better" Primal.