Summoner Issues & Player Feedback

[LittleArrow]

Given we used to actually get lore in the job quests, the things they stopped doing to give us the unified role quests to lessen the burden on the development cycle having to write quests for all the jobs, I doubt this. We have no lore for Phoenix and its trance beyond just '[finger guns] carteneau!' and Binding Coils if you do it since it's an optional raid series. Unless we get a sentence about it in the eventual 4th Encyclopaedia I highly doubt we're getting more beyond the casual PLL mention of 'this is more like what actual original bahamut was' and maybe a tiny bit of lore allusion in the tooltip.



I really wish I could have your level of optimism, and respectfully I do appreciate you're trying to make people see a light to what feels like the endless tunnel of gloom most long-term SMN players have had, however since the job has been unfun to play since 6.0 it's a bitter pill to swallow having to wait to see how further butchered it will be. Again, it LOOKS great, but we could have gotten so much better with an actual 2nd gem cycle between Bahamut and Phoenix with other summons, some risk-reward with how you cycle through particular gems for single/aoe buffs in burst phase, anything beyond the monotonous 1-2-3-Burst-1-2-3-Burst where 2/3 gems feel pitiful in damage.

"But the lore says we reached our aetherwell cap after Garuda thus can't imbue further summon essences" is the weakest excuse in a game that has, constantly, retconned major plot points before given its breaking this rule already with Solar Bahamut existing.

I 100% respect your opinion, but that's what it is, an opinion. [EDIT] And my defense of the class is my opinion also.

I'm sorry that you find the job unfun. I really do feel bad for those that loved the way the job was before, but I'll never agree that the previous summoner was summoner - it wasn't. No summoner in any final fantasy has been that. Yoshi has stated it was essentially a FF reflavor of warlock from wow. I want FFXIV to bring a job that will make previous summoners happy. There are LOADS of debuffers in the FF games to choose from. I'm really hoping for that.

However, the current summoner IS fun, imo. Not every job has to have the complexity of old school XIV summoner. There are many jobs that I would say keep you on your toes. It's not a fix, and it's not an answer to the criticisms previous summoner players have, but I will always defend current summoner. I agree it needs to be built on. I'm gutted they didn't add more summons to the Phoenix phase. I do think there could be incredibly fun complexity to the job, but I will continue to absolutely enjoy watching these summons wreck monsters.

[faiarrow]

However, the current summoner IS fun. Not every job has to have the complexity of old school XIV summoner.

We will have to agree to disagree, since this is your opinion and as you elloquently put it, it is an opinion. It is fine to defend something you think is fun, but tonedeaf to not read the room and that the greater community consensus worldwide is mixed-to-negative seeing the developers double down on the simplification.

[LittleArrow]

We will have to agree to disagree, since this is your opinion and as you elloquently put it, it is an opinion. It is fine to defend something you think is fun, but tonedeaf to not read the room and that the greater community consensus worldwide is mixed-to-negative seeing the developers double down on the simplification.

I apologize if I seemed rude in anything I said. I do agree with you that I stand firmly in the side of the minority. I'll never submit to just being disappointed or angry without seeing any of the positives, because there are positives in this case, I believe.

Disappointment is a very difficult opinion to combat or try to balance. I'm disappointed too. I was specifically speaking to the player in my post, because I truly felt I could shed a positive light on their opinion. This is a forum, however, and it is absolutely probably best I just wait until the dust settles before continuing to post here, for myself included.

Meanwhile, I'm going to jump down the youtube rabbit hole of summons compilation videos from Final Fantasy games and get hyped. Summoner is, 100%, the best Final Fantasy job!

[rawker]

Sure... let's ignore FFXI SMN exists. It is a pet job. The egis of ARR up to HW is expected as you do not expect to summon primals at 50. They started with Bahamut at 70. I was fine with that but no.. they made the egis and carbuncle do nothing. Took out the pet management and then the disrespect up to DT. It is not acceptable. If you didn't like the pet management, it's fine.. but rejoicing to the point they removed it and then give a blanket statement of feeling sorry for people who thoroughly enjoyed old summoner is just insulting. If you truly are sorry you will not follow up with a shallow statement of feeling sorry and just keep your praising of the new summoner.

Edit.. btw, before being able to summon the big ones, you have elemental spirits you have no control of what they cast, have atrocious perpetuation costs and the only thing you could summon that isn't an elemental spirit was.... Carbuncle. You fight with Carbuncle in the trials to be able to summon Ifrit, Shiva, Garuda, etc... that's what's expected in FFXIV... but no.. this gutted version of SMN is clearly a downgrade... oh wait Yuna on FFX also summons Aeons as pets. Funny

[Shikiseki]

I think as a foundation it served a good purpose until you realize how much potential the kit had but they focused on the wrong thing first (adding a demi in the form of bahamut2? but I digress)

If you realize that if you would have added just 1 additional gemshine summon into the mix, you could have already shaken the decisionmaking within the fixed 1 minute window: Do I fully use 3 gem summons? do I use all 4 of them but which one would you cut short? Or even have Shiva being one gemshine phase you cannot get out of until it's completely over due to the method of summoning being different - so many options! After that you add the 5th and 6th gem summon, each time expanding the possibilities even further

On top of that, you could introduce each gem summon to give an astral or umbral seal which will determine the demi summoning outcome like:
3 Astral nodes --> Bahamut
3 Umbral nodes --> Phoenix
2 A / 1 U nodes --> Odin
2 U / 1 A nodes --> Alexander

this idea alone would basically carry you as buildingblock until 10.0 as you can easily expand it which not only gives you even more summoning but also high decision making depening on the situation you're in as you suddenly not only have a variance in how many gemshine summons you summon but on what demi you ultimately want next in the line, all hopefully serving a different flavour while being identical in damage

[Khryseis_Astra]

"But the lore says we reached our aetherwell cap after Garuda thus can't imbue further summon essences" is the weakest excuse in a game that has, constantly, retconned major plot points before given its breaking this rule already with Solar Bahamut existing.

