[ Dev Requests ] Player Suggestions for Future Summoner Reworks

[Roda]

The biggest two for me:
1, don't take away me fighting alongside my carbuncle companion. I like pet casters. Having a familiar is important to me. Don't let imperfect execution scare you into thinking it can't ever work. Pet classes are a staple to mmos, and removing that niche would be a misstep for xiv imo.
2, Don't make the summons do all the damaging work for me. I want to cast my own spells, and have my summon be a patner to supplement my damage, not have it be the entirety of my interaction with the target.

Now for the more nitty-gritty stuff.

• Resource managment and dot management is fun but the way current summoner goes about it is kinda really backwards? Summons are all just on cooldown timers that are 100% passive to your engagement with the rotation. There is ZERO thought put into using your big summons outside of managing ghosting. The most engaging challenge to playing summoner right now is just ruin 4 managment which is just an allowance to move without losing DPS and to spend in bahamut phase to avoid using ruin 2 for weaving. The gameplay is fun, but the identity is confused.
• Having different pet summons for different situations is fun! But I think "single target" vs "AoE" vs "I give you a shield and waste a ruin IV and do no damage" is a pretty weak implementation of it. I'd rather have my carbuncle selection be based off of utility and supporting my group instead of me noticing if there's 3 or more monsters in a cluster at once. Something like we were doing in stormblood with garuda buffing magic damage and ifrit buffing physical. I think there's a lot of potential with that design philosophy. (bonus points if your pet choice changes how you interact with your -big summon- abilities!) ((all I'm saying is I want to summon a melee dps carbuncle and then go into odin trance and wield zantetsuken :P))
• I want a proper tanking pet again dangit! I want it to be able to hold agro for me, I want to have to manage it a bit and I want to be able to heal it! Pet casters are fun!
• Not only have more egi glamours, but give us quests, hidden quests even with puzzles, to go find and earn them! Let me use my class to interact with the world and get cool effects that affect the expression of my character. It is an RPG after all, and you don't have to limit a job to get cool fluffy flavor.
• Y'all never think big enough for the LB3 rework. Summon both hydaelyn and zodiark for the lb3. Cmon. (or maybe just randomly choose between the available primals. I'd like to summon alexander too lmao)
• Like I said I do LIKE smn having dots be a part of its identity (because wha tis a pet but a dot who's your friend?) but I'd like to see them get an upgrade in the next expansion like whm got their dps abilities updated in ShB to be more in-line with their class. Something like we see in Bozja spoilers where you send out a spell of tempering/corruption. Because the poison aesthetic is kinda misplaced after arcanist.
• another thing with dots is that I actually didn't mind fester ruins in that I liked that dot management interacted with the other parts of our rotation instead of "is dot applied? if no, apply dot" I'd like to see dots have a similar interaction with a gauge as BRD dots or DNC esprit. (probably something building to the big summons)

I made a rage concept of what I wish smn was back at the start of ShB when SMN was physically painful to play. Maybe I'll give it another pass and post it again here.

[Exodus-E]

What do you all think or suggest?

I think they should keep the Egis around.
Better yet: they should implement more to be applied/changed through a dedicated UI window (instead of text commands).

On a related note, and after all these years, I'm real sick of people wanting to outright remove them under the pretense of "not being like past FF games" (like SCH or DRK currently are, amirite?).
All while ignoring the established lore set up by this game's universe.

Implement more Trances/Demi-Summons? Fair enough.
Removing Egis? Absolutely not.

The biggest two for me:
1, don't take away me fighting alongside my carbuncle companion. I like pet casters. Having a familiar is important to me. Don't let imperfect execution scare you into thinking it can't ever work. Pet classes are a staple to mmos, and removing that niche would be a misstep for xiv imo.
2, Don't make the summons do all the damaging work for me. I want to cast my own spells, and have my summon be a patner to supplement my damage, not have it be the entirety of my interaction with the target.

Agreed 100%.
They should simply improve on what's already there, as well as implement more pets (even if they're just cosmetics).

[Raikai]

Implement more Trances/Demi-Summons? Fair enough.
Removing Egis? Absolutely not.

So, then the SMN (and SCH for some of that matter) will be eternally cursed with this clunky gameplay because the devs can't make pets work optimally? I do hope they get rid of Egis play-wise not because I hate them, or because I don't think egi lore is worse than the 'classical summoner' thing, but simply because it doesn't work well.

If somehow they would announce "Hey we upgraded the game's code and now pets can be reworked!" then I'd be all for it... But if they cannot, I'd rather have SMN go to another direction.

[Exodus-E]

So, then the SMN (and SCH for some of that matter) will be eternally cursed with this clunky gameplay because the devs can't make pets work optimally? I do hope they get rid of Egis play-wise not because I hate them, or because I don't think egi lore is worse than the 'classical summoner' thing, but simply because it doesn't work well.

If somehow they would announce "Hey we upgraded the game's code and now pets can be reworked!" then I'd be all for it... But if they cannot, I'd rather have SMN go to another direction.

That's what I meant with my "improve on what's already there", yeah.
I merely take offense on those who want stuff removed (based on their own "ideal" image of a given thing) instead of finding a way to further adjust/fix what we currently have.

[Raikai]

That's what I meant with my "improve on what's already there", yeah.
I merely take offense on those who want stuff removed (based on their own "ideal" image of a given thing) instead of finding a way to further adjust/fix what we currently have.

That would honestly be the best case scenario but I'm not really holding my breath with sphagetti code improvements. Actually I was, sorta, since Yoshi-P implied (or at least that was my understanding) in one of the interviews not long ago that something "big" would be coming to the game's structure. Something inside of me thought that it was honestly a code improvement, so they could bypass many things (sometimes even simple things) that they can't do because of it.

But alas it we didn't have anything like that in the announcement... Unless it's something they're unvealing just in May.

[Kindled]

I think they should keep the Egis around.
Better yet: they should implement more to be applied/changed through a dedicated UI window (instead of text commands).

On a related note, and after all these years, I'm real sick of people wanting to outright remove them under the pretense of "not being like past FF games" (like SCH or DRK currently are, amirite?).
All while ignoring the established lore set up by this game's universe.

Implement more Trances/Demi-Summons? Fair enough.
Removing Egis? Absolutely not.


Agreed 100%.
They should simply improve on what's already there, as well as implement more pets (even if they're just cosmetics).

True, I would prefer if they kept the egis included, but maybe change their models to fit how the game has progressed since 2.0.

Additionally, hopefully they can further develop the Egi Assault abilities so we can actually place the AoEs ourselves. I don't mind managing my pets as long as it doesn't take away too much from the damage. Although, this might be an unpopular desire since many people don't like the micromanaging involved.