Thread: Summoner 6.0 Rework (my reimagining)

Originally Posted by ItMe

Snip.

This doesn't pass the sniff test for multiple reasons.

For one, sure it has to be its own thing, but SMN's STORY evokes the concept of summoners from other games. And in a way, not only is SMN bad at reflecting the job over FF games, but its bad at representing what being a summoner would be like in Eorzea.

The job quests don't talk about your powerful ruin and biomancy magic, and the Summoner NPCs you face down aren't tossing little tiny chicken nugget rock formations at you while most of the damage comes from them. Even in this universe, Egis are meant to be powerful primal slaying tools that reflect a fraction of the primal's power the summoner is able to wield. It isn't like its a critical part of the lore that the egi is lame or unimpressive, its actually sorta the opposite, they are meant to be powerful and intimidating but the SMN just... gets a pile of chicken nuggets.

Furthermore, arguing that the job having a bad 'feel' is intentional is silly. No one goes out of their way to make the keystone feature of a class in a game deliberately not interesting or exciting. It is super clear that pets overall are a badly dated legacy mechanic that the devs... don't... like? It isn't on purpose that the egi's abilities feel limp and the job is 'really' about your ruin spells: that is WHY they have been reworking them and trying to get them into a better space. Part of the very pitch of SHB's summoner rework was, in fact, a boldfaced admittance that they aren't where they should be in terms of gamefeel, its why they said 'we want to make you ACTUALLY feel like a summoner.'

And finally, even if it was intentional, does that make it better? If the design is so contentious and considered, at best, mechanically interesting but thematically a weird failure, I don't think saying 'it is on purpose' or 'the fact its that way reflects what this job would be in the world.' And I don't think the devs agree with that sentiment either, its why MCH got such a substantial rework into a new job: They were very aware MCH didn't feel good or really like the characters who inspired it, so even though it isn't fully Edgar it more resembles him than the non-thematic mush the job used to be. Job fantasy is absurdly important to the devs and they talk about it a lot. If the job is failing to deliver what it is 'promising' its a failure regardless of it was intended or not, and I think it is super fair to say that even in the context of the XIV story Summoner does a cruddy job at reflecting what it 'should' be.

Again, I think summoner is mechanically very solid, but if you think its gamefeel is where it should be, the devs are signaling pretty hard they disagree.

Just take some of the models from the job quests of enemy 'supercharged' egis and just make egi assaults turn em into that for a moment. Just change the visuals so its more clear there is a summoner-egi link in attacks, and the job is instantly made a lot better despite no mechanical OR lore changes. They don't need crazy super-spells or every job getting a summon, but its been a long standing point of contention that the Job-quest NPC summons and Egis are visually cooler and better than ours for no good reason, in a job that not only has bad aesthetics, but really needs to be about crazy good aesthetics because that is sorta what summons low key are in FF.