And really they’ve already started laying the foundations… Eden, the fact that we’ve got an extra shard of our soul from Ardbert, the way summoning was explained during EW with the difference between how primals were summoned under Ascian influence as opposed to Ancient creation magic… I mean, a large chunk of the player base wants Levi-Shiva-Ramuh, and at this point, it would be so easy to say old lore is old, and we’re powerful enough to handle it now, and we have more knowledge of what summoning actually is and how it works. I doubt I’d come here and see people complaining “but lore!” if they finally gave us our other 3 gems! Ok there’s always a few, but most of the posts I’m seeing here and elsewhere, this is the most wanted item on the list.

Add to that, it would take up no extra hot bar space, as our gems could go to Levi-Shiva-Ramuh buttons just like they do for Garuda-Titan-Ifrit… and they could continue that further ahead with other triads of summons if they wanted.

I do share Little Arrow’s optimism though… SMN was the second job I picked up and though there are some things I miss about old SMN (DOT spread was fun lol), I like the format it’s in now a lot better. They’ve built a good foundation for future growth, but now they need to start doing it! So I share everyone’s disappointment in having to wait another few years to get what I thought would be the next logical step. Still love the job, I just want more! lol

[Ggwppino]

I posted this in another thread, but I'd like to post this here too, since it's a defined thread towards summoner.

I hated the original FFXIV summoner. I feel awful for the players that loved it to lose their class. However, wanting summoner to be a wow warlock isn't the answer. Yoshida's vision for summoner being an actual summoner was 100% the correct move.

I ADORE the new Summoner! Summoner was always my favorite class in every final fantasy game, even the ones that didn't have it - I was so excited to get the new summon materia, guardian force, whatever they called it! Those cutscenes were one of my favorite things in all the final fantasy games, which is why I'm so confused we're getting neo-bahamut.

I 100% agree, I do NOT want a Bahamut mage. I want a SUMMONER. I want Shiva, Ramuh, Leviathan, Titania, Anima - I want all of the classic summons and I want new summons too! I know the devs are scared of button bloat, then make the Shiva / Ramuh / Leviathan replace Titan, Garuda, Ifrit during Phoenix phase. Give us a OGCD of Alexander for a party shield / buff. Give us more summons please!

[EDIT] I just wanted to add, I really like where Bahamut and Phoenix sit with the job. They're beautifully mirrored just like in game with how they fit in the lore; I'll stop there due to spoilers. There's nothing wrong with how it is now, but going forward - give me more summons!

Adding 3 summons after Phoenix is ​​just watering down the broth even more.

You say that the summons don't have to be skins, but currently the feeling is practically this: bahamut and phoenix are 2.48s GCD summons that work in the exact same way, let's add Titan which is the exact same thing and Garuda which works very similarly and so they work pretty much the same way. I would have worked a lot, much more to differentiate these flavors as they did with ifrit (the only real summon that was really successful in design).
I would have added more summons, not too many, just the right amount, but not sequentially but always used within the 1 minute window.
I would have done a job to redevelop the carbuncle and give it the right merits and the right importance.

I want my summons to be really different from each other, and in EW they did a terrible job of conveying identities to these summons. And in DT they just demonstrated how incompetent they are and that they are using this game only as a cash cow to milk as much as possible to get as much as possible in the shortest possible time, with the lowest possible effort, without actually giving them attention that it deserves.
There is no longer the love and attention that there was in past years.

[KadenLag]

Just to add my opinion as a summoner main, super disappointed with the extra bahamut, there are so many other options that people have been asking years for and to get a second bahamut is extremely disheartening. I honestly don't know how the choice to add this even passed, I've seen some saying its to cut cost and dev time by reusing assets, we get such small class additions each expansion, every 2 years that if thats the case it feels very disingenuous to players time and money. I adore the games story and always think they do phenomenal on that front but this is the first job trailer overall that I was very disappointed in. I assume it's too late for any change to actually happen so I guess I'm a bahamut mage now, rip summoner, really demotivating. I normally don't make forum posts but in this case my disappointment was enough to make me want to add my opinions.

would it really have been so much work to add for example Ramuh, give him his aoe lightning attack. Theres more potential but even as a low copy/paste effort, the model exists, and you can rehash the same rotation as ifrit,gardua,titan, or bahamut/phoenix

[undull1]

It's ridiculous that summoner doesn't become a complete class until lvl 86, most classes have their base core mechanics sorted by LVL 50-60.

Adding a garbage new skin to our boring bahamut phase and 20 potency to a few actions is below the playerbases lowest expectations.

The devs need to do better.

[Rekh]

That "bahamut's" way out of left field. Is this like a random request by someone in the dev team? Would really like to know the logic behind this.