Shared Classes Are Not Failures (ie SCH/SMN)

[MirronTulaxia]

It's not exactly something that FF especially delves into, so it's hardly surprising it flopped. FF doesn't do "build a job". At best you just generally get to take two different job skillsets and use them at the same time, that's... not at all like what you're talking about. It also would be appalling from a balance standpoint. That Elder Scrolls Online, when "build a job" is much more a key feature of that series, doesn't do that should say something about the viability of build a job in terms of an MMO.

In short, it's not really an FF thing or an MMO thing. It's hardly surprising that they went a different route.

[ty_taurus]

While I suppose this isn't as important to some as job functionality, I think there's also something to be said about how the dual job system affected Summoner specifically in terms of job fantasy. Summoners are not and have never been poison mages and while the job has significantly gotten better in terms of actually feeling like a summoner as the name implies, it took a long time for us to really feel like a true-to-its-name Final Fantasy Summoner. I won't say it being connected to Arcanist and Scholar is exclusively the issue, because PS3 support was also a thing back then and doing something like Summon Bahamut in 2.0 would've killed us poor PS3 players (it was a darker time). That said, if Summoner were introduced on its own, I think it would probably fulfill that fantasy far more than it does now even. I mean just look at how often egi-glamours are brought up and how much players want to still summon Ramuh, Leviathan, and Shiva at least, not even including Ravan, Bismarck, etc.

[HeulGDarian]

While I suppose this isn't as important to some as job functionality, I think there's also something to be said about how the dual job system affected Summoner specifically in terms of job fantasy. Summoners are not and have never been poison mages and while the job has significantly gotten better in terms of actually feeling like a summoner as the name implies, it took a long time for us to really feel like a true-to-its-name Final Fantasy Summoner. I won't say it being connected to Arcanist and Scholar is exclusively the issue, because PS3 support was also a thing back then and doing something like Summon Bahamut in 2.0 would've killed us poor PS3 players (it was a darker time). That said, if Summoner were introduced on its own, I think it would probably fulfill that fantasy far more than it does now even. I mean just look at how often egi-glamours are brought up and how much players want to still summon Ramuh, Leviathan, and Shiva at least, not even including Ravan, Bismarck, etc.

neither is this one a poison mage , you got 2 instead of one dot and a way to upkeep. That does not make a job poison mage, especially in the universe where there is no such thing as POISON MAGIC. People asking for egis to change appearance doesnt mean they hate the smn identity , not only that alot of people love the egis . The problems with the job are well known already, its not the egis, its not the dots, its not the ruin gameplay, nor its identity. Its the pet ai of both demis and egis and its the fact that trance is an awful clock, double awful in the case of pheonix trance no matter how fun it is. But thats not what you lot care about , you lot care about your favourite past iteration of summoner ignoring the series as a whole. Smn never was just summoning with the exception of ff5. A summoner having more spells is nothing new , what this game did is it created a magic system where a summoner can do more than just summon , instead of simply handing out the summons to the different mages. This is what development of a job looks like, it took the having alot of options aspect of summoner and build upon it. that is the main difference between a summoner and a blm who simply spams their most powerfull spell.

[ty_taurus]

neither is this one a poison mage , you got 2 instead of one dot and a way to upkeep. That does not make a job poison mage, especially in the universe where there is no such thing as POISON MAGIC. People asking for egis to change appearance doesnt mean they hate the smn identity , not only that alot of people love the egis . The problems with the job are well known already, its not the egis, its not the dots, its not the ruin gameplay, nor its identity. Its the pet ai of both demis and egis and its the fact that trance is an awful clock, double awful in the case of pheonix trance no matter how fun it is. But thats not what you lot care about , you lot care about your favourite past iteration of summoner ignoring the series as a whole. Smn never was just summoning with the exception of ff5. A summoner having more spells is nothing new , what this game did is it created a magic system where a summoner can do more than just summon , instead of simply handing out the summons to the different mages. This is what development of a job looks like, it took the having alot of options aspect of summoner and build upon it. that is the main difference between a summoner and a blm who simply spams their most powerfull spell.

I'm pretty confused. Where is this rant coming from? I think you didn't read what I wrote.

[MirronTulaxia]

While I suppose this isn't as important to some as job functionality, I think there's also something to be said about how the dual job system affected Summoner specifically in terms of job fantasy. Summoners are not and have never been poison mages and while the job has significantly gotten better in terms of actually feeling like a summoner as the name implies, it took a long time for us to really feel like a true-to-its-name Final Fantasy Summoner. I won't say it being connected to Arcanist and Scholar is exclusively the issue, because PS3 support was also a thing back then and doing something like Summon Bahamut in 2.0 would've killed us poor PS3 players (it was a darker time). That said, if Summoner were introduced on its own, I think it would probably fulfill that fantasy far more than it does now even. I mean just look at how often egi-glamours are brought up and how much players want to still summon Ramuh, Leviathan, and Shiva at least, not even including Ravan, Bismarck, etc.

I feel like this is shifting the burden from Yoshida/SE. Ultimately they're the ones who decided that a WoW Warlock was an acceptable implementation for a Summoner, and for anyone who cares about the series it really doesn't hold up.

[ty_taurus]

I feel like this is shifting the burden from Yoshida/SE. Ultimately they're the ones who decided that a WoW Warlock was an acceptable implementation for a Summoner, and for anyone who cares about the series it really doesn't hold up.

Hindsight is 20/20 after all, and I don't think it's a healthy way to handle situations by turning anything into a blame game. It's so much easier for me to sit here, Summoner already having been designed as is, and say "well if you had just done this, it would be better" than it is for the development team to have created the Arcanist, Summoner, and Scholar from the ground up. I agree that it really should be designed differently from the beginning, but there's little that can be done about that now. I'm just glad they recognized what the summoner fantasy was and are trying to work toward it slowly but surely. It would be nice if they could be more transparent about where they eventually want to take it, and what these secret plans for egi-glamours are that are apparently in the works but cannot be talked about, but that's Japanese game developers for you.