KrazyJoe
just because you can just have the summon on, it will just like having another player helping you. it wil be overuse by all player. even the summons aren't really strong, it still works better than poison. so we will end up having summon everywhere. one more norm ring for your set.
in 8, one summon, one heal. you have actually only 6 rings that you can be diffrent from the others.
Apart the fact that summon can be thought as FF's summons ( and that would avoid all this problem ), if you want stay on topic, I think we can agree that a time limited summon can contribute to reduce its overpower. Exactly as a not-so-strong summon. And a good AI.
Let's say, on many games that use this kind of ability (-cough-nwn-cough-), after a while summoned creatures are just used to distract the enemy ( or for other strategic uses ), cause of after two hits against a decent enemy they say goodbye and die. Not many players, as far as I've seen, have enough patience to use this way of fighting. So I don't think we will have a massive invasion of summoned creatures.
Anyway, even if you're right, if we're in the situation that summoning is limited enough ( and a good use of those three ways should guarantee this ), so that you're not forced to use this kind of rings, I don't see which is the problem in having many familiars on the map while you're battling. Customization is safe, fair levels of power are safe and we have more life on the screen
3nodding .