The Wyvern DilemmaFollow

Is it really so hard to just reduce attack power while the Wyvern is summoned, the same way Bard attack power is reduced during songs? Give the Wyvern special abilities that make it situationally worth reducing attack power. Tweak the balance a bit through updates as needed. These are professional game designers, things like this shouldn't be that hard for them to figure out. Yoshi, I am disappoint.

If you wanna be technical...

First set of DRGs in FF fought alongside dragon/Wyverns, used em as mounts/pets and this wasn't an MMORPG FF game unless of course people don't count FFII as a Final Fantasy game. Since we're not adapting a lifestyle (due to being anything on one character) we're basically the exception to the rule..or we wouldn't do what we can do in general story wise.

I only know of one FF game where a dragoon came with a dragon (XI). In the other games they're either dragon slayers or dragon knights (or blue mages... because Khimari is a weirdo).

I actually really like the idea of using the companion system for this. Maybe even if it's just a cosmetic change... DRG uses a dragon companion instead of a chocobo companion? That way it doesn't affect party dps balance at all and it isn't just a minion.

Edited, May 23rd 2014 12:50am by Callinon

Only if black mages get a fire sprite.

I don't think the WHM unicorn would be a very good fighting companion.

Yup, here is to hoping that all (or a good chunk of) the mounts get converted to companions.

Then imagine the leveling parties... a party of Behemoths fighting next to a party of Goobbues... and no one sees anything.

It might be redundant, but healer/tank type might actually work out. Casts protection spells that generate emnity and reduce incoming damage, letting the WHM alternate between Cleric Stance to heal and deal damage.

Yeah... I can make anything work >.>

SMN is a solid design for the most part, and I still posit that the only things needed for it to be perfect would be removing Contagion/Shining Emerald from the pet and give it to the master (my favored suggestions is having Tri-Disaster and Contagion effectively switch places) and better pathing for Ifrit-egi. You can tell it's a good design when the major complaint has been that the egi's aren't big enough (really, guys?).

Responding to the OP, they've established lore as to how Dragoons relate to dragons in FFXIV. I expect them to stick to their guns. At the most I could see a wyvern minion, so long as it's not tied to the DRG job (i.e, a subscription reward or maybe a reward for having an FFXI account linked to your FFXIV account instead of a quest reward for leveling DRG to lv60).

As an aside, I never really understood the fascination with wyverns. Sure, it's cute to have a baby animal help you out and was the source of some funny memes (mostly involving Ryuu-san and his wyvern Mikan). Still, the job hit the mainstream as a guy that wields a lance and jumps on his foes. I thought of the wyvern as a novel idea but at some point it became one of those common bits of misinformation...like the people that think RDM has always been and should always be an enfeebler. The best comment I ever saw on the matter was from an awesome sig on the beta forums that I wish I had archived for posterity: Kain from FFIV saying "I didn't need a wyvern to become the symbol for all dragoons. Why do you?".

Garuda trumps Ifrit because of Contagion and ranged advantage. Remove Contagion from the equation and then it's a matter of tweaking Ifrit.
The "it doesn't feel like a summoner" argument is and will continue to be eyeroll-worthy because it is based on a) mechanics from single player games that DO NOT cross over into MMO context or b) nostalgia and rose-colored goggles fixated on a system that was a mediocre caster that had little use outside of their two hour ability and carby pulls. And even in the single-player games summoner has struggled and needed to be attached to something else to be made mechanically viable (see: Rydia, Garnet, Eiko, Yuna).

Negative on that. I was there up until the stagnation known as WotG, came back for Abyssea and left halfway into Tanaka's second coming.

Even with skill boosts SMN is still a mediocre caster because of how wards scaled with summoning skill. Avatar favors in general are a joke because while the idea is solid you still have the hurdle of not every avatar being universally useful. The issue with SMN becomes even more glaring when you take Abyssea, Voidwatch and Legion into account, where it was basically there for Perfect Defense and nothing else. Even before that the only things SMN had to cling to relevancy was the promise of the lv70 blood pacts and the poor excuse known as "hateless damage".
There's stuff that works and stuff that doesn't. Asking for a perfect transition is pointless because single-player RPGs and MMORPGs are completely different beasts that require different approaches to design.
Ignoring the fact that DRG in concept is relatively simple since it's a physical attacker that jumps on their targets. Not much that can get jumbled or screwed up unless you mix needless elements into the concept...like say, a fragile pet that ignores enemy defense ratings but forces damage reductions on the DRG himself for balance purposes.
RDM is actually one of the prime examples of console FF concepts that don't make the transition. That's largely why RDM went through the identity crisis and civil war that followed. On a concept level you'd have to look at the core of the idea of a RDM (a guy that uses swords and magic) and build something from there rather than stick to a design approach that doesn't work.
And yet has stringent limitations, thus making it unreliable. Yoshida himself said FC summons are usable for dungeons, FATEs and content along those lines, can only be summoned once and then its gone.

And what I'm saying is that not all mechanics and concepts from the console FFs can cross over from single-player to MMO design parameters intact. In some cases the concepts and jobs have to be modified to fit within the framework of the game. So the people that base their expectations entirely on the console FFs are limiting themselves and setting themselves up for disappointment.

I wouldn't want a Wyvern battle pet. Vanity minion: sure. Mount: awesome, I hope they do that. A pet would just complicate things too much. Sure it could be done, and some people would probably be really great with it, but I wouldn't want a nerf, and I don't think it makes sense for any positional based battle class to manage a pet at the same time as trying to dance around. Maybe if they had some option to use the pet+nerf or neither, then people could choose, and that would be fine. I'm not sure how they'd explain the nerf due to using a Wyvern, but I'm sure it could be worked out. In that case, I would definitely give it a try.

I agree it is too late..
But It a dragoon... they need a dragon or why call them dragoon...
They could have a mount that's a dragon I guess but they should have left the class lancer because that is really what it is...

I hated having to rely on my wyvern 24/7 in FFXI. As a temporary limit break type ability, I think that would be cool but I wouldn't want Dragoon turned into a pet job again. It's too late in the game to implement such a big change anyway so I don't see that happening.