Evolved Summoner speculation

[Minali]

I have to admit, random summons would be the least appealing thing to me I could think of. I don't want to play a Summoner to just summon some random cool looking pet but to utilize the differences of each primal in the best way to tackle a specific problem, and Summoner has been this for ages in the Final Fantasy Franchise. In some games like FF8, if I recall it correctly, one summon was more a specific attack and that was it. (I don't remember if you could spam it or had to load up a bar for a summon though.) In FF10, each summon had two or so thematic attacks and a big limit break, and you were hoping it reaches the limit break before getting nuked. xD
Completely random summoning would be neither of these and take away every possible player agency and option for strategy whatsoever. I'd rather not have this. If I understand it correctly, it would require players to work against their own job instead of with it, being more about "damage control" as in damage the "wrong" primal would cause than actually utilizing their primals as valuable battle companions. This doesn't really seem fun to me at least.

So far they seemed to have tried to go with the FF10 like style and doubled down on that with the rework in EW. I like the general idea and appreciated the rework but of course this comes with the downside that you might not have that many summons at your disposal, especially not without some button bloat. Additionally to this making it kind of a thing that summoning each primal once would be the best course of actions between each demi summon made it incredibly strict, and which order you choose doesn't really matter much in many fights. Therefore my hopes for Evolved would be that it's getting 1) more freeform in the choice of summons, so you have this tactical element from Shb and other FF titles back, and b) to get more summons.

Sadly this is kind of a "have a cake and eat it" situation. If they make all summons into what the demis are now for a more strategic gameplay, it would be a lot of little stances and a lot to juggle. (And possibly also harder to make them distinct enough. The gazillion summons worked so well in standalone games because of this whole elemental stuff we don't have in FFXIV for a good reason.) Perhaps trying out the FF8 route might be a good way for a change to get more summons into but prevent button bloat? Although I would miss having my summons hang around for a bit, but who knows, maybe it doesn't even have to be one or the other and there's some middle ground to be found.

Maybe they could take some inspiration from Monk? Don't know if it's still in the current iteration of Monk because I haven't touched that in DT yet but in Shb or EW (my memory starts to blur a little) you had one button changing based on the buttons you pressed before, Masterful Blitz. When they introduced the whole Nadi stuff that also had an impact on the gauge. The Nadi stuff was still kind of restrictive because same with Evolved Bard you had to have done both combos for the big thing, so that's not ideal.

Okay, throwing some ideas on the wall, would be interesting to know what other Summoners think about it. Any "Press button 1" or so is purely for explanatory choice, not "it needs to be the first skill" or whatever.:

1) We get that EW Nadi thing for the bigger demi summons, but instead of Lunar Nadi and Solar Nadi and having to have both, you can make a choice:
If you press 1-2-3, you get Bahamut, if you press 4-5-6 you get Phoenix. (Or 3-2-1 throwing some Ninja mudra thing in the mix but I know mudras are a complex system for many and might not be working for the current target audience of the job. But as said, I'm not picky about the buttons, make it 2-2-2 and 3-3-3 for all I care, leaving 1-1-1 for standard ruin spam/carby attacks).

I'm not a big fan of Solar Bahamut, imo this should've been Quetzalcoatl or Quetzalcoatl-by-another-name because it would suit the lore much better and is an established summon from the FF series, but if it sticks around, the same concept applies.

2) You have a skill like Masterful Blitz and depending on what other buttons you press, you can get all sorts of primals, or primal attacks, whatever suits. First ones coming to mind are ofc our established three, Ifrit, Titan and Garuda.

3) Primal themed attacks either like these situational things they had for Paladin (the clemency and cover thing) or as simple oGCDs or procs.
I know one concern of the devs regarding adding more primals would be the question what to do with them, for example if - going by the old system - you would have Ifrit-> Garuda->Titan -> Demi-Bahamut -> Shiva -> Ramuh -> Leviathan -> Demi-Phoenix. Making the second rock candy collections not just different looking clones can be tricky, considering many of the distinct effects of the single player games are a downside in FFXIV due to how the system works. (Bind or Sleep are nice in solo duties but in a dungeon they make grouping up mobs a lot harder for a tank, for example.) However, I think there's still some wiggle room and maybe there are some neat effects to be found in the Logos Actions in Eureka, Lost Actions in Bozja or the Phantom Jobs in Occult Crescent, or maybe even Blue Mage, that are neither based on disruptive mechanics like Heavy nor on these kinds of team synergies the devs want to get rid off. How about Shiva causing a blind status effect for 5 seconds? How about Leviathan causing poison or a vulnerability to physical damage for a short while? In my opinion there's still plenty of room for creative ideas of how other primals could add to the game without simply being "DPS attack as single target or AOE" in another flavour and making the appearance of more summons a great addition without being too taxing mechanically.
We also already have some oGCDs who are just named stuff like "Fester" as a reference to that previous Green Mage style Summoner, they could be given a different flavour. (Tbh I don't know why they haven't changed their names with the EW rework but it is what it is.)

As said, just some ideas I have, some suggestions following these core ideas of more summons but also more player agency and situational gameplay like they seem to try to achieve going by the first early stage examples they showed. Doesn't have to be all three ideas at once either, simply mentioning some options.

I know it sounds a bit much and I know many players who discovered Summoner in EW and DT value its simplicity, but in my opinion, depending on how it's done, this hasn't to contradict these ideas I mentioned. And I myself certainly don't need this patchwork job back that it was in Shb, where one of the egis was only marginally helpful in some solo fights, one in few mob pulls, and it felt way more like a green mage with all those poison dots, a green mage who happened to have mini-Ifrit floating next to them. However, the version it is now is very streamlined and quite strict with the timing, and very heavily created with the two minute meta in mind, especially since DT. (And this whole thing of having your rotation reset is also even less fun now when the rotation is 4 minutes long. I miss seeing Phoenix in new battle content.) So it's likely it is going to change either way, even for Reborn a little, unless it wants to be the last 2 (or 4) minute rotation job standing. Which would go against the plans the devs mentioned at the Fan Fest. And considering a simplification in buttons etc. is what they are trying to achieve anyway, I am sure whatever they do with the job is going to have this general idea in mind.

Edit: I don't really feel strongly about keeping or losing resurrection. It depends a bit on how healing would work in future content (or reworked older content). It prevented many wipes since I started playing, but if the healing would improve to the point less raises would be necessary, or starting over would be a bigger help than trying to wiggle through with two or three players alive at the same time, losing it would be fine by me. But I also don't play content more "hardcore" than old Unreal trials, so no clue how vital this is in savage or ultimate, and how much a removal would hurt that experience.