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[Column] Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn: FFXIV: Improving the Summoner Feel
BillMurphy
Former Managing EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 4,565
Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn is an overall awesome experience, but the feel of the Summoner Job can be a bit underwhelming. This week, we offer up some suggestions on how to improve one of the game's most iconic Jobs.
Yoshida-san explained that as an MMO it would be difficult to have the massive summons and dramatic effects we often see in other Final Fantasy games and I agreed. However, that doesn’t mean they have to be that small. Heck, even FFXI had summons of reasonable size and scale.
Read more of Michael Bitton's Final Fantasy XIV: Improving the Summoner Feel.
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Comments
I'm still on the fence w/ summoner. I like it, it's fun, but I'd like to see a bit more to it as well. Best comparison I come up with is It feels like a WoW hunter to me. Now, I'm not saying that negatively, cause I enjoyed hunter in WoW, but I'd like to see summoner stand out a bit more.
Scholar on the other hand, has a rather unique and refreshing feel to it (though I admit I just unlocked it last weekend and haven't healed a dungeon yet). But for some reason, it seems a bit more unique than summoner.
things to look forward to, room for improvement, expac growth potential.
enjoy what we have , look forward to what can come.
Got a lvl 50 smn. I can understand some of these comments, but only with partial agreement.
Pet size - please not the same as Aion. If you've ever tried going through something like Steel Rake with a couple of the Spiritmaster's Fire spirits blocking the screen - and those are only the lvl 40 ones.
I'm not one for simply boosting a classes skills. Make each class advantageous to the group, by better differentation not just a "moar dps!" approach. Players soon learn which dps classes are preferred in raids/dungeons, with the other dps class(es) becoming ostracized as they are perceived to be weaker in output.
Unfortunately I have to agree 100%.
Given the design decision for FFXIV, Yoshi has successfully limited a lot of the cooler options they could've had, as seen in games like FFXI. By making the combat super streamlined & simplistic, it also effectively removes most of the customization.
However, I also think this gets used too much as an excuse not to do interesting stuff with the game. For example, I know they aren't going to add in a renkai system, or go around adding class-specific limit breaks, because that would require a complete re-balancing of the game's combat. However, that doesn't mean they can't have different animations per job. Keep the caster one as is for BLM, but add primal-specific ones for Summoners. Add lance animations for dragoons, and monk animations for monks. Etc. etc. They have plenty of inspiration to draw from with those.
Also, the signature attack move is anything but. They are all 3 VERY lackluster, and the tooltip really needs to update depending on the summon you have out at the time. Currently, you can't even tell what they do, because the graphics are barely noticeable, and there's no description as to what is actually happening.
I also agree that the Egi's are rather lame. There is no reason they couldn't look closer to the summons, without being exact copies of the boss primals. The boss primals are multiple times the size of your character, just being able to summon a primal around the same size as your character (ala FFXI), would be enough. However, they could also go further and have you're primals evolve as you level, to eventually resemble something similar to the elder primals, but a lesser version. For example, maybe Ifrit is a smaller version of the elder, that has less horns, and less intense flames, but overall has the same general 'look' as the elder version.
Sadly, given the current way the game is designed, I dont know how they are going to add more summons. Each summon is lumped into an insanely generic role. Garuda = caster, Ifrit = melee, Titan = tank. They could add some slight variations I suppose, but it would effectiely make certain summons obscelete. I hope I'm wrong about this.
The summoner was one of my fav. classes in FFXI. However in FFXIV I do find it very underwhelming in a lot of ways.
i have much more fun with SCH than i do with SMN. and im not a regular healer in mmo's typically.
"There are at least two kinds of games.
One could be called finite, the other infinite.
A finite game is played for the purpose of winning,
an infinite game for the purpose of continuing play."
Finite and Infinite Games, James Carse
I don't have a whole lot of experience with smn as my acn is only in the mid 30s and from 30 on I've almost exclusively used it as SCH but I have to agree with this article 100%. I was super excited when I unlocked smn and got ifrit but after using him for a short while I went back to regular acn while soloing on acn because he just dies too dang fast.
I hear on pc it is easy to move him out of AoE range and therefore increase his survivability but on Ps3 it takes just a fraction of a second too long for me. Some have said this isn't an issue with titan or garuda but apparently ifrit has the highest dps so it would be nice to be able to use him when not soloing.
Currently there is only Ifrit, Titan and Garuda. Hopefully more to come.
They just need to change the graphics to make people THINK they're more powerful.
SMN are currently top DPS 95% of the time in end game content